Athlon PC building problems

[markdshark]

Hey all. Recently I decided to go build myself a new PC (getting just a wee bit frustrated with my old 133MHz Pentium).

So anyway. I went out and bought the following parts:

Athlon 700MHZ retail box
ASUS K7M Via 1.04 mobo
Matrox Millenium AGP card
128 Megs SDRAM
20 gig Maxtor HD
Pioneer DVD
(still plan on getting a CD-RW)

Yesterday my CPU (finally) arrived and I promptly slapped it all together and turned it on.

Nothing. Worse actually.

First off I noticed there's no where to plug my monitor in except into the Matrox card. But I haven't installed the Matrox drivers yet, so why should I expect it to work anyway? When I do turn the machine on, the monitor remains blank and even seems to go into "low power/no power" mode (green light changes to yellow)

Secondly....(and this one has me chewing nervously on my lower lip)...after turning it on, the machine ran for like a minute or two and then shut itself off. Subsequent pushes on the power button resulted in everything sort of starting up for a brief moment and then dying (like with the case open I can see the fans make a few revolutions and stop) Apparently if I leave it for a few hours I can turn it on again, but again it'll only run for a few minutes and in any case I can't see anything on the monitor.

Finally, the first few times I turned it on I was getting the system activity led's to flash pleasantly for me. Now when I do turn it on (or even when I try), I get no response from the system activity led's (but when it does choose to start and run for a few, I do hear a beep)

Am I doing something wrong? Missing something? Am I dazed and confused? (wait...I know the answer to that one!)

At this point I'm not even sure where to begin looking for answers. My first time ever building. I followed the mobo manual to a 'T'. I even consulted AMD's "guide to building..."

Suggestions?

Mark

[Paul V]

Try this:

Plug the monitor into the vid card. It'll work fine in VGA mode, you only need drivers to get maximum performance in win9x/linux/whatever.
As to power, try this: push the power switch, wait 3 seconds or so and hit the reset button. It's a known problem with K7Ms and AGP vid cards that often the system won't properly power up. A BIOS flash I believe fixes it, I never flashed my own as it almost never happens to me anymore.

[This message has been edited by Paul V (edited 02-08-2000).]

[markdshark]

right on. I'll try that when I go home tonight. Along with trying to power on with nothing but the cpu, mobo and agp card, as well as moving all my old machine's components onto the new board and seeing if that works.

Do you know if one needs RAM for the POST?

[markdshark]

The solution as turned out was to get a 300Watt power supply. For one part of the problem. The other part was even simpler. Turns out a dual head grafix card isn't a dual head until you teach it how to drive. So simple switching the cable to head 1 got me a display.

[AuraEdge]

Just for reference..the parts you NEED for a comp to turn on are CPU, board, Power supply, and RAM...nothing else.
Glad you got the Athlon up!
You should be VERY happy with your new rig!

[HOTRODk62]

glad you got the bugs worked out...I had this happen on a k62 system I was building a while back, the fans would barely turn, and I thought it was a power supply issue. turned out I had the usb connector on backwards...LOL

[markdshark]

ugh...I hear you. I've been wracking my brains trying all sorts of solutions for 2 days now when it turns out my HD was plugged to the slave connector on my ATA66 cable :-/

Ah well....back to setting up the system. And man...when it does run....it doth run sweet!!! :-)