VOGONS


First post, by mzry

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

Hi all,

I am at my wits end with this system and I am almost out of all ideas. I recently had this thread about Deus Ex crashing on save: Deus Ex - crash on save?

I ended up buying another TUSL2-C motherboard, this time one made in Taiwan, the Deus Ex crashes seemed to go away. I thought this problem was solved. I then wanted to play some 'American McGees Alice' and noticed, once again, it would 'randomly' but often crash on save. Often during level transitions where you enter a new level and the game auto-saves, the behavior of the crash is: a full lock of the system (not a bsod) with screeching audio.

Besides all of the things I'd already tried in the Deus-Ex thread, I tried a couple of other things:
* Removed my Adaptec SCSI 2940-UW card
* Re-installed system on a Sandisk CF card with IDE adaptor

Running entirely off IDE and CF seemed to help at first, but soon the problems were back. I then suspected the IDE cable (one of those possibly crappy 'round' cables) so I:
* Replaced crappy round IDE cable with high-quality Promise ultra-ata100 cable.

Still problems persisted, I then tried:

* Moved the V5 5500 into a different PCI slot
* Moved the Creative Xfi to a different PCI slot
* Put different memory in the system

(Please see the Deus ex thread for all the other countless things I tried)

Also note: I *did* try a completely different sound card, one with no directx acceleration and the system still was unstable.

I am now completely out of ideas, I've pretty much changed out the entire system. The only thing left that could possibly be at fault could be the graphics card itself? But it's basically brand-new condition, barely used & has been re-capped entirely. I don't think the nature of how the system crashes seems to be how a 3d card might crash. I know that I have previously swapped the PSU out and still had issues, but this was on the old motherboard, so perhaps it's worth me doing again.

Can anyone recommend a modern ATX which is suitable for an older system like this? Thanks

Any other ideas much appreciated.

Reply 1 of 3, by Joseph_Joestar

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
mzry wrote on 2022-08-09, 14:42:

Can anyone recommend a modern ATX which is suitable for an older system like this? Thanks

Any modern PSU should work fine on that system. I'd get something from Seasonic or Corsair in the 450W range or better. Just make sure that the plug is 20+4 instead of 24 pins, since you'll need to detach the extra ones.

As for your issue, I would suggest removing all but the very basic hardware from the system and temporarily switching to a mechanical IDE hard drive and a simple PCI 2D graphics card (S3 Trio etc). If you can reproduce the problem on a barebones system (PCI 2D only graphics card, IDE hard drive, no sound card, no CD-ROM) then it's probably something related to the motherboard (needs recap?) .

Lastly, boot Memtest86+ from a floppy and leave it running for at least 8 hours to see if it finds any errors. RAM issues can be tricky and sometimes need multiple passes to show up.

P.S.

You don't mention which operating system and what HDD size you're using. This matters too as, for example, Win98 cannot properly work with drives larger than 127 GB without third-party patches. Also, make sure that you have the relevant Intel chipset drivers installed (from 2002 or later) and try disabling DMA for the hard drive in Device Manager.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 2 of 3, by mzry

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member
Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-08-10, 00:52:
Any modern PSU should work fine on that system. I'd get something from Seasonic or Corsair in the 450W range or better. Just mak […]
Show full quote
mzry wrote on 2022-08-09, 14:42:

Can anyone recommend a modern ATX which is suitable for an older system like this? Thanks

Any modern PSU should work fine on that system. I'd get something from Seasonic or Corsair in the 450W range or better. Just make sure that the plug is 20+4 instead of 24 pins, since you'll need to detach the extra ones.

As for your issue, I would suggest removing all but the very basic hardware from the system and temporarily switching to a mechanical IDE hard drive and a simple PCI 2D graphics card (S3 Trio etc). If you can reproduce the problem on a barebones system (PCI 2D only graphics card, IDE hard drive, no sound card, no CD-ROM) then it's probably something related to the motherboard (needs recap?) .

Lastly, boot Memtest86+ from a floppy and leave it running for at least 8 hours to see if it finds any errors. RAM issues can be tricky and sometimes need multiple passes to show up.

P.S.

You don't mention which operating system and what HDD size you're using. This matters too as, for example, Win98 cannot properly work with drives larger than 127 GB without third-party patches. Also, make sure that you have the relevant Intel chipset drivers installed (from 2002 or later) and try disabling DMA for the hard drive in Device Manager.

Thanks for the tips. I think those unanswered questions were answered in my Deus Ex thread so I didn't want to double up on information. I'm running XP and Windows is installed on a 16gb SanDisk CF card (before I was using scsi through an Adaptec 2940uw and 80gb scsi disk) I'm not aware of any specific intel drivers required for XP. I think like you mentioned I'll try just running a physical HDD IDE drive next and see how it goes. DMA certainly sounds like it could be an issue somehow as the freeze/locks seem to happen during high data throughput and high CPU usage. I could recap the board, but as I mentioned before I had previously a different tusl2 which had the same issues which I had re-capped. So I doubt it would be the issue. But still might recap it again sometime.

I'll try a physical IDE drive next. Thx.

Reply 3 of 3, by rasz_pl

User metadata
Rank l33t
Rank
l33t
mzry wrote on 2022-08-09, 14:42:

Running entirely off IDE and CF seemed to help at first, but soon the problems were back.

I would start with different PSU, or plugging an oscilloscope on 5V 12V lines and watching it during heavy gameplay or whatever you do when it crashes

AT&T Globalyst/FIC 486-GAC-2 Cache Module reproduction
Zenith Data Systems (ZDS) ZBIOS 'MFM-300 Monitor' reverse engineering