Intel G31 Graphics Driver Possible?

[kenpachi]

Hi all! First post... first of all, very impressed with the knowledge and skill here!

I know asking for display drivers for win98 is probably the most yawn-inspiring question asked, and I wouldn't ask if I didn't think it weren't remotely possible, given some of the genius work I've seen here!

Sometime last year I built a 386 and had a play with mini98 on it, and in the course of searching for a matching case cover, I ended up with an Intel G31 mainboard with an E8600, after a bit of fun and failure, I built a P4/NVS280/AWE32 for win98/dos use, though the E8600/NVS280/(no sound) was considerably faster. However, given the E8600 is a good match for max-speed win98, and the HDA audio is working (thanks guys, legendary!), the next thing I was looking at was the onboard intel G31 graphics. Boring, yes, but given w9x modded-driver supported video cards are not quite so cheap/available anymore, they should provide enough grunt for w9x gaming backed by an e8600. The other was that I saw, on retro systems revival, a w98 driver was posted that supports i945, which was what gave me (probably false) hope as i noticed that driver used ialmnt5.sys rather than ialm.vxd used in the latest official w98 supported intel graphics drivers. Unfortunately I don't have a i945 graphics chipset to test that driver with.

Anyway, I exhausted most avenues of inf-modding the G31 registry entries into the 945 (and last official w9x supported intel) driver inf, and about as much file swapping as I could think of, even ran kernelex in case the newer NT binaries checked the G31 registry entries. The furthest I got in w9x or ME was 'display not configured correctly' on startup, with bootlog showing that miniVDD couldn't start. I was kinda hoping that the driver architecture was the same, and it was just a matter of configuration stored in the registry, with the driver implementing that config.

So, if the i945 driver does actually work, is there any possible chance for a G31 driver which appears similar to the i965 graphics driver?

Edited June 19, 2022 by kenpachi

[pangoomis]

No.

Latest Intel GPU driver for Win9x is for the Extreme Graphics 2 chip included with the i865G chipset.

The drivers which you saw here: https://retrosystemsrevival.blogspot.com/2019/06/intel-945gm-display-driver-for-windows.html are NOT for 9x, not sure how they got them to work and it seems super fake.

With the motherboard you have, all you can do is install VBEMP or try your luck with the SciTech Display Doctor. Or get a compatible PCI-E/PCI GPU.

There aren't any "modded" graphic card drivers for 9x. They just involve editing INF files and putting files from different available versions of the released drivers for the best combination (which is how GeForce 7000 series work on 9x). The only real mod is the Radeon 9500 softmod that was very popular back in the day, but this was also done for XP and Radeon 9000 series was always officially compatible with 9x anyways.

Apart from the GeForce 7000 series, nothing was ever "modded" to work on 9x.

GPU compatibility maxes out at GeForce 7000 series/Radeon X850 series/Intel Extreme Graphics 2 series for 9x. Doesn't matter if AGP or PCI-E, both will work.

 

[kenpachi]

Awesome, thank you for your reply and comprehensive info!

Much appreciated.