My friend has an old PentiumII, home built, running Win98, and it appears the VGA card has failed.
What is a source for used PC hardware (on-net source, or local in Silicon Valley)?
She had borrowed the PC and it was working fine, but on return to the owner the monitor fails to sync (same message as when unplugged from PC), though it works fine on another PC, so it looks like the card is not putting out a usable signal.
She’s broke and doesn’t want to spend $50 at Frye’s if possible.
First she needs to open it up and make sure the video card is fully seated. Sometimes the cards will work loose when moving the machine. If that doesn’t help, look in the phone book for a place that sells used computers, like Computer Renaissance, or something like it. Of course, there’s always e-bay. They have hundreds of cards.
Local used hardware in silicon valley is easy.
Weird Stuff in Sunnyvale:
http://www.weirdstuff.com/
Halted Electronics Supply (also in Sunnyvale):
http://www.halted.com/store/index.html
There’s also a used comptuer place on the west side of 101 just north of the airport, but I’m drawing a blank on what it’s called and getting there is a bit tricky.
There are bunches of other places, these are just the ones I’ve been to.
Though, in a pinch, if you look around at Fry’s you can usually find video cards for $10-15.
Or maybe drive around on a Saturday morning and hit some garage sales… and there’s always the Foothill College Electronics Flea Market, which has a website at http://www.electronicsfleamarket.com/ but it’s currently down.
Definatley Ebay. I’ve just built a Pentium II system from scratch entirely from there.
Older, non over clocked video cards rarely fail hardwarewise unless a line spike of something hits them. I second the re-seating attempt. Chances are good that may solve it.
If not Ebay has used PCI and AGP 4 to 8 meg video cards for $ 10 or less + shipping. You need to determine if she has a PCI or an AGP video slot. If it’s a PII MB chances are better than even it’s an AGP slot.