PC broke?

bitbaltic

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Evening chaps

Came down to the boat tonight and turned on my onboard mini-PC to add an audio cable between it and the monitor so we can get sound and the little one can use it to watch telly. Had to take the PC out of its VESA mount to do this. After checking the audio cable worked OK put it back in the VESA mount and fired up NavMonPC to see what the wind instrument was reading. Realised the USB cable to the multiplexer had fallen out at the back of the PC so plugged it back in.

The moment I did that the monitor screen went blank and said 'no signal'.
Nothing I've done since- and I've checked all the connections thrice- will get a signal back on the monitor. The computer boots up as I'd expect but there's no picture and no signal received.

Could some sort of static spike have fried something? I know we have a few computer experts here so I'm open to any suggestions!

Cheers
 

Mrnotming

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Hi Richard,
Have you sorted this yet?
Some recent monitors have both SVGA as well as Digital HDMI, Buttons on the monitor allow a swap between systems.
Is it possible the monitor settings have been disturbed somehow?
 

RichardS

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Hi Richard,
Have you sorted this yet?
Some recent monitors have both SVGA as well as Digital HDMI, Buttons on the monitor allow a swap between systems.
Is it possible the monitor settings have been disturbed somehow?

Don't worry ..... I did it long before USB and HDMI had even been invented. :)

Needed a new VGA (D-Sub) daughter board to get it working again.

Richard
 

ShinyShoe

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I've seen a couple of similar things happen. I'd try first:

Power everything down completely - no standby modes or any of that - power lead out - go make cuppa. Unplug all but keyboard, mouse and monitor
Power up the monitor and get it to the screen saying no signal, making sure it is set to VGA input.
Power up PC.

If that doesn't work try the obvious F keys for the bios screen during boot. One of my monitors is so slow to pick up the signal coming that it misses the bios screen and if there is a hard disk fault then stops on black screen. Obvious keys would be F2, F5, F8, F12, DEL, ESC.

If none of those work open her up and find the bios reset jumper and jump it. I've known machines that failed to detect a monitor switch the BIOS setting to something like external display card from internal VGA. But there was no external card installed.

Failing that - yip she's dead!
 

bitbaltic

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I've seen a couple of similar things happen. I'd try first:

1) Power everything down completely - no standby modes or any of that - power lead out - go make cuppa. Unplug all but keyboard, mouse and monitor
Power up the monitor and get it to the screen saying no signal, making sure it is set to VGA input.
Power up PC.

2) If that doesn't work try the obvious F keys for the bios screen during boot. One of my monitors is so slow to pick up the signal coming that it misses the bios screen and if there is a hard disk fault then stops on black screen. Obvious keys would be F2, F5, F8, F12, DEL, ESC.

3) If none of those work open her up and find the bios reset jumper and jump it. I've known machines that failed to detect a monitor switch the BIOS setting to something like external display card from internal VGA. But there was no external card installed.

Failing that - yip she's dead!

Thanks SS

Tried 1) above already, to no avail. I have brought the mini-PC home now and will try it on a different monitor this afternoon and try 2) and 3). It is a simple machine though (I expect a sinlge board inside) so my gut feeling is it is dead.

JD said:
Have you tried a different monitor with the mini PC?

Going to try that after the Ireland match this afternoon :) already tried the boat monitor with a laptop PC though- it's fine, so not expecting success.

In the case that the mini-PC is dead, I will need to replace it. A like for like swap is only just over £100 but I'm not overwhelmingly happy about such juvenile failure (it's only a year old). I know about the pipo and gigabyte brix to look at as alternatives. Are there any other suggestions? must run on 12v DC (ie likely to come with a wall wart adapter that puts out 12v DC), VGA, USB.
 

JumbleDuck

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In the case that the mini-PC is dead, I will need to replace it. A like for like swap is only just over £100 but I'm not overwhelmingly happy about such juvenile failure (it's only a year old). I know about the pipo and gigabyte brix to look at as alternatives. Are there any other suggestions? must run on 12v DC (ie likely to come with a wall wart adapter that puts out 12v DC), VGA, USB.

It might be overkill, but for home desktop use I run Lenovo ThinkCentre M57p and M58 USFF machine. Roughly A4 size x 3" thick, 64 bit dual core processors, up to 8GB memory. Outputs are VGA, DisplayPort loads of USB. Run on 12V from a brick. The one I am writing this on cost me £35 from eBay, plus another £65 for RAM and SSD.
 

rogerthebodger

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Thanks SS

Tried 1) above already, to no avail. I have brought the mini-PC home now and will try it on a different monitor this afternoon and try 2) and 3). It is a simple machine though (I expect a sinlge board inside) so my gut feeling is it is dead.



Going to try that after the Ireland match this afternoon :) already tried the boat monitor with a laptop PC though- it's fine, so not expecting success.

In the case that the mini-PC is dead, I will need to replace it. A like for like swap is only just over £100 but I'm not overwhelmingly happy about such juvenile failure (it's only a year old). I know about the pipo and gigabyte brix to look at as alternatives. Are there any other suggestions? must run on 12v DC (ie likely to come with a wall wart adapter that puts out 12v DC), VGA, USB.

I got a mini-ITX computer a couple of years ago that I use as my Nav computer powered direct from 12VDC that has a number of USB ports and VGA or HDMI screen output.

No problem plugging ans unplugging VGA with power on. M/cs seem to be a bit more powerful now than when I purchased mine. But mine runs OpenCPN ok with GPS AIS , NMEA instruments and DSC radio all connected.
 

bitbaltic

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Okay, been through the various checks and it's definitely dead on VGA. It has a HDMI output; I've never been aboe to get anything out of this even when the VGA was working (the monitor on the boat sees no signal and the TV at home says the signal is 'not compatible'). The home TV still says 'this signal is not compatible', so it may be that it is still outputting something on HDMI, but the VGA is definitely dead. Opened it up- no signs of scorching or anything else, although I can't see the rear of the board without completely disassembling it.

Thinking pragmatically and wanting it fixed for next weekend, I've just ordered a like for like replacement and will spend an afternoon re-loading all the software. This will be the 'second generation' of the Sumvision PC so hopefully it might have a little more longevity.

Thanks for all the help folks :)
 

cliveshelton

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I have virtually the same setup as you as we have discovered. The same exact fault happened to me about 6 weeks ago. Eventually I gave up and bought a replacement PC but not like for like. I went for an Acer Aspire Cloudbook due to the battery life (at least 8 hours). It's bigger of course and not 12volts but I only use it for planning and not underway. It took me ages to get a refund from the supplier of the sumvision which was still under warranty. I succeeded though far a while.
 

bitbaltic

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Is it this one? If you swap the eMMc you would lose Windows 10 if the old one didn't have it. Plus any differences in the motherboard could cause a boot failure. This could be fixed, but it may never be happy.

Yes it is that one. It has been upgraded to Windows 10 already, but I would be worried as you say about motherboard issues. The failed machine is the 'Mark 1' and the replacement which should arrive today is the 'Mark 2' which is claimes to have a better processor as well as who knows what else. I think a rebuild is the safest option.....
 
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