ABIT motherboard compatibility

[dwright]

I fixed the opengl lockups (system locked up solid on entry to opengl - reset required).
Before bh6 lockup:
AGP = G400max irq 10
slot 0 = empty
slot 1 = promise ultra 66 irq 12
slot 2 = sblive irq 5 (sb16 disabled)
slot 3 = nic (irq 11)
slot 4 = ATI TV Wonder (irq 11)
After bh6 no lockup:
AGP = G400max irq 10
slot 0 = empty
slot 1 = sblive irq 5 (sb16 ENABLED)
slot 2 = promise ultra 66 irq 12
slot 3 = nic (irq 11)
slot 4 = ATI TV Wonder (irq 11)

I have not had a lockup for 2 days now. All I did was switch the ultra 66 and the sblive (but kept sb16 emulation - I forgot to disable it) and no lockups. Switching the cards caused win98se to search for drivers, I just pointed it to them and that is it. I don't know why but its working for now. I did not remove or reseat the g400max.

[rinkol]

Haig - I appologize for my comments. My patience was previously used up by ata66 lockups (I have given up on that particular bleeding edge technology, at least until those bios/driver issues get sorted out) and was frustrated that not much info about the problem or visible progress seemed to be available.

Robert inkol

[rinkol]

One further thought. Does the use of Windows NT instead of Windows 98 affect the agp x2 lockup problem? With my vanilla g400/bp6 combo, I have the impression that there is less of a lockup problem when I boot into NT. Indeed I haven't noticed any since making the bios tweaks. Is this because the NT drivers don't have the bug(s) causing the lockup problem, or that they are simply much less aggressive and/or my applications don't test them? On the assumption that the tech demo and most games don't work under NT, does anyone have any suggestions for an NT g400 torture test?

Robert Inkol

[SCompRacer]

Scytale, it's like Chinese water torture, a little pebble here, a little pebble there....

[gammaman]

G400 Max - This is most peculiar indeed.
I too am suffering these "Lock Ups" but I don't seem to be able to predict them at all. When I get a lock up, both of my screens (I use dual head) fill with beautifully coloured single-pixel wide lines, and my mouse cursor turns into a block of these very same beautiful lines. Audio continues to play, however all controls other than the mouse are locked.

I have had a quick look inside my computer and discovered that I have a Canadian made 2-wire, steel fan job.

I have a 350W power supply with all default voltages set in BIOS. My case is bullet-proof with no less than 10 fans (incl. processor, G400Max and 2xHD Cooler)

I suppose the most peculiar thing is that I am suffering intermittantly. Last night I was unable to play the tech demo at all - 6 or 7 attempts. I left my computer on all night with no power saving features enabled - in other words, it was running as hot as it ever will. This morning, the tech demo plays flawlessly.

I can tell you that a computer that is not stable is useless to me, and I will be sending this card back ASAP. I wish someone at Matrox could find the problem, because I truly despise the idea of playing a crap-shoot with the mail and hoping I get one of these wonderful Irish plastic-three-wired fan jobs that may, or may not work.

Incidentally, I have all the latest bios and drivers for my BE6, HPT66, G400, SBLive and Creative Dxr3. There are no hardware IRQ problems - I have been through the entire musical PCI-slots shenanigans thanks to ABit and the 400BX implementation. (5 PCI + 1AGP = 4IRQ's) and the crashes keep on coming.



[This message has been edited by gammaman (edited 10-06-1999).]

[Dutch]

Gammaman, I used to have a Matrox G200 in my Abit BX-6 rev 1, and I had your EXACT symptoms with the mouse cursor turning into a block, the "beautiful solid color lines," and the whole screen starting to "buzz," with audio playing but the rest of the system locking up. My power supply is 400W and I have plenty of fans as well.

I found that those symptoms would most often occur while using Internet Explorer. I also found the following types of web pages would trigger the freaked out screen:

1) Pages with "transition" effects. (Workaround, turn off transition effects in browser settings.)

2) Pages that use Shockwave. It happens intermittently. For example, go to a web page that contains Shockwave and it will happen. Alternatively, go to the same webpage, but IMMEDIATELY MINIMIZE YOUR BROWSER BEFORE THE PAGE DISPLAYS. It won't happen. BUT, once you bring the web page back up (windowed or maximized), it will happen. Reboot, try again, and it will work without problems. Later in your same Windows session, it will happen again.

There is definitely a "condition" that exists that causes #2, but I've no idea what it is. It may involve Abit specific hardware combined with certain G200 cards, it may not. Workaround: none that I know of.

I have since purchased the G400 max dual head and installed that; the freaked out screen symptom has not manifested itself. (Yet.)

[Rob M.]

I fixed it!! All you have to do is unplug any Monitors and TVs from your Max! I havn't seen it crash once when I tried this!

[glarec]

well guys, i just got my replacement g400max yesterday and found out that the new one is the 3 wires, plastic fan one i went home and swapped the old one out. turned on the computer, it booted, found the card as a new card(i guess they all have different serial numbers embedded in the chipset), booted successfully into win98 as usual, i went and use the tweak "force 2x agp", rebooted, and try to run expendable in 2x agp.. well.. guess what?

IT WORKS!!!!!!!

now i am a happy camper

so if you have the 2 fans/abit combo.. my suggestion is to replace it


------------------
Glarec
------
bp6-(2)433(oc488) celerons, g400max, ibm ultra scsi 9.1g, sb-live value, hitachi ss-753 19", plextor 32x, etc, etc, etc...

[Haig]

Hi guys,

here's an update. I swapped a new Abit mobo and a new max with a clients Abit and Max.

For 2 days, it's been running without a crash. The only thing different is the power supply and the harddrive (or whatever is on the hard drive).

We also had 2 2940's, scsi cd and dvd drives, ide cd and an HP IDE CD burner all installed.

It still won't crash.

I just saw this thread:
http://forums.murc.ws/ubb/Forum5/HTML/005078.html

Does this help anyone?

Paul's trick sounds like the grounding problem that alot of people are complaining about on the Abit forums.

Don't know if this means anything but this morning, I read a review in November's issue of Gaming magazine that they rated the Abit mobo's at 3 because of too many lock ups. They never mentioned what graphic card they used not why the lock ups.

Haig

[ALBPM]

I think that blondeguy, cjolley and I may be on to a simple solution for the ABIT problem.

The one thing I've noticed is how difficult it is to properly seat an AGP or PCI card on an ABIT motherboard. The gap between the edge of the motherboard and the case is very small and can keep the card from seating properly. It is difficult to get the end of the slot cover bracket to slide into that small gap.

One trick I use for all my PCI and AGP cards is to bend both ends of the bracket slightly with a pair of pliers so the cards fit squarely into the slot.


Paul

[cjolley]

Also of note -> unlike PCI cards, AGP cards are affected by lateral angle in the slot because of using 2 rows of contacts per side.

If so the problem is unsolvable systematically (ie by using a general rule) because it would involve too many factors.

1. Batch of physical slot used by ABit for particular motherboard.
2. Fit of motherboard in particular case.
3. Current draw of particular G400 (fan?)
4. Voltage & ground quality of particular powersupply.

These conditions could never be duplicated by Matrox. Even shipping the whole computer to them might not work because the fit of everything in the case could be different after the shippers had thrown it around a few times.


Solution -> Pull it out and re-insert it a couple of times and/or move it side-to-side at it's hold-down screw. If this does not work RMA it for a different card. Matrox has been very good about this, it is a known issue (don't you just love that word?). And as far as I can see so far, this will always fix it (It is probably not a very high percentage problem, ABit users are almost all hobbyists so the sample here is distilled)

Just my $0.03.

chuck

------------------
ABit BH6 w/ Celery 333@500, 128mb gh@cas2, 10gb IBM@7200, SB Live Value@44kh, noname CDRom@40x, Mitsumi CDRW@2x2x8, Zoom@56k, Princeton EO75@1024x768x32x85hz, USB mouse,Matrox G400 MAX!!!!



[This message has been edited by cjolley (edited 10-08-1999).]