Bit of help needed with G400MAX, S7 mobo and W2K

[Rob G]

First of all, I appreciate that there has been a lot of threads about Matrox cards and W2K. I've had a look through and I can't really find much that helps.

System:
AMD K6III-450
FIC PA-2013 (1mb) mobo
256mb PC100
2xIBM 34GXP 20gb drives running through a Promise Ultra66 controller card.
Matrox G400MAX
plus other stuff I haven't got round to installing on W2K yet.

I've been running the G400Max quite happily on Win98SE for months, using the 4in1 driver 4.18.

Needless to say, on W2K (Pro, clean install) - as soon as I install the Matrox W2K drivers 5.03 and reboot, the screen goes black and I can do nothing with the system. Similar to what used to happen on W98 when the 4in1 driver wasn't used.

I've seen a lot of comments about ACPI and how it causes problems - but I'm not seeing any ACPI options in my bios (I leave the power management stuff off, if that makes any difference).

I've checked the FIC website and there's no mention of W2K problems (or compatibility) with the mobo. No bios updates either.

W2K seems to run just fine until I go for the Matrox driver.

Anyone know what I can do? W2K is very new to me as I've never used NT much.

Cheers
Rob

[DosFreak]

I THINK there might be a bios update for your mobo because I think I remember someone posting that FIC emailed them the bios. Email FIC with your prob.

[Rags]

Go into your bios and change the AGP aperture to 4.

Rags

[PR-man]

Well I had posted about this problem a while back. I contacted FIC tech support and they duplicated the problem and sent it off to Tawain fo a fix. They are supposed to email me when the fix is available. I think the problem is similar to the FIC/G200 problem when the g200 came out. The FIC bios' just do not handle the DIME memory managment correctly and thus u must essentially disable AGP. I believe that is why i have seen only FIC and Matrox users in win2k with this problem because only Matrox uses DIME. I will let you guys know what the Fix is when FIC tech gets back to me PR-man

------------------
Win2k rocks!!! Now if only my chipset was not VIA !!!!!!!!

[PR-man]

by the way I have all the newest pa-2013 beta bios' from FIC tech support if anyone wants them LOL

------------------
Win2k rocks!!! Now if only my chipset was not VIA !!!!!!!!

[Rob G]

Tnank you! The Max is now humming along nicely in W2K. I flashed the bios to 4323 and still had the same problem. Changed the apeture down to 4mb and it worked.

Why does the apeture make the difference?

OK next problem. W2K doesn't like my Promise Ultra66 controller card. AT ALL. I stipped the machine down to a basic system for installing and if I insert the Promise card (with both HDs running through it) W2k just freezes on load-up. I'm using Promise's latest W2K driver.

Any ideas?

[PR-man]

Ok rob, my theory about the apeture is what I had said in my previous post (and if you havent guessed it already i was once jediphoenix)

Quote:The FIC bios' just do not handle the DIME memory managment correctly and thus u must essentially disable AGP. I believe that is why i have seen only FIC and Matrox users in win2k with this problem because only Matrox uses DIME.

Also the 4323 bios is very old, i have the newest bios from FIC that they say is best for win2k I will email it to you if you like. Just email me

------------------
Win2k rocks!!! Now if only my chipset was not VIA !!!!!!!!