Activy 3xx does not boot from PCI Graphic Adapter

[Mave]

Hi,

I have a Fujitsu Siemens Activy 330 Multimedia Center. Now I wanted to install an alternative Software on that PC.

www.team-mediaportal.com

But the Software refuses to work because the Activy has an onboard Cyberpro TVIA 5005 graphics chip that supports DirectX7 whereas the Media Portal Software needs DirectX9 to work.

As the Activy PC has 3 PCI Slots (no AGP) I added an additional PCI graphics card from NVIDIA (Geforce FX 5200) with no success. After inserting that card the screen remains black when turning the PC on. No beep codes, nothing on the screen - neither through the onboard adapter nor through the additional PCI card.

After that I assumed some incompatibilities between the NVIDIA card and the board's BIOS.

Therefore I ordered another card - an ATI RADEON 9250 PCI, but it led to the same results. The PC doesn't do anything when turning it on.

In the Phoenix BIOS of the mainboard there is no setting to turn the onboard grahpics chip off, but I assumed that if I plug an additional PCI graphics card it should at least work as secondary card an then I could enable it in the Windows XP hardware manager.

Does anybody have a hint how to get a PCI graphcis card running in that PC?

The PC has the following components:

- Intel Celeron 1200
- 810e chipset
- Cyberpro TVIA 5005 onboard graphcis

Is there any chance to patch the BIOS to disable the onboard graphics and enable an additional PCI graphics card?

Marcus

[KachiWachi]

The 810e Graphics is also disabled?

[Denniss]

Do you have a Bios option like VGA priority or similar ? That should be changed from integrated/OnBoard/AGP to PCI.
Check your documentation, may a jumper or switch has to be set to disable the OnBoard VGA.

[Mave]

Yes,

it is disabled. Maybe they put the Cyberpro TVIA 5005 chipset on the board because the 810e integrated chipset didn't support the TV out features they needed.

My goal is to have them both disabled and replace them with an additional PCI graphics adapter that is DirectX9 capable. This seems to be the only possiblility to get MediaPortal running.

Marcus

[Mave]

@Denniss:

I have 2 Problems:

1. There is no option in the BIOS the turn the onboard VGA off and no option the set any priority.

2. If I plugin an additional card the PC does nothing.

This BIOS itself has very limited options:



Setting "TV Out" to "Disabled" does nothing.

Any ideas?

Marcus

[KachiWachi]

You *should* be able to get the PC to at least recognize a second video card (run a dual monitor setup)...unless somehow the motherboard BIOS won't allow that.

Have you contacted Fujitsu Siemens about this issue?

[Mave]

I posted a question into their user forum some time ago, but I got no answer from the developers so far. They see the Activy MediaCenter (which has Windows XP embedded installed) as closed system like a DVD player that shouldn't be modified by an end user.

I saved the original Phoenix BIOS and used PhoenixDeco to list the modules:



I looked at the 4 OPROMs with a HexViewer and they seem to have to following purpose:

OPROM0: TCP/IP Boot
OPROM1: BootManager?
OPROM2: Cyb 5000 VGA/SVGA/VESA BIOS
OPROM3: Cyb 5300 VGA/SVGA/VESA BIOS

Is there any chance to modify the original BIOS in a way that enables the additional PCI graphics adapter - maybe by removing the ROM module of the onboard VGA chip?

My knowledge about that is very very very limited

Do you know how and what to do?

[Ritchie]

Possibly the system is not compatible with the VGA card you are installing. See if you can first try with a basic VGA card that should work with any system.

[Mave]

As already mentioned I tried 2 different cards:

- ATI Radeon 9250 PCI
- NVIDIA Geforce FX5200 PCI

Currently there are not so many PCI cards available on the market, but
these cards should be pretty basic or what exactly to you mean with a "basic" VGA card?

[Ritchie]

I guess it's difficult to define basic.

But if you are using reasonably current cards you might be pushing the limits depending on the age of the board and BIOS.

What I was thinking was taking a known good working card from an older system such as a Socket 7 or early Pentium II system, and try that.

Not as a permanent card mind you, but just to establish more for certain the system will allow using a PCI VGA card rather than the integrated graphics.