WEIRD 'hangs' with IBM BL 486/75 -- HELP!

[Eugene Grayver]

Hullo,

I have an IBM Blue Lightning DLC/75 mhz MB. I have run Qaplus diagnostics
on it and everytime it crashes in the DMA transfer testing stage. This did
not bother me since every program ran fine. Lately I installed two
games :Ultima 7.5 and Jagged Alliance. Both games are really memory-demanding.
I have 8megs of RAM, which is sufficient for either game. When I start
the games, they crash (hang the system completely, so even CTRL_ALT_DEL doesn't
work). They crash after I use the mouse for a few seconds.

I tried different mouse drivers (I've MS mouse) to no avail. My video card
is Orchid Fahrenheit 1280+ VLB card.

I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions on how to even approach this problem.

Thanks,

Eugene.

[Andrew Wolfe]

Eugene

I am very interested in this... I have the same mother board, I know for
fact that they have trouble processing digitised speach using sound
cards, this is a recognised problem. On my machine Aethra hangs
completely as soon as it tries to make a sound effect, this is easily
solved by using setup to change it to music only. I can only assume that
this is all the result of some sort of DMA conflict and your tests seem
to confirm this. IBM will not help me as the BL mother board is not in
any genuine IBMs (mine is in an Advent - made by Dixons).

There is a company in Manchester who will fix the board for about 60UKP
which means that it must be something pretty simple. I hope that this
info helps, please let me know if turning off speech and effects in the
games solve the prob or if you find out what the hardware patch is.

BTW Dixons is a major electronics retailer and Manchester is in the North
of England.... Not that these will probably help you much...

Andrew