Jumbled Screen Message During Boot

[schvankus]

i'm using an old asus p55t2p4 rev 3.0 mobo.

everything was fine until i replaced the cpu. i've checked and doubl-checked the cpu jumper settings and all seem correct for a 120Mhz pentium.

now sometimes, just before the windows 98se desktop loads, a screen full of jumbled letters and numbers appear.

when the computer starts normally, that same jumbled screen contains info such as PCI device listing.

other than that, everything seems fine.

has anyone experienced this before and found a solution or should i just get another cpu?

it s

[Denniss]

60Mhz FSB x2 with 3.3V(Std) or 3.5V(VRE)

If set to 3.3V try 3.5V - make sure the CPU is proper cooled

[ajzchips]

Also, that P120 could be a remarked P75, P90 or P100.

[Ritchie]

As you suspect, if the jumpers are wrong this may cause problems, if the voltage was accidentally set too high the CPU could already be damaged.

But assuming settings are correct, I suspect you may have a bad replacement CPU. Especially since PCI Device Listing is within BIOS area.

What I would be doing is going back to the original CPU and using the same jumper settings as you had before; hopefully you made a note of these.

But I would look at any jumpers that control the PCI BUS Speed. If this is set much higher than 33MHz then maybe this may cause video problems. Also check your video card is correctly seated; these can pop out at one end and thus not make good connection.

[KachiWachi]

Make sure also that your CPU fan is operating properly. An overheating CPU will do the same things as you describe.

Make sure everything is seated properly as well...add-in cards, RAM, etc...

You could also try running a DOS mode CPU diagnostics and/or RAM test...

[schvankus]

Thanks for all your input, but it turned out to be a bad video card. I swapped it out and the problem disappeared.

Cheers

g