Bus Mastering, Asus 2B-F and Matrox

[Cliffordd]

I just received the G400 32M dual head card, and finally got it operating after doing a clean Windows install. Everything seems to work except for bus mastering and one game. I get clean reboots (the system will just reboot on its own) when Bus mastering is enabled in both 3D and 2D (specifically Links99) games, but that doesn't happen when I disable bus mastering. I haven't had any luck installing High Heat 2000 at all. I get a clean reboot regardless of whether Bus Mastering is enabled or not. Any ideas would be appreciated.

System Specifications:

Asus 2B-F MB
PentiumIII 450
96 meg RAM
Matrox 32M G400 DH English
Western Digital 18 gig HD
Soundblaster Live Value
US Robotics 56K Winmodem

[Cliffordd]

Forgot to mention that I'm using Windows98 (first edition). Sorry about that.

[Slartibartfast]

There are known issues with the P2B and Bus Mastering... are you using ECC memory? Turn off ECC checking (whether you've got ECC or not) in the BIOS.

There are a few things that could be wrong. Elaborate on your clock speeds, memory speeds, etc.

- Slarty

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It wasn't always like this... I had a real life once. A signature, too. I used to be a guy named Gurm. But that's all gone now. Now, my name is Ash... and I am a slave.
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Specs? You want specs? Yeah. Alright you primitive screwheads, listen up. See this? This is my boomstick! It's a twelve gauge double barreled Remington, S-Mart's top-of-the-line. You can find this in the sporting goods department. That's right this sweet baby was made in Grand Rapids Michigan. Retails for about $109.95. It's got a walnut stock, cobalt blue steel and a hair trigger. That's right. Shop Smart. Shop S-mart. Ya got that?! Now I swear, the next one of you primates, even touches me...

[rickn]

P2B-F and DH G400 here, no problems at all with it or bus mastering

[cpld006]

I had similar problems with Busmastering on an Intel SE440BX-2 board. It turned out to be the card and a replacement fixed the problem.

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PIII 617, Asus P3B-F. 128MB PC133 SDRam, ADSL line, SB Live, a bunch of other crap.

[Cliffordd]

I don't get the ECC option in the BIOS because I don't have the correct memory chips. Could that be the cause of the problem? Everything else seems to work except Bus Mastering and the High Heat game. I'm not overclocking the card, and I'm not doing anything tricky to the memory either. I installed the latest Matrox BIOS, but nothing changed.
I do hope there isn't anything wrong with the card. I mail-ordered it, and I'm not into sending it back.

[majingohan]

i have a g400 32mb single head and i am too having trouble with bus mastering. when busmastering is enabled, windows exploerer will crash every twenty minutes or so and will not shut down properly (it will start the shutdown sequence and then freeze at a black screen) when busmastering is disabled, there is no problem. i have no problems when the drivers are uninstalled or when i use my mystique. i have all the lastest drivers for all my peripherals and also the latest bios versions. even matrox technical support has not been able to figure out the problem.

my system:
amd k62-300
jbond m/b (via chipset)
seagate medalist hd
quantum bigfoot hd
sblive! value
matrox millenium g400 32mb single head

also, any idea when driver version 5.20 should be released and if it should correct the problem?

[Maggi]

Hi Clifford,

make sure you're using the latest ASUS bios, too ... it's now at 1010.

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Cheerio,
Maggi

Asus P2B-S @ 112MHz FSB - Bios 1009 final
Celeron300A @ 504Mhz
128MB 7ns SDRAM
G400 DualHead 32MB SGRAM @ 201 MHz memory clock

[Cliffordd]

I tried updating the Asus BIOS yesterday, but I received an insufficient memory error when I tried running AFLASH. I ran that booting off the system disk I created per the instructions in the website. Am I supposed to use AFLASH or AFLASH21? I haven't tried AFLASH21 at the DOS prompt yet.

[Maggi]

take this one:

ftp://ftp.asuscom.de/pub/ASUSCOM/BIOS/BIOS_FLASH_UTILS/aflash121.zip

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Cheerio,
Maggi

Asus P2B-S @ 112MHz FSB - Bios 1009 final
Celeron300A @ 504Mhz
128MB 7ns SDRAM
G400 DualHead 32MB SGRAM @ 201 MHz memory clock

[Cliffordd]

Just downloaded that. I'll give it a try this afternoon. Thanks.

[Cliffordd]

Changed the BIOS to 1.10 and increased the AGP aperture to 128. It didn't crash as often using Bus Mastering, but it still crashed. I'm beginning to think it is some sort of weird conflict with the SoundBlaster Live Value drivers. It only seems to crash when playing WAV (Or other sound) files while I have Bus Mastering enabled. Whenever I try to load update 2.1 of the LiveWire (or whatever) software (with and without Bus Mastering enabled), the system boots me out before it completes, and I get a frozen screen with a green line on top when it boots back into Windows. I've had the system up now for 20 minutes without any problems, but I'm not making any noise. Playing computer detective is so much fun!

[Ron]

Try kicking your AGP aperature up to 256M, it seems to help in many cases.
Ron

[Scytale]

If all this doesn't help you may want to try forcing AGP1X in the registry (and enable busmastering). It works for me and some others. In real life there's hardly any performance loss compared to AGP2X.

[Cliffordd]

Shifting the AGP aperture to 128 did keep me up longer, so I'll try the 256 next. I'm still confused on this sound card issue though. Asus has something in about connecting PCI SB cards to some connector on the motherboard. They mention that not doing so would cause incompatibilities with the DOS environment, but I don't run any DOS programs with sound, so I didn't bother. Could this be the reason for some of these nasty sound card conflicts? I still find it very unusual that installing a sound driver update would corrupt the video driver.