I am installing a new computer in the shop. I think I have a problem and afraid to hook up my machine. Take a look at my test. Could somebody let me know if this is ok. My old computer looked test looked good. My new one is a sony with p4, 3000 processer 1 gig ram. I did the opt. thing and still get strange looking test. Please advise me.

Does your computer have onboard video or a seperate video card?

I have had a lot of trouble with motherboards with onboard video that share ram.

Monty

HI Monty,
I'm not sure about onboard video, but it had a video card that I removed when I saw the test. I also removed the modem card that was in it too. I changed the clock to regular pc as well. To me this step in the clock test is very strange.

Check to make sure that your monitor is not hooked to the mother board connector. If it is, you are probably using the on board video on the mother board. If so do the following:

If the video card you removed was a pci type card, put it back. Hook the monitor to it.

Go into the bios setup when the computer starts up and look for an option to disable the onboard video.

If you find this option disable it.

See if that fixes your problem.

I am currently running Mach on a computer that has onboard video, but the bios allowed me to disable it. I am using an el cheapo PCI video card.

My dad's mini mill on the other hand was a nightmare. I disabled everything, took out all the cards, and used a pci video card all to no avail. There was no way to disable the onboard video even if I ran a pci card. So I just had to replace the motherboard.

Mach just won't work with some on board video.

Hopefully your bios has the option to disable it.

You might also look to see if there is a jumper on the MB to disable the on board video.

If that doesn't work we'll go from there. 

Monty

Hi there Monty, I give this all a look and see what I have. I think what your leaning to is this is a video problem and not a clock problem.
Thanks
Frank

I don't know exactly what causes the problem. With my dad's computer the driver test would look normal, and then all of a sudden it would look like a siesmograph in LA during the big one. Then the computer would lock up.

The alternate driver would not work at all. 

I think that the on board video interferes with the mach driver by accessing RAM. There must be some kind of conflict with memory addresses or something like that. It makes the thing unstable, unpredictable and flaky.

PCI cards have their own memory so they don't cause that problem. At least this is my theory. I don't pretend to understand the intractible innards of Mach software. You will have to speak to Art or Brian about that.

Other people have had similar problems in the past. In all cases changing to a PCI card and disabling the on board video, or replacing the MB as a last resort has fixed the problem. At least that is where I would start to look if I had the problem you are describing.

Monty

Did you get the problem solved?

Monty

Hi there Monty, No I haven't figured out the problem. I did talk to Sony and was told that the onboard graphics could not be disabled. That means that if the problem is in the on board graphics  then I'm out of luck with this Sony computer.
With not being able to disable the graphics, We'll never know.
I now have a Dell to fix up and use. I have tried the driver test on many computers since,(all friends)and Dell is the only one that worked perfect everytime. I was running my machine with a borrowed Dell but now have to give it up.
You've be a great help by getting me going in the right direction.
Thanks.
Finder99cnc

Hi,
  Does the computer actually run mach ok?
I've found that sometimes even with suposedly bad driver test
there seems little if no effect to the actual machine.
  Just a thought

Hi Monty,
I have tried it and the machine sounds like it is got square gears in it. The old clunk clunk thing.
Hey, no harm, no foul. I can sell the Sony on Ebay and make $$$$$$$ to buy more stuff.
Thanks Again.
Finder99cnc