PD 5.3 Installation observation and a dumb question

[Chucky Cheese]

Hey everybody..

i recently installed the pd 5.3 drivers today(10/9/99), the only hitch i noticed was during installation the g400 max did not show up in the "show compatable hdw." list. I had to go to the "show all devices" list to get to the g400 max dh. windows tells me that this driver was not written specifically blah blah blah...i just ignore this and every thing installs ok.
here is my home system:

Motherboard: AMI MegaRUM II, dual 600Mhz Pentium III processors (installed), /w512 L2 Cache each. 512 Mb of PC100, 8ns memory. Symbios Logic 53C896 U2W SCSI controllers.

SCSI I/O:

Channel 1(Ultra2): 4 Seagate Cheetah 9LP, ST34502LW Ultra2 Wide SCSI-3 hard Drives, each with 512k cache.

Channel 2(SE): JAZ 2GB internal, Plex-Writer 8/20, Pioneer DVD-303s ultra-scsi DVD reader and 2 UltraPlex-Wide 17/40 speed CD-ROM drives.

USB: USB Zip Drive.

Networking: The network adapter is a 3Com 3C509B-TX PCI adapter and a US Robotics Courier V.Everything 33.6/28.8/x2/V.90 internal ISA modem.

Video: Matrox G400 Max with Dual Head. The primary display is a Panasonic PanaSync E21, .25-dot pitch, 20" viewable; the secondary display is a Viewsonic flat panel display model VP150.

Multi-media: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live PCI Bus Mastering sound card. Speaker system is the Cambridge Works FPS2000 Digital speaker system.

now for the dumb question...how do i use the turbogl driver(mgatglp3.dll)???

thanks
Chucky


[This message has been edited by Chucky Cheese (edited 10-09-1999).]

[Kenny[SP]]

it's a kind of simple the file mgatglp3.dll is renamed to opengl32.dll and installed in every games folders that you have it is automated at installation

Ken

[paulcs]

Chucky, I'm curious. After uninstalling your old drivers, did you install the new ones in Windows Display/Properties, or, in Standard VGA Adapter mode, did you just run the PowerDesk setup program?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Chucky Cheese]

when windows came up it did it's new harware routine in vga mode. i then pointed to the directory where i unzipped the new drivers to and used install.inf. after reboot i ran setup from the same folder.

Chucky


[This message has been edited by Chucky Cheese (edited 10-09-1999).]

[paulcs]

Did the TurboGL install program pop up at the end of the installation sequence and hunt for the games it supports?

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Chucky Cheese]

it probably did but i clicked through the setup kind of quick without reading the screens to close. q3test says that it is the turbogl driver by matrox.

i'm not complaining but at 1600x1280 32 bit q3test performance is unacceptable. i play at 1024x768 32 bit and its' perfect. i don't benchmark or i'd post some scores, for me if it is smooth and looks good thats' all i want...excuse me while i scream...I LOVE MATROX VIDEO!!!"...there i feel better.

Chuckys' back

[GD]

Hi chuchy!

You know our configurations are much alike! I don't have so many peripherals nor so powerful CPUs but I've got the same motherboard... (and the embedded SCSI controllers)

I was wondering if you have experienced any lockups with your board... Anyway you seem 2B using Win2000... Is this true? (In case you have win98 what's the use of having dual CPUs?)

Moreover I wonder how you managed to enable both SCSI controllers. I have disabled the second one because of lack of IRQs.

Anyway here's my IRQ config...

0 System timer
1 Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural Keyboard
2 Programmable interrupt controller
3 Communications Port (COM2)
4 Communications Port (COM1)
5 TerraTec EWS64 XL Codec
6 (free)
7 EPSON Printer Port (LPT1)
8 System CMOS/real time clock
9 Intel(r) 82371AB/EB/MB PCI to USB Universal Host Controller
9 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
9 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
10 Symbios Logic 22910 (896-based) PCI SCSI Adapter
10 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
11 Matrox Millennium G400 DualHead - English
11 IRQ Holder for PCI Steering
12 PS/2 Compatible Mouse Port
13 Numeric data processor
14 Primary IDE controller (dual fifo)
14 Intel(r) 82371AB/EB/MB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
15 Secondary IDE controller (dual fifo)
15 Intel(r) 82371AB/EB/MB PCI Bus Master IDE Controller
Could u post yours?

Anyway the lockups might be caused by my terratec EWS64XL soundcard. However it is situated very far from the G400 (it is an ISA card and there is only one ISA slot on our boards at the exact oposite of the AGP slot as you must have noticed).

However the soundcard has proved to be the most stable peripheral in my system...

My system config follows

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PC Power and Cooling Deluxe Chrome Tower case and 300W ATX Power Supply, Dual Slot1 440GX AMI MegaRUM II motherboard, 128MB of ECC 100 MHz SDRAM, PII 450 MHz, Matrox G400 MAX, Seagate Cheetah 9,1GB @ primary SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller, Hitachi 4x DVD-ROM, Panasonic (Matsushita) LS-120 Drive, Terratec EWS64XL sound card.

[Joel]

Just go into the folder where you unzipped the 5.30 drivers and run the setup.exe file. This time don't worry about uninstalling them first. I have been beta testing for Matrox for a while now and the only time I had to use the uninstaller was when I went from the 4.x drivers to the 5.x drivers and that was only because the registry structure between the two changed. After running the uninstaller and setting things to standard VGA upon reboot the machine is actually asking for the standard VGA drivers not the Matrox drivers. The setup program that comes with the Matrox drivers not only installs the drivers themselves but it also installs PowerDesk and runs any addtional programs such as the TurboGL games search and install. Hope this helps.

Joel

[Chucky Cheese]

Hey GD,

here is my IRQ Table:

00-Timer
01-Keyboard
02-Prog. IRQ controller
03-IRQ Holder and USB controller
04-COM 1
05-SB Live Emulation
06-FDC
07-ECP LPT1
08-CMOS/RTC
09-NIC and IRQ Holder
10-SYM896 and IRQ Holder
11-SB Live, G400 MAX and IRQ Holder
12-PS2
13-NDP
14-FREE
15-SYM896 and IRQ Holder

This system is rock solid, no lockups, no BSODs'. Tech Demo is perfect. there are no sound latency problems..i figure that i should see problems while panning real fast while shooting at a high rate..noop! NO PROBLEMS!!!

I just recieved RC2 of Win2k. I've just been waitng on a 9.1 GB Cheeta drive to arrive so that i can dual boot from the same SCSI id.

those scsi controllers are tricky to setup. What helped me was to configure the pci bus to get the IRQ table from the acpi bios. be sure to enable "acpi aware os" in the bios first. hope this helps!!!

Chucky


[This message has been edited by Chucky Cheese (edited 10-10-1999).]

[This message has been edited by Chucky Cheese (edited 10-10-1999).]

[paulcs]

In my Quake2 directory, and in q3test-1.08 for that matter, there are files named OPENGL32.DLL (all caps). They have yesterday's date, my installation date for the new drivers, and are sized at 541 KB.

If you find these files in your game directories, then the MiniGL installer worked, and you subconsciously installed them quite nicely.

What I suspect is happening with a lot of people, who don't think the TurboGL is functioning properly, is that they installed the drivers directly through Display/Properties, using the inf file like you did.

I've had a lot of luck with this method of installing PowerDesk and new drivers.

I unzip the drivers into their own directory.

After running the uninstaller, I reboot and install, as prompted, the Standard VGA Driver. I reboot again, as directed.

In standard VGA mode, after doing a quick search through the registry, I then run the Setup.exe installer, either through the Start Menu/Run or through Control Panel/Add-Remove Programs.

The Matrox installation software install PowerDesk and the drivers. You are then given the option to install the TurboGL. The Turbo GL installer appears, if memory serves me correctly, in the upper left hand corner of your screen. In a flurry of activity, it scrolls through the directories on your computer, looking for the supported games.

I could be a little off in terms of the sequence of events, but the TurboGL installation was a bit different than any Matrox installation I've done in the past.

I hope this helps.

Paul
paulcs@flashcom.net

[Bohrn]

Chucky, you are one lucky b%#$)@RD! What a system. I didn't know that many people went to the 'cheeze any more

------------------
AssuP2B ,iCeleron337, 128megs PC100, G40032megSH, Yamaha PCI sound, 2 small HD's, 42X Sony CDrom and 98SE w/shutdown patch, PD 5.30

[GD]

lol, of course you don;t have irq problems ... You have disabled both the IDE controllers :-). The only free IRQ i have is 6 which is normally assigned to the floppy drive... I don't have a floppy though (My LS-120 connects to the IDE bus and can ready 720kb and 1.44 floppies as well).

Anyway I have deleted all the bios options and configured it from the start. ACPI aware O/S is on...

You are going to get a cheetah????
I wanted to buy a hitachi 12k rpm HD but when the system was bought that HD had problems in the production and this is why I got a cheetah. Anyway I read at PC Pro that hitachi was going to announce 15k rpm HDs at the last comdex. No1 confirmed that however...

Since you have so many HDs buy AMI's MegaRAID Express 000 card. It shouldn;t be very expensive and is a very easy RAID 0 implementation since it just turns the MegaRUM II's SCSI channels into RAID channels... All HDs have to be of the same size however...

Out of curiosity, what are your scores in 3Dmark @ 800x600? :-)))

------------------
PC Power and Cooling Deluxe Chrome Tower case and 300W ATX Power Supply, Dual Slot1 440GX AMI MegaRUM II motherboard, 128MB of ECC 100 MHz SDRAM, PII 450 MHz, Matrox G400 MAX, Seagate Cheetah 9,1GB @ primary SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller, Hitachi 4x DVD-ROM, Panasonic (Matsushita) LS-120 Drive, Terratec EWS64XL sound card.

[Chucky Cheese]

GD,

my main reason for getting the cheetah is that the rest of my hdds'are cheetahs' and i wish to sidestep any incompatability issues that might arise from mixing and matching...besides, i read somewhere that they were faster than the new 12k drives.

i don't have any benchmarking programs. i did note that based on wintune99 results my opengl performance dipped very slightly after PD 5.3 upgrade from PD 5.25...what, me worry. i run wintune over the web in express mode as my reference for performance, i use road runner for internet access so it doesn't take that long.

HEY...just say no to IDE...its' to limited and to slow!!!

Chucky
U2W SCSI RULZ!!!!!

[GD]

Ever heard of Ultra 160/m SCSI? :-)))

(I know our implementation is better cause its 80MB/sec x 2 is better than a simple 160MB/sec channel because it can support more devices but LSI logic has produced a dual Ultra160/m (also know as Ultra3) 64-bit PCI controller :-)... I hope MegaRUM III will ship with this inside :-) )

------------------
PC Power and Cooling Deluxe Chrome Tower case and 300W ATX Power Supply, Dual Slot1 440GX AMI MegaRUM II motherboard, 128MB of ECC 100 MHz SDRAM, PII 450 MHz, Matrox G400 MAX, Seagate Cheetah 9,1GB @ primary SCSI Ultra2 Wide controller, Hitachi 4x DVD-ROM, Panasonic (Matsushita) LS-120 Drive, Terratec EWS64XL sound card.

[Chucky Cheese]

GD,

we already have 64 bit PCI slots...both are on the secondary pci bus though. i have the raid controller for this mother board but win98se does not like it at all. BTW the manual for this board recommends a 400 watt power supply...you would not beleive the problems that manifest themselves because of a marginal power supply.

when i get my 9.1 GB cheetah i plan to install win2k rc2. hopefully, if all my software runs ok and i can play the latest games, i'll eventually migrate totally to win2k. i've tried 3 versions of linux, it's ok but i spend to much time configuring rather than using my system...maybe later. like 2.6 kernel. i'm tracking their hardware support closely.

i just got done with a three hour session of unreal tournament...it totally ROCKS.

Chucky
a.k.a. STRYKR (UT Demo, 10/10/99)


[This message has been edited by Chucky Cheese (edited 10-11-1999).]

[This message has been edited by Chucky Cheese (edited 10-11-1999).]