Potentially a bad RAM stick? Try booting the system with only one stick of known-working RAM, and see if the issue still occurs.

bad graphic card, bad driver, something wrong with pci controller/slot

rasz_pl wrote:

bad graphic card, bad driver, something wrong with pci controller/slot

So the graphics cards I’ve used all work great in other machines. I haven’t swapped out the ram sticks yet so I’ll try that. Maybe the contacts and/or PCI ports need to be cleaned out. The MB I’m using was pretty filthy when I received it. I sprayed a lot of the dirt off with compressed air but maybe it needs more of a deep cleaning. Could dirt and grime cause an issue like this? Other than the issue I’ve stated, everything seems to boot up and run fine.

That's an odd one. I've seen things like that caused by a bad video card, but if it does it with multiple cards, I'm not sure.

Check for swollen or leaky capacitors on the motherboard.

Try a different power supply too.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

That's an odd one. I've seen things like that caused by a bad video card, but if it does it with multiple cards, I'm not sure.

Check for swollen or leaky capacitors on the motherboard.

Try a different power supply too.

You know now that you mentioned it, my power supply has been making a funny noise off and on. It makes a low buzzing noise but it’s not constant. I didn’t think anything of it because the system seemed to be getting enough power. The power supply is about 10 years old. Once I get home from work I’ll see if the power supply is the issue.

Well after swapping out different power supplies, video cards, memory, HDD, and trying w95 and w98 (just to see), I still get the same issues with the artifacts and freezing. I'm thinking it is a problem with the motherboard. I have no idea what would be causing this on the motherboard itself. I don't see any obvious capacitors bulging or any other weird things going on with the circuitry. Any ideas out there?

The motherboard I am using is a Supermicro P6SKE II. It's a shame because I love the bios menu it has and I wanted to have a working P2 machine with win95.

tensi0n wrote:

I'm thinking it is a problem with the motherboard. I have no idea what would be causing this on the motherboard itself.

corrupted pci transfer, have you tried different pci ports?

Things you will never own, but want to.

on a older vogons thread about (Things you will never own, but want to.) theres a post about that similar super micro 440fx board. that guy said that Unfortunately both revisions have wonky PCI that causes font and mouse cursor corruption with most graphics cards. S3 PCI chips actually lock up almost instantly once the drivers are installed.

Yes I’ve tried every single PCI port with same issue. Is a corrupted PCI transfer fixable?

Windows9566 wrote:

Things you will never own, but want to.

on a older vogons thread about (Things you will never own, but want to.) theres a post about that similar super micro 440fx board. that guy said that Unfortunately both revisions have wonky PCI that causes font and mouse cursor corruption with most graphics cards. S3 PCI chips actually lock up almost instantly once the drivers are installed.

Well that’s probably my problem 🤣. Both cards I’ve tested with this machine are S3 cards.

UPDATE:

I was able to dig up a Matrox 703 graphics card and installed it in my machine. The issues I've been having went away so it appears the S3 cards where the issue. The problem is now I can't find actual drivers for the card so I am running it with the standard VGA drivers from win95. Does anyone know where I can find the drivers for this? I created a new post reference my driver question: Matrox 703 Graphics Card

Thanks.

no driver installed = you cant be sure its working

rasz_pl wrote:

no driver installed = you cant be sure its working

Right, the vast majority of graphical problems will only show up when drivers are installed.