Hello? G400Max problems, your input...please.

[skeeech]

From all the activity around here this seems to be the right place to post a question but nobody is responding. I wont go into it again but if you scan down this list and look for ZERO in the response column and user name skeeech. Help. Have a g400max went through three different mother boards & the only way it would work and be stable was if you turned off all graphic acceleration. I know there are a bunch of Matrox tech support people on this board. Do you guys and gals have any insight. I thought I had a bad card but judging from the other posts I was not the only one.

I guess my question is this are there any know cards or BIOS's that g400max does not work well with? Also, does turning off bus matering kill AGP functionality?

Thanx for any responses...
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PII-400, 384MB, 27GB IDE harddrives, SBlive value,3c509b-combo ethernet, USR Sportster 56K, until g400max comes back g200 8M with monster 2-12MB version.

[M Ragsdale]

HI skeeech,
I don't remember your other post exactly, but I do remember a few suggestions. What you are reporting is a classic symptom of conflicting hardware. Remove all of your cards, except your Video. Boot into safe mode, remove the cards you just pulled from device mangager, then reboot. Does the card work now, with the acceleration turned up?

[skeeech]

First off thanx for the response. Below is my original post. I built my machine and several others I stripped it down as you have suggested, I got a total clean drive and put a clean install of win98 2nd edition. Same problems... here is the postOk, I don't know which person I was to preorder this card but I had about 1.5 weeks of hell trying to make it work from boot up.
I uninstalled all things Matrox. My first problem was it would not finish the install of all the desktop utilities. I got around that manually. The most constant problem was that when booting up the screen would go all blocky (couldn't read anything) like the pages were getting corrupted and then lock up. I suspected the Matrox drivers, irq conflict, maybe even my Epox mother board might be lacking since the bios had not been updated my Epox since 12/17/98!!! I swapped system memory, I even bought a couple of new mother boards one was a diamond/micronics c400 and an Asus P3B-F. The symtoms were the same regardless of the mother board. The only way to come up clean every time was to turn off the Graphic acceleration. Yes turn it down to NONE.
Now, I'm ok with this provided some new drivers come out and help me, but the more I thought about it the more ludicrous this seemed. When you spend almost 300bucks for a super dual-head bump mapping 2d/3d card you should be able to use it that way.

I spoke to Matrox level 1 and 2 support. I tried turning of all video caching and the like. I played with the apeture settings. I even removed irq steering handlers because I had two assigned to irq 11 and Matrox thought that might be causing a problem. I don't mean to rant but I even produced a totally clean scsi drive with a clean install of win98 2nd edition and it still went bonkers on me.

The biggest problem with Matrox support was that many of the things they wanted me to try I could not do without being in an accelerated mode. (Power desk is not visible/usable unless some acceleration is turned on).

I have since overnighted my g400MAx to Matrox for replacement because I think I just got a bum card. I've restored my g200 and monster 2 12MB back to their stable glory until I get my g400max back. Please let me know what else it could possibly be.

All drivers for SB live, 2940 SCSI card, Etherlink 3, and USR modem were upgraded to the most current level. I think it was interesting that the problem went accross 3 different mother boards.

The best news is that CompUSA gave me all my money back for the Diamond C400 board I "borrowed" from them. I ended up keeping the Asus board because it does boot up way quicker than my old Epox board did any day.

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PII-400, 384MB, 27GB IDE harddrives, SBlive value,3c509b-combo ethernet, USR Sportster 56K, until g400max comes back g200 8M with monster 2-12MB version.

[Kruzin]

Since you sent your card in for RMA, I would just wait to get the replacement and see what happens. It was most likely just a bad apple.

The only mobos that have confirmed issues are all old LX based boards. It should certainly work on the P3B-F with no problem.

[M Ragsdale]

I'm with Kruzin on this one. I didn't know you had already done this. When you tried other motherboards, did you just put it in an other case, with a different hard drive. Or did you just swap the mother boards in and out of your case?

[skeeech]

Wow, maybe you guys are just night owls. I feel silly now for getting all whiney.

Anyway, M and Kruzin, the only thing I did not change was my case. I even changed the system memory. I had a spare 2Gb scsi drive that I did the clean install of 98 and just the video card with. I did start out working but after a period of time she starting acting up just like before.

I have a couple of machines but this one is my only AGP/PII based. With the initial scsi drive test going well, I formated my real main hard drive thinking I was on the road to victory. You can imagine my disapointment when after a clean install and the first real boot I got the same amn thing.

I'll definately post my results once I get my card NEW Max back. If that does not work I'm not sure what I'll. I won't do a voodoo 3 but the tnt2 sounds like it might be a good second choice...

[M Ragsdale]

If your new G400 does the same thing, then you can be 99.9% sure that the problem is not in the G400. Just come back and ask, I am sure that one of us can find a solution.

Matt