Windows ME on Acer Aspire 5502WXMi (ATI Mobility Radeon X700 problem)

[dencorso]

Congratulations!

9x/ME is for the unswerving only, nowadays.

And, of course, welcome to MSFN!

[pkkilleru]

LOL!

 

Bad luck is after me, now that i sorted out the incompatible BIOS and the mystery hardware conflict, i have another problem and that is the driver. i tried the following drivers:

 

http://windows98.xf.cz/vga/fw9x8269.rar by ZakMcKracken84 ( also you can find other interesting windows 98 stuff on that Czech website http://windows98.xf.cz/ )

 

and 

 

http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE by Maximus-Decim

 

Neither one of them worked, windows would load until right before showing the mouse cursor, then there would be a black screen (with the laptop panel backlight lit) and i would guess a system hang

after forcing shut down, windows refuses to load the video driver anymore giving me error code 11 and something about ASD

 

then again the standard PCI graphics adapter default driver works just fine, so i am sure there are no conflicts anymore, if there are i have seen that windows lets me know

 

If anybody knows of a windows 98 driver that is compatible with nvidia geforce go cards or even quadro fx go (1000, 1400) i would try anything at this point

 

PS i ordered a nano flash programmer to try other bioses from other manufacturers in a last act of desperation ( here it is http://www.ebay.com/itm/271313593344?_trksid=p2059210.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT )

 

and here goes me drowning right before i reach the shore

 

**** shame, i tell you!

[pkkilleru]

I haven't forgotten about this project and i just got word that my PLCC32 eeprom USB programmer got in, i highly doubt that changing bioses from another manufacturer but keeping the specs of the platform will work, but it's my last resort, stay tuned.

[pkkilleru]

I finally give up, Acer keeps everything to themselves, even to the point where the motherboard does not accept any other flash rom than the one in the specs (even if it's the same size, package, pinout, memory rows, etc).

 

The idea that an Acer motherboard would work with a bios rom from another manufacturer was folly, still i wanted to get it out of the way.

 

So long story short, the closest i got to a working windows 9x environment with a PCI express video card, in a most modern mobile system, was with ATI mobility radeon x700, even though the driver could not recognize the laptop display properly (i think if the drivers would have been specifically written for mobile, it would have worked) still it works great on an external monitor

 

a major breakthrough was to discover that the acer aspire 5500 (EFL50) can be flashed with the acer travelmate 4150 (EDL00) bios to support the NVIDIA geforce go 6600 (please do this at your own risk and the best way through crisis recovery with a usb floppy disk drive)

 

running windows 9x with the nvidia card was a major disappointment for this platform because windows does not allocate the proper resources for it and therefore it returns code 12 conflict in device manager, still there is a workaround this problem by configuring the card's resources manually in safe mode, although the default VGA windows driver functions properly and installs the monitor, the available modified NVIDIA driver does not work properly, it tries to load when windows boots and then the computer restart and the video card gives error code 11 in device manager

 

and here is where i sign off, it was a nice try, great challenge to overcome a mount only to find a higher impassable one in the distance....

 

thank you every one for your attention, suggestions and support

 

admins please close this thread

[Drugwash]

Well, there's no saying you didn't try. Good luck on your next challenge!