Voodoo Burnout -- Twofold

[brendanh]

Ok, so here's the deal:

I had a voodoo 3 and was playing diablo II. It had worked flawlessly for about 1.5 years. All of the sudden the video cut out completely and the monitor started flashing "check cable connection..etc.". Reset did nothing. I powered off and powered on and my video came back, briefly. On the windows startup screen, the video cut out again. How long it took to cut out depended on how long I left the power off, but even leaving it off for a day did not get me more than about 40 seconds of video. So i gave up and bought a voodoo 5.

Guess what?
The same exact thing happened again today while playing Diablo II.. no I'm not a diablo fanatic or anything.. so this seems like a wierd coincidence. Anybody have similar problems? The voodoo 5 does the same thing, power-on gives me about 30 seconds of video before it cuts out.

Here's a description of my computer:
Athalon 1000Mhz, MSI K7TPro2-A

Voodoo 5 5500 AGP
300 watt power supply
various things, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, ATI TV tuner, ethernet adapter, SB live.. other boring stuff that probably don't affect it.

bios settings are factory default, no heat problems, no overclocking

If anyone could help me I'd be forever greatful!!

 

[Rifter]

do the vid cards still work, like in other systems? if not then id say its a mobo and or PS problem.

 

[brendanh]

I dunno if they work in other systems, i haven't had the opportunuty to try it out yet- what intrigues me is that they worked fine for so long and then all of the sudden blew up on me, sounds like an electrical problem or something.

 

[brendanh]

OK. I just tried it in another computer and it (the voodoo 5) appears to be working fine. So, what now??

Thanks!

 

[brendanh]

I tore out all of my stuff but the bare essentials, the secondary IDE (CD-RW, DVD-ROM), TV tuner, modem, floppy, were all torn out. Now it works--go figure. I'm putting it back together piece by piece, what could it have been??

 

[HappyGamer2]

yep it sounds like you have hardware problems big time power supply, cpu or maybe the MB it's self
do other game work fine? if so reinstall DII

 

[HappyGamer2]

tired power supply?
bad connetion somewere

 

[Yakkum]

I bet it was the power supply, and with everything unhooked it was drawing less power so it started working again. As for why it cut out after such a long time of working correctly I can't really say, perhaps you were overclocking? Maybe you had a bunch of components running at the same time? Other new added components?
And maybe due to the power consumption of an added piece it wouldn't boot back up? I really have no idea but the power supply sounds like a likely problem with some of your issues. Good luck!

Edit: Oops, my bad, just realized you said you weren't overclocking. Well maybe it had something to do with your ati tuner. Those things are problem heavy with any brand.

 

[brendanh]

Sounds like power may be it.. I pulled out the modem (don't need it) and a Ultra 66 Ide controller that was an artifact from an old setup. Must've freed up enough power to keep things chugging cuz everything works now. its just wierd that it cut out both times while playing the same game.

Everyone that responded thanks very much for your input.

 

[jamie2833]

you know it might not be the power supply but the power cable, i had a very similar problem with my computer, it just switched off when it felt like it, usually after about an hour or so using it it'd just switch off like the cable was lose, then it'd try to switch itself back on.
also like you i had to leave it off for it to be able to switch back on again, something vry strange happened though = when the whole PC tower was tilted to about 45 degrees it'd be fine but anything more upright it'd switch off again! very strange, anyway it totally stopped working after i started playing with it and i started panicking thinking it was the power supply etc, so i had to wait a while to get a spare PSU from a friend, and guess what? it wouldn't work with his either!
thought i'd have to get a new power supply til my sister came in and said 'is it the fuse?' aaaaaarrrghhh!!
i could have hit her!!

try checking the fuses, could just be something as simple as that?

 

[Davegod75]

see brendan i told you it might be the power supply. Yeah I dunno why you even had that modem or controller card even in there. Anyways glad to see it works

edit: btw that voodoo5 sucks a lot of power out of the powers supply