CompuServe Messages

Phil, I am all too familiar with the black screen you describe. It has followed my A2000 through a motherboard revision and still comes back to haunt me. I get it mostly when using SID, a file manager type-program. I have a GVP controller and a 40 meg Quantum, a Live!2000 board and, like you, a Microbotics 8-Up DIP. The only thing I can figure is that possibly the 8-UP is very sensitive to noise and that harddisk activity can sometimes make it go bananas. The only way I can even use the Live!2000 is by putting the 8-UP in the leftmost slot and putting the Live! in the rightmost slot, with the hardcard in the middle -taking up 3 slots!- :^( The clincher is that back when I had a REV 3.9 motherboard, the three cards coexisted peacefully and I had no blackout problems. Even then, though, I would sometimes have gurus while doing ray traces with Turbo Silver. That is when I first suspected a memory/noise problem and, indeed, segregating the memory board as far as possible from the other boards seemed to do the trick. Anyone else care to comment? I'd love to find a way to run my machine without having to play musical slots to get everything to work. Nick