am i a moron?

[siliconjoe]

i am currently making my first attempt at building a computer and i bought a mother board that was just that: a mother board, nothing else. no manuals no nuthin just the board wrapped in plastic. it was tested and nonreturnable unless d.o.a. installed it into the case and plugged every thing in. i also installed an amd athlon xp cpu.
now when i turn it on all the usual bells and wistles sound as though it is working properly but nothing shows up on the monitr. i tested the monitor and works on another computer. my question: why isnt the monitor working?

two notes:
the jp1 switch was set to Clear CMOS Memory when i got it and installed it. the computer will only turn on though when it is set this way. when set the cap on default and push the power button nothing happens. now i dont know much about these things but with what i can figure out that doesnt quite seem right to me.
second, the "Embeded 256-bit 3D AGP Graphics Accelerator" has a 64MB frame buffer i dont know what that means but i do know thati only have 64 mb of ram installed currenly (the wallet hurts) is this the cause? and am i a silly jackass for even attempting to make this computer work with only 64mb of ram

thank you for your time, any advice/ridicule is much appreciatted. sorry about the lengh.

~siliconjoe

 

[rclarke250]

First off...what system board is it? Are you sure and take the xp cpu you installed? Is the memory in slot 1? sometimes when you have on board video,memory has to be in the first slot. the reason I ask about the xp cpu is you don't say if it is a model 6 or model 8,what is the speed? Some of the first boards that would work with the xp cpu only worked with the model 6,I know. I have an asus like this.

 

[mainegeek]

What XP cpu and what type and speed memory?

 

[norty303]

My guess is it could be a PC-Chips board (or derivative) as many of those have been shipped in a 'board only' state. The jumper might be labelled wrongly, it will definately do nothing with it set to clear cmos and will do 'something' when it's not!

The frame buffer is not the concern here, it's the shared memory size. You should be able to boot with it set to 8mb (might go as low as 4 but I can't remember) If you're installing Win 98 you 'might' just get away with it. If it's XP then your chances are not very good especially sharing with graphics memory.