rec.autos.simulators

The problem may not be quite what you think it is. A while back I had a
perfectly good 486/66 system with a Diamond Viper video card in it
running Windows 95. One of the memory chips on the Viper developed a
problem and the card needed to go to Diamond for repairs. I couldn't
afford any downtime because my wife and I both used the computer to
do school work, so I simply bought an ATI Graphics Pro Turbo card to
replace the Viper.

After I installed the newer card and its drivers, Windows 95 crashed
periodically and sometimes hung when booting. It took a while to get
through to Microsoft technical support, but when I did I was told that
"some ATI cards have problems with older system BIOSes when running
Windows 95." When I subsequently replaced the computer's motherboard
(which was a couple of years old) with a newer one that had a newer
BIOS, the ATI card worked fine.

What does this have to do with your problem with a Matrox card? If
your situation is anything like mine was, perhaps you're seeing a
combination of events that revolves around installing the Matrox
card. For example, what vintage were the three other video boards
that worked? And how old is your computer and BIOS? It would be
unfortunate if you now have one of the hardware/firmware/software
combinations that doesn't work well, but it's hardly impossible
given all the combinations possible with PCs.

There are so many people successfully using Matrox video boards
(I have a Millenium that works great) that I suspect the problem
isn't quite as simple as "Don't buy Matrox unless you want to throw
away your money." Had I not done more investigating, I wouldn've
made the same claim about an otherwise perfectly good ATI product.

Frank Calloway

... you want to throw away your money.

        Here's the story: based on the input on their previous products, I've made
the mistake of purchasing a Matrox Mystique video board. The board speed is
great, but...
        I've installed it in a perfectly working machine; it worked before with no
problems with 3 different video boards, which means there is really a
problem either with Matrox hardware or its drivers. Specifically, Windows
95 crashes with no apparent reason, everytime I try to use any software
that writes to the video, either using DirectX or not. First time I've
installed it, it crashed with a simple screen saver; I couldn't run
Matrox's bundle of applications (MechWarrior2) or Microsoft's Monster Truck
Madness.
        Then I reinstalled it, and it seemed to work for a while (2 days!); then
it started to crash again, and now with sound (*.WAV) applications! I've
tried Matrox support, via e-mail, because I happen to live in Brazil, and
their support is an electronic and stupid version of their lousy manual;
they keep asking the same stupid questions (after a delay of 7 days or
more). I mean, I'm no newbie to PC hardware; I've written a detailed e-mail
describing the problem, but their answers were obnoxious.
        Be warned: DON'T BUY FROM MATROX, UNLESS YOU WANT A HEADACHE AND HAVE
MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW.

--
     ________
    /    |__ \          Eduardo Piovani Dias - Systems Programmer
   /     |  \ \         State University of Campinas, SP - Brazil (UNICAMP)
  /      |   ) \        "Gleb Wataghin" Physics Institute            (IFGW)
 (------ |__/   )       "John David Rogers" Computing Center        (CCJDR)


    \____|___/          

--
     ________
    /    |__ \          Eduardo Piovani Dias - Systems Programmer
   /     |  \ \         State University of Campinas, SP - Brazil (UNICAMP)
  /      |   ) \        "Gleb Wataghin" Physics Institute            (IFGW)
 (------ |__/   )       "John David Rogers" Computing Center        (CCJDR)


    \____|___/          

        This whole post is pretty extreme.  Matrox is responsive to
criticism.  Their products are of the highest quality and tech support
is good.  There may be a debate as to which video card is best but
in my opinion there is no debate as to Matrox's quality and com-
patibility at least with my system (Micron P133 Home Pro).

        Alan

Since when did the mystique have MTM bundled?  Whatever bud.

        You're either a moron that doesn't know how
to troubleshoot computer problems, or your motherboard
is flakey.  actually, probably both.

MONEY TO THROW OUT OF THE WINDOW.

  I have been using Millennium and now using Mystique with NO problem.
Mystique runs PERFECTLY in my machine with all options on.  

I've been running a Matrox Mystique for about three weeks with no
problems whatsoever (in Win95 AND WinNT).  Before that I was running a
Matrox Millenium for 1 year, also without a hitch.  I think you should
make sure it's the video card before you start slamming a perfectly good
manufacturer.

Bruce.

--
Edmond Underwood
U Software
Bench32 1.21 - Now available at the Bench32 web site.
Bench32 web site:  http://www.rmii.com/~underwoe/bench32.html

.. no probs at all !

The only problems are related to weak and stupid Windows95 , DirectX and so on..
.. that's the only real problem , the OS !!

I hope Windows97 will solve a lot of issues when it comes, however Windows95
it's a very hard thing to configure .. ! Just make a thing in a different way
and your system could go in a "blind" state .. all the registry entries
screwed-up and so on .. !! That's the good and the bad of the PnP , ESCD and so
on features in PCs ...

However Mystique it's a great card.. I'm trying to find a 4MB RETAIL .. I want
to buy one and probably I'll also add the powerful RainbowRunner for Video
options (Hardware MPEG-1 & AVI coprocessor, StillFrame Digitizer from PAL/NTSC,
converter to PAL/NTSC and other good features to speed up video functions to the
limit !)

Alain Roussel

All the success stories with Matrox are great, but I think the issue
here is that is does not work in this machine for some reason, and the
necessary technical support doesn't seem to be forthcoming.

Cheers
Adrian

--------------------------------------------------------------
  "It does not do to leave a live dragon
   out of your calculations."      -- Tolkien
--------------------------------------------------------------

All the success stories with Matrox are great, but I think the issue
here is that is does not work in this machine for some reason, and the
necessary technical support doesn't seem to be forthcoming.

Cheers
Adrian

PRR  While this thread is rather off-topic, I don't recall that the
bot would cancel -replies- to articles, like it's been doing to me all
of a sudden...

--------------------------------------------------------------
  "It does not do to leave a live dragon
   out of your calculations."      -- Tolkien
--------------------------------------------------------------

It seems that some guys either can't read plain english, or my spell
checker is lousy too. I'm not blamin Matrox for the quality of their
hardware or even their drivers: what I'm trying to say is, their support is
obnoxious. Also, it is stupid to blame Windows 95 for it; it has been
around for enoughf time for Matrox to know it's idiosyncrasies.

Enough of that.

Matrox aren't any worse [or any better] than many other manufacturers,
however I'm beginning to believe PC tech support is becoming/ has become
impossible.

This thread started off as a "Don't buy" thread, mainly because a few
people had problems with tech support. However, from various postings
and my own experiences, I'm rapidly coming to the conclusion that all
companies are poor at PC tech support and it's up to you to either take
the product as is and sort any problems you have out, possibly by
Internet support, or return it for something else. The poor support is
due to the magnitude of PC hardware/ software combinations out there
which no manufacturer can be reasonably expected to completely cover. If
you wan't an almost completely reliable computer DON'T BUY A PC!! :-). I
personally wish to God that a 68K based machine had been *** over
the last 15 years, 'cos we wouldn't have to worry about:

I/O Ports               )68K is memory mapped I/O
Lack of Interrupt lines )most 68K systems happily daisy-chain interrupts
Segmented Memory
Paged Memory
Low Memory
High Memory
Conventional Memory
Extended Memory
Expanded Memory
**"$"%%! memory
8086 mode, 80286 mode, 80386 mode etc
IDE (most non-PCs seemed to go SCSI early on)
Bill Gates & Microsoft [ wishful thinking :-)] with
Windows 1, 2, 3.1, 3.11, 95, NT , OS/2

Don't get me wrong, the 68K isn't perfect, but life would be much
simpler
[cue the diverging thread, sorry about the rant]
--
Mailshot Prevention - Remove any asterisks from end of reply-to address
before replying.
Disclaimer - Neither I nor any company I work for are responsible for
the
any problems caused as a result of reading or acting on my email.
   |\/|   /\  |-\
   |  |  /__\ |_/
   |  | /    \| \

????!!

The problems related to Win95 are so much difficult to resolve that only
Microsoft could fix them !! All the 3D cards will have problems under Windows95
.. that's not a question of the support by Matrox (that's the best I've ever
seen on a card for now!!) .. but with the support by Microsoft that knows all of
the bugs in Windows95 and hasn't released a good fixpack (oops..! Yeah! I'm a
OS/2 Fan! ^-^ ) for them yet !! Also it seems that Windows97 could not be out
until Summer'97 to address all of these problems .. anyway users of Windows95
are in lack of support ..

..and all of us will have to re-buy and so re-pay for Windows97 !!! This is
crazy!

Anyway.. Win95 has problems with :

 - Configuration
 - DirectX extensions
 - DirectX installer without de-installer nor detailed info/instructions and so

   on !!!!!

 - FAT16 and now FAT32 ..
 - OSR2 new probs and only for OEM with new PCs !!!
 - A lot of bugs
 - Green Book unsupported by DOS7.0's MSCDEX integrated !!
 - Bugs with SystemRegistry and config
 - Bugs with Large HDDs addressed only for USA version!
 - Winsock hangs the system .. ISDN 1.1 only for USA version...?!

More and more bugs.. so........

is that a problem by Matrox or Win95 it's not an OS but a mere Win4+DOS7 that
has too many bugs ?!