ABIT motherboard compatibility

[Rob M.]

Doh.. you'd think that I was a newbie or a junior member or.. err.. well, sorry.

[Zypher]

877 = free

They ran out of 800s, and 888s too it seems

BTW, mine works fine, I have a 300W atx 2.01 spec PS. But most bx boards won't boot at all with a <2.01 anyway. Late 97/early98 was the switchover, so unless you migrated a 'first gen' atx setup, you should have 2.01.

More trends on this bug are showing up:

-Type of fan
-Voltage
-Powersupply
-[insert hypothesis here]

Hmmm indeedy

[cjolley]

I just checked and I have the suspect metal-bladed 2-wire fan and a bh6. But I have no problems at all.
My PS is a 300w ? brand in an Enlight case.

Could someone who has the problem just unplug the fan on their card, point a table fan into their case and see if the problem goes away?
BTW my fan was not running when I got the card. It was not plugged in all the way.

Haig, do you have any thing you would like me to test?
chuck


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ABit BH6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@????, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Zoom@56k, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, Matrox G400 MAX!!!!

[Haig]

For the BH6 owners, can you guys verify that you are using the LN bios and 2x check that your Video Ram is disabled.

Brad - To the end user, a crash is a crash. So some of you will always think that it's the same issue. For us internally, it isn't.

I was concentrating more on the Max problem since I didn't see too much of regular g400 clients complaining about 2x crashes.

In Tech Supp, we have received alot more max 2x crashing calls than any type of regular G400 calls.

Chuck - If you are using the LN bios, can you flash it back to the previous bios and enable the Video Shadow?

If flashing it back is too risky then don't bother. I'll find an older bios and do it at work.

Also, if you are using ata 33 hard drives, what did you use to disable ata 66 mode?

Thanks,

Haig

[kooguy]

Hey Haig, Video Shadow is supposed to be enabled for those that have an Abit board? Everyone has been telling me to disable it.

I also get lockups once in a while. Yep, another Celeron, Abit, and SB Live! combo here. Could it also be what I am running in the background? I have Mcafee Antivirus 4.0.2 running.

[Scytale]

I'm using a BH6 with LN BIOS, the state of both caching and shadowing doesn't make any difference for me.

[kooguy]

You're right. Doesn't seem to do anything. I just got a lock up while typing an email after enabling it. Weird.

[cjolley]

Haig,
I flashed back from LN to JJ bios (my original) and got no errors.
I'll try KG tonight.
Any others I will have to DL, just ask.
chuck

PS I have vid bios shadow & cache enabled.
Do you want vid mem cache enabled?
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ABit BH6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@????, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Zoom@56k, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, Matrox G400 MAX!!!!




[This message has been edited by cjolley (edited 09-30-1999).]

[Labman]

I have a G400 32Mb SH and have had lockups w/ Asus P3BF mobo as well as Abit BX6R2 which I am currently using. In both cases I had to force AGP 1x to avoid lockups. I still get some but at a very tolerable level.
Using 5.25 drivers and Open GL ICD beta.
I have a 300W PS and no shared IRQ's for either the G400 or SBLive value.

Labman

[Rob M.]

I was just wondering if everyone with the 2x AGP problem was experiencing the same lockup. The lockup I have identifies itself by suddenly and then continously randomly writing hundreds of single pixel wide, horizontal lines of random colour to my display. I can still see that something was there, but I can't make out anything. Also I can still move my mouse, but the arrow becomes a box with the same line thingy happening to it. As soon as this happens everything else locks up, only reset and power off work at that point (would've been nice to get a screenshot ) I've had this same problem on 2 different abit systems with 2 MAX's. So assuming everyone with the 2x crash has this specific lockup, it may help weed out those who are and aren't affected by this..

[dwright]

Confirmed bh6 bios at LN level. Video shadow on and off does not affect my lockups in opengl. I think I can predict my lockups now.
I might try loading win98se again for the 4th or 5th time to see what happens since I forced IRQ's now.
G400max(irq 10), sblive(irq5), bh6 192meg all memory slots filled, promise ultra 66, PIII450, not overclocked.

[rinkol]

I think one should be careful about making assumptions that different factors are involve with the agp 2x lockups with the vanila and Max flavors of the g400. I think the Max users are more likely to push their card by using the latest drivers and making sure they enable hardware acceleration in games (I know at least some games use software acceleration by default in many situations). Probably most business g400 users are using the g400 under NT (and very likely with ASUS rather than Abit motherboards). From my experience the Matrox NT drivers are not very aggressive and, as business users aren't likely to be playing 3D games, this class of users will probably have relatively few problems.

I have the vanilla 16 MB G400 and found that newer drivers and versions of dx simply made things worse, even with the agp x1 registry hack.

There are clearly differences betweeen the two versions, (timing margins + heat generation + cooling), but I am not sure as to their significance. Again, my g400 is used in a computer in a basement location and is in a full tower with relatively good cooling - so if heat is a problem for me it will be a worse one for users in warmer climates.

I have contacted Matrox tech support and am looking forward to some solution - so far I am told that the problem is a known issue and that it is being worked on.

Robert Inkol

[bcronin]

All these suggestions of different things to try tweaking in the BIOS, etc. while well meaning, will make no difference whatsoever. I tried varying every conceivable setting in my BIOS to no avail. I even did a clean install of Win98SE on a totally empty partition with no hardware installed other than the base set of hardware that Win98 detected during install plus the G400 5.25 drivers. Nothing worked except forcing AGP1X. Alex in tech support finally suggested I try getting the board RMA'd and lo, it worked. I was not trying to claim that the difference in fans had anything to do with it. I was simply reporting that that seemed to me to be the only difference between the two boards (plus the different country of manufacture). I'm sure there were other differences that were not apparent to me.

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Cheers,
BC

[cjolley]

dwright,
Try taking your third stick of memory out.
Make sure the two remaining are in slots 0 & 1.
chuck

It just rings a bell.


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ABit BH6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@????, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Zoom@56k, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, Matrox G400 MAX!!!!

[cjolley]

Haig,
Well, I flashed to KG, turned on caching of system, vid bios, vid ram, and turned off L2 cache EEC.
I then ran a 1 hour quake demo @ 1024x768x32bpp -> no problems!
so, I ran the tech demo @ 1024x768x32bpp + all settings high for an hour.-> no problem!

I don't know what the problem is (if there realy is one) but, it ain't happnen on my machine no matter what I do.

Did I mention that I have a USB mouse and it's playing nice too.

If you can think of any other thing to test let me know.

chuck

(who never had any trouble with his G200 and FIC 503+ either )




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ABit BH6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@????, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Zoom@56k, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, Matrox G400 MAX!!!!