G400MAX: DVD player hangs on Athlon 600, was fine on Celery 400

[box]

Have you tried disabling Ultra-dma for your DVD-drive, I have to do that on my EPOX MVP3G-M + K6-III + AOpen 6xDVD combo?

(an AMD problem?)

[This message has been edited by box (edited 09-29-1999).]

[TheMorg]

I looked in Control Panel / System, found the LG DVD-ROM, looked in the Properties / Settings tab and found the following:
Disconnect (checked)
Sync data transfer (unchecked)
Auto insert notification (checked)

I thought the UltraDMA setting would have been in there too. Where is it hiding?

[Brama]

Don't you have a "DMA" on the right side of the window ? You are in the correct windows, "DMA" box has to be here !


Another comment: why DVD driver is slave on second IDE channel ?
First device on an IDE channel has to be master. The IDE channel # doesn't matter, you can keep it on ch. 2.

Try to force irq5 "used by ISA" in bios, so SBLive will take probably irq 10 and SB16 emulation the correct value of 5.

Many old DOS games are not able to set an irq higher than 7 so they would not work with your current setting.

Bye,

[This message has been edited by Brama (edited 09-29-1999).]

[TheMorg]

G400MAX: DVD player hangs on Athlon 600, was fine on Celery 400

Hi all,

I need help (more than usual). I upgraded my BH6/Celery 400 system to a shiny new Athlon 600 running on the Asus "if Intel asks, I don't exist" K7M mobo.

Although Windows seems stable enough (after a few teething crashes), as do D3D games, my DVD playback has died big time.

I insert a DVD-ROM or start the Matrox DVD Player manually, and all I get is the little "DVD Player now loading" window and the activity light flashes on my DVD-ROM drive for about 2 minutes. After that, the drive stops and the little window just sits there, [not responding].

I had heard good things about the Athlon's stability. Anybody any ideas or similar experiences?

System specs:
Asus K7M mobo
Athlon 600 (not o/c!)
Supermicro big nasty case & PSU
256Mb PC100 SDRAM
AGP: G400MAX
PCI1: <empty>
PCI2: SBLive!
PCI3: Network
PCI4: Adaptec 2940U2W
PCI5: RR-G
IDE1 Master: <empty>
IDE1 Slave: <empty>
IDE2 Master: <empty>
IDE2 Slave: LG DVD-ROM DRD-820B (2x)
SCSI0: IBM LVD HDD
SCSI5: Plextor CD-R PX-R820T
SCSI6: IBM LVD HDD

Drivers:
DirectX 7
Powerdesk 5.15
LiveWare 2.1

Interrupts:
IRQ5: Creative Labs SBLive!
IRQ5: IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
IRQ9: Matrox Millennium G400 Dual Head - English
IRQ9: IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
IRQ10: Creative SB16 Emulation
IRQ11: VIA VT83C572/VT82C586 PCI to USB Controller
IRQ11: VIA VT83C572/VT82C586 PCI to USB Controller
IRQ11: Adaptec AHA-2940U2W/U2B Ultra2 SCSI Controller
IRQ11: PCI Ethernet DEC 21041 Based Adapter
IRQ11: IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
IRQ11: IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
IRQ14: Primary Bus Master IDE controller (dual fifo)
IRQ14: VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller (Ultra DMA)
IRQ15: Primary Bus Master IDE controller (dual fifo)
IRQ15: VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller (Ultra DMA)

Voltages:
+12V: 12.281
+5V: 5.053
+3.3V: 3.408
VCore: 1.648
-5V: -5.113
-12V: -12.62

I hope that's enough detail!

Thanks for any input,

Tim.

---------------------
"Some bring happiness wherever they go, others whenever they go."

[box]

Well, with the via BM-driver, you get a 'VIA DMA tool' that allows you to set DMA-mode for each drive. I don't know about the AMD-chipset, but try looking under the BM-installer (maybe during installation?).

Or maybe you can switch of DMA in the bios?

Sorry I havn't gotten my hands on an Athlon system yet (holding out for 2nd gen. motherboards).

[Ron]

First thing to try is change your DVD to Master on either the primary or secondary ide channel. Seeing as it appears to be your only ide device, I would suggest setting it up as master on the primary channel and disable the secondary channel in bios. This will save on boot time and free up an IRQ if required. The only time I've seen a requirement to run an ide device as a slave without a master was with a few of the older CDROM drives that were produced in the transition period between proprietary interfaces and ATAPI standards.

------------------
BX6r2, 128MB PC100, C366A@550, Pan DVDwHollywood+,Pan 4X SCSI CDR, WangDAT, Quantam UDMA HDs, Fireport 40 UW, SBLive!Value (attached to bi-amped TEAC/Hitachi multimedia system), SMC Intel 21041 NIC, etc. G200 Mystique as well.

[kewlcat]

I'm sure you checked this, but it's important to have bus-mastering enabled for your DVD-ROM. Maybe not so much for an Athlon 600, but on a Celery at 450, it makes a difference.

------------------
Abit BH6, Celeron 300a@375, G400 32MB DualHead, 128MB RAM, WD26500 6.4GB, SBLive! Value.

[TheMorg]

Thanks all,

I'll try these out when I get back on my PC on Monday night. You know, I'm tempted to get a faster DVD-ROM drive and attach it to my SCSI card. Then I can free up 2 IRQ's!

The current drive is only where it is from when I was seduced by the SCSI Side of the Force and was a little lazy.

I found the VIA DMA Tool which says that Bus Mastering is currently enabled. I'll have a play with it.

One interesting characteristic is that when I run the DVD benchmark program (now what's it called again?) it fails to read any DVD movie I put in the drive. So it looks less of a G400MAX problem every minute.

I'll post results next week. Thanks again.

Tim

[Meek]

Hi. I had similar problems with my Athlon 500 and MSI motherboard but they are gone, now. I am sad to say that I reall do not know what was the final change that made it working, as there were at least a couple of things wrong.

However, it did not run on IRQ9, but then again, there was ACPI lurking at that IRQ simultanenously, at least some of the time. The last thing I did was actually re-installing the AMD bus mastering drivers (MSI has AMD IDE chips, I suppose you really have the VIA things there).

So, check your power saving settings, and disable it... may help.

M.

[TheMorg]

Update:

I used the 'VIADMATOOL' that came with my K7M mobo to disable DMA on the DVD-ROM drive (the only IDE device left in my system). Lo-and-behold, my machine now plays DVD movies just fine thankyou verymuch.

This is only a temporary solution as I'm getting either a Toshiba SCSI 5x DVD-ROM player (with SPDIF) or a Pioneer SCSI 6x (doesn't have SPDIF).

The only problem I now have is using the "Stop" button on the DVD Player Controller and then pressing "Play" hangs the DVD Player. But this is a lot further than I was getting before.

Thanks for your help!

Tim

[HedsSpaz]

Wait wait, back up a sec. Where did you get the Asus mobo? I didn't think that they had released it yet?
Sorry to be off the subject here but I had to ask.

HedsSpaz

[TheMorg]

Re: Asus K7M mobo supply

Check out Scan in the UK. They claim to be one of VERY few to be supplying them at the moment. They can't even mention the ASUS K7M in their hardware index.

<A href="www.scan.co.uk/asusk7m.htm">www.scan.co.uk/asusk7m.htm</A>

When I bought mine, Scan made sure I was using a "supported" PSU (the 300W PSU that came with my Supermicro SC750A is apparently on the list).

So far I've dared to o/c my Athlon 600 to 650 by increasing the FSB from 100MHz to 108MHz. Interestingly, the CPU posts as 650MHz even with an FSB of 103MHz (theoretically 618Mhz). Maybe the Athlon only posts at officially-supported clocks?