i got a opti 486 dx2 and i am having problems getting it to work. i have a hd controller card but the new board has ports on the board for the ribbon connectors. the main problem is that the video card isn't working.

joseph, sounds like you have a few problems to iron out here. make sure you don't plug the i/o card into the board if you're using the onboard ide connectors; unless you can disable the onboard ones via a setting in the bios, or you can disable the i/o card ones via a jumper, you will have a major conflict, and either the computer won't boot up, or it won't recognize the harddrive(s). as for your video card, what i usually do when i am tinkering around wtih a "new" board, is i have an old 256-colour isa vga card (one that plugs into the old 8- or 16- bit slots). these old cards were/are pretty reliable, and that way i don't need to worry about a potential video problem. see if you can find one that perhaps someone might give away (a 16-colour one is fine too). also, make sure your motherboard doesn't have an onboard video controller, if you're going to use a plug-in video card; otherwise, some motherboards allow you to disable this onboard video, via a jumper setting. good luck, james