[G4] Video card conflicts

[Ron Steinke]

On Oct 4, 2004, at 5:16 PM, Kevin Willis wrote:

I have a 400 Mhz Gigabit G4.  When I bought it (used) I put a PCI ATI 
Radeon 7000 video card in it.  I left the 16 mb AGP card that came with 
the system in it, although it is not being used.  I haven't had any 
problems with the system until now.  I installed a 1 Ghz Sonnet Encore 
card last weekend, and I have been having a lot of trouble keeping this 
thing up and running.  I keep having apps. lock up, kernel panics etc.  
I am wondering if there might be a conflict with the CPU dealing with 
the 2 video cards in the system.  Could that be the case?  Should I 
pull the AGP card and leave that part of the case open until  can 
afford a good AGP card?

BTW, I am running OS 10.3.5 with 1 Gb of RAM.

I really doubt that you are having trouble because of the two video 
cards.

Your setup sounds identical to mine, except for the troubles you seem 
to be having. My G4 was also a 400MHz Gbit model until I upgraded to 
800MHz and then 1GHz Sonnet cards.

My G4 Gbit is just sailing along without any real problems at all these 
days. I never noticed any problems with having two video cards (the 
same models you have) installed except that I had to select the correct 
monitor for my menu bar and icons to be visible on the desktop.

How did you arrive at OS-X.3.5? I did the upgrade from OS-9.2.2 to 
OS-X, OS-X.1, OS-X.2, and now OS-X.3.5 in increments, not as a single 
upgrade step. After each upgrade, I went through the steps to rebuild 
the desktop file and repair permissions.

All these upgrades were AFTER installing the 1Gb RAM and 
trouble-shooting a couple of non-compatible RAM sticks. The RAM sticks 
just refused to show up in the Get Info window or System Profiler. 
Since I put in all compatible sticks, they all show up and perform like 
they are supposed to.

I suggest running some utility program like Cron or MacJanitor and 
repairing the permissions as a first step to try.

Good luck.