i don't have a known good video card to swap in. there's no integrated video. the video card has been funny for a while. the ram has been suspect. so i can't rule anything out.
it's an old nvia pcie x16 card. there's two slots for pcie x16 and only one of them worked. i believe it's because the clip fell off the other slot quite some time ago. now, the clip has fallen off both slots. this is a 32-bit recording pc, so i actually want to avoid wasting limited ram on the video card. i might have to try to downgrade to a pci card or a pcix4 slot. on this computer it doesn't matter, that's fine.
my 98 pc has an agp card in a p3bf with no pcie and there's no agp slot on the p5b. i have two other desktops and neither has a video card. they do have pcie x16 slots.
i can try to put the video card in one of the other pcs to make sure it works. that will at least tell me if the card is broken.
i had to remove the video card to reprogram it, there wasn't really another choice.
i should try reprogramming it again but not this morning. this morning, the main goal was to get my bed back, and i'm consequently a little overdue on a shower.
i have some writing to do this morning so the shower will have to wait until tonight.
if the board can get power i should be able to bring it back still, i think.
the pc speaker doesn't work (the speaker disconnected from the power, which was fragile) but i can try to jimmy it or even finally to resolder it to try to get a beep code at least.