help - adding a pci geforce4 to a gateway 6400 deactivates SCSI

[brianboru]

Finally got around to picking up a new video card for my Gateway 6400.
I was happy to find a geforce 4 card in a pci format - I grabbed a PNY Verto Geforce4 MX 420.

Anyway, it's not working.

I put it in (tried all the slots), took out all the other cards and well... it boots fine.
The bios automatically de-activates the onboard video and routes video to the card.
POST and BIOS are ok, but for some reason it deactivates the onboard SCSI.
It looks like it's probably a conflict with IRQ 11 (video is now on 11 and one of the scsi controllers used 11).
So it's useless to me without onboard scsi working.

1) i tried moving the card around
2) tried messing with bios settings
3) went looking for some way to deactivate one of the scsi controllers
4) switched the scsi source jack from primary to the secondary.
5) went looking for info at Gateway 6400 Server FAQ

If I unplug the card, the computer boots fine from SCSI with onboard video.

So a few questions I'm hoping people have run across (know there are quite a few 6400s out there):

Anybody had a similar config that's working?
If not, what's the best card you've actually seen working with this board (primarily games + maybe some video in/out)?
Anybody have any further info on the board + server? Manually setting IRQs? etc...

help! thanks...

 

[brianboru]

btw, I did search through the forums and I couldn't find some of the original threads that I thought might have some info.
If somebody can help me out I'd appreciate it.
Maybe I'm not searching for the right thing...

Did a few google searches too.

 

[amdskip]

Is there a jumper on the board to disable onboard video?

 

[corkyg]

You have to find a way to physically disable the on board video. Your PCI video card and the SCSI card can't share an IRQ - SCSI must have a dedicated IRQ because of its bus mastering capability. Normally, video is AGP, and slot 1 PCI shares the IRQ with AGB - I never use PCI slot 1 for that reason. When I was running SCSI, it went into PCI slot 2 which was a dedicated IRQ not shared with anything. What you are running in to is why I don't like factory built, mass produced computers. What does Gateway tech support tell you?

 

[brianboru]

I hate it when i try to post and the page chokes... when you try to go back it erases everything you typed in the window. argh...

1) yes i tried looking for a jumper. there are some but not one as far as i can tell that disables video. anyway video is auto disabled when you put a card in as i can see the bios and post fine...

2) haven't talked to gw tech support yet as I'm not sure if this is the box I elected not to have support on. anyway, i was hoping with the popularity of this box that someone would have tried installing a newer card in it already.

3) corky - normally i agree with you. no way i'd pick a box like this for a normal computer. but at 2-300 bucks, whatever it was - it sure made an excellent backup server. just would like it to pull double duty now.

here's hoping somebody out there has tried something similar?

 

[targetshopper]

Brian,

I have the same exact problem

I installed PNY GeForce4 MX420 64MB card, once installed
it wont acknowledge scsi thus I get can't boot media.


so some people have suggested plugging
it into every single PCI Slot to see if that might help.

I am not strong on hardware so I dont know what the motivation for that is?
(Maybe the IRQ changes when plugged into dif PCI slot?)

Another thing I was looking on the GATEWAY motherBOARD itself and noticed
a bunch of switches (blue thing w/white switches) I am not clear what that
does, I wonder if that has a way to switch off or do something?

I read in another forum that they got an ATI RADEON 7000 to work or ATI something
to work. Also another person had a GeForce from another vendor and it failed too

Let me know if anything like that works or helps for you I am going to try some more
things to night to see if I can get mine to work.

** I remember when you had to set the IRQ jumpers yourself, in this case
having the luxury of Plug-n-Play might not have been so good.

HERE'S A LINK to another ANDANTECH forum but no one in there knew, plus it was old thread.
http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=27&threadid=659078&highlight_key=y&keyword1=6400