Unstable Ibm 300PL \ VOGONS

Unstable Ibm 300PL

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First post, by Ahrle

Posted on 2023-04-30, 15:06

Ahrle Offline

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Sat in lockup for 2-4 years, threw in a Mill II Pci and ct6670 and fired her up. At first it went stable and nice, but after formatting and reinstalling, all sorts of weird errors appear:

- Keen games are red.
- Integrated Crystal sound card plays no MIDI in games such as Skyroads, 3D Bomber, etc. Tried messing with IRQ's etc. to no avail.
- Jazzrabbit 2 has completely frozen the system three times by now.
- Keyboard randomly stops responding until full restart.
- Win98Se threw 12 BSOD's during the first 3 hours of use.

Ideas? Caps? Psu giving up? I am used to 98SE BSOD's, but this is different...

Reply 1 of 4, by Garrett W

Posted on 2023-04-30, 16:04

Garrett W Offline

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Maybe it's classic Matrox Mystique + Millennium II bus mastering issues that are causing the instability. I'd try a different videocard (or an integrated one if it exists) to troubleshoot whether or not the system is stable.

Reply 2 of 4, by PD2JK

Posted on 2023-04-30, 16:04

PD2JK Offline

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Can you reseat and clean every component in your system? Especially the contacts.
Is a memory test stable?

i386 16 ⇒ i486 DX4 100 ⇒ Pentium MMX 200 ⇒ Athlon Orion 700 | TB 1000 ⇒ AthlonXP 1700+ ⇒ Opteron 165 ⇒ Dual Opteron 856

Reply 3 of 4, by Ahrle

Posted on 2023-05-01, 00:17

Ahrle Offline

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Garrett W wrote on 2023-04-30, 16:04:

Maybe it's classic Matrox Mystique + Millennium II bus mastering issues that are causing the instability. I'd try a different videocard (or an integrated one if it exists) to troubleshoot whether or not the system is stable.

Replaced the card with FireGL 1000. Red Keen and Jackrabbit freezing solved.

Threw in an Awe64 while at it, also appearing dodgy. At first, integrated card played sound only, and Awe MIDI only. After many IRQ changes, and internal card disabled, Awe handled both in 3D Bomber and Skyroads. Consequently, Jazzrabbit 1 quit playing sound at all. All setups would throw me out of the game, except Gravis setting completely freezing the system. Restoring IRQ to automatic didn't help either; just removed 3D Bomber's MIDI.

Idk. I suspect lack of IRQ's (POST once warned before disabling unnecessary stuff), or its 100W PSU is too weak.