Paul Dokas wrote:

> I've recent aquired a new machine (PIII 650, 128MB, Adaptec 2940U2W
> and a Matrox G400 with 16MB) to replace my trusty old Pentium 133.
>
> I've put NetBSD 1.5 on it, pulled to -current without any problems, but
> I'm having troubles getting X to work.
>
> What happens is that I can start up the X server all by itself and it
> work just fine.  But, if I launch any applications that attempt to display
> something onto that X server, it displays a few rectangles and then locks
> up solid (just the X server, not the OS).  Grabbing the X server with
> gdb and doing a backtrace shows that the X server is locked up in
> MGAStormSync() which is on line 318 of:
>
>   /usr/xsrc/xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/vga256/drivers/mga/mga_storm.c
>
> Now, to complicate matters, this machine is a Compaq with all original
> parts, including the Matrox card which seems to have been supplied
> directly to Compaq by Matrox.  So, I'd have to guess that Compaq may
> have requested that Matrox make some changes to the card (possibly to
> the card's BIOS?  That might explain this problem...)
>
> I've tried changing all of the PCI and AGP related BIOS setting, it still
> doesn't work.  I've tried another AGP video card, an ATI Rage 128, it
> works just fine with X.  I've tried XFree86 4.0.3, it also locks up.
> I've even tried Windows 2000 on the machine with it's native Matrox
> G400 driver it works just fine.
>
> Anyone have any recommendations for things that I could try?  I'm
> pretty close to just going out and buying an NVidia GeForce2, but
> I'm cheap enough that I don't want to give up quite yet.
>
> Paul
> --
> Paul Dokas                                            dokas@cs.umn.edu
> ======================================================================
> Don Juan Matus:  "an enigma wrapped in mystery wrapped in a tortilla."

One recommendation I might make, since I had this problem (not quite, but
similar) with a Matrox G200 w/8MB RAM  which came built in to my HP Kayak, is
to flash the Compaq BIOS with the most current available.  This solved a few
of my problems, including the video.

Hope Compaq has an update available.

Good luck