ATI Radeon X1800XT for Windows 9x?

[Destro]

This is tired at this point. Radeon Omega Drivers 3.8.221, and Cat 6.2 were the last drivers for win 9x.  You will find this easily if you search.

Along with those drivers ATI listed what chips were supported.  If you want you can look in the drivers INF and see for yourself.

If the card you want to install doesn't even remotely resemble a supported a chip listed in the INF or official readme. Than it's not going to work.

It's not rocket science you can't use like a driver that is designed for like a totally different piece of hardware on some other piece of hardware.  Because it's not written for that chipset.

Around the time Later radeon cards started coming out AMD bought ATI and chips were getting simple refreshes. Some of the refreshed parts can be coaxed into working because only minor architectural changes were made if any were made at all.  But major architectural changes is what this thread is all about.   A major architectural change would be like the difference between a Nvidia TnT2 and like a gforce GTX 9800.  Most people are smart enough not to try to install a gtx9800 with Nvidia TnT2 drivers for windows 98.  ANd think that oh? we can just mod the bios of the Gtx9800 make it think its a TnT2 and the driver for win 98 will will work.

 

Theres a reason I just made a simple response to the thread.  It's a waste of time to elaborate. 

[Cawsign]

This is what I'm looking at:

Radeon X800 XL Feb. 2, 2005 R430 110nm 256MB 400MHz 980MHz 16:6:16:16 6400 6400 600 31GB/s GDDR3 256

Radeon X1800 XT Oct. 5, 2005 R520 90nm 256MB 625MHz 750MHz 16:8:16:16 10000 10000 1250 48GB/s GDDR3 256

The 90nm cards require even more heat and power than the 130nm cards did. Why is that if it's a more efficient process? Because in spite of "RingMemoryTechnologyTM" and "revolutionary new architecture" all they did was find a way of upping the stable clock speed. You can change the thin film that the transistors are printed on, but what you've got are the same copper traces to the same logic as before.

That's not the only speculative reason I've got for trying it.

I think Catalyst 6.2 under windows XP might well support the X1800 series, so the card already had support in this version. For one reason or another ATI locked them out, and they did it in a way which was more sophisticated than cutting them from the INI file. Perhaps catastrophic instability is the reason. Perhaps they just didn't want to support 9x and were for reasons unknown to me, thorough in blocking it.

Whatever the case you get articles like this one: http://www.hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/3603-ati-radeon-x1800-xt-preview/?page=2 which says: "Outwardly, R520 is essentially, and ATI will hate me for saying so, little more than a highly clocked R480." Good news for me! Except that it also says not long afterwards: "feeding everything with a new memory controller"... A new memory controller which probably doesn't behave the same way an R430's did.

Now then, like a christmas pudding, the proof will probably come from the eating. Speaking of which I'll probably have to wait until after christmas before these cards even arrive. So we can argue over whether Bill Gates intended it or not sometime in the new year. I bought the card specifically for this experiment, so it's likely that's what we're going to do.

[jaclaz]

11 hours ago, Destro said:

It's pretty simple its like getting a driver that will power a apple.  Then trying to get that same driver to power a orange.  It's not going to work.

Research at NASA has however proved that comparing apples with oranges has some scientific validity, even after thousands or millions people used the analogy as an example of something impossible or improper, JFYI:

https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

All in all, notwithstanding your (and other people) efforts:

12 hours ago, Destro said:

I know it doesn't work because I have tried it.  It's been experimented by 100s of people, a simple google serach would tell you that.  The fact that you can't find any info on anyone in the history of man doing this if you used 10 differnt search engines and spent 2 months shifting through the wayback machine should be an indication that it wont work. .  I have tried like Omega Rad drivers that you are probably too young to know about.  that have been really good at getting newer cards to run on 98. ...

I personally tend to remain possibilistic, never say never, tomorrow a breakthrough may still happen.

jaclaz

[Destro]

Ok welp you can try Digital-FLEM.  You need .net 4.0 I believe to run it.  Then try adding the card to the 98se driver. I know it will add old cards to newer drivers.  Don't know if it will work with cat 6.2.  You can try to edit the 6.2 drivers yourself and add all of the pnp strings for your card and then force the driver to install.  If that doesn't work.

[PROBLEMCHYLD]

10 hours ago, jaclaz said:

Research at NASA has however proved that comparing apples with oranges has some scientific validity, even after thousands or millions people used the analogy as an example of something impossible or improper, JFYI:

https://www.improbable.com/airchives/paperair/volume1/v1i3/air-1-3-apples.html

Man... You have stirred up some controversy with this reference. Thank you, ol' great one!!!!! I will be debating this over the holidays. Happy Holidays to everyone.

P.S

We are already fighting. Thanks a lot. LOL

[pangoomis]

NVIDIA did actually made official 7xxx drivers, remember these?:

https://web.archive.org/web/20070202110210/http://www.bfgtech.com/7800GS_256.html

ATI never made driver for Xxxx, not even for any OEM.

Unlike WDM, which 98SE shares with Win2K, in terms of Network/AC97 Audio/USB/HID drivers (missed any?), Win9x drivers are propietary, and were never used by any other system, period. If they don't exist, they DO NOT exist! Not even Russians can fix that.

[Cawsign]

First I've had faulty power buttons, both on the case and at the outlet. It's a bit like finding two spiders in the bathtub: why are they so inconvenient? how did they both get there?

So I swapped things around and the test rig now gives 100% gpu rpm and no display out. The board I thought I'd use is an unusual AMD development board, and I suspect it wants me to use the onboard DVI port only. It's one of those ports that's got no holes for the 4 little pins that sit on either side of the big oblong one.

I'm going to play around with display adapters and possibly even build a 2nd test rig ~ I don't blame the card yet. Although this card has the most unusual curvature to it that I have ever seen. It's my fault and all, for not understanding the "like new" euphemism in the listing.

I was wondering: Can 9x be installed to a SATA hard drive? or to a USB drive? Because otherwise I'm gonna have to buy a special hard drive just for testing 9x

[rloew]

9x can be installed to a SATA Hard Drive but will probably need my SATA Patch.

Installing to an USB Drive would require some modification to the Installation process.