G400Max on Epox 7KXA and W98

[JohnT]

Has anyone been able to get the G400Max working well in W98 on the 7KXA mb (or any other KX133 mb)?

I finally got the drivers installed, but it locks up in W98 as soon as I try to do almost anything.

In NT4 or W2000 Pro, the G400Max works flawlessly on the same system (7KXA, K7-800, 256MB pc133, Promise Ultra66, ST320430A, PCI128 Soundblaster, 3Com 3C509bm NIC).

I gave up on the G400Max temporarily, and installed another card (ATI Rage Fury Pro) and it runs fine in W98 and NT4 at the same resolutions.

Any ideas or suggestions??

JohnT

[HedsSpaz]

Hate to ask the obvious, but have you installed Via's AGP drivers?

[JohnT]

Yes, I have installed the Via AGP (and other Via drivers for W98) from the CD that came with the board.

I also tried the Via 4.01 drivers on the Epox site, but got an error msg, even after downloading them a second time. So I'm running the version off of the CD. The ATI board seems to like them fine!

[ski]

Yeah I got my stable. I use the PD 5.30 and TurboGL 1.0 for my G400

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I am one reboot away from prefection

Sys stats:
Athlon 800mhz
Epox EP-7KXA
256MB PC-133 ram
Matrox G400 32mb SGRAM SoundBlaster Live MP3+
PC-DVD Encore 6x/Dxr3 card
33.6 modem (Woohoo ) 28.0 gig Seagate Barrcuda drive 7200rpm baby!!!

www.3dpower.net The coolest place on the net besides this one!!!

[JohnT]

Well, I installed the v4.20 of the Via 4in1 drivers, which worked fine with the ATI, then removed its drivers in W98. Shutdown, replaced the G400Max, reboot into NT4, installed the drivers there for the G400, and it still works fine in NT4.

When I booted into W98, it was the same old story - after much fiddleing around and numerous reboots, I got the G400Max reinstalled - but it still hangs when trying to do the slightest task (sometimes even in Device Manager).

I am about to try the latest drivers in W98 from Matrox, but really don't expect it to start working - but who knows.

Could this be a W98 vs W98SE problem, even though the ATI works fine but the G400Max doesn't?? I have the original W98 CD and no W98SE (W98 is not a first choice for me - I really installed it to try to get some benchmarks to compare against the published ones for this new mb).

Thanks Ski, for your comments. However, not being especially familiar with W98, what exactly is PD 5.30 and where do I get it? Are you referring to the build no of the drivers from Matrox, or something else?

[getmatrox]

I have the EP-7KXA working great at 110/146 with my G400.
Have you followed the setup guide provided at amdzone? As far as the drivers are concerned, just install 5.41 for the G400.
If you get frequent crashes or an annoying horizontal line every 10th warm boot (or so), disable ACPI and let Windows redetect your stuff.
The Matrox programmers need to solve the via incompatiblities once and for all. Until then, be prepared to tinker a bit.

[JohnT]

Yes, when I installed the mb initially, I followed the guide you refer to. Of course, may settings have changed since then <g>. I went back and set them to the recommended values, installed the default pci vga driver in safe mode, removed the G400Max drivers using the uninstall mga utility, rebooted, then installed the pd 5.30 drivers (as was recommended by ski).

Rebooted, and guess what, the same old crap! This time it hung while searching for games compatible with GL drivers. The interesting thing is, the mouse pointer still moves over the screen, and ctrl-alt-del twice will reboot the system. So it appears the OS is active, but the display is hung.

Anyways, I have already spent much more time on this problem than W98 is worth to me, so I'm going back to NT4 and NT5 and say good riddance to W98!! I can only guess that perhaps the G400Max might work with W98SE (as it has for some of you, but I'm sure not going to spend the money to find out!).

Thanks to all of you that tried to help, but the G400Max with W98 and the Epox 7KXA is a no-go here.

JohnT

[Joel]

Here's probably another dumb question but did you do a reformat of your hard driver and then reinstall everything after putting in the new board?

Joel

[OMan]

Everyone I have heard from who has a G400 working with a KX133 based system has the board only working at AGP1x. According to Matrox the G400 does some diags at boot time and drops the AGP speed to 1x if it does not like what it sees. I have had to replace my G400 with a TNT2 based card (hapilly running at AGP4x) because the frame rate would get so slow. If you want to know for sure then download PowerStrip and take a peek at the advanced info. Chances are you will see that your G400 is only running at 1x.


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"Oman"

[JohnT]

Hi Joel -
Yes I did - it was a complete new install because previously I only had NT4 and NT5 as my operating systems. These are on a SCSI RAID sub-system for which there is no driver for W98, so I installed the Ultra66 (left over from a previous mb installation) and the ST320430A.

Because of the previous partitioning for NT (4GB C: and D I could not get W98 to install and repartitioned to 2GB, which it liked enough to install on.

So, a long answer to a short question! Since the ATI Rage Fury Pro works flawlessly on the exact same installation (sans matrox drivers), I'm convinced this is a G400Max incompatiblilty problem with the Via chipset (or maybe just with the Epox version).

Thanks for taking the time to consider my problem and sending a reply!

JohnT

[JohnT]

Hi "Oman" -

Well, I have never gotten the G400Max to do anything in W98 long enough to have any idea what the AGP speed is! It has always locked up only a few seconds into the boot sequence after the network login screen appears. In fact, I have yet to see the icons for My Computer, etc unless in safe mode with the G400Max (The ATI will run indefinitally with no problems).

I have tried both AGP 4x enabled and disabled, with no difference. I have tried the drivers that came on the CD (5.13, I believe), 5.30, and the beta 5.53 - none of them work for me in W98. Here in NT4, I have no problems at all.

Thanks for the reply!

JohnT

[Netromm]

Take a look at http://www.amdzone.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=160 where Richard Fox has contributed a great guide to setting up the Epox 7KXA.

[CannyOne]

Hi There JohnT!,

I have the EP-7KXA motherboard and a G400-MAX. It runs just fine at AGP 2X, with side banding. This is with 5.52 Matrox drivers and the 4.00 AGP Miniport (found in the 4.20 4-in-1 Pack) under Win98SE.

Some people report that these drivers don't function properly, but I haven't found that to be the case. There is however one difference, with the VIA chipset, that you might not have caught. You should install the AGP miniport driver last!

But before I go into that are you sure Your G400 isn't sharing an IRQ? Is the Promise card in PCI slot 2 or 3? I'm using a Hot Rod 66 Controller Card for my drives. So I'd doubt that the Promise would be the cause unless it's in PCI slot 1. You might need to specify an IRQ for each of the Bus-Master PCI slots that don't share (PCI #1 shares and #5 is not BM).

From the sound of it you did not perform a clean OS install. If that is the case I'd venture some of those ATI drivers are still leaving their "influence" in the OS. Though I know how much of a pain it is you should perform another "clean" install. Then install the video drivers. Followed by the Latest version of DirectX (7.0a). And finally install the VIA GART driver (aka the AGP miniport).

The other suspect in your system is that "wonderful" 3Com NIC. I have two 905Cs that are incompatible! ( Causing constant pauses and lockups. Sounds very much like what you describe.) My Generic Realteks work just fine. And guess what? They're much less expensive. I've also heard that Intel NICs work, but I avoid most of their stuff if possible. You know what I'm saying so I'll leave well enough alone.

I also seem to remember some issues with the SB PCI-128. I have what's known as the PCI-1024 (aka "new" SB Live Value OEM). So it's difficult to remember exactly what the issues and resolutions were. You might try using the "dreaded" On-Board Sound if that is an option.

Your issue is NOT an incompatibility between the G400 and your EP-7KXA! I've been comunicating (though infrequently lately) with a number of people who have this combination of video card and motherboard in an attempt to come to an agreement on "optimized" settings for the BIOS and this card. So there are a number of people who have this combination that don't have a problem. I'm sorry to hear that you are having difficulties. And I can relate to your frustration. I hope some of this helps you find a resolution.

[paulcs]

I'm with CannyOne. I don't think this is an Matrox/VIA issue either.

It's hard to get a machine that previously had an ATI board in it to work properly with a G400 without reformatting and reinstalling Windows. I don't like recommending a reformat and a reinstall, but, if I were you, I'd do what CannyOne suggests in the order he suggested.

Getting your IRQ house in order is important as well.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[JohnT]

Very interesting! Thanks for the comments netromm, CannyOne and paulcs.

Try this for a different twist - yesterday my ASUS K7V came, so of course, I installed it.

Now for the interesting part - after transferring all of the cards, memory, etc I booted into NT4 to check things out -worked fine except for the NIC, which is now a pci SMC (no ISA slots on the K7V for the 3C509b).

I then booted into W98 (existing installation). After installing many new devices found, including the cards that were already there (SCSI, PCI 128, Ultra 66), it loaded the OS. And ... the G400Max works in W98 for the first time!! (PD5.30 drivers)

When the mb hardware drivers were being loaded, the cdrom was unavailable (because the SCSI card driver were not yet loaded), so I could not load any of the drivers from the ASUS CDrom. But it loaded drivers anyway, and upon reboot, everything worked, including the new SMC NIC card.

Checking system devices in Device Manager, all drivers are MS 5-11-98 except the VIA Power Management Controller which is VIA Tech 2-16-99. Even the VIA Tech V82C598 CPU to AGP Controller is listed as MS 5-11-98.

To verify it is working reasonably well, I ran ZD Content Creation WS2000 and obtained the expected score for the configuration.

Needless to say, I will do a complete backup before trying any driver changes.

So why does it work on the K7V and not on the Epox? As stated previously, I tried both the 4in1 v4.18 (Epox CD) and v4.20 from the VIA site. The IDE drivers for the VIA chip shouldn't matter since I am using the Ultra66 - right (I tried both with and without and saw no difference)?

Is the G400Max really running in PCI mode?

Looking forward to your comments!

JohnT