graphics card failure?

Hello,

I've been having an annoying problem with my second graphics card in my Mac.
After I moved to Belgium from the states (and took my G4 with me) the second screen attached to my second graphics card (3dfx - PCI) sometimes works and sometimes doesn't (same problem with any monitor I attach to it).
Since OS X was already running on it before there was a problem I'm guessing something went wrong during transport.
Now first of all I want to ask why there are two graphics in there. The ATI Rage 128 pro AGP has two ports anyway. One for my studio display and then one extra vga port. This vga port however doesn't work at all. The other grafx card has a dvi and a vga and my crt is connected to the vga. This has always been this way.
Should I replace the pci card or is there a way to get the vga port on my agp card working?

I also remember that everytime I disconnect everything from my mac and move to a different place and put it all back together it takes for ever to get it working again. sometimes the usb keyboard and mouse attached to the studio display don't work, then I have to play around with that. Than the studio display doesn't work. Than the crt doesn't work. There seems to be a specific order to connect my peripherals and restart a gazillion times before everything works.

Any ideas?

Thanks!!

My system: Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) ; dual processor 450MHz - 1024MB ram ; Mac OS X (10.2.8)

I would check if every thing inside (cards, connectors, cables) is correctly seated. The transport might have caused some movement inside the case.

And no, it is not normal that you need to reboot several times for all components being recognised...either they are not firmly connected, or you have an issue with the logicboard.

Everything seems to be correctly seated...
I was kinda hoping the PCI videocard is damaged, but if it's the motherboard...
It is strange that the vga port on my agp card isn't working though. Why would that be?

I don't think the old ATI Rage 128 Pro is capable of driving two screens at the same time.
You should try to get a better AGP card and take out the PCI card, eBay would be a good place to search.
The Radeon 9000 Pro is a very good card, can drive two screens. All you would need is an ADCtoDVI or ADCtoVGA adapter for the second screen, as it has one DVI and one ADC connector.

And, from my own experience, I can tell you that it works like a charm in the G4 AGP

well, I decided to follow your advice, throw out the old pci and agp cards and replace them with an ATI RADEON 9000 PRO 64MB MAC VIDEO CARD. Best decision I ever made. This thing works great!
Thanks for the tip!!

Hi,

The problems aren't over
Ever since I replaced the graphics card, the two usb-ports on the back of my apple studio display don't work no more.
Everything else is fine.
Any ideas?

Vincent