I'm rebuilding an old IBM PC I bought three years ago for uni. I'm hoping to give it to a friend. I've used only the parts that originally came with the machine. These are: Celeron 550 on some random board On board GFX On Board sound 64MB Ram CD/Burner 10Gb HDD (IBM) IBM monitor When I plug in the monitor and turn on the machine I get no beeps or anything, but also no picture. There's no "no signal" signal, but no picture and not even a small prompt appears. Just black with standby light on on the monitor. My dad reckons that it could be the gfx is not working right and that I should get a GFXcard, but I don't have an AGP slot. Will a PCI GFX card work from boot? Or could it be some other problem? Any help will be much appreciated.

Sounds more like a knackered monitor - if the graphics card wasnt working properly then it is more than likely that the monitor would be in standby mode. Have you tried another monitor. If a another monitor doesn't work on it then your dad is probably right and it is the graphics card. Regards Alex.

Yes i agree with ocel but to answer all your questions you can get a PCI and it will work from boot..there cheap also get 1 with tv out :-P

I had the problem once with a friends computer. It was the power supply that had a broken cable! Before you buy a new grafic card try the monitor on another computer - as it's old only boot to dos (bootdisk?) because the set frequency for the other monitor may be much too high! If you get a picture the monitor works! Try another power supply (I just put my computer beside it and connected the the mobo power connector to my friends mobo - computer boots up until it realises that there are no drives because the original power supply won't work with the mobo connector removed -> but that should be enough to see if you get an image on the monitor)! If both don't work it can be the grafic card, mainboard, ram or the processor that's not working. At least that's what a local technician told me as I called him after replacing the grafic card! BTW; The technicians first guess was the power supply so try a new! I hope that helps!