problems with my V2, G400, and athlon system

[Solo2]

This has been fustrating me for quite a while. The G400 rocks at any D3D games but I love tribes so I decieded to pick up a Creative V2 12meg so I could play tribes in Glide mode(G400 can only play this in software or some crappy ICD). I have this on an Athlon 650 on a K7M with 128mb of ram. All my slots but one are filled. I have the cards like this:

AGP- G400 32meg DH OEM
PCI- EMpty
PCI2-SB Live! Value
PCI3-Mylex Ultra SCSI
PCI4-Cornet 10/100 NIC
ISA- 56K USR V.90

I tried putting in the V2 in the PCI just under the AGP and it gave me a strange freeze screen when first entering Win98SE, then I swapped it with the 10/100 NIC and still the same thing, then I pulled the Mylex card and put the V2 there and still no go. After several reboots it would sometimes let me into Win98SE in 16 color 640x480 also telling me my display driver was incorrect. I finally gave up and pulled the V2 and put everything back and everything was back to normal. Anybody know how I can get the V2 working with the G400? Is there some incompatibility that I dont know about? ANy thanks would be greatly appreciated. Oh yea, i tried this with the latest drivers and BIOSes for everything.

[Kruzin]

I would think it's a bad Voodoo card. Try it in another machine.

The cards should work fine together, with the exception of the TurboGL (which would only affect games). If it acting like that just trying to boot up, the Voodoo would be the first thing I'd check out...

[Solo2]

hmm.. i'll try that thanks for the suggestion.

[Kruzin]

One other thought could be the power supply.
Athlons are very picky, which is why they have a list of approved power supplys for use with the chips. Is your PS on that list?

The G400 takes a lot of juice. So does the Voodoo2. Combined, they may be causing a power problem...

[Solo2]

I'm pretty sure it isnt the power supply. I have a PC Power and Cooling Turbo 300 ATX. I've had the system running almost flawlessly with the G400 and everything else but the V2 for about a week now so I'm pretty sure its the V2 screwing something up or some kinda IRQ problem.

[Kruzin]

Well, Voodoos don't even use an IRQ. Generally, they are very easy to set up, so when one causes these kind of problems, it's usually a faulty card...

[Solo2]

Damn, i tried it on my friends computer and the V2 works perfectly. I'm thinking now its some kind of compatibility problem with my K7M, are there any message boards where I can find help on this?

[Ron]

Solo2
Don't count on the brand name of the PS, this company has been known in the past to repackage generic brand X stuff and then charge a premium price for it. Check the actual part numbers against the AMD approved list. The K7M manual lists specifications for their recommended PS as well.

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BX6r2, 128MB PC100, C366A@567, Pan DVDwHollywood+,Pan 4X SCSI II 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.

[Thundrchez]

Most likely the problem is not with the voodoo2 at all. Try these two tricks:

p 19 of the K7M manual shows how to change the voltage IO (VIO). By default, the K7M has it too high at 3.4V. Change it to 3.31V.

Hack up the registry to force AGP 2X. MURC downloads have registry hacks, and you need to install the forceagp2x.reg.

I was keeping my K7M + G400 system on 24/7 until the power glitched. Then I got the infamous "plaid death" on Windows bootup. Cold boots made this happen. Forcing the AGP to 2X mode fixed my problem.

[rylan]

If you're still having problems and can't figure it out, head over to http://www.amdzone.com/
and go to their message boards. They have a lot of info for Athlon systems and lots of people who know how to fix odd stuff.
Some other things to try first though: Make sure you have the most recent motherboard bios and drivers for the chipset. The problem you described almost sounds like a busmastering problem, but the VoodooII doesn't use and irq or busmastering, but who knows!

[Zwisch]

Hi,

I had the exact same problem with my voodoo 2's on my FIC SD-11... couldn't load windows with the card installed... didn't want to have a headhacke so I sold them... but there seem to be some issue with that and the VIA chipsets... for now, simply try copying the turbogl opengl32.dll file into your Tribes directory... seems to work fine.. or better at least

[Solo2]

thanks for the tips guys!!! I got it working! I just had to set a jumper on my mobo to lower the voltage being sent to my PCI cards and had to force my G400 to do AGP2x. Yay, Tribes here I come!