Troubleshooting a Shuttle

[hxrichard]

Hi

This was never going to go according to plan... I've got a barebones Shuttle and it's not working. Please, somebody help me.

I've got a new Shuttle XPC SN41G2 - the one with the built in VGA and TV-out connectors.

The basic problem seems to be that the VGA (or for that matter the TV-out) does not work. I plug my 17" VGA monitor into the back and power it up and don't even get as much as a flicker. The fans come on, the blue light on the front comes on but nothing on the monitor.

I've now tried it with the DVD drive (which powers up etc), the HD (which causes the HD light on the front to flash), the RAM and the processor all plugged in. And I've removed the DVD drive, the HD, the RAM and the processor all in stages and still nothing at all on the display. I would expect to go to the bios or see *something*.

A few questions:

1. I've not got a floppy. This machine surely cannot force me to buy and install a floppy?

2. The monitor I'm using is an Apple Studio Display 17" (CRT model that matches my old B&W G3) with a standard VGA connector. Please do not speculate anyone but does anyone *know* that these monitors do only work when plugged into Macs? Bizarre though that would be.

Anyone got any clues to this? It's like the graphics chip is just dead or something.

Many thanks.

Richard.

[Jiff Lemon]

Firstly, do you KNOW the monitor is working? Does it work ok on another PC? Have you another monitor you can try?

Second, What memory is in there? Single stick? Two sticks?

Had very similar experiance with a SB51, which gave similar symptoms. If you've other memory you can try, give that a whirl. Failing that try a single stick/swap slots.

[hxrichard]

Originally posted by Jiff Lemon
Firstly, do you KNOW the monitor is working? Does it work ok on another PC? Have you another monitor you can try?

Second, What memory is in there? Single stick? Two sticks?

Had very similar experiance with a SB51, which gave similar symptoms. If you've other memory you can try, give that a whirl. Failing that try a single stick/swap slots.

Thanks for the reply. Yes, the monitor is fine. It's worked for year. Indeed, it's working now as I type!

I'll try swapping the single 512Mb memory slot but surely I would get *something* on the monitor. The bios. Something, anything?

Richard.

[Jiff Lemon]

Like I said had similar problems with memory and it just fails to post.
Lights come on, nowt happens.
I RMA'ed the shuttle thinking it was dead (after reseting the bios etc) - all the components worked in other machines too.
Seems shuttles can be picky with memory.

You got another stick you can try?

[micovwar]

silly question but have u tried the alternative vga output,(assuming ure not using a graphics card)

a while back i activated my second monitor vga output and it rendered my live output useless becouse there wasnt a second monitor attached and i had to switch the plug to the activated output to get the monitor to come on!

just a thought
good luck

[Nimrod]

I have a SN41G2 (got my RMA replacement on Friday) and after building I had this problem !

What I did was this:

Plug the Monitor into the bottom VGA port (VGA1).
Hold down and keep holding down the INsert key on your keyboard. Keep it pressed in until you see a message on screen about being in safe mode.
Turn the shuttle on.

Basically keeping the Insert key pressed resets the bios. So once you have done this the shuttle will reset its bios.

Once I had done this I had output on VGA1 and I could then go into the bios and make sure that the shuttle was setup to use the onabord VGA output