600X in SelectaDock III, GeForce FX5500 PCI, XP issues

[pkiff]

I'm in the process of trying to get a new video card working with my 600X machine in one of my SelectaDock III units. I'm running into problems with freezing, screen blanking, and modem/network cable dropouts. I suspect that the problem is a PCI/IRQ communication problem with the SelectaDock III under XP.

TWO QUESTIONS:

1. Is there anyone on the list who has got a high end graphics card installed in a SelectaDock III and is running XP?

2. Is there anyone on the list who has got a GeForce (MX, 2, 3, 4, or FX) class video card installed in a SelectaDock III running any version of Windows?

MY RELEVANT HARDWARE AND SOFTWARE:
600X PIII 850MHz
576 MB RAM
SelectaDock III
nVidia GeForce FX5500 256MB PCI
ForceWare 77.77
DirectX 9.0c
Windows XP SP2
latest IBM Power Management / Battery Maximizer software loaded
Xircom RealPort CardBus Modem/NIC PCMCIA card

SOME ADDITIONAL DETAILS:

I've had the same 600X machine running under Windoze 98SE with a Voodoo 5 5500 in the SelectaDock III and I can get that setup running great, but I haven't tried to setup the nVidia GeForce FX5500 under Windows 98SE yet.

I've seen some references to people installing XP without the HAL (Hardware Abstraction Layer) in order to be able to manually adjust the PCI IRQs, like under Windows 98SE, and that will be my next approach, but doing that requires a complete reinstall of Windows XP I think. And then the machine will no longer have ACPI, but will have to run under APM I think.

I tried to make this work with the drivers that XP SP2 loaded automatically, and then I upgraded the nVidia drivers to 77.77, but the same problems occur with either driver: after 5-30 minutes of use, one of two things happens: either my network connection drops and my network card disappears (it begins to appear with a yellow exclamation point in Device Manager and it is no longer listed in the "saftely remove hardware" list) or my external display blanks out and the computer has to be rebooted. I've tried to use an identical, but different RealPort modem/NIC combo card, but the problem continued, so it isn't a hardware failure with the RealPort. I'm pretty sure this is a conflict between the NIC and the video card, but I don't know how to solve this under XP.

Later:
The same screen blanking occurs without the NIC installed, so now I think it must be a PCI bus issue generally.

Any suggestions?

Phil.

[whizkid]

You can use IBM's Configuration Utility to assign IRQ's for some things. See how that goes.

[pkiff]

Under XP I don't think you are able to assign different IRQs to different things using the IBM Configuration utility. You can enable different things, but the actual setting of the IRQs is fixed -- those parts of the dialog boxes are greyed out. This is by design and is part of the ACPI specs.

Under Windoze 98SE you can change the IRQs in a number of ways (running under APM mode), and I've done extensive IRQ re-assignment work on a Selectadock under 98SE -- successfully, too -- but those choices aren't available in XP.

I am hoping that if I switch to Standard PC (APM) HAL from ACPI HAL, that I'll be able to adjust these settings under XP, but I don't really know what will happen. Also, I've decided I will see if I can get my Voodoo 5 5500 64MB running smoothly in XP under ACPI first, and if so, then I may abandon the project of trying to get the nVidia GeForce FX5500 256MB working altogether, as the Voodoo 5 is just so much easier to install.

Phil.

[whizkid]

You can turn off Quick Boot in EZSetup. That will make the BIOS choose IRQ settings instead of the OS... and maybe XP will then let you change them. Worth a shot?

[pkiff]

I always wondered what that QuickBoot option was!

Thanks, yes, good idea, I'll try both settings and boot a couple times under each when I can free up some time to spend with the machine again.

Phil.

[pkiff]

Changing the QuickBoot settings did not seem to solve the problem. Since then I did a fresh XP install using HAL "Standard PC" instead of ACPI, but was not able to get the card installed properly under that scheme. I have more or less managed to get it installed now, after another fresh install, this time using ACPI again (the default). So my standard desktop displays and I can boost that up to 1600 x 1200, but I am getting frequent freezes and screen blanking out that require hard reboots. I tried installing a 3D game that requires hardware T&L, and the install went fine, but it freezes before I can get the game going.

At the moment, I'm using stock XP drivers for everything, since I haven't decided which ones other than those are the most likely to be stable.

My current theory is that my problems are a combination of not being able to assign a dedicated IRQ to the video card and of weak/dirty power being supplied to the SelectaDock III. Since I"m also working on replacing the USB 1.1 ports with USB 2.0 ports in the SelectaDock III, I'm also going to have a go at replacing the fan and the power supply the next time I open up the guts and fiddle with things. But I am not particularly hopeful that I will be able to stabilize the nVidia GeForce FX5500 256MB.

Phil.