Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

G400 made by IBM (Part#01N2197) won't do DOS display modes

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • G400 made by IBM (Part#01N2197) won't do DOS display modes

    This is posted for a friend who posted this in another forum asking for help. Is there a known problem with the G400 in displaying some DOS modes? Mine always worked fine on the same mobo as he uses (P2B).

    Note that he installed an AGP Millenium II card and it worked OK,
    so the AGP slot and motherboard set up must be fine.

    Here is his description of the problem...

    I have recently installed a Maxtor G400 with 16M in my computer. Note this is a computer I have built from the ground up so to speak. I had everything up and running quite nicely using an old ATI Rage Card. Things worked smoothly - however since installing my Maxtor card with the latest drivers downloaded from the matrox site I have encountered 2 strange problems.
    1). I do not get any activity on my screen until it is actually ready to log onto windows - there are no POST messages etc., my monitor turns itself off until it reaches the login prompt.

    2). I can't seem to run any programs that require DOS - ie can't get a DOS prompt, and some programs that run in this environment squawk and the system may sieze up. It complains that it cannot run with the current video configuration and needs to run in full screen - or something similar

    I only have the one card in (I took out the ATI card which was a PCI card not an AGP card.

    Anyone out there have any ideas why this is happening and if there is a quick solution.

    Unfortunately I am having some difficulty with my floppy drive, so the option of booting into DOS, running the ubioswin, or ubiosdos maxtor utilties is not currently open (However if this is the solution I would be most appreciative).

    The whole problems seems rather strange to me and I can't quite figure out why this card is acting this way.

    Other than those 2 problems the card works perfectly fine for all other graphic and game programs that require extensive 3d type stuff.

    Any help would be appreciated.

  • #2
    It could be lost/defect BIOS (had same problem)

    Use restore utility or use pbioswin to reflash BIOS of the card from Windows.

    I highly recommend restore utility floppy.

    ftp://ftp.matrox.com/pub/mga/utils/biosutil/recover.zip

    G400's are known to have lost/damaged/corrupt BIOS problems.

    Comment


    • #3
      Thanks for the response. Given that this is an IBM part, is the matrox flasher still gonna work OK?

      It sounds a little tricky to run the utility while there is no DOS level video, but I would imagine one does not have to follow the screen instructions for that part.

      A person really does need 2 computers for many things.

      Comment


      • #4
        I resurected my dead G400 that didn't display any mode with that utility.

        Ask Matrox tech support on Monday (Post in their forum), when they open the fora about IBM card and flasher.

        Comment


        • #5
          Card now working

          I confirmed with IBM that the chipset and BIOS is standard Matrox stuff.

          The restore floppy was booted and the BIOS was restored and we have it working again.

          Thanks for the helps...

          Comment

          Working...
          X