Performa 6400/200 lost video out

[wottle]

I picked up a Performa 6400/200, my old college computer, off of craigslist. It had no hard drive, so I swapped out the hard drive for another I had laying around. Booted up fine, and I moved on to my final plan - dual booting Mac OS 9 and BeOS. I got the drive partitioned, reinstalled OS 9 on there and got ready to install BeOS. I started up the machine, got the startup chime, but no video. I tried a different monitor, as well as a different adapter (6400 didn't have VGA out, so I used two different types of adapters. Still no video out.

I removed the video-in PCI board, just in case. Tried zapping the PRAM, no change.

The board looks clean, caps not bulging and don't see any signs of leaking. The original PRAM battery was dead, so I removed it and I still get the boot sound. There was a 3x AAA battery holder connected to the PRAM battery connector, so I threw 3 AAA batteries in there and I'm getting 4.1v at the connector, which is a bit lower than the 4.5v of the original battery. Still no video on boot.

Any ideas on what to check next?

 

[wottle]

FYI, I did get some fresh batteries in there and for the PRAM voltage up to 4.8, so I don't think it's a problem with the PRAM battery. Interestingly, I seem unable to zap the PRAM now, as I can hold down the Cmd-Opt-P-R and do not get a second boot chime.

 

[wottle]

OK, so I swapped the main board out with a known working one from a Performa 5500, and still no video. Is there another board handling the video out on the 6400? Could it be a wiring issue?

Also, given it has PCI, I'm thinking I may just buy a PCI card with VGA out. Any tips on what a good video card would be for this machine? I have some PCI video cards from some PowerMac G3/G4s. Would those work back in Mac OS 7/8/9? I found an old Sonnect PCI card on eBay, but the prices was too high for my budget on this one. Also, I'd like to find one that will work with BeOS. So far, haven't had much luck finding some sort of compatibility list.

Thanks for any help you can provide!

 

[ApfelKlassik.de]

Hi!

Any updates on this? I think I found my own Nemesis, too, in a Performa 6400 ...

Got 2 in the mean time ... the first one was working like a charm but had no sound (neither chassis, nor headphone) ... so I got a 2nd one - and guess what.
This one has sound but ... no video .

Good thing I that I now know that both enclosures do work fine ...

Both boards cleaned and recapped - to no avail.

Any clues?

 

[wottle]

Hi!

Any updates on this? I think I found my own Nemesis, too, in a Performa 6400 ...

Got 2 in the mean time ... the first one was working like a charm but had no sound (neither chassis, nor headphone) ... so I got a 2nd one - and guess what.
This one has sound but ... no video .

Good thing I that I now know that both enclosures do work fine ...

Both boards cleaned and recapped - to no avail.

Any clues?

I wish I knew what I did, but I eventually got the machine to boot reliably. Probably removing the board and reseating something? I got it to run BeOS and it seems to be working well now. Unfortunately, I don't know what caused it to start working...