Hi Haig

[Vermillion]

I think I'll try to start this all off on a good foot.

Good morning Haig. I have a quick question for you. It is in regards to my DVD software bundled with my Matrox G400Max not working (the card itself runs perfectly). It loads up just fine, pretends to access the DVD drive, but after that, does nothing. No buttons work and nothing can be accessed within the program.

Here are all the questions and help I have received in this forum to better expedite the process:

Hardware
ABIT BH6 Celeron @ 460ish
128 RAM
SBLIVE! XGamer
Matrox MG400Max
SCSI card for HP Scanners
3Com Etherlink

(The board, chip, RAM, soundcard, ect all work fine, so please no bad mouthing me on my choices)

IRQ LIST (note: this is only the list as I keep returning to, this is not the list it has been throughout the process of testing your hypothesis)
0 System timer
1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 (free)
4 (free)
5 Symbios Logic 53C416 SCSI Adapter (for HP ScanJets)
6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
7 Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 Creative SB16 Emulation
10 Creative SB Live!
10 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
10 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
11 3Com Etherlink III Bus-Master PCI Ethernet Adapter
11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
12 Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead - English
12 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
13 Numeric data processor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 Intel 82371AB/EB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller

Question:
______
Have you tried removing the card and putting it back in?
______

Yes, several times. The card sits correctly in the slot.

Question:
______
Have you tried having only the video card installed without the other cards in the machine (i.e. sound, scsi, ect.)?
______

Yes, several times.

Question:
______
Have you formatted your system and installed everything from scratch?
______

Yes, several times.

Question:
______
Do you have any other software DVD players installed?
______

No, they were removed prior to starting this process.

Question:
______
Have you forced it to AGPx1?
______
Yes.

Question
_____
What DVD drive are you using?
If it's IDE, put it as Master.

I don't know what Abit board you have but if it's the one with the ATA 66, make sure the DVD drive is on the ATA 33 headers.

If it's SCSI, what device id is it on?

Make sure your Xing app is completely removed from the system for now
_____
The drive is a Creative PC DVD (Panasonic 2nd Gen I think)

It's set as a Master I believe

ATA 33

Not SCSI (there were no SCSI's installed at the time of test)

Xing was taken off in an effort to get this to work.

Question
_____
Check to make sure the DVD-rom drive is set to DMA mode and regions are correct?
_____
It is.

Question
_____
Have you checked different dvd's to see if it is just that one DVD with the problem?
_____

Have tried over 15 different DVD's, no change in status.


Question
_____
That SCSI card.. Hmm what do you have connected to it? Have you tried moving the slot it is in? IS the chain terminated correctly (if required, ) Also maybe there is a BIOS(?)/Firmware updated for the SCSI card.
_____

Not applicable. I have had nothing but the video card installed on a freshly formatted machine.


That is all I can remember off the top of my head. I have tried every single suggestion that has been presented to me without question. I do not blindly sit here and say "that can't be it, that will never work".

Like I have said, the card works fabulous in regards to every other aspect but the DVD. I love my card (I mean REEEEEAALLLY love it), I just want to be able to fully utilize it.

Eric Johnston

p.s. Also, I am sorry if you thought I was slamming your tech. When I said "short with me", that is what I meant. The tech's emails were one line emails. After waiting 2 days for a response, I require a little more than just a 1 line "do that again". I guess that makes me high maintence

p.p.s Interesting fact
Sent first inquiry 10-13-99 4:30pm
First response 10-15-99 11:40am
Sent second inquiry 10-15-99 12:36pm
Second response 10-18-99 10:31am
Sent third inquiry 10-18-99 12:09pm
Third response not yet received

Total time in queue with zero suggestions from online tech support towards a fix: 6 days 20 hours

Average response time (not including the weekend): 45.667 hours

Time it took for Haig to gather up all our emails and "gently" point out not to bad mouth his employees: 9.46 hours

I guess for efficencies sake, maybe I just need to post to Haig that Matrox Employees are purposefully causing my family to spontaneously combust and then just tack a tech question on the end. Just kidding

Like I keep saying, I'm not trying to be the disgruntle bonehead on the other end of the phone and I truly do appreciate everyone that has tried to help me in the MURC forum. You guys are great even though I have been running around here like a child crying about not having all the candy in the candy store.

[Haig]

Hi Eric,

"Sent third inquiry 10-18-99 12:09pm
Third response not yet received"

Don't seem to have your email. Our server shows us that we sent you an email on this date asking you to resend your file again because the first attachement came in corrupted.

"Time it took for Haig to gather up all our emails and "gently" point out not to bad mouth his employees: 9.46 hours"

More like 10 minutes after I read that thread. I personally don't visit the forum much during working hours. Sometimes I log on here at night from home to see what's going on in the life of the Matrox faithfulls . I rarely go into any page other than 1 and skim thru the topics. If anything catches my eye, I'll read it.

"p.p.s Interesting fact
Sent first inquiry 10-13-99 4:30pm"

We recieved it at 6:16pm - after working hours.

Well enough of the bickering since it won't get anyone anywhere

Try putting in the DVD title into your creative drive first and then open up quadrant. Does this help?

Haig

[This message has been edited by Haig (edited 20 October 1999).]

[dwright]

Has the creative dvd drive worked with other software on your computer? Xing is mentioned in your post, did it play dvd's? My dvd does not play with the Matrox DVD player unless I lower my resolution from 32bit 1280*1024 to 1024*768 first.

[Vermillion]

Haig: Agreed. I'll stop bickering. Sorry.

Been doing a little fiddling with the DVD's and so forth.

Per your suggestion: The DVD now plays the audio track at an extremely accelerated speed, but shows no video and then eventually locks up the program. A step in the right direction, thanks Now, what is my next step?

Dwright: Yes, the DVD has functioned acceptably with the other software DVD decoders I have (which means this is just a "plug and chug" software issue I think).

[Haig]

Hi Eric,

I'll stop to

That mickey mouse audio sounds very familiar. Last time I saw that was when the Live card just came out and had major conflicts with our G200 Marvel. After scoping out all the signals, we found out that the live card is polling the system timer ~4000 times/nano sec. Since we use the system timer to get the time stamp for the video clip, this just threw off our capture drivers completely and played a whole clip in 1.5 seconds.

Don't bother pulling out your live card because Divicorp will give you error messages.

I'll try this out tomorrow and see what the problem is.

Until then, make sure you have the updated drivers for your live card.

Haig

[Vermillion]

Thanks Haig.

Not only is it Mickey Mouse audio, but the program locks up exactly 28 seconds into it (independent of DVD).

SBLIVE! drivers are 3.0 (released yesterday).

[Haig]

Hi Eric,

I tried out the Creative PC DVD (1st gen) and saw the problem with any title I put in.

I then tried the Creative PC DVD DXR2 and had no problems with the exception of 2 titles:

G.I. Jane - Very slow and choppy
The Mummy - Corruption all over the video window.

These 2 titles came with their own player and I saw the same problem even with their own player.

I then tried the same titles with various Technics and Toshiba drives and had no problems with our player and the titles' players.

I sent this off to Divicorp and also entered it into our database. Don't know who's problem it is but I'll be honest with you, it might not be considered as a high priority right now. It would be nice if all these production houses would encode their titles the same way

I used the Live card with various drivers and all showed the same results. The system I used was on a PIII 500.

Haig

[Vermillion]

Hehe.

Ah well, I can't same I'm surprised

Thanks a lot for your patience with me when I first came in frothing about the mouth. I know that not everything can be fixed. Do you think investing in a different DVD player (or decoder card) would be worth the effort? Any suggestions?

Till then, I'll load the evil xing back up and run everything at 50% so that it looks good

Thanks again. Your always Matrox faithful, though sometimes crabby,
Vermillion