Athlon and G400

[Oliver]

Hi, I have bought a new computer few weeks ago when my nightmare began.

My systems include:
Magic-pro motherboard using AMD750 Chipsets
Athlon 500
128M RAM
G400/16M RAM
SB AWE64 value (ISA)
3Com internal 56k modem
Adaptec AVA1502 SCSI (ISA) for my Nikon Coolscan II
IBM 13G harddisk/7200
Win98, clean install with DirectX7
AMD AGP port 4.45, Bus mastering 1.22RC
G400 bios 1.5-22, driver 5.30, IRQ 4
AGP aperture 64M
No IRQ conflicts found by win98

The system boot smoothly and no problem with running word processor. However, running FIFA99, FIFA 2000 and Need for Speed III, the screen seems being cut into two or more pieces which is very annoying. No such problem is found with software rendering.

[IceStorm]

I've never heard of "Magic Pro". Who are they? Got a website?

Only Athlon boards I knew about were from MSI, Gigabyte, BCM, Asus, and FIC...



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Primary System: Athlon 550, MSI 6167 mb w/BIOS 1.3, 3x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, G400 MAX in multi-monitor mode, Two Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 900u monitors, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster Live!, DeskTop Theater DTT2500 DIGITAL Speaker System (Sweeeeeet!), WDC WD20 5AA 20GB HD, WD AC310100 10GB HD, Toshiba SD-M1212 6x DVD-ROM, HP 8100i CD-RW, Epson Stylus Pro, OptiUPS PowerES 650, MS SideWinder Precision Pro USB joystick, Gravis Xterminator gamepad (no DX7 drivers yet), Logitech 3-button mouse, Mitsumi keyboard, Win98 SE, Belkin OmniCube 4-port KVM, 10/100 5-port Linksys Ethernet switch, Epson 1200u scanner, Epson Stylus Pro printer, Logitech QuickCam Pro with the little stand and the lense kit (cool).

Secondary System: PIII-450, Soyo 6BA+ IV, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium G200 AGP, V2 SLI rig, Intel Pro/100+ Management Adapter, SoundBlaster 32, WD AC41800 18GB HD,WD AC310100 10GB HD, Creative Dxr3 DVD decoder card, Hitachi GD-2500 6x DVD-ROM, Win98 SE

Tertiary System: PII-266, Asus P2B BIOS 1008, 1x128MB PC100 ECC SDRAM CAS2, Millennium II, 3Com 3C905, 3Com 3C509, ADSL Modem 640kbit down/90kbit up, Mylex BT-930 SCSI card, Seagate 2GB Hawk, Seagate 1GB Hawk, Quantum DLT 4000 tape drive, NEC 6x CD-ROM, Linux distro S.u.S.E. 6.1 (IP Masquerade works!)

Quaternary System: Ocean Rhino 9 motherboard w/Intel 430HX chipset, P200MMX, 4x64MB EDO Parity RAM, Millennium II, 3Com 3C590, SoundBlaster 16 MCD, Fujitsu 3.5GB HD, WD 1.2GB HD, Haven't chosen an OS yet.

And a JetDirect EX print server that bootp's its address from the Tertiary System.

All specs subject to change.

[Nuno]

Yeah, if even the known brand Athlon mobo´s have their issues, I can imagine what´s probably going on with that "Magic-Pro"...

But I can tell you several things that are not looking good in your setup:

1 - Move the G400 to IRQ 9 or higher. In IRQ 4 you are looking for trouble.

2 - Set the AGP aperture size to 128 (or 256).

Oh and also if enabled, disable all video shadowing/cacheing in the bios.

[This message has been edited by Nuno (edited 16 November 1999).]

[Alfie]

Usually anything-pro is a pcchips product.
Perhaps something else, though.

[Oliver]

Thank you for all the suggestions.
Magic-Pro, in fact, is a quite famous mainboard producer in Taiwan. In this case, its mainboard has a similar structure to Gigabyte and AMD has recognised.
This brand is not famous in Europe or America, but it is cheap and as reliable as ASUS.