Troubleshooting for Video Cards in the Philips iU22/iE33

Many technologists and sonographers become frustrated when turning on their systems to find there is no video on the monitor, or on the touch panel. There are many factors that can cause this “no video” issue. One of those factors are the video cards. Troubleshooting video cards in the field is always a challenge because you have to consider all the possibilities and components in the system. However, there are ways to help narrow down the diagnosis of a video card failure in the Philips iU22 and iE33 systems.

The iU22 and iE33 systems are similar when it comes to the backend portion, therefore, this troubleshooting technique can help on both systems when it comes to a video cards issue. Specifically talking about the D cart and above for the iU22/iE33, there are two video card mounts on the UMB (Unified motherboard) and EMB (Excelsior motherboard). The right side (facing the back of the system) is the monitor video card, while the left is the touch panel video card. When a customer boots up the system and video does not appear on the monitor it is most likely the right side video card at fault. By swapping that video card to the left slot they should see a different result. If after swapping, the monitor displays video, it most likely was the video card that was originally on the right side that is bad. We can perform the same test on the touch panel when it does not have a display.

When you do this you need to physically move the cards from left to right or right to left depending on which video card is in question. Simply moving the DVI cables from one card to another will not work and will also cause the system to give an error code. In addition, when dealing with the iU22/iE33 systems they have multiple video graphic cards throughout the many different cart levels. There is the 7600 GT, which is the most common, the 8600 GT, followed by the 9800 GT. Please note that the cards cannot be interchanged between each other. For example, a video card from a 7600 cannot be put in an 8600 or 9800 and vice versa. The video cards in the machine will always need to match or the system will recognize the change and give an error code.

If you use this simple troubleshooting method, you can easily determine if the “no video” issue is caused by the video card.

This article was originally published on Conquest Imaging.