ATI GUP frame buffer, solved

[turnbull@example.com (Stephen J. Turnbull)]

Ted Matsumura writes:

   We have a couple of ATI PCI Mach 64 boards, and there were a lot of warnings
   and patches for the Win x/ 95 / NT OS's on the net, may want to check.
   Also, unshadow video bios if you can, and see if that resolves problem.

Nope, the problem was exactly what I said; the frame buffer was
conflicting with the newly installed memory.  Fortunately ATI put all
its configuration utilities on a file server, and that solved my
problem with the defunct floppy.

   I hope you're not currently buying up EISA products.  If you are, I'd
   recommend you consider PCI ...

Nope.  EISA products are ridiculously expensive for what you get
compared to PCI.  They haven't come down at all the way ISA boards
have.  That machine is 3 years old now.  (Remember, it predates
Windows NT.)  Maybe it wasn't a great idea to go with EISA even then,
but the EISA+VLB motherboard was trivially more expensive ($50) than
the VLB-only version, nobody reputable was making SCSI hosts for VLB,
and PCI didn't exist yet.  I'm still happy with its performance in
general (I don't do video in an X Window or anything like that), and
upgrading to 32MB makes X Windows zip right along since swapping is
very rare.  I figure it has another 2--3 years of life left as a Web
server, even if I do upgrade to an Alpha or a 80686 or a PowerPC or
whatever for my personal workstation....

-- 
                            Stephen J. Turnbull
Institute of Policy and Planning Sciences                    Yaseppochi-Gumi
University of Tsukuba                      http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp/
Tennodai 1-1-1, Tsukuba, 305 JAPAN                 turnbull@example.com