so i decided i was going to build my cousin a computer for christmas. ive built on average one a month for people and very rarely run into problems. but now i have one. the mobo i ordered for his computer came with a male serial port on the board for video. very odd and was not stated in the description for the item. I cant send it back so i purchesed a serial to vga converter. this is the setup: the converter plugs right into the mobo, male on the mobo, female on the converter. then the other end of the converter, also female, goes into the male end of the vga cable. the vga cable then runs into my 19" widescreen samsung monitor, syncmaster 941bw. but no matter what i have the monitor set on, i am getting no video at all. im trying to make sure the mobo is working and there is a bios before i go any further in the build. i cant figure this out at all. if someone has any idea what the problem might be, and a solution for it, please let me know. thanks in advance.
Hello ,I also build up form scratch and have run ito a few wierd problem's sometime,so if you want post your mobo's spec's here and ill see if i can help any.
that serial port is a 9 pin male connector, it is not a video connector nor can it be. it is for serial devices like the old serial mouses or older palm pilots. you need a proper videocard if as it appears as that board does not have 1 built in. without knowing what slot that board has for video it can pci, agp or pci/e16. what is the make & model# of that motherboard to see what you have. that info is in the manual or printed on the board itself but not on the chips.
well, it has agp, pci, and pcie x16. i have a gforce 8500 thaqt i am going to put in it, but if i put it in and hook it up to the monitor it wont work. i assume this is because the bios isnt set for that to be the primary video source, and without being able to see waht i am doing, i cant set it to be that way. the mobo is an msi 945 neo5, this is the board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130139
that board doesn't have agp just 3 pci's, 2 pci/e 1x & 1 pci/e 16x.is the cmos in normal(default) position? try clearing the cmos as have found that to work sometimes on stubborn computers. hopefully you didn't frie the board when using the serial adapter.
well, i will try that tommorrow. i assumed that the cmos would be set right from the get go, but i could be wrong. thanks for the advice.
