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From: funkstr@ucscb.ucsc.edu (Larry Hastings)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware
Subject: Sporadic problem with VGA coming up in -- black and white mode?
Message-ID: <6712@darkstar.ucsc.edu>
Date: 8 Sep 90 11:47:35 GMT
Sender: usenet@darkstar.ucsc.edu
Distribution: na
Organization: Knowledge Dynamics Corporation
Lines: 37



My housemate's 386 has a Genoa 5400 Super-VGA card.  Every 10th time it
boots up (on the average), it comes up thinking that it's some sort of black
and white card -- the text colors available are black, lo-white, hi-white, and
I think underlined.  (A lot of colors don't show up at all.)  This is very
reminiscent of MDA -- but nothing has asked it to be in an MDA mode.  Not only
that, but trying to convince it to go to color either doesn't work, or hangs
the machine (for instance, changing to a super-VGA mode).  The problem has
never gone away without rebooting, and (usually) it takes a couple of reboots
before the problem does go away.

We had long attributed this to a bug in the card -- he got one of the very
first ones, and it would not suprise me if he had buggy ROMs.  However,
this has now started happening on _my_ machine.  (I just got my machine about
a month ago, and this has started happening within the last week.)  I don't
recall what kind of VGA I have -- suffice to say it's pretty darn generic,
non-Super VGA.

I don't think this is some sort of software virus, because:
	a) My housemate's machine also runs UNIX, and it's happened under
	   UNIX as well,
	b) it's also happened when booting from floppy, and
	c) if it was a virus, it would probably be detected by a nice current
	   version of SCAN (which says that both systems are clean).

Now I'm stumped.  It's a really pissy annoying problem, too -- it can take
several reboots to get it to go away.  Like 10 on a bad day.

Have any of you had similar problems, and (if so) do you know of a solution?
--
larry hastings, the galactic funkster, funkstr@ucscb.ucsc.edu

I don't speak for Knowledge Dynamics or UC Santa Cruz, nor do they speak for me

"I am now telling the computer EXACTLY what he can do with a lifetime supply
 of chocolate!"   --"Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory"