Marvel G200 crashes System

[J1NG]

Heh...

I've got the exact same problem, except mines a PCI version with all the bells and whistles you can attach to the Marvel G200 I've never experienced this problem up until about 5 months ago when I <B>HAD</B> (Read: not my choice) to replace the motherboard. I ended up with a <B>VIA</B> chipset board. It only occurs rarely now (it used to bugger up my screen within 10 minutes when I first got the board! ) So recently I've put the Marvel back into an old Intel BX chipset board to see if it works fine. Lo and behold, it works wonders on the Intel chipset board. Hence it could be a chipset thing... and the Marvel is fine.

System:
Pentium !!! 1Ghz 133FSB
Gigabyte <B>VIA</B> Apollo Pro 266 GA-6RX (4 Channel IDE enabled)
1GB ECC Registered Crucial PC2100 RAM (4x256MB)
IBM 46.1GB ATA100 Hard Drive
Quantum 8.4GB ATA66 Hard Drive
Quantum 2.5 Mode4 Hard Drive
Ricoh MP7163A CDR/W 16x10x32x
Pioneer 6x DVD-ROM Drive 103 x2
<B>Matrox Marvel G200 PCI 16MB + Hardware DVD Module</B>
Creative Sound Blaster Live! PLayer 1024 + Daughter board + Optical Module
Adaptec 39160 SCSI card (Don't ask why it's here, it just is )
USRobotics Pro Message Moem 56k V90
Creative DTT3500 Dolby Digital Speakers
Epson GT8500 A4 SCSI flatbet Scanner
Oki DP5000 Dye Sub A4 Printer
Wacom Intuos A4 Oversized USB Graphics Tablet
Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer
Microsoft Natural Keyboard

I <i>think</i> that's everything

J1NG

[vlaka]

OK.. here are the current system settings... what you need to take into account is the system still crashed just as often with no other card in the system except for the matrox card and when I tested that I only had my 8.4gig ATA33 HDD connected to the motherboard.

[DMA]
1 Creative SB16 Emulation
2 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
4 Direct memory access controller
5 Creative SB16 Emulation
0 (free)
3 (free)
6 (free)
7 (free)

[IRQs]

0 System timer
1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
3 VIA Tech 3038 PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
3 Creative SB Live! series
3 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
3 SCI IRQ used by ACPI bus
4 Communications Port (COM1)
5 Creative SB16 Emulation
6 Standard Floppy Disk Controller
7 Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 Matrox Marvel G200 AGP - English
9 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
10 3Com EtherLink III ISA (3C509b-TPO) in PnP mode
11 Adaptec AHA-2940U/AHA-2940UW PCI SCSI Controller
11 HPT370 UDMA/ATA100 RAID Controller
11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
11 ACPI IRQ Holder for PCI IRQ Steering
12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port
13 Numeric data processor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 VIA Bus Master PCI IDE Controller

[vlaka]

Thanks J1NG...

All I want matrox to tell me is that the board is not compatible with my motherboard so I don't go out and do somethign stupid like purchase a Marvel G400 or an RT2000, cuz the rest of my system is new and I use it for my work. I really don't like ATI but I think the Raedon All in Wonder and an add on DV card may be in my near future unfortunantly. Unless someone has another video editing board for under $1500 CAD in mind that would be a good buy for me.
The strange thing, if it is a VIA conflict, is my old system k6-2-400 with a VIA MVP3 chipset ran the marvel perfectly stable. So I don't know if it can be a VIA conflict.

..... and the confusion sets in...

[J1NG]

Well...

I don't know... I think the older VIA chipsets seemed OK. It was the later chipsets from VIA (within the last 3 years) that commonly causes problems with so many different cards.

As for the RT2X00 cards, I think they have less problems. I'm not sure though, since I haven't had experience with one yet.

J1NG

[vlaka]

I'd be perfectly happy getting this marvel g200 to run stable then i can add a dv card, but until it runs stable i won't be adding anything...
so if u have any suggestions as to what i should try let me know...

[The PIT]

Is it a kt7a board ?? I'd try forcing agp x1 using the matrox tweek program and changing the setting in the bios. I'd be also tempted to knock the memory timings back to the standard settings in the bios.
As for Via boards with the 686b they hate the sblive card zip drives and wintv cards. How badly depends on who makes your motherboard.

[vlaka]

Its a KT7-RAID board...

Bios settings are already dialed back all the way... AGP is running 1X.

THe video card crashes the system with or without teh SBLive in the system.

[Ant]

I have a KT7-RAID board and have run a Marvel G400, G400-RR/G, RT2000 and G450/RT2000 on it with no problems. Have you installed up to date VIA drivers?

[vlaka]

I will recheck the via website if they have any new drivers, but I did install the newest 4 in 1 drivers from what I remembered.

What can the problem be then? Is it possible that it is a faulty motherboard? even if it works fine with any other video car in the system?

I went back and forth with matrox tech support forever so I already went through most of the suggestions..... but maybe there is something they missed to tell me.

[The PIT]

The only via driver I might be tempted to use is the latest vgart driver and only then as a last resort.
To truly verify whether it's sb live card you need to do a clean re-install without it in or do a bit of registry hacking to remove the creative crud that doesn't get installed.
Another thing that maybe worth trying is disabling acpi. To do this though you need a special modded bios from http://www.biosmods.com/.
The most stable Bios I've found is the ZT and I haven't upgraded from this since eveything works fairly well.
If you need the sblive emulation you'll also to need to reserve it's irq in the bios first. If you don't need it disable the little critter.
The scsi card really shouldn't be sharing with the highpoint either. If you're not using the highpoint disable it. Same for usb. I've got a 2940 and it isn't always the happiest at sharing with certain cards.
I suggest the following layout.

pci slot 1 empty
pci slot2 scsi card
pci slot3 sb live card
pci slot4 empty (You may try the sblive in here as some finds it works in my case instant blue screen no doubt due to sharing with usb)
pci slot5 empty
pci slot6 3com card

Any chance of your Bios settings??