Does it work in safe mode?

Grem Five wrote on 2023-12-18, 01:16:

Does it work in safe mode?

Yes, it works in safe mode. It also works fine with Standard PCI Graphics Adapter (VGA) driver.

It's only when trying to use the Matrox driver that it freezes on boot.

Probably bus mastering bug.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2023-12-18, 01:28:

Probably bus mastering bug.

Just what I was thinking, try unchecking the bus mastering box in the matrox drivers.

Edit: Wait can you do that from safe mode?

Grem Five wrote on 2023-12-18, 01:32:

Just what I was thinking, try unchecking the bus mastering box in the matrox drivers.

Edit: Wait can you do that from safe mode?

Unfortunately it appears you cannot.

If I go to Advanced Properties in safe mode, none of those settings are there.

And if I try to run the Matrox Display adapter settings specifically, it says it can't be run in safe mode.

Never heard of the problem you have... but I have seen the bus mastering manifest itself like in this video: https://youtu.be/In1a1kmOJPE?t=664

Your case could be different because of motherboard design or that it is a Pentium Pro (I dont know anything of the differences in those)

I have a Matrox Parhelia PCI and it suffered from a slightly different bus mastering problem as well but that was in a Dual 1.4 Tualatin board.

Tried a few more experiments, most of them for naught.

Tried re-flashing the motherboard BIOS with the v1.1 from RetroWeb. It still says 1.0 when booting up, so don't know if the BIOS was any different (checksum was different though). This made no difference.

I then tried installing Windows 95 OSR 2.5, followed by the same Matrox drivers. That also made no difference.

Then I decided to try a few different S3 video cards and most of those failed as well:

S3 Virge - Blue screened upon installing drivers and now only produces garbled output. Looks like something on the card itself has failed.
S3 Virge/VX - Lock up on boot. I suspect this is a faulty card though, as I've had graphics artifacts when testing under DOS.
S3 Virge/DX (two different ones) - One locked up during detection in Windows. The other blue screened on startup.
S3 Vision968 - Installed drivers and worked fine.

So out of about eight different cards, the only card I could get working under Windows 95 has been the S3 Vision968.

At this point I'm thinking this set up is a bust. I'm going to retry with my other Pentium Pro motherboard and see how that goes. At the very least I want to narrow down if it's a motherboard issue or a Windows 95 issue.

Grem Five wrote on 2023-12-18, 02:25:

Never heard of the problem you have... but I have seen the bus mastering manifest itself like in this video: https://youtu.be/In1a1kmOJPE?t=664

Your case could be different because of motherboard design or that it is a Pentium Pro (I dont know anything of the differences in those)

I wonder if it's maybe something in relation to the Intel 440FX chipset under Windows 95.

The Pentium Pro was more intended for Windows NT / enterprise setups, so I imagine not a lot of people were trying to run this sort of setup.

I'll know more once I try this with another 440FX motherboard. If the issue continues to manifest itself, I'll know this combo just isn't meant to be.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-12-18, 02:43:

I wonder if it's maybe something in relation to the Intel 440FX chipset under Windows 95. […]
Show full quote

Grem Five wrote on 2023-12-18, 02:25:

Never heard of the problem you have... but I have seen the bus mastering manifest itself like in this video: https://youtu.be/In1a1kmOJPE?t=664

Your case could be different because of motherboard design or that it is a Pentium Pro (I dont know anything of the differences in those)

I wonder if it's maybe something in relation to the Intel 440FX chipset under Windows 95.

The Pentium Pro was more intended for Windows NT / enterprise setups, so I imagine not a lot of people were trying to run this sort of setup.

I'll know more once I try this with another 440FX motherboard. If the issue continues to manifest itself, I'll know this combo just isn't meant to be.

Maybe try disabling bus mastering with PCISPY... https://web.archive.org/web/19980114014043fw_ … m#bus_mastering

"Bus Mastering Disable

Use PCISPY with the following commands to disable bus-mastering under Windows 3.1x or DOS.
• PCISPY - l : to list the PCI devices in the system
• PCISPY -W 3 4 83

Where
W = write
3 = Device #
4 = Hex Number for register 4
83 = Disable busmaster"

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-12-18, 02:32:

Tried re-flashing the motherboard BIOS with the v1.1 from RetroWeb. It still says 1.0 when booting up, so don't know if the BIOS was any different (checksum was different though). This made no difference.

that doesnt sound right, was flashing utility able to verify successful programming?

I wrote a reply in your other thread, but including it here as well as it might help: Re: ASUS Media Bus - PCI-AS2940UW with SCSI & Vibra16

If the bus mastering solution does not fix your issue, i suggest you to disable everything related to country and keyboard layout in the autoexec.bat
my mystique freeze at boot when loading french character set. Not sure why. But i always have to remove these lines from the autoexec.bat file

I ended up trying a different motherboard (Supermicro P6SNE). I used the same Windows 95 install, so it's not a clean install on this board. But it did end up working.

Even with all the sound and video cards plugged in, it still booted fine.

Next I'm going to re-attempt a clean Windows 95 OSR 2 install for this board specifically and see if everything still works.

After which I'll go back to the old board and maybe run some more experiments per the above suggestions and see if I can narrow down the problem.

You have tried different pci slots for the mystique, right?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-12-18, 14:24:

You have tried different pci slots for the mystique, right?

Yes, that was one of the first things I tried. I removed extraneous cards and tried the Matrox in a few different slots.

I also had tried tweaking some of the BIOS settings, but didn't do an extensive run through of that yet.

- Takeout all cards use only the mystique
- Load Bios-Defaults
- Deactivate all onboard components
- try every PCI slot.

Mystique is a excellent card! Use the very latest driver (4.31.041 from 1999) for propper vsync!

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-12-18, 02:32:

Tried a few more experiments, most of them for naught. […]
Show full quote

Tried a few more experiments, most of them for naught.

Tried re-flashing the motherboard BIOS with the v1.1 from RetroWeb. It still says 1.0 when booting up, so don't know if the BIOS was any different (checksum was different though). This made no difference.

I then tried installing Windows 95 OSR 2.5, followed by the same Matrox drivers. That also made no difference.

Then I decided to try a few different S3 video cards and most of those failed as well:

S3 Virge - Blue screened upon installing drivers and now only produces garbled output. Looks like something on the card itself has failed.
S3 Virge/VX - Lock up on boot. I suspect this is a faulty card though, as I've had graphics artifacts when testing under DOS.
S3 Virge/DX (two different ones) - One locked up during detection in Windows. The other blue screened on startup.
S3 Vision968 - Installed drivers and worked fine.

So out of about eight different cards, the only card I could get working under Windows 95 has been the S3 Vision968.

At this point I'm thinking this set up is a bust. I'm going to retry with my other Pentium Pro motherboard and see how that goes. At the very least I want to narrow down if it's a motherboard issue or a Windows 95 issue.

The S3 Vision968 is the only card in that list that does NOT use bus mastering. The fact it works points to that.

Figured out the culprit!

Turns out it was this guy the whole time:

Or more specifically, it was the default SB16 drivers that Windows 95 installs when detecting the AWE64 during initial setup.

Normally when I do a Windows setup, I install all hardware I intend to use and let Windows detect things during the initial setup. Then I install any subsequent drivers as needed.

For the AWE64, Windows 95 installs a default Sound Blaster 16/AWE32 driver, instead of the proper AWE64 driver. Since I always start with updating video drivers, I hadn't yet replaced the default sound driver. Turns out this was the cause of the problem.

I figured this out after reading vetz's thread on issues using an SB16 with the 440FX chipset and a Matrox video card. In my case, I have an AWE64, but hadn't yet upgraded the driver. Installing the AWE64 drivers followed by the Matrox driver and everything worked fine. I also experimented disabling the SB16 driver and it would let me boot up with the Matrox driver without freezing.

Incidentally disabling bus mastering in the Matrox options and then enabling the SB16 driver did not work. It still caused a lockup.

Had I installed the AWE64 driver first, I never would have run into this issue.

Glad you found the issue. For Win9x builds I tend to use a PCI directsound compatible card.