First post, by markpot4
I have issues with the s3 onboard graphics. It freezes randomly when building graphics (playing a game, swiching windows etc). It also sometimes already freeze in the vga bios when switching between bios windows. When the freeze happen the pc stop building graphics or text. The "-" still blinks during the freeze but but the text or garpahics doesnt progress further (see picture). So it feels like the gpu isnt completly frozen it just is waiting for a awnser from the graphic that it never gets.
When using a isa graphic card it works without issues but isa speed is a lot slower then the s3 onboard chip so it would be still nice to get the s3 onboard chip to work.
The cpu seems to be upgraded to an cpu 486dx 50mhz instead of a 486sx that came with the board. Dont know if this could make any issues. Deactivate l1 cache make the graphics more stable and less freezes happen. There are still freezes happening but not as much as with l1 cache on. I think thats bc the cpu is working much slower with l1 cache off.
Also I realized there are some kind of graphical noise. The noise gets worse the more you turning up color depth in win95. Especially when using true color mode in win95. I dont have the noise with the isa graphic card. Also at the point while the pc is testing himem there is a lot of graphical noise going on. However I have no color issues, text issues or anything else. When the freezes happen the noise itself is still going on and doesnt freeze. So seems like the graphics itself are still working during the freeze.
The bios dallas rtc chip battery is low btw. It has no corrosion bc its inside a chip. Dont know if this have to do something with the issue bc its connected with the vga bios chip that controls s3 graphics. There are 2 bios chips on the board btw. 1. Award Software inc bios chip 2. Quadtel bios software vga chip. Seems like one is for the bios itself and the other one for the graphical bios or something.
I also run checkit to test everything. It have almost no issues. Ram, cpu, hdd, chipset-test run fine. Only the vga test freezes when building graphics. First I thought its the vram maybe but the vram test on checkit run mostly without issues. Only one time it freezes and there was a black and white pattern while freezing. But im not sure if the problem was the vram itself or something else during the vram test that triggers the freeze.
Does someone maybe know what could cause these freezing issues and does those graphical have to do something with the freezes or is this a seperate problem (maybe vga cable problem or something).
I also uploaded a picture of the mainboard btw maybe that helps for diagnose the issue.
