Problem w/ video on G3 AllInOne

External Since: Mar 22, 2004 Posts: 528

Here's a strange thing that just happened to my G3-AIO (same internals as a
desktop beige G3 for those who haven't seen an All-InOne). Out of the blue ,
my screen suddenly garbled: several vertical lines appeared, the mouse cursor
turned into a 1-inch square white box, and any time I moved a window or
scrolled, the screen tried to draw the new location but didn't clean up the
old, leaving massive amounts of illegible crud all over.

After trying many things (and cursing a lot), I found I could get the display
to behave properly only by removing all ATI extensions (2-d and 3-d accelerators
and a couple related things) from the Extensions Folder. I did remove a
bunch of Preferences files and I did a reinstall of OS 8.6; this made no
difference.

I ran a Norton System Diagnostic. It said my CPU was running at the same speed
as the G3 -333MHz benchmark, but that my video performance was about a factor of
6 low -- barely faster than a 6100 benchmark.

I've also reset the PRAM and NVRAM. About the only things I haven't done are
to hit the CUDA button and to physically re-seat the graphics PCI card --which
is the one that came w/ this machine:
ATY Mach64-3DU Pro with 2Meg VRAM onboard.

So, is my apparently slow video related to turning off all ATI accelerators?
And can I test my ATI card, or should I just replace it?

Also -- is there any tool you know of I could use to test the VRAM on the card?

Many thanks in advance
Carl
--
Carl Witthoft backwards: lrac"at"tfohttiw"dot"com http://www.witthoft.com

External Since: Oct 03, 2003 Posts: 398

In article <carl-F9B3CD.13154816112003 RemoveThis @comcast.ash.giganews.com>, Carl
Witthoft <carl RemoveThis @witthoft.com> wrote:

> Here's a strange thing that just happened to my G3-AIO (same internals as a
> desktop beige G3 for those who haven't seen an All-InOne). Out of the blue
> ,
> my screen suddenly garbled: several vertical lines appeared, the mouse
> cursor
> turned into a 1-inch square white box, and any time I moved a window or
> scrolled, the screen tried to draw the new location but didn't clean up the
> old, leaving massive amounts of illegible crud all over.
>
> After trying many things (and cursing a lot), I found I could get the
> display
> to behave properly only by removing all ATI extensions (2-d and 3-d
> accelerators
> and a couple related things) from the Extensions Folder. I did remove a
> bunch of Preferences files and I did a reinstall of OS 8.6; this made no
> difference.
>
> I ran a Norton System Diagnostic. It said my CPU was running at the same
> speed
> as the G3 -333MHz benchmark, but that my video performance was about a factor
> of
> 6 low -- barely faster than a 6100 benchmark.
>
> I've also reset the PRAM and NVRAM. About the only things I haven't done
> are
> to hit the CUDA button and to physically re-seat the graphics PCI card
> --which
> is the one that came w/ this machine:
> ATY Mach64-3DU Pro with 2Meg VRAM onboard.
>
> So, is my apparently slow video related to turning off all ATI accelerators?
>
> And can I test my ATI card, or should I just replace it?
>
> Also -- is there any tool you know of I could use to test the VRAM on the card?

Did you try downloading new driver/accelerator software from ATI,
reinstalling those?

Cathy

--
"there's a dance or two in the old dame yet." - mehitabel

C.Stevenson, M.D.
cats1921 RemoveThis @sonic.net