Best Graphics Card With Win98SE Drivers?

[dencorso]

I guess you could try to actually use the NVAGP.INF from the unofficial 82.69 directly with those not so much older drivers... if so, it obviates having to edit it for each driver set... its worth to try it. Here are pointers to the 82.16 and the 81.98. As for the 77.72, I know you alredy have it, but there seem to be an older and a newer version of it, whatever that may mean. Perhaps one of those does the trick.

[rloew]

That seemed to go fine, but of course when I tried to install 77.72 to see what difference it made, it didn't know about my card.

I tried inserting the necessary information into NVAGP.INF, but I don't think I got it right, as although the driver appeared to install, it wouldn't actually work!

The ID for my card seems to be VEN_10DE&DEV_02E4&SUBSYS_22711682&REV_A2 although I think you only use the first bit up to the second ampersand.

Presumably I have to add a line for it in the [Mfg] section and [strings] section in the inf file, but I'm unsure of the actual form the entry should take.

The existing lines don't give much clue, at least not to me!

Any pointers would be most welcome.

The simplest way to add the ID is as follows:

1. Locate the two lines in NVAGP.INF that contain the number 221.

2. Duplicate each line, putting the copied line immediately after the original line.

3. In the two copied lines, replace the three instances of 0221 with 02E4

4. Replace the number 6200 with 7950.

5. Save the File.

I then found Rudolph had posted on another thread that he'd got rid of the shut-down problem on one system by substituting some files with their 77.72 versions.

These were NVDISP.DRV, NVCORE.VXD, NVARCH16.DLL, and NVSVC.EXE.

I tried that and it didn't work, in fact the driver stopped working altogether when I substituted them.

Replacing those four files effectively downversioned the Driver. Further experiments did not find any advantage to doing this over just using the older version. I suspect that 77.72 simply will not work. It didn't work with a 7200 GS.

I don't think the problem is related to RAM as using the PATCHMEM Options, or reducing the available RAM, didn't help solve any problems with any NVIDIA Card.

[dencorso]

Replacing those four files effectively downversioned the Driver. Further experiments did not find any advantage to doing this over just using the older version. I suspect that 77.72 simply will not work. It didn't work with a 7200 GS.

I'm not so sure. According to my > 1 GiB list, Multibooter uses a:

Video card: nVIDIA 7800 GS OC (256 MiB; AGP 8x)

* NO shutdown problems after fiddling with GeForce (77.72) driver *

It's possible that 256 MiB x 512 MiB be the main problem, but if not, if 77.72 worked with a 7800, there is a chance that it'll also work with 7950 (despite your negative result with the 7200). And, then, there are both the 81.92 and the 82.16 as further alternatives, besides the BFG custom driver for the 7800 Cyker mentioned some posts above.

@Cyker: could you please give us a link to that driver?

[rloew]

Replacing those four files effectively downversioned the Driver. Further experiments did not find any advantage to doing this over just using the older version. I suspect that 77.72 simply will not work. It didn't work with a 7200 GS.

I'm not so sure. According to my > 1 GiB list, Multibooter uses a:

Video card: nVIDIA 7800 GS OC (256 MiB; AGP 8x)

* NO shutdown problems after fiddling with GeForce (77.72) driver *

It's possible that 256 MiB x 512 MiB be the main problem, but if not, if 77.72 worked with a 7800, there is a chance that it'll also work with 7950 (despite your negative result with the 7200). And, then, there are both the 81.92 and the 82.16 as further alternatives, besides the BFG custom driver for the 7800 Cyker mentioned some posts above.

@Cyker: could you please give us a link to that driver?

I wasn't implying that the 77.72 Driver doesn't work with 7xxx Cards, I use it with a 7100 PCI-E Card.

I was implying that it probably won't work with Dave-H's 7950, based on his two failed attempts to use it.

512MB could be a problem, at least with the 7xxx Cards, with the 77.72 Driver.

[Cyker]

http://www.bfgtech.com/bfgr78256gsoc.aspx

Go there, click Support; should take you to the driver

Edit: Or try this: http://www.bfgtech.com/CMDocs/BFGTech/NVIDIADisplayWin9x(82_16)int.zip

Options are a bit limited as the 79xx series simply aren't supported in older drivers; It's not just a case of kludging the inf - There just aren't any codepaths for the 79xx chips afaik!

[Dave-H]

Well, tried a few more drivers today, but sadly with no success.

77.72

Even with the inf file configured correctly (thanks Rudolph!) still no go.

Installed fine, but on first reboot just got a message that "NVSVC illegal operation in KERNEL32.DLL".

After that even a reinstall didn't bring the driver back, so had to uninstall it, which at least worked OK.

81.78

Even worse!

Again installed fine, but on reboot after the splash screen the monitor just flashed and then switched off, and the OS stopped loading.

Didn't get to see any error messages!

Had to put back the MS generic VGA driver in Safe Mode to even boot again.

Also the driver wouldn't uninstall ("NVUDISP page fault in NVUDISP.EXE"). Had to use Driver Cleaner Pro to get rid of it.

82.16

I had hopes for this one as it was the first to have a series 7 card mentioned in its inf file (the 7800 GS).

Unfortunately, this driver did exactly the same thing as 81.78!

So, it looks as if Maximus-Decim's modified 82.69 driver is the only one that will actually work with the card, at least on my system.

I still have the two error messages, the one saying the network card's not working (when it is!) and the one on shut-down.

The first one is there whenever any driver is installed for the card, including the MS VGA driver, but not if there is no driver at all.

The second one is only there when the nVidia driver is installed.

And I still can't get the hardware overlay to work!

[dencorso]

So, now it seems to me that the issue with the network card is unrelated, even if it began on your first installation of the nVidia drivers... As it is relatively harmless, we can troubleshoot it last.

The usual workaround for the shut-down issue with nVidia drivers is to set a password in the BIOS. Then, instead of shutting down, you reboot and, when the machine pauses for you to enter the password, you turn it off using the smart-button in the case.

BTW, you probably have a third issue you're not even aware of: you probably cannot "Restart in MS-DOS mode" anymore, too.

The "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and the much-more-troubleshooted-already shut-down issues have proven unsolvable, up to now, for the 7 series, at least. But now we know 512 MiB is not really an issue, and that's great news!

Just to check things out, how does the system behave in case you take your vidocapture card out (just for testing, of course)?

[rloew]

The "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and the much-more-troubleshooted-already shut-down issues have proven unsolvable, up to now, for the 7 series, at least.

The 7100 GS PCI-E Card, which works with the 77.72 Driver, does not have the shut-down issue. It is only 128MB though.

[dencorso]

The "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and the much-more-troubleshooted-already shut-down issues have proven unsolvable, up to now, for the 7 series, at least.

The 7100 GS PCI-E Card, which works with the 77.72 Driver, does not have the shut-down issue. It is only 128MB though.

What about the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" issue?

Moreover I think that the higher the drive number, the most likely their manifestation.

For my ancient GeForce 2 MX 400, anything above 29.42 gives both. As one moves to newer cards, higher numbered drivers become a must, and the likelihood of not having any working driver without those issues becomes higher. I think they're most probably due to an increasing lack of interst on the part of nVidia for the 9x/ME family OSes, probably from the 6x.xx drivers onwards.

So, it looks as if Maximus-Decim's modified 82.69 driver is the only one that will actually work with the card, at least on my system.

And the 7950 are possibly the most up-to-date cards able to work with 9x/ME... I don't recall anyone having had any success with newer cards.

@Cyker: Thanks!

[rloew]

The "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and the much-more-troubleshooted-already shut-down issues have proven unsolvable, up to now, for the 7 series, at least.

The 7100 GS PCI-E Card, which works with the 77.72 Driver, does not have the shut-down issue. It is only 128MB though.

What about the "Restart in MS-DOS mode" issue?

I never used the "Restart in MS-DOS mode", so I knew nothing about it.

I tried it on my 7100 GS System.

It switches to MS-DOS without problem. It does not switch back.

I have had problems restarting Windows, usually after Graphics Settings Changes, on many Computers.

I tried "Restart in MS-DOS mode" on my 8400 GS System, with STD VGA Driver. It only restarted once in three tries.

In all other cases it froze loading VMCPD.

[Dave-H]

Just wanted to report that "Restart in DOS Mode" works fine on my system. It's only the shutdown command that produces the "Write fault error writing device AUX" message instead of the "Windows 98 is shutting down" splash screen.

Also, the only relevant setting in my BIOS for the card is the AGP Aperture setting.

The options are 256, 128, 64, and 32 MB.

I have it set to 128 MB, which I think is the default.

Any thoughts on whether this is the best setting?

[dencorso]

I'm glad to know you don't have the "Restart in DOS Mode" issue. But this led me to think about another possibility: What is the update state of your 98SE? Is it plain-vanilla or do you have one of Gapes's uSP applied? If you don't, perhaps it might solve your issues... Now, take care: save all of autoexec.bat, config.sys, msdos.sys, system.ini, win.ini and control.ini before applying it. And don't do it before we discuss some more, because Gape's uSP will interfere with the RAM Limitation Patch, since it updates VMM.VxD, so we must prepare for that, too. However, it's premature for me to elaborate on this, because you may have it already applied, from before adding RLoew's patch...

[Dave-H]

Yes, I've got all the bells and whistles on my Windows 98 installation!

Gape's SP 2.1a, soporific's Auto-Patcher December 2007 full with the December 2008 update, and (much more recently but still before the graphics card update) KernelEx 4.0 Final 2, which I had to apply to run Opera 10.60.

All very wonderful enhancements, not forgetting Rudolph's patch too of course!

Is the error message about my network card likely being caused by a memory problem which later in the boot sequence resolves itself?

IIRC when I was having the start-up problem a few years ago which turned out to be because the registry was too big (since cured by Rudolph's patch) one of the ways to get the system to start was to go into Safe Mode and disable the network card.

It was something to do with it being an Intel integrated NIC which uses low level memory.

I'm sure Rudolph will remind me what it was all about!

[dencorso]

Then, this is not correct:

vmm32.vxd (real mode), vcache.vxd, vmm.vxd: 4.10.0.2222 with RAM Limitation Patch 6.0 (with /M Option)

* swapfile set to zero size *

... it should be:

vmm32.vxd (real mode), vcache.vxd, vmm.vxd: 4.10.0.2226 with RAM Limitation Patch 6.1 (with /M Option)

* swapfile set to zero size *

instead, right?

[Dave-H]

My vcache.vxd and vmm.vxd files don't seem to have any version numbers.

I'm actually now using RAM Limitation Patch version 7.0, with the /m option.

Had a play today with the AGP Aperture setting.

To cut a very long story short, changing it made no apparent difference on Windows XP, perhaps as expected, but on Windows 98 the driver only seems to work properly with it set to 128 MB.

On any other setting, the driver installs OK, but doesn't work.

I only get a limited range of settings (maximum 16 bit colour for instance) and no nVidia controls at all!

No amount of uninstalling and reinstalling the driver seemed to make any difference unless the AGP aperture was set to 128, after which it eventually sprang to life.

It's just as well that it happened to be on 128 in the first place, or I would have probably assumed that the driver just didn't work!

Anyway, at least it does work with one setting!

I wanted to try and see if any of the error messages went away with a different setting, but I don't think that's an option anyway by the looks of it.

I'm wondering if the overlay problem is simply being caused by the fact that the card has 512 MB of memory on-board.

My capture card drivers were designed many years before cards with anything like that amount were even on the horizon.

Somebody said that there was a 256 MB version of the card, and the fact that the box has 512 MB on it as a separate sticker would seem to bear that out.

I'm now going to investigate whether it's possible to disable half the memory on my card, perhaps by getting into its BIOS settings.

I don't think physically removing anything is an option as it would be on a motherboard, and I don't think there's any jumpers on the card, unless they're hiding under the fan casing!

I can live without the overlay working in Windows 98, but I must get it working somehow in XP!