goldman@mbcl.rutgers.edu (06/13/91)
I thought I should post my experiences with the Western Digital 8514/A plus card, for anyone thinking of going the 8514/A compatible route. I bought the card about a year ago, to use with os/2 1.2 in a clone (Dataworld 386/20, AMI bios 4/89). The card never! worked right for me; I would always get occasional, spontaneous crashes that would freeze the whole system, forcing me to do a hard reboot. (The mouse cursor would stop moving, and then I'd have to hard reboot.) The problems only got worse when I made a little LanMan 2.0 network, consisting of a couple of machines with WD ethernet cards. Whenever I tried to backup networked drives (Sytos Plus software 1.10; Alliance 60 Meg Tape Drive; QIC-36 interface), the machine with the 8514/A card and the tape drive (NOT! the one where the networked drives resided) would go on the fritz. The screen would get completeley munged, as if the 8514/A card was no longer putting out the right vertical or horizontal scan rate. Then I could soft reboot, but the screen would remain munged until I hard rebooted. A week ago, I bought the ATI 8514/A ultra card. All the problems went away. I might as well also report that I saw a comment on the IBM Atlanta BBS, under the topic "OS/2 on non-IBM hardware" a statement from a guy who said "We returned all our Western Digital cards and replaced them with ATI ones. The Western Digital card is neither hardware nor register compatible with the IBM card". Also, Alfred Poor, in a recent review of 1024x768 cards in PC magazine, said that, in order to get the Western Digital card to work under Windows 3.0 enhanced mode, you have to have an "emmexclude=" statement (or something like that) in your Windows.ini file. So my advice is: if you're thinking of buying a Western Digital 8514/A card, don't. Adrian -- Adrian Goldman | Internet: Goldman@MBCL.Rutgers.Edu Molecular Biology Computing Laboratory | Bitnet: Goldman@BioVAX Waksman Insitute, | Phone: (908) 932-4864 Rutgers University, | Fax: (908) 932-5735 Piscataway, NJ 08855 USA |
rommel@Informatik.TU-Muenchen.DE (Kai-Uwe Rommel) (06/14/91)
In article <477.28574d90@mbcl.rutgers.edu> goldman@mbcl.rutgers.edu writes: >I thought I should post my experiences with the Western Digital 8514/A plus >card, for anyone thinking of going the 8514/A compatible route. > >I bought the card about a year ago, to use with os/2 1.2 in a clone (Dataworld >386/20, AMI bios 4/89). The card never! worked right for me; I would >always get occasional, spontaneous crashes that would freeze the whole system, >forcing me to do a hard reboot. (The mouse cursor would stop moving, and then ... >So my advice is: if you're thinking of buying a Western Digital 8514/A card, >don't. >Adrian Goldman | Internet: Goldman@MBCL.Rutgers.Edu Hmm. This advice may be good as the ATI card is said to be faster than the WD one. But I want to note that I use a WD 8514/A+ with both Windows 3.0 and IBM OS/2 1.3 with *no* problems at all until now. May be the problems occur in conjunction with other hardware. I know that it does not work with Tseng 4000 VGA cards that have the original Tseng Labs BIOS. Also, Adrian reported that he has read that the card is not fully IBM hardware compatible. But I use the original 8514 drivers of both Windows and OS/2 that were written for the IBM 8514/A and both of them work with no problems with my WD card. The advice, to buy an ATI card may be OK, if you want the technically better (and more expensive) card. I just wanted to note that the WD/Paradise card is not that bad at all. Kai Uwe Rommel /* Kai Uwe Rommel, Munich ----- rommel@lan.informatik.tu-muenchen.dbp.de */ DOS ... is still a real mode only non-reentrant interrupt handler, and always will be. -Russell Williams