How about an item for those questions that you never thought you would
ever have to ask.



Hows this for a start:

What would make it so that after you shut your system down and wait any
longer than 5 minutes to turn it back on you have to pull the video
card, then plug it into a different slot to make the display work again?
(This has been happening for a month or so, and I've taken to
alternating between 2 PCI slots that have be plotting my untimely demise
by now)

17 responses total.

I had a card that would flake out in a similar way...it'd work great if you
never turned off the machine.  After a hard reboot, the machine would often
fail to 'find' it again.  I never figured it out either.

Since reseating the card is fixing it, I'm guessing it's heat related.  The
components in the computer should expand a bit as it heats up, and will then
stay at a fairly constant temperature (and therefore size) as long as it's
running.  Once it cools down it contracts, and that's when you're seeing the
problems.

Does just reseating it do it, or do you have to swap slots?  On the one I
had, just pulling it out and sticking it back in the same slot didn't help. 
It had to go in a different PCI slot for the computer to 'rediscover' it.
Booting the computer with the card removed, then shutting the machine off
and sticking it back in would work, too.

resp 3: thats exactly it....how'd you fix it? new card? new motherboard? 
new computer? :)

If it's a heat thing I'm just gonna throw this damn thing through the 
window

(toking grumbles something about already having one case fan one cpu fan 
and 2 fans rigged on a heatsink near the ps/2 port)

At first I fretted it might be a problem with the machine's plug-and-play
BIOS.  (At the time, the vid card was my only PCI card.) Eventually, though,
I got a different video card and that fixed it.  So it seemed to be a
problem with the card, in my case; YMMV.  Got another machine (or a friend)
you could swap cards with, and see if the problem follows the card?

I suppose you might try cleaning the card-edge connector, too.  I have a
stack of 3c509 cards that were stored simply by stacking them up and
wrapping a length of strapping tape around them.  The result is the top and
bottom cards got stick-um goo on the edge connectors.  One of these cards
will work flawlessly after cleaning it and sticking it in a slot, and
continue to work just fine indefinately -- but next time I remove it, I have
to clean it again, or the machine won't recognize it when I stick it back
in.  This has been very repeatable, and has happened three or four times
now.

Ah, if putting it back in the same slot doesn't work, that makes my heat
problem theory a lot less likely.

There a couple possibilities.
1) The card is not resetting correctly.  Low powered chips can hold
information for a long time, powered from the capacitors in the circuit.
Once that power is drained, the card must reset in order to power up.
Moving it to another slot, causes it to do a complete reconfiguration.

2) Most newer video cards contain an EEPROM that holds configuration
information.  If this EEPROM is defective,  once it is powered down, it could
lose it's confuguration information.  Agian, switching slots causes it to be
reconfigured.

so it's almost deffinately a vid card problem...that actually makes me
happy (brand new cheap vid cards are readily avaliable, brand new cheap
motherboards aren't)

I think it's unlikely to be a motherboard problem, particularly if you have
other PCI cards that work fine.

hi every body
i wanna ask somthing...
which card has the more powerful processor the Riva tnt2 (32mb)
or the voodoo 3 2000?
and lastly is the SB live worth the money to buy it? or should i go for the
SB live value?
just one more quistions.. :)
how do i create a new item on the browsing list (for discussing something
new)?
over and out!

Hmm, no idea about the video cards, but I'm using the sb live value with 
a $40 or so set of speakers w/ sub, & it sounds fine to me...

IRC from the benchmarks I looked at, the Voodoo3 had the most raw 
horsepower and was able to outperform the TNT2 by a small margin.  The 
TNT2, however, wasn't far behind and it supports 32-bit color textures 
which the Voodoo3 does not.  This will become more of an issue with 
newer games.  For example, in Q3Test @ 16-bit color you can see 
dithering in the fog effects, while at 32-bit it is a smooth transition.

You should also look into a Matrox G400.  This card wasn't out when I 
made my TNT2 purchase but from what I've heard it performs very well.

From what i hear, the G400 is supposed to be a generation above tnt2/voddoo3,
and for about the same price. i am very pleased with my g200 and will be
getting a g400 in the not-so-distant future. also matrox cards are the most
accelerated under XFree86 if you use that.

I had recently setup Mandrake linux (redhat)
it worked fine exept it did not knwo my SB live value card
as i am r[4~[D
as i am new to linux i am truly lost as howto setup my sound card 
ps (itds not in the soundcofigurator card list)

This response has been erased.

cl website?

www.creative.com has a driver for the sblive under linux

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss