[ccrider]

I just replaced my rage 128 in my dual 500 with a radeon 8500 driving dual displays. I'm having nothing but trouble...

I'm running 2 vga monitors, one through the vga out and one through the adc with the bundled adc to vga converter. The main monitor is running through the straight vga out. My resolution is set to 1600 x 1200 on both monitors.

The trouble started when I started testing out the changing desktop picture. It worked for a few seconds , then the second monitor started flickering and eventually the entire machine locked up. Hmmmmm..

So, I restarted, did the old /sbin/ repair, turned off the changing desktop, and went about the business of business. As I was working in after effects doing a ram preview (on my main monitor), the second monitor started to flicker again. It seemed whenever the disk would access, the monitor would flicker slightly. When my ram preview started playing, the second monitor flickered violently, and then......lockup.

WTF?

Anyone have any ideas? It's a pretty fresh install of Jaguar (which was clean BTW). I used to have an older radeon pci card as my second monitor which I pulled, thinking it may be the problem, but it still did it. One more interesting note - I tried running the second monitor through my old radeon and the cursor shadow appeared on both monitors, where it didn't before. Is the cursor shadow determined by the whether the main monitor is running QE? Obviously the old radeon can't run QE because it's pci (yeah, I know about the hack but no thanks).

Any ideas?

Thanks...

[ccrider]

bumpety bump

[pdot]

have you tried resetting the p-ram?
command-option-p-r during startup. you should hear a confirmation chime/beep.

[Cipher13]

To reset the PRAM that way, listen for 3 chimes before letting go. If you're lazy like me, open the machine, and hold the CUDA button for a few seconds. Bottom, back end of the mobo, little black flat button. Below the PCI slots, near the power cables that lead to the mobo.

I doubt this is a software problem. When the system is running, open it up and make sure the cooling fan on the R8500 is going - it could be overheating, though I doubt it. That would cause display issues that *may* make it look like the system has frozen, where it hasn't; has the system been running hot lately? Are you sure the crashing fits in with disk access, all the time? Grounding issue? Perhaps the drive isn't grounding properly, then accesses, drawing more power, flowing through the chassis to the R8500... though that doesn't make much sense, I could see something like that causing problems like this.

It's worth a shot, as much as I'm skeptical.