PS/2 9577 s/i - Are on-board SVGA failures common?

[ButINeededThatName]

So I have two 9577s/i systems that for the longest time I thought had dead system boards as I would only get a "flash" on the display upon powering the system on followed by no video and no startup beep. Well, today after deciding to work on these two systems again (and getting nowhere, again) I walked away from it while it was still powered on to go do something else and to my surprise, after about five minutes I heard a startup beep from the other room. Well, my curiosity peaked and I decided to slap an XGA card into system and waddya know, it actually works! Turns out it was taking it's sweet time POST before this for some reason and all that the on-board SVGA was dead the whole time. I did this same process for my other system and it was the same case, although this does unfortunately mean I can't use any adapters that require the AVE extension slot.

Anyways, story out of the way, Is this sort of failure common or at least known about by any of my fellow Microchannel nuts on here? I know I'm asking with only a test-pool of two, but even then two-for-two seems strange for an uncommon failure, although I could just be unlucky. None of the capacitors look like they've lost their lunch, though that doesn't necessarily mean they aren't bad. If there's hope for saving it I'd definitely prefer to, as it would both be better than using a standard XGA-1 card and having the ability to use AVE adapters (which I planned to) in these systems.

 

[ardent-blue]

Quite wise of you to finally admit your addiction, it is the first step towards cleaning up...

Lacuna Video

What is the version of the S3 chip? The "928" is the chip ID, "G" or "P" revision?

Who made the RAMDAC? AT&T or Brooktree? Date code?

Disable all system board COM ports. It is possumble that a conflict exists between a COM port I/O address and that of the S3 chip.

SurePath BIOS? Level 08 should fix most problems.

g7jt60a.exe 76/77 BIOS Revision Level 8 (Build 60A) (zipped image)
g7jt61a.exe 76/77 BIOS Revision Level 9 (Build 61A) (zipped image)

Once you get one to pop again, run system programs, do Ctrl-A at the main menu, run diags ONLY on the on-board video.

 

[ButINeededThatName]

​​​​​Well it looks like the onboard SVGA on one system decided to wake from it's slumber while the planar on the other just decided to take a permanent nap (fancy way of saying it died). You win some you lose some, I guess.

I decided to use two monitors to troubleshoot this; One plugged into the XGA card to start the diagnostics and one into the SVGA to see if anything popped up during said diagnostics. I'm not sure what the issue was, but the second I started the diag. on the on-board video, it decided to output something and it's been fine ever since. I seem to attract some of the strangest of problems. That's not a bad thing though, the challenge is fun.

As to not leave your questions unanswered though...

The working system has a "G" revision S3 chip and an AT&T RAMDAC
The now dead system has a "G" revision S3 chip and a BrookTree RAMDAC