Video corruption after the welcome screen displays

[tgoodhew]

Hey All,

I just purchased a license for 6.1 and I'm trying to run it on a Dolch Pac 65 (CI6BM motherboard with a Trident graphics chipset).

It boots correctly, displays the splash screen and then displays the welcome screen ("Welcome to Gibson Research Corporatio's SpinRite6.1"). Almost immediately I get corrupt video being displayed.

If I hit ESC twice then it drops down to DOS without a problem. If I run "spinright /?" I get the help information displayed.

Any thoughts?

Thanks.

 

[DanR]

Any thoughts?

Yes!

Perform a simple edit on the config.sys file and REMark out the SPLASH line. Save the file and reboot.

What seems to be happening: SpinRite must switch the video system from text to graphics, display the blue SR 6.1 Splash screen for a few seconds, and then switch the video system back to text. On a few systems the video system will not take kindly to this switching. Eliminating the Splash screen solves the problem.

With the Splash screen thus eliminated SpinRite 6.1 will launch immediately and run without further ado!

 

[tgoodhew]

Thank you Dan for the suggestion and quick reply.

Unfortunately, that wasn't the solution - Here is what the screen looks like after the first display of the Welcome page:

 

[DanR]

Hmmm . . . That is a 1990's vintage PC. It is likely too old for SpinRite 6.1 to be properly compatible with it.

However, as SpinRite 6.1 owner you can download SpinRite 6.0 free of charge.

Just initiate a new download of SpinRite 6.1, but before the final click, edit spinrite.exe in the link to sr60.exe for SpinRite 6.0.

SR 6.0 will likely have no problem with that old hardware.

 

[tgoodhew]

Hmmm . . . That is a 1990's vintage PC. It is likely too old for SpinRite 6.1 to be properly compatible with it.

However, as SpinRite 6.1 owner you can download SpinRite 6.0 free of charge.

Just initiate a new download of SpinRite 6.1, but before the final click, edit spinrite.exe in the link to sr60.exe for SpinRite 6.0.

SR 6.0 will likely have no problem with that old hardware. :}

Thanks again Dan - I just downloaded SR60.exe and it boots and seems to run fine.

Is there a debug build or logging option that might be useful to identify why the 6.1 software is failing? It's probably isn't worth it from GRC's perspective but I thought I'd ask.

 

[PHolder]

debug build

It's worth noting that the default behaviour of 6.1 is to log, and there is a 6.1 option to add DIAGS to the command line which will dump some diagnostic info into a .DBG file. Also, there is the SCREEN option which will reset the video display subsystem, so give that a try. (See "What are SpinRite’s command line options?" on https://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm .)

Assuming you build your SpinRite media with the built-in image tool, you should have a few debug utilities that come along for free, BUT they're mostly focused on detecting [strange] disk devices and exploring RAM issues. I think, if you were to get anywhere with a debug build, it would be one that @Steve would make custom, just for your hardware, which he did during development, but I don't know if would be inclined to do just for a less-compatible display device that likely very few people are using. I tagged Steve above, so he may, at some point, eventually pop in and reply to you directly.

 

[tgoodhew]

Thanks for the suggestions. Tried VIDEO and it didn't have any impact. DIAGS didn't write anything useful (or really at all apart from the header info etc) to the DBG file.

I have 6.0 working so I'll just hang with that and look forward to hearing something in the future.

 

[DanR]

You could try the FORCEBIOS command line switch. That will cause SpinRite 6.1 to emulate SpinRite 6.0 by working through the system BIOS.

SpinRite 6.1's native drivers may be too aggressive for this PC. The forcebios switch takes a much less aggressive approach. However, the trouble seems to occurr before SpinRite ever starts scanning, so this may not work.

 

[tgoodhew]

Thanks Dan - I'll give that a try tomorrow and report back

 

[ColbyBouma]

(See "What are SpinRite’s command line options?" on https://www.grc.com/sr/faq.htm .)

@Steve your list is incomplete. It's missing commands like NOREWRITE.

Command Line · Wiki · GRC Community / SpinRite 6.1 Wiki · GitLab

GitLab.com

gitlab.com

 

[SeanBZA]

ISTR that SR6.1 uses newer assembly instructions that were not present on the older Pentium processors, but which got added later on. Thus it likely is attempting to execute an error routine, which also contains those new instructions, and thus fails into a hard loop, ignoring anything other than power off and hardware reset to force a warm boot.