Old ATI Radeon card, picture freezes using overlays

J

JERONI.PAUL

Hello

I own an old ATI Radeon 7000 card (labeled RV100 on the board), 64 Mb
of RAM, two monitor outputs and one SVideo that has three significant
problems:

* using recent drivers (catalyst 5.11 for example) the picture freezes
after about a second playing video using overlays, audio continues and
if its window is moved or resized it might update the picture or play a
few frames and freeze again. The player hangs when it is closed and if
overlays are disabled it plays OK. The same happens using a digital TV
capture card (MPEG2).

* using old driver releases like catalyst 3.x or pre-catalyst versions
(the ones that came in its CD) it plays fine with overlays, but
occasionaly freezes the picture for a few seconds and does that
persistently if menus or animations are played at the same time (for
example minimizing or maximizing another Window, the window animation
is frozen at half way together with the video, or WinXP pop-up menu
fade-in sometimes shows a half-brighting menu for these seconds).

* After some random time it'll suddently turn the picture into a mess
of flashing coloured vertical bars. Suspending or restarting the
computer fixes the problem for a while. Its heat sink is not even warm
to the touch.

The fan is running fine. I've tested this card on another computer with
the same sympthoms, it is definitely a problem with this card. I've
identified and measured its 3 power rails, 1,8V, 2,5V and 3,3V, they
seem to stay solid on their values.

I found that the vertical bars problem apparently is some memory chip
leaving the data bus hi-impedance because poking around the databus
lines makes the bars flash or change colour. It is not always the same
chip, which makes me think of some corruption of the memory chip
programmable registers instead of a failing RAM module.

I guess it must be a power supply problem (I mean the onboard
regulators on the ATI card) or filter capacitors. ¿Anyone has seen
that before? I might try paralleling a 100uF capacitor to every supply
rail.

I know it is an old card not worth the effort (before you mention that)
but it is more than I need for my HTPC. It is a nice card because its
two monitor outputs and built-in MPEG-2 acceleration.

Thank you
 
F

First of One

What happens when you play movies without overlays (like VMR7 or VMR9 mode)?
A decent app like Media Player Classic will let you choose among several
different rendering modes.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358&release_id=403110

--
"War is the continuation of politics by other means.
It can therefore be said that politics is war without
bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed."

Hello

I own an old ATI Radeon 7000 card (labeled RV100 on the board), 64 Mb
of RAM, two monitor outputs and one SVideo that has three significant
problems:

* using recent drivers (catalyst 5.11 for example) the picture freezes
after about a second playing video using overlays, audio continues and
if its window is moved or resized it might update the picture or play a
few frames and freeze again. The player hangs when it is closed and if
overlays are disabled it plays OK. The same happens using a digital TV
capture card (MPEG2).

* using old driver releases like catalyst 3.x or pre-catalyst versions
(the ones that came in its CD) it plays fine with overlays, but
occasionaly freezes the picture for a few seconds and does that
persistently if menus or animations are played at the same time (for
example minimizing or maximizing another Window, the window animation
is frozen at half way together with the video, or WinXP pop-up menu
fade-in sometimes shows a half-brighting menu for these seconds).
 
J

JERONI.PAUL

First of One:
What happens when you play movies without overlays (like VMR7 or VMR9 mode)?
A decent app like Media Player Classic will let you choose among several
different rendering modes.
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=82303&package_id=84358&release_id=403110

The fault shows at some extent with all the available modes except with
Old renderer that seems to work properly. Overlay is the worst and
VMR7, VMR9 and Default renderer are inbetween, it is not so frequent
but still freezes while trying to navigate menus.

Thank you
 
J

JERONI.PAUL

Hello

Installed latest 6.11 Catalyst, the occasional freeze no longer occurs
even running other animations, but like 5.11 did, just shows the first
frame of any video rendered with overlays. Audio continues and MPC
progress bar also keeps running. If you keep moving player window the
video will keep updating but otherwise it just freezes. The app hangs
when closed.

MPC freezes when using: Default renderer, Old renderer Overlay mixer
and VMR7 (windowed). Works fine using VMR9 (windowed), VMR7 and VMR9
(renderless) (but loses some frames, VMR9 never worked too well for me,
seems to need tons of processing power).

I happened to plug a TV on the SVideo out and found it fixes that
problem, then all works properly and video shows in both monitor and
TV. Also works if only a TV is plugged (no monitor). But if two
monitors are plugged then problem persists (even tough it seems that TV
out and secondary monitor out share the same DAC) but the video shows
only on primary.

I might just put two 75 ohm resistors on the SVideo out and go that
way, yet I would like to know why and if it has a solution. Could that
be a problem with the firmware of the card?

Thank you
 
J

JERONI.PAUL

I noticed that neither the BIOS nor Windows is assigning an IRQ to this
card. Tried a similar Radeon 7000 that I have lying around and it gets
an IRQ, and in another PC this card doesn't get an IRQ either.

Retrieved the BIOS from the card with flashrom and it shows as if the
card was Built by ATI but I guess someone tampered with this since the
card has no labels at all and I guess it is from a third party. Also
the clocks seem to be set a bit low at 166/142 and should be 183/183 or
200/200 since it has 200 MHz Hynix rated memory chips. I tested with
ATItool and up to 200MHz it works fine at more there start to be
glitches.

My card is identical to this one:
http://members.sparedollar.com/valuedepot/ATI-7000-64MB-AGP-1.jpg
I'm looking for its original BIOS.
 
J

JERONI.PAUL

I fixed the problem. Tried various firmwares without any change around
the IRQ and concluded that the card was supposed to work that way.
Started testing various Catalyst versions and found that 4.5 works
great with this card. Older versions like 3.4 have some problem playing
MPEG files, 3.10, 4.1, etc. also work fine. 4.6 and up hang.
 

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