Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-13, 11:07:

I'm now wondering if installing with acpi disabled could have screwed the install or something?

Installing with ACPI disabled and then enabling it is almost asking for issues. I would have installed with just the USB disabled, enabled it after installing and select the default driver. I would also post images of the device manager properties pages rather than reporting what they say.

I am wondering how the mouse reported on the USB bus, what is reported for the problematic device and would check by looking at the [USB Bus] panel of my SIV utility.

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-13, 12:15:

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-13, 11:07:

I'm now wondering if installing with acpi disabled could have screwed the install or something?

Installing with ACPI disabled and then enabling it is almost asking for issues. I would have installed with just the USB disabled, enabled it after installing and select the default driver. I would also post images of the device manager properties pages rather than reporting what they say.

I am wondering how the mouse reported on the USB bus, what is reported for the problematic device and would check by looking at the [USB Bus] panel of my SIV utility.

Thanks, I'll try reinstall with acpi active. Some device was causing installer to hang originally and as theres quite a few I just disabled all non essentials in one go to see if it works, including usb and acpi so will try with these active and see if installer gets any further. I dont know anything about acpi is but maybe this system property is checked for at install only or something.

With both mouse and flash drive xp probes them but cant identify the devices. I think they are reported as unknown but will check and post screen grab. Its prob not chipset driver issue as the usb controller seems to be working fine.

Ha all sorted 😀

It seemed to be the usb device that was causing xp install to hang at "setup is starting" so disabling this in bios got the install running and enabling in post install picked it up along with the attached device.

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-13, 17:12:

Ha all sorted 😀

Good and I suspect we will never really know why there was an issue.

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-13, 17:20:

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-13, 17:12:

Ha all sorted 😀

Good and I suspect we will never really know why there was an issue.

Hey yep I'm starting to suspect finicky hardware maybe.
There seems to be something up with the gpu (mach64 gx) as it has correct driver I xp but it's not loading properly. Driver seems fine in 98 but dxdiag seems to be freezing system.

It also started beeping the hell out of itself yesterday with memory fault . Switch ram sticks around seemed to fix that but I'm thinking the ram might be causing instability or something... I get missing ram terminator card error on bios boot and manual states all empty slots should have terminators installed so maybe this is causing some issues. Unfortunately I only have 2x terminator cards and 2xpc133r sticks so cant fill all the empties. Anyhow I just bought 4 more 128mb sticks so hopefully with all slots populated it might help things a bit.

What model Visual Workstation is it? It's not the ones with the proprietary Cobalt graphics, is it?

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-03-14, 13:10:

What model Visual Workstation is it? It's not the ones with the proprietary Cobalt graphics, is it?

Its zx10 intergraph one with mach64 gx pci but I doubt this was the original card...
Google says it had matrox g400 originally.

I'm actually wondering what card to install in this... I think the current mach64 could have problems.

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-14, 14:29:

Its zx10 intergraph

Did you run SIV on it and if so did it report it as Intergraph ZX10 ? If not and you post the two Menu->File->Save Local files I will try and fix it.

Hey. Wow sounds good 😀 i've not run or heard of SIV, but I did run msinfo which reports the computer model as intergraph zx10.

I had some joy today using a 128mb agp fx5700le that I borrowed from mate and xp picks it up fine. However a working 256mb fx5500 produces garbled video output. Strange as 5500 should be good with older agp i understand.

This is making me think something is up to do with memory between system and gpu or something like that... maybe the extra ram is inducing some issue. I am also experiencing system freezes on xp boot screen at the moment plus the weird usb install issue so something is definitely up!

Anyhow I will download Siv and give it a go tomorrow.

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-14, 16:48:

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-14, 14:29:

Its zx10 intergraph

Did you run SIV on it and if so did it report it as Intergraph ZX10 ? If not and you post the two Menu->File->Save Local files I will try and fix it.

Hi so I have run the Siv and can upload results when back home with internet if useful? However after a little playing around i may be honing in on the problem. Appologies for a lengthy post but in summary:

Dual p3 with 2x128mb reg ram. Bios complains on boot of missing memory terminator cards as only 2 of 8 slots are populated.

256mb fx 5500 produced what appeared to be corrupted video ram output pre boot on my pc, but worked on another machine.

However the 128mb fx5700le from that other machine in mine works fine.

Xp install hanging on "starting windows setup"... resolved by turning off usb device in bios, though I now suspect that turning of any pci device may have worked.

Adding hardware or installing drivers can cause xp to hang on splash screen start up. Safe mode indicates this occurs on loading agppcq.sys... resolved in some cases by using "start last known working configuration" or by turning off a pci device in bios. If boot success and no hardware or drivers are added it seems stable.
Process:
1) turn off usb to install windows.
2) windows boot is stable until...
3) install gpu drivers etc.
5) windows hangs on boot
6) rollback driver install or disable usb etc device in bios
7) xp boots

I was at step 7 yesterday having disabled usb to get it working. I then added soundblaster card and disabled onboard creative audiopci.

This caused xp to hang on boot. Either reenabling the usb or audiopci allowed xp to boot!

This is leading me to conclusion that it doesnt matter so much which device I turn on or off it's more like the number of devices... maybe pointing towards device irq/resource allocation issue.

The bios warning and issue with 256mb gpu compared to 128mb seems to indicate some memory related problem.

The fact it always fails on agppcq.sys makes me think this could be related to agp memory or something.

... The plot thickens 😀

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-17, 13:13:

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-14, 16:48:

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-14, 14:29:

Its zx10 intergraph

Did you run SIV on it and if so did it report it as Intergraph ZX10 ? If not and you post the two Menu->File->Save Local files I will try and fix it.

Hi so I have run the Siv and can upload results when back home with internet if useful?

Yes, please ZIP and attach the two SIV save files.

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-14, 12:36:

I get missing ram terminator card error on bios boot and manual states all empty slots should have terminators installed so maybe this is causing some issues.

I looked in that attached Tyan motherboard manual and I can see anything about "ram terminator card", where did you read this?

Do you mean CPU terminator? How many CPUs does it have?

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-18, 06:33:

Yes, please ZIP and attach the two SIV save files. […]
Show full quote

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-17, 13:13:

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-14, 16:48:

Did you run SIV on it and if so did it report it as Intergraph ZX10 ? If not and you post the two Menu->File->Save Local files I will try and fix it.

Hi so I have run the Siv and can upload results when back home with internet if useful?

Yes, please ZIP and attach the two SIV save files.

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-14, 12:36:

I get missing ram terminator card error on bios boot and manual states all empty slots should have terminators installed so maybe this is causing some issues.

I looked in that attached Tyan motherboard manual and I can see anything about "ram terminator card", where did you read this?

Do you mean CPU terminator? How many CPUs does it have?

Hu ray. Many thanks for looking in to this! Yes i also only found reference to cpu terminators. The ram terminator error is displayed when bios loads after ide devices are initialized and requires a f1 keystroke to proceed. The pc came with two 168pin ram sticks that have no ram chips on them only what appear to be resistors. Two cpus are installed and work fine.

Its slightly tricky uploading siv because I've no internet where the pc is so will have to put on usb key, transfer to phone using pc elsewhere then upload! Also I'm wondering whether the error will be evident because I can only take a snapshot of system when the pc is stable but will try sort later today if I get time!

It's almost like an issue when there are odd or even numbers of devices or something like that. I think bios is latest version but maybe the image has subtle corruption or something. Though it is strange that installing a driver for a device rather than just booting with the device seems to cause xp to crash.

Anyhow the extra ram arrived today so I'll be able to try it out with all slots populated shortly.

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-18, 06:33:

Yes, please ZIP and attach the two SIV save files.

So yep ive run SIV as attached. I now have 6 128MB chips installed + 2 terminators so all slots are full. This fixed the complaint from bios on boot but has not solved the strange system freezing issue. Interestingly SIV correctly reports 768MB total ram but also that SIMM bank 0 are empty, when they are populated. I can try with just bank 0 populated and see what it picks up if useful?

So another thing i tried which seems to have worked is to disable the 6th PCI slot instead of the USB to get the system booting . I guess i can probably live with it... basically install everything i need then disable a device / pci slot or something to get round this glitch as it otherwise seems to be stable, but It would be great to get to bottom of it if possible!

Wasn't this Tyan board sold primarily as an OEM product for workstation use? Also, it seems to have something of a history of being super-picky over RAM.

In this case I'd avoid the Tyan manual and go straight to the SGI version which details proper memory population (max 6 sticks + 2 terminators in Bank 1 / correct bank filling order)

Haven't checked, but the ZX10 system guide may help also

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-18, 17:47:

I now have 6 128MB chips installed + 2 terminators so all slots are full.

Thank you, SIV did OK, but only reported 4 DIMMs as the SMBIOS only reports 4 DIMMs, see [Machine].

Maybe some issues are down to having DIMMs in Bank 1, once you have re-arranged the DIMMs I wonder how many DIMMs the SMBIOS + SIV sill report.

SIV was unable to report the DIMM SPD data as looking at Menu->System->SMB Bus none of the DIMMs were found so I suspect there is an SMBus multiplexor I need to adjust SIV to support. Do any public utilities such as AIDA64 or HWiNFO report the SPD and if so which?

There look to be 2 x Analog Devices ADM1024 but neither report any sensible temperatures, fan speeds or voltages as they are disabled. SIV 5.57 Beta-07 and later should enable and report the ADM1024s so please may I have new save files? Is there a BIOS monitoring screen and if there is please will you post an image of it?

SIV failed to report the nVidia NV36.3 [GeForce FX 5700LE] clock speeds and after checking it looks to be down to the GPU Chipset ID being 436300A1 rather than 036300A1. I should have adjusted for this SIV 5.57 Beta-07 and later.

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2021-03-18, 21:14:

Wasn't this Tyan board sold primarily as an OEM product for workstation use? Also, it seems to have something of a history of being super-picky over RAM.

Not sure, but I coulnt find chipset drivers on the net. They were also used in a graphics orientated rack I believe.

The tyan manual says ram tolerances are very tight so only one make/type of sdram should be used but they dont allude to the bizzare 3 to 0 except for 1 stacking order specified in the sgi manual! God knows what this is all about?

I'm using two different 128mb pc133r chips at the moment and have populated from bank 0 to 2 with 3 empty so will try 4 identical sticks in 3 and 2 😀

red-ray wrote on 2021-03-19, 07:57:

Thank you, SIV did OK, but only reported 4 DIMMs as the SMBIOS only reports 4 DIMMs, see [Machine]. […]
Show full quote

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-18, 17:47:

I now have 6 128MB chips installed + 2 terminators so all slots are full.

Thank you, SIV did OK, but only reported 4 DIMMs as the SMBIOS only reports 4 DIMMs, see [Machine].

Maybe some issues are down to having DIMMs in Bank 1, once you have re-arranged the DIMMs I wonder how many DIMMs the SMBIOS + SIV sill report.

SIV was unable to report the DIMM SPD data as looking at Menu->System->SMB Bus none of the DIMMs were found so I suspect there is an SMBus multiplexor I need to adjust SIV to support. Do any public utilities such as AIDA64 or HWiNFO report the SPD and if so which?

There look to be 2 x Analog Devices ADM1024 but neither report any sensible temperatures, fan speeds or voltages as they are disabled. The attached SIV32X 5.57 ZX10-07 test SIV should enable and report the ADM1024s so please may I have new save files? Is there a BIOS monitoring screen and if there is please will you post an image of it?

SIV failed to report the nVidia NV36.3 [GeForce FX 5700LE] clock speeds and after checking it looks to be down to the GPU Chipset ID being 436300A1 rather than 036300A1. I should have adjusted for this in the attached

No I dont recall anything related to temperatures or ADM device in the bios. Temp monitoring would definitely be handy though as the fan power seems excessive and extremely loud so I'm using a manual speed controller now.
Should they be listed in device manager or something and can I turn them off again if needed after running this new version?

Klaatu wrote on 2021-03-19, 10:18:

Should they be listed in device manager or something and can I turn them off again if needed after running this new version?

They are SMBus slave devices and I don't recall ever seeing any ICH, PCH or IMC SMBus slave devices listed in Device Manager. In general Windows does not even come with a driver for these SMBuses and we all had to develop our own.

After enabling ADM1024 and similar I have never seen an issue with the only side effect being other reporting programs then being able to report the sensors. Looking at both ADM1024 register 0x40 is 0x08 which is the hardware default and shows the BIOS has failed to setup the sensor chips.

Assuming the enable works then things should get reported on Menu->Hardware->Sensor Debug, but I suspect the names and/or scaling may need adjusting.

In the unlikely event of enabling the ADM1024s causing an issue then rebooting the system should revert them to the hardware default state of disabled.