fish@vpnet.chi.il.us (Gil Winograd) (08/09/90)
I just recently bought a 386SX system (1Meg RAM) from Mirage Computers in California (ad in Computer Shopper). With the computer, I bought the Super VGA option, which is a Paradise 1024i OEM card (256K RAM) and a Loop monitor. (The card name is EMK-16 VGA1024). The problem I have is: Occasionally when I am scrolling up and down through text, some of the attribute bytes on the text screen get messed up, so that, for no apparent reason, there will be a blinking "a" or a green "h" in the middle of the screen. The text itself is never garbled or destroyed, just its associated attribute byte. This happens most often in TELIX when I use ALT-B to scroll back text, but has also happened to a lesser extent in Turbo C. All VGA diagnostics I have run say that my card is in perfect working order, operating in 16 bits with full capabilities, etc... (The only glitch is that the border color turns yellow instead of brown during diagnostic tests, but I have verified that this is normal for Paradise cards). The only advice I received so far from Mirage is to check my DIP switches, which I did. Any other advice? Thanks, -* Gil fish@vpnet.chi.il.us
bb16@prism.gatech.EDU (Scott Bostater) (08/10/90)
In article <26c160d9-21e5comp.sys.ibm.pc@vpnet.chi.il.us> fish@vpnet.chi.il.us (Gil Winograd) writes: >I just recently bought a 386SX system (1Meg RAM) from Mirage Computers in >California (ad in Computer Shopper). With the computer, I bought the Super >VGA option, which is a Paradise 1024i OEM card (256K RAM) and a Loop monitor. >(The card name is EMK-16 VGA1024). The problem I have is: Occasionally when >I am scrolling up and down through text, some of the attribute bytes on the >text screen get messed up, so that, for no apparent reason, there will be >a blinking "a" or a green "h" in the middle of the screen. The text itself [stuff deleted] I'm having a similar problem with my home computer (25 MHz 386, ATI VGA Wonder 512K card, NEC 3D monitor). Most of the time the card works fine, except when my wife is using PC-Write, then the same problem you describe occurs. Also, if I shadow the Video BIOS, I normally lose the first character from the DOS command line. I got around that by turn the feature off. Unfortunately, my wife is unwilling to write reports with stray garbage on the screen (I don't know why, my reports allways have garbage in them :-). This error is deterministic, I can regenerate the same garabage cells over and over by scrolling through the same file. I spend most of my time using Turbo [Asm|C|Debug|Pascal] and have not noticed this problem, though I sometimes get stray stuff on the graphics screens (640x480 mode). I'm not certain if its my fault or the card's fault. As Gil mentioned, my card also passes all the diagnostic routines that ATI supplied with the board. If anybody has an idea about what's going wrong, I'd love to hear about it. -- Scott Bostater Georgia Tech Research Institute - Radar Systems Analysis "My soul finds rest in God alone; my salvation comes from Him" -Ps 62.1 uucp: ...!{allegra,amd,hplabs,ut-ngp}!gatech!prism!bb16 Internet: bb16@prism.gatech.edu
scowl@adpplz.UUCP (Scott W Larson) (08/17/90)
Try switching your machine to a slower CPU speed. If that seems to clear the problems, then your VGA adapter has a speed problem.
akcs.terry@ddsw1.MCS.COM (terry loftus) (08/23/90)
the first thing to check is video ram speed and bus i/o speed on your computer. Some of the Neat and Chips and technologies boards have the ability to select different bus clock speeds. Your bus speed should say AT bus, if it says clk2/ins or any other you could be running faster than the rom bios and character generater on your card can handle. You may also wish to check if you have cash programs which may interfer with memory bit maps on some Vga adapters