g400 and busmastering

[BigBug]

jsb, you can extract the original one from the cabs you installed win98 from.
use 'extract' that is located in the same folder on the cd, if you dont have another app for browsing cabs.

[AlanOgilvie]

Yes, or you could use the "sfc" utility which ships with Windows 98. Just give it the name of the system file you want to extract, and it will find it for you and extract it into the right directory automatically.

A follow-up question: does anyone know what VMCPD.VXD is/does? Having reinstalled Win98, this file isn't installed on my system...


[This message has been edited by AlanOgilvie (edited 09-22-1999).]

[Skynet8]

I've already tried the above method, but my g400/sblive combo still doesn't work. With DX7 installed, I've copied VMCPD.VXD (Win98 version) to the WINDOWS/SYSTEM/VMM32 folder and D3DRGBF.DLL, D3DRG16F.DLL and all those D3DRG*.DLL files to the WINDOWS/SYSTEM folder, even though all those files weren't present originally. However, my games still freeze often, including the G400 Techdemo. Both cards have different IRQs and I have the latest drivers installed. What can I do?? Help!!

[jsb]

From M Techsupport yesterday:

Dear Sir,
We are working on correcting an issue that affects the BE6, BH6, and Bx6
motherboards please bare with us as we work to solve this issue. I wish I
had a better answer for you but at the moment I have no better answer
for you.

[AlanOgilvie]

I guess I can always *hope* that this fix will fix my lockups with the Hauppauge Win TV PCI card (on a Chaintech 6BTM mobo). <Sigh...>

[Simbaman]

hmm i have a SB Live and a G400 DH 32MB
AND NO Problems whatsoever with Busmastering...
But then again i have the Aopen AX6B MB !!

[HELIX]

Hi

Could this be some help ?

I have heard that the G400 busmastering problem is caused by the bios on the graphic
card.
the new bios upgrade from 1.3 to 1.5 is not working.

rumors says that if you downgrade your bios all busmastering problems will go away.

The problem for me is to get a bios ver. 1.3 because my cd was delivered with the 1.5 bios.

Please check your current bios and report back if I am wrong and where can I find the 1.3 bios




------------------
HELIX

[Star F.]

I don't believe the bus mastering issue can be solved by downgrading to g400 bios 1.3. It was on my card when I bought it and the problems were already there. So we wait for a new bios, only question is HOW LONG we should wait before switching to nVidia or whatever.

The problem seems to affect not all, but a lot of very common m/b's, among them some Abit boards and also my Gigabyte 686BX.

The symptoms are always the same: at some point in a running game the picture suddenly stands still, the sound loops on and the computer is out for lunch. It seems that this is bound to happen especially in situations when the cpu has to supply results of relatively complex calculations, relating to opponents' reactions or physical events, for example. The typical short delay in first laps of racing games (when track data is loaded from the hard disk), however, does not cause a lockup. Obviously, interaction of the G400 with an IDE or SCSI bus master is not the problem.

When you disable the G400 bus mastering, the problem is gone, but at least half of your fps is also gone.

A good test program is the Re-Volt Demo, see www.re-volt.com. That game involves quite a lot of AI and physical calculation (besides being absolute fun). If you can play it for at least 30 minutes without a crash, you may be sure that your G400-m/b combo is stable enough for other games/programs too.

Some people managed to get rid of the lockups by setting AGP1x, disabling Video shadow and caching or restoring a file named vmcpd.vxd from the Win CD (to system\vmm32). See several threads on this forum. None of those workarounds worked for my 686BX. I even programmed the pci latency (using powerstrip): all bm devices to lowest, all except G400 to highest, G400 to highest and others to lowest -- nope. One thing improved it a little: I deleted the vgartd.vxd from the system dir and any references to it from the registry. You should only do this in Win 98, since vgartd.vxd is supposed to provide AGP support for Win 95.

Well, finally, here are my specs:
Gigabyte 686BX mb (FSB @100), p2-450, 384 MB pc-100 RAM, Diamond S90 (A3D, Aureal 1) sound card [PCI bus master], Adaptec 2940 UW SCSI controller [PCI bus master], Accton EN1207D-TX Fast Ethernet Adapter [PCI bus master], 2 HDDs, 1 cd rom, 1 cd recorder and, of course, a Matrox G400 SH with 32 MB.

I may add that my previous graphics card, a Diamond Viper V500 (TNT 1), had absolutely no problems with bus mastering in the same configuration. I may also add that I CANNOT UNDERSTAND how such a blatant bug could have escaped the matrox developers and testers. After all, my system and those of many others that get the same lockups consist of components that are all standard and widely used.

[Star F.]

Hi Ricardo,

thanx for answering. The 5.11 and 5.13 drivers, unfortunately, don't improve anything for me. I think at least a new BIOS is required, if not a HW revision.

Your m/b of course is newer than mine, which I bought about 1 year ago. Still -- try the Re-Volt Demo. I also have games in which the lockup occurs almost never. But you cannot know which game will please you tomorrow ...

[Chris Blake]

Same problems here, I thought that this was a problem with Re-Volt only but it occurs with everything (I wasn't playing them for long enough! Stupid really). Like many others posting here I have tried just about everything to get this card working.

I have been in contact with Matrox support in the UK and was told by one rather rude operator, that there is a problem with busmastering on Super-Socket-7 motherboards and that I should take my Max back and get a refund, or buy another motherboard! This is not the kind of attitude I expect from tech support and I shall be taking the matter further- but that's a different issue.

However, this bustmastering problem doesn’t seem to be confined to SS7 mobos. The only conclusion I can draw is that there are issues with either the G400 Bios or Drivers when the G400 is being pushed (I agree that playing Re-Volt for over 30 minutes to test your card is a good idea). I shall try and downgrade my G400 bios (only thing I haven't tried) and go back to the 5.13 drivers and see if does any good.

Perhaps someone from Matrox who may be lurking on this thread would care to comment on this issue?

System: GA-5AXr4, K6III450, 192Mb, SBLive! Value, G400Max


------------------

--
Chris Blake

[BobN]

I have the same problems with NHL 2000,HeavyGear2 and the Speed Busters Demo.I,ve tried everything on this forum and then some. I have an MSI-6163 Pro vers. 2 and an Intel 450 P111 processor. It is very annoying! At least Matrox should be aware of the problem. I sure hope it is a fixable problem. The busmastering idea(disabling) seems to work though(How slow!). I sent my problems to Matrox yesterday. Good luck everyone!

[AlanOgilvie]

Chris,

I *really* hope Matrox can get to the bottom of all of these (apparent) problems with busmastering and/or AGP 2X, but I have some doubts. I was speaking to Matrox tech support only this morning, and the response I got was effectively "it must be a problem with your motherboard". So far, Hauppauge have blamed the problem on the Matrox card & Matrox are blaming the motherboard (Chaintech 6BTM, a fairly modern board, with standard Intel 440BX chipset). I'm afraid "pass the buck" always seems like the easiest option for tech support...

[Star F.]

Of course it's a problem 'with' the motherboard. But it's the G400's problem, which can't handle bus mastering on quite a number of today's most standard boards.

See my message above.

[Chris Blake]

StarF,

I totally agree. How many boards are there out there with AGP cards in them? Must be millions. If there was such a problem with AGP ports surely this would have come to light before now?

Some indiction that Matrox recognise that this is a problem and are looking into it would be nice.

I don't really give a damn about MiniOGL drivers and such, all I want is a card that WORKS! I'm all for advancing technology but lets get a card out there that works on the most common boards shall we boys and girls?

------------------

--
Chris Blake


[This message has been edited by Chris Blake (edited 09-24-1999).]

[Ricardo]

Star F,

I had the exact same problems that you decribed with Sega Rally 2 and TOCA 2. I also tried everything (removing pci cards, reinstalling windows ...) but since I had no IRQ sharing and pcispy reported no conflits, I was almost sure that it wasn't a HW problem. So after a while I came to the above results:

Powerdesk 5.25 & Bus mastering - Hang
Powerdesk 5.25 & No bus mastering - OK & Slow

Powerdesk 5.21 & Bus mastering - Hang
Powerdesk 5.21 & No bus mastering - OK & Slow

Powerdesk 5.13 & Bus mastering - OK

Powerdesk 5.11 & Bus mastering - OK

So it seems a driver problem.

Try Powerdesk 5.13 and see what happens.


Good Luck


------------------
P3-500, Shuttle 661P, 512Meg HSDRAM,WD Expert 18GB, Segate Medalist 6GB, AOpen 40X CDROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, G400 MAX, SB Live Value, 3Com 10/100 (3C905B-TX) , Sony F400 19"