Newbie- Intermittant Video BridgePort EZ Trak

[fishhead31]

To preface, I'm an IT technician by trade, helping someone with some computer issues on their CNC machine. I'm relatively young, and have only been in the field for 5 or 6 years now, so machines with ISA slots are a little before my time.

The machine is a BridgePort EZ Trak (afraid I didn't see any sort of specific model number on the machine). It has had monitor problems in the past - in fact they are even now using an external CRT sitting on a bench rather than the small screen that it came with.

After resolving some keyboard issues I had him up and running, however in the process of getting there we ran into an issue that had apparently been going on for a while - sometimes the video will show up on the monitor, sometimes it will not. After rebooting the machine anywhere from 1 to a few dozen times all of a sudden the monitor will start up. I'm not sure if the machine's just not posting on the times it doesn't boot or if it's strictly the monitor - everything seems to hum to life and look like normal except the monitor doesn't work.

Any ideas? I can obtain more specific information if needed, but all I have in my notes is the model of the mobo (486-ccv) and the disk controller apparently (MIO-400KF).

[D-Money]

How old is the power supply? I've seen 'em able to muster enough juice to spin the CPU fan, but nothing else, not even it's own fan.

[fishhead31]

As far as I know it's original to the machine - at least 10 years old, probably closer to 15. Would it be hit-or-miss like this though?

[D-Money]

Originally Posted by fishhead31 As far as I know it's original to the machine - at least 10 years old, probably closer to 15. Would it be hit-or-miss like this though?

A power-supply THAT old should definitely be replaced. They sell brand new "AT" type power supplies on Amazon for like $35 bucks.

[fishhead31]

Thanks for the idea - certainly cheap enough to give it a shot without worrying too much about it. Not sure if I recall seeing anything that looked like a standard PSU in there, but I'll check it out.

[mikemck]

Sometimes the cable that goes to the mother board is slightly loose.