Centurion
05-12-2003, 6:48 AM
The device is an Acer P120 with 16 megs - 775 meg HD - and only a floppy in the tray.
Yeh this is the one I have had issues with! -
History - it had win95b on it - formated F16 in order to accomodate a suspend program which wrote in that form. I had updated drivers - [Video] C&T 65545 pci - but they were not as good as the original. I could get 16 HC - but after a update never got better than 256. ??
I had been working on a second machine - similar - to it - which had passwords on it at the bios level - the guy that set this second one up was really a security freak. Anyway - instead of using the test machine as the guinie pig - I used mine - Figured I could get it back in the end to original without too much trouble.
So I laid the passwords on it and then went looking for a password killer - I found Cmoskill and Killcmos - I used Cmoskill - Imediately the Video on the DS screen went to a faint former self. I spent the next long while looking for testers and found that it should work right but has not - Eventually I got to the point - were a reload of windows became ness - bad sectors on the HD demanded that I do a reload - As luck woudl have it - I was able to find in Dos - the old W95 source - on the HD - and did a reload - unfortunately - it was corrupted - crapped out. So I grabbed my w98se disk and loaded it onto it. That was a couple of weeks ago.
Now symptoms are this - my video pluggin to an exterior monitor works - and has the same mono and color screens that I expect - however - the DS screen - comes up - and gives a ghost picture across the entire screen - you can barely make out any of the features. - but once in a while the contrast is enough to squint through it. It kinda looks like the contrast is low and the brightness is set lower. I did manage to grab video drivers from around the world and started using them one at a time. Did get to 256 on the monitor - but the DS screen is still faint. Next I have been looking for the utilities that run the "hotkeys" - they have the brightness and contrast controls linked to them. Not quite finished with them.
Related to the diagnosis - I am working on loading Sisoft Sandra - and doing a scan of the machine to give me the actual parts that this machine has onboard. [ I know that when I had a problem on a previous machine - an AMD it picked off that the Bios was corrupted - I flashed it and it worked fine.
I have the correct flash and utility - as well as all of the drivers I figure that I can use - - But - I wonder if - Cmos kill did reset all of the defaults at this level- CMOS that is - should I go back and flash it to the current correct bios and go from there - Do I have to go back to the Bios - flash it - reload win98 - and then[with the info from sandra - grab the correct drivers for the video again. and start from the ground up.
Also - When I boot - I get 2 messages about a PCI device needing drivers - I have gone through the win98 disk but so far have found no drivers which win will accept as being the right ones. The video - is listed in literature as a PCI device - - So this might well be the offending issue.
The Ali alladin HD comes in as a generic IDE devices - both floppy and the HD - but they work.
My Network card - a xircon comes in correct - and I have it buei'ed over to my main box. works fine. I use it to shove stuff onto the box - for testing
I call upon the exalted experts of XPC - to toss an idea - [this is true groveling-] :help: :help:
Thanks C - BTW - I don't figure this is anything more than a driver/flash bios issue - because those were where the problems began.
Yeh this is the one I have had issues with! -
History - it had win95b on it - formated F16 in order to accomodate a suspend program which wrote in that form. I had updated drivers - [Video] C&T 65545 pci - but they were not as good as the original. I could get 16 HC - but after a update never got better than 256. ??
I had been working on a second machine - similar - to it - which had passwords on it at the bios level - the guy that set this second one up was really a security freak. Anyway - instead of using the test machine as the guinie pig - I used mine - Figured I could get it back in the end to original without too much trouble.
So I laid the passwords on it and then went looking for a password killer - I found Cmoskill and Killcmos - I used Cmoskill - Imediately the Video on the DS screen went to a faint former self. I spent the next long while looking for testers and found that it should work right but has not - Eventually I got to the point - were a reload of windows became ness - bad sectors on the HD demanded that I do a reload - As luck woudl have it - I was able to find in Dos - the old W95 source - on the HD - and did a reload - unfortunately - it was corrupted - crapped out. So I grabbed my w98se disk and loaded it onto it. That was a couple of weeks ago.
Now symptoms are this - my video pluggin to an exterior monitor works - and has the same mono and color screens that I expect - however - the DS screen - comes up - and gives a ghost picture across the entire screen - you can barely make out any of the features. - but once in a while the contrast is enough to squint through it. It kinda looks like the contrast is low and the brightness is set lower. I did manage to grab video drivers from around the world and started using them one at a time. Did get to 256 on the monitor - but the DS screen is still faint. Next I have been looking for the utilities that run the "hotkeys" - they have the brightness and contrast controls linked to them. Not quite finished with them.
Related to the diagnosis - I am working on loading Sisoft Sandra - and doing a scan of the machine to give me the actual parts that this machine has onboard. [ I know that when I had a problem on a previous machine - an AMD it picked off that the Bios was corrupted - I flashed it and it worked fine.
I have the correct flash and utility - as well as all of the drivers I figure that I can use - - But - I wonder if - Cmos kill did reset all of the defaults at this level- CMOS that is - should I go back and flash it to the current correct bios and go from there - Do I have to go back to the Bios - flash it - reload win98 - and then[with the info from sandra - grab the correct drivers for the video again. and start from the ground up.
Also - When I boot - I get 2 messages about a PCI device needing drivers - I have gone through the win98 disk but so far have found no drivers which win will accept as being the right ones. The video - is listed in literature as a PCI device - - So this might well be the offending issue.
The Ali alladin HD comes in as a generic IDE devices - both floppy and the HD - but they work.
My Network card - a xircon comes in correct - and I have it buei'ed over to my main box. works fine. I use it to shove stuff onto the box - for testing
I call upon the exalted experts of XPC - to toss an idea - [this is true groveling-] :help: :help:
Thanks C - BTW - I don't figure this is anything more than a driver/flash bios issue - because those were where the problems began.