Wierd problem after installing a new motherboard...

[Electrofreak]

Ok well, I went and built my brother a computer for his birthday back in April. This week, he needed a new motherboard and so I picked one for him and he bought it. It is a Chaintech SPT800, a relatively inexpensive $55 motherboard. (By brother couldn't afford anything fancy.) It has all the features he needs, and Chaintech is a pretty well established motherboard manufacturer so I figured it would be a good deal.

Anyhow, it arrived in the mail from newegg today, and I went over to my stepmothers house to install it. I pulled out the old motherboard no problem, installed the RAM and CPU into the new mobo, switched the motherboard headers inside the case around to suit the new board, and screwed the sucker in. I connected the Radeon 9600 PRO that my brother has into the card, hooked up the IDEs, front panel switches and lights, and lastly, the power. I started it up and it posted.

Naturally, there were a few BIOS settings I had to mess with to make the machine work well (it has no floppy drive, so floppy seek off, etc), so I made my changes and started Windows 98 SE. It froze at the loading screen, which I'd somewhat expected, the motherboard having a new chipset and all. So, I loaded it into safe mode and it installed a series of basic drivers. Now the motherboard came with an installation CD, and I'd completely forgotten that Win 98 safe mode doesnt have CD support. Thus, I tried loading it up into normal mode once more, still no go. Figured I would copy some of the installation files onto a floppy and install them in safe mode, but I had also forgotten that the system had no floppy drive. I had to get it to load up into normal mode, and my brother had lost the Win 98 install disk long ago.

Desperate, I pulled a hard drive out of an old computer of my moms that contains Windows ME. I have a setup CD for it so I figured I could have it run the CD from command prompt, and copy the installation files over onto Win 98 drive, where I could install them manually while in safe mode. A clever idea, in my opinion. There arent any motherboard headers at the edge of the board where the IDE ports are located, so it tends to flex a bit as you push the IDEs in. Not the best design IMO. I noticed this as I was pushing in the IDE for the hard drive that contains ME, and it worried me a bit. I tried to be gentle but the IDE didn't want to go in smoothly and took a bit of pushing.

After installing the new drive, I started up the motherboard, and this is where things got nasty. The monitor gave me the "no signal" message, despite the fact that it had been working fine before. I checked the Radeon, everything was seated properly. I unplugged the ME drive, and still same problem. I installed an old Radeon 7000 I had into a PCI slot. Tested that, no change. I tried a different monitor, no change. It beeps as the BIOS starts up but I just can't get the monitor to get a damn signal.


A.D.D VERSION: Installed a new motherboard, Posted into BIOS fine, Windows 98 wouldn't boot, I connected a new IDE drive, (which may have damaged the mobo) and now it will no longer send a video signal to any video card / monitor I connect it to.

Specs of the system:

Intel P4 Celeron 2.4
1 x 512 stick of Kingston PC3200
ATI Radeon 9600 PRO
300w Antec Powersupply
20gb WD 7200 rpm ATA100 with Windows 98 SE installed (and setup disk is lost)

And of course the new Chaintech SPT800 "Summit" socket 478, with VIA PT800 + VT8237 chipsets, built-in Realtek AC '97 audio, SATA 150, ethernet, 400/533/800 FSB, 266/333/400 dual-channel DDR capability, and no, it doesn't have onboard video.

Anyone have any idea what might be causing this?