I'm not sure how it can cause Windows to hang. VGA is "dumb" as in is just outputs the signal, it doesn't know or care if something is attached to receive that signal or if its been received ok.
Thats why you can set resolutions to something screen cant handle. It just doesn't care, its the screen that says I cant display this.

That said my Diamond S3 Virge also doesn't like my Compaq KVM. Everything works just shows nothing on screen. it did like my cheap 4 port KVM, and even works if I daisy chain that off the Compaq KVM.
Seems like S3 can be picky on KVM's

chinny22 wrote on 2020-08-27, 08:57:

I'm not sure how it can cause Windows to hang. VGA is "dumb" as in is just outputs the signal, it doesn't know or care if someth […]
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I'm not sure how it can cause Windows to hang. VGA is "dumb" as in is just outputs the signal, it doesn't know or care if something is attached to receive that signal or if its been received ok.
Thats why you can set resolutions to something screen cant handle. It just doesn't care, its the screen that says I cant display this.

That said my Diamond S3 Virge also doesn't like my Compaq KVM. Everything works just shows nothing on screen. it did like my cheap 4 port KVM, and even works if I daisy chain that off the Compaq KVM.
Seems like S3 can be picky on KVM's

It's funny, I was just about to insert a Matrox card since I kind of guessed it was an incompatibility. But yes, Windows DEFINITELY crashes - the bar stops moving after two secs. It's very weird.

Oh I believe you, I'm just not sure how its possible 😀

chinny22 wrote on 2020-08-27, 09:14:

Oh I believe you, I'm just not sure how its possible 😀

Yeah no kidding - neither do I. But I changed to the Matrox and all problems are solved. The only "problem" I have now, is that the BIOS gives a long and three short beeps (graphics card error) for some reason but continues to work fine otherwise ... go figure.

It happens to me with a virge and a kvm - but a quick reboot always fixes it. Having the input selected on the kvm before booting usually helps too.

kolderman wrote on 2020-08-27, 10:36:

It happens to me with a virge and a kvm - but a quick reboot always fixes it. Having the input selected on the kvm before booting usually helps too.

Yeah I think I'll stop using the on-board chip. The Matrox Mystique performs 10-80% faster in all benchmarks anyway. My only concern is compatibility (https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/) since Matrox is very iffy about DOS VESA support. I guess I'll need to test and see. My Pentium 75 has a Cirrus Logic which is great so I can always switch to that one for pre-1995 games if I encounter compatibility problems (that's why I got a KVM in the first place ...).

some vgas have some "autodetect" feature
on my virge2gx if the vga cable is not fully plugged it can go to b/w mode
without a vga cable plugged the system will beep like there is no video card installed! annoying 🤣
so I assume that the vga "autodetects" a b/w monitor because of the kvm used

Older Trident and Cirrus cards have that same "problem"... i have even one Trident 8900 that with modern monitors sometimes starts in color and sometimes BW.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2020-08-27, 11:55:

Older Trident and Cirrus cards have that same "problem"... i have even one Trident 8900 that with modern monitors sometimes starts in color and sometimes BW.

I guess I'm lucky it only happens with one of my PCs then. I ordered a Matrox Millenium 2 for now since the Mystique, while a decent card, only has 2MB and I might as well go for a 4MB card to get the extra resolutions.