funkstr@ucscb.ucsc.edu (Larry Hastings) (09/08/90)
My housemate's 386 has a Genoa 5400 Super-VGA card. Every 10th time it boots up (on the average), it comes up thinking that it's some sort of black and white card -- the text colors available are black, lo-white, hi-white, and I think underlined. (A lot of colors don't show up at all.) This is very reminiscent of MDA -- but nothing has asked it to be in an MDA mode. Not only that, but trying to convince it to go to color either doesn't work, or hangs the machine (for instance, changing to a super-VGA mode). The problem has never gone away without rebooting, and (usually) it takes a couple of reboots before the problem does go away. We had long attributed this to a bug in the card -- he got one of the very first ones, and it would not suprise me if he had buggy ROMs. However, this has now started happening on _my_ machine. (I just got my machine about a month ago, and this has started happening within the last week.) I don't recall what kind of VGA I have -- suffice to say it's pretty darn generic, non-Super VGA. I don't think this is some sort of software virus, because: a) My housemate's machine also runs UNIX, and it's happened under UNIX as well, b) it's also happened when booting from floppy, and c) if it was a virus, it would probably be detected by a nice current version of SCAN (which says that both systems are clean). Now I'm stumped. It's a really pissy annoying problem, too -- it can take several reboots to get it to go away. Like 10 on a bad day. Have any of you had similar problems, and (if so) do you know of a solution? -- larry hastings, the galactic funkster, funkstr@ucscb.ucsc.edu I don't speak for Knowledge Dynamics or UC Santa Cruz, nor do they speak for me "I am now telling the computer EXACTLY what he can do with a lifetime supply of chocolate!" --"Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"
poffen@sj.ate.slb.com (Russ Poffenberger) (09/11/90)
In article <6712@darkstar.ucsc.edu> funkstr@ucscb.ucsc.edu (Larry Hastings) writes: > > >My housemate's 386 has a Genoa 5400 Super-VGA card. Every 10th time it >boots up (on the average), it comes up thinking that it's some sort of black >and white card -- the text colors available are black, lo-white, hi-white, and >I think underlined. (A lot of colors don't show up at all.) This is very >reminiscent of MDA -- but nothing has asked it to be in an MDA mode. Not only >that, but trying to convince it to go to color either doesn't work, or hangs >the machine (for instance, changing to a super-VGA mode). The problem has >never gone away without rebooting, and (usually) it takes a couple of reboots >before the problem does go away. > >We had long attributed this to a bug in the card -- he got one of the very >first ones, and it would not suprise me if he had buggy ROMs. However, >this has now started happening on _my_ machine. (I just got my machine about >a month ago, and this has started happening within the last week.) I don't >recall what kind of VGA I have -- suffice to say it's pretty darn generic, >non-Super VGA. > >I don't think this is some sort of software virus, because: > a) My housemate's machine also runs UNIX, and it's happened under > UNIX as well, > b) it's also happened when booting from floppy, and > c) if it was a virus, it would probably be detected by a nice current > version of SCAN (which says that both systems are clean). > >Now I'm stumped. It's a really pissy annoying problem, too -- it can take >several reboots to get it to go away. Like 10 on a bad day. > >Have any of you had similar problems, and (if so) do you know of a solution? >-- Many VGA cards detect what type of monitor is connected so it can properly support it. I have found (with my V7 Fastwrite VGA at least), that I must power up the monitor first, or else the card will improperly detect what type of monitor it is, and I only get black and white. Perhaps this is related to your problem. Russ Poffenberger DOMAIN: poffen@sj.ate.slb.com Schlumberger Technologies UUCP: {uunet,decwrl,amdahl}!sjsca4!poffen 1601 Technology Drive CIS: 72401,276 San Jose, Ca. 95110 (408)437-5254