Need help from ATI card owners

[X-0]

edit:  **argh....I meant this to go in the other forum, but maybe this is close to the subject matter...more n00b mistakes....**


I've had some experience with the whole vid card/ display issue from helping a friend build a home theatre PC, but we have run into a really annoying problem.  I'd like to duplicate his setup for a cabinet if this can be fixed.

Long ago when the PC was first built, we used an old scan converter to display the PC on a TV.  After a hardware upgrade, he went with an nvidia ti500, using the svideo display.  A much better result.  Next we borrowed an ATI Radeon, and found (as everyone knows by now) that it looks better.  He then bought ATI's daughter card that offers component video out.  Never got it to work right.  Now he's on an ATI 8500 and generally pleased, but if the PC powers off or crashes, the card always defaults to the VGA output.  That means he has to drag a monitor into the room, fight the cabling nightmare to hook it to the PC, boot up and then tell the card to use the TV output.  We can't seem to get it to always boot up to that ouput by default, and if you don't hook up a monitor, you get no display.  I have read here that some people are using ATI cards, so do you have this problem?  What's the fix?

[RoadhawK]

Hmmmm. It *should* default to whatever display device is connected. Have you tried using different drivers?.

I'd email ATI and see what they say.

HTH

[X-0]

Well, the card definately does not default to the tv display if it's the only thing there.  He says he's tried all available drivers with no luck, no word back from ATI.  FTR, it's an 8500LE.  What card(s) are others using in their rigs?  

I'm in the process of acquiring the necessary PC parts for my project, the video card is probably the last thing I'll get, so I'm curious which cards people do have, and want to make sure I don't have this kind of issue.

[BobA]

A quick but maybe not ideal solution would be to NOT turn off the PC and to put it on a small UPS for under $100 so it does not loose its settings and have to restart.   If you are getting OS system crashes this will probably not help but if you can determine what is causing the OS to become unstable you maybe in better shape.   You did not mention OS so are you on W98  suggest XP for stability.   Other then that more memory can help prevent intensive applications from crashing.

You can also setup a PC remotely via the network if proper software is installed.  XP does this very well.

BobA

[mcleanjoel]

Not sure if it would help but you might see if the hydravision software can do nything for you.