Blizzard 1230/50 MKIV problem (Black Screen)

[Brian]

When you power on do the powerled light up twice, blink or it stay in the "dimmed" state constantly?

The 23W PSU you have is not strong enough to power your machine with the card and you can count on it to either fail powering up your machine or at the very least be grilled in short. A 50W A500 PSU should do it.

Are you sure it's a Blizzard1230IV? Those cards did as far as I know only come in 50Mhz versions (earlier revs came in 40Mhz versions) so you might in that case have a card that have been tampered with already.

If a stronger PSU don't do the trick it might be one of many other Ebay "as is/no warranty" sales that most often are dammaged goods. :-(

[Brian]

Still it don't prove that there's power enough. If you can't get hold of an A500 PSU then try get hold of an old AT trafo. On the motherboard powerplug connect orange (PowerGood) to yellow (+12v), then connect one of the diskdrive power connectors to the diskdrive and another one to the motherboard.

I burned a 50W A500 PSU by running my A1200 with 2 external diskdrives, one 3.5" Harddrive and a Blizzard1230III (though it did take some time). So don't write of the card before you are sure it's not a power issue.

[Brian]

The ordinart AT PSU you find in older PC's have 2 flat connectors, with 6 pins in each, that powers the motherboard. One of these connecotr have an orange (Power Good) and a yellow whire (+12V) and you need to connect these two whires together in order to get the PSU to work.

Then you should find some power connectors on the PSU that goes to harddrives and diskdrives (you should have 2 power connectors for diskdrives, though there are quite a few PSU with just one). Connect one of them to the diskdrive so it have power, then connect the other to the motherboard so it get more power. Then power up both the AT PSU and the original PSU at the same time.

[Brian]

Then it shouldn't be a powerproblem... Can you try the card in another A1200 to see if the problem continue there cause then it's likely a dead CPU card and time to contact the seller I think.