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Received: by minnie.vk1xwt.ampr.org with NNTP id AA1542 ; Tue, 23 Feb 93 14:47:49 EST Path: sserve!manuel.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!news.Hawaii.Edu!ames!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!swrinde!cs.utexas.edu!usc!wupost!emory!ogicse!usenet.ee.pdx.edu!acacia!rgrimes From: rgrimes@acacia (Rodney W. Grimes) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: [386BSD] screen goes blank! Message-ID: <1lvjcm$i3q@walt.ee.pdx.edu> Date: 18 Feb 93 09:03:17 GMT Article-I.D.: walt.1lvjcm$i3q References: <1lghbb$eoo@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> Organization: Portland State University Lines: 53 NNTP-Posting-Host: acacia.cs.pdx.edu engelsma@golden.cps.msu.edu (Jonathan Engelsma (Reid)) writes: : A friend of mine recently purchased a new 386DX with 8M RAM, 200M HD, : ATI Vantage graphics card, and a SVGA monitor. He partitioned the drive : into a 80M DOS partition and a 120M 386BSD partition. He installed : 386BSD fine, was able to boot etc. About a week later I tried to : install Xfree86 for him, but got stuck trying to figure out the : settings in the Xconfig file. I ran out of time that day, and have : yet to get back and finish. Before I left, I made sure the machine : was booting off the original kernel. : : The problems started the next day. He was running 386BSD, and suddenly : the screen goes completely blank. When he tried to reboot, the machine : would not boot off floppy or HD. It just gives some error indicator : which according to the manual indicates 'error reading video RAM'. He : took the machine back to the local shop where he bought it. They tried : the video board in another machine and were able to demonstrate that it : works fine. They suspected the mother board was faulty, and replaced : it. They booted 386bsd several times from the HD and all seemed fine, : so he took it home. He needed to run DOS, so the first thing he did : was change the active partition to DOS and booted DOS off the HD. Aprox : 2 hours later (he was still running DOS), bingo - the screen goes blank... : same exact problem. Machine doesn't boot off floppy or HD anymore. I have seen this before, it is very rare, but usually is the video board having thermal problems. You need to tell your repair shop to run the board using QA plus or some other graphics intesive program for several hours at elelvated temperature to see if they can duplicate it. : : Of course the shop he bought it from has barely heard of Unix let alone : 386BSD, and seem inclined to believe that the problem is the software : and not theirs. : : I'm not sure what to think anymore. Since he was running DOS the second : time the problem occured, it seems like it can't be anything to do with : the 386bsd software residing on a different partition. Could I have damaged : the monitor or the graphics card trying to run X without having the Xconfig set : correctly? If so, why did it work for a couple hours after replacing : the mother board? The graphics board worked fined in another machine : though. Maybe the monitor is the problem? : : If anybody out there has any comments, suggestions, hints, etc. please : share them with us. : : Thanks, : Jonathan : ------------------------------------------------------------------------- : Jonathan R. Engelsma Michigan State University : Department of : E-mail: engelsma@cps.msu.edu Computer Science : uunet!frith!engelsma : uunet!frith!jresys!engelsma (home) : -------------------------------------------------------------------------