I posted this message at a PC hardware help site but thought I'd put it here too... i need serious help

I have a 486/66 with 8mb ram and Win 95 which I want to turn into a Linux box. I hadn't used the computer in over a year until I turned it on yesterday. There was no video and the booting seemed to stop just where the BIOS (Award) would turn control over to Windows. I assumed the CMOS battery was dead and replaced it. I then tried a different monitor with this computer, but still no video. Fortunately, I have the installation guide that came with the motherboard and it has enough of a description of the BIOS setup program that I can tell what keys to press to go through the menus. I tried several things but there was no change in the boot process until I selected "Set CMOS setup defaults" or something like that. Now the system boots, there is still no video, but the system seems to boot the OS (this was my main box for over 3 years and I still know what the HD sounds like as it boots... it sounds very similar to what I remember). I have seated and reseated the video card twice (the card is a Trident VGA) and it only has one chip in a socket, but it looks like it's seated fine.

The motherboard guide has one jumper near the CMOS battery that is not documented in the manual; is this the jumper used to erase the CMOS? How do I go about doing this? Will resetting the CMOS fix the problem?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Do you have any other video card you can try? Just to see if the Trident is broken. It looks that everything's booting OK, so it's not BIOS. I seems the card is not sending signal to your monitor.

I did remove the battery, thinking that the CMOS would be reset, but the motherboard manual says the only sure way to erase the CMOS is to use the jumper-- but it doesn't say which jumper. But however it happened, the computer seems to boot now.

I don't have another video card at hand but I can probably get one. The thing is, the computer sat where it did for over a year. It was plugged into a surge protector and did not move. I don't know how the card could've been damaged.

Crazy things happen, static from a carpet whatever. Usually the motherboard gives out a series of beeps if the video device is broken, is it a bad monitor cable?

Motherboards don't have the smarts to beep in those days. You need to know what you are doing.

Get a diagnostic card. It will help you figure out what is the problem.

A surge proctector doesn't protect the computer from brownouts or blackouts.

Are you absolutely sure it does post? If not, what about the possibility of bad ram?? I had a computer with ram that died on my suddenly and it took me the longest time to figure it out. It would turn on, but no image on the screen, memory test, or nothing. Just black. Wasn't until I figured to swap the ram that it did work.

I just now thought that I should probably mention that I pulled the card completely out and booted the computer. The long-short-short beep sounded; this indicates that the computer couldn't find the video card... does that mean the card still works?

Also, I have two 16mb ram cards that I put into the computer in place of the 8mb it came with. It wouldn't even start booting until I took them out and replaced them with the original 8mb card.

Update: duhhhhh... i realized today that the IDE HD connector goes on backwards if you put it on that way... that's why it wouldn't boot with the ram cards in there. They work alright, except I still don't have video

Thanks