NVidia drivers 82.69

[celtish]

@ MDGx

Thanks for updating the nv82.69 programme again. My machine now loads fine, without the blackout and judder!

Tweaked Unofficial NVIDIA Display Driver 82.69 for Windows 98/98 SP1/98 SE/ME:

http://www.mdgx.com/files/nv8269.php

NV8269.EXE [14.5 MB, multilingual]:

http://www.mdgx.com/files/NV8269.EXE

[xrayer]

About shutdown problem - I'm 100% sure that it's caused by nvidia drivers because when I switch to standard PCI VGA then I can shutdown properly and even reboot to dos and return back to win. Once I switch to nV drivers it hangs again.

[RetroOS]

About shutdown problem - I'm 100% sure that it's caused by nvidia drivers because when I switch to standard PCI VGA then I can shutdown properly and even reboot to dos and return back to win. Once I switch to nV drivers it hangs again.

I agree but I think that using the Standard PCI VGA driver is not really proving anything.

This driver uses legacy VGA I/O and will not activate or utilise any AGP/PCI-E acceleration, system memory access, or any advanced chipset features.

I think the issue could be PCI-E as you put it:

...The problem is nowdays screwed up mobos/bioses (I mean 9xx chipsets + PCIE)

Since I have AGP and have few problems (actually I had a restart 'black screen' today!), it would appear to be an issue with new mobos and PCI-E...

But, I still think it's the drivers rather than the new hardware. Some interaction between driver and hardware?

My two cents.

[xrayer]

I agree but I think that using the Standard PCI VGA driver is not really proving anything.

This driver uses legacy VGA I/O and will not activate or utilise any AGP/PCI-E acceleration, system memory access, or any advanced chipset features.

I think the issue could be PCI-E as you put it:

You are right, maybe also some chipset problem but I think that from programmer's view the PCI-E behaves same like standard PCI. Registers are accessed same way. I also have installed INF files for i945 and ICH7 so device manager should be happy.

Since I have AGP and have few problems (actually I had a restart 'black screen' today!), it would appear to be an issue with new mobos and PCI-E...

But, I still think it's the drivers rather than the new hardware. Some interaction between driver and hardware?

I mean removing of legacy features. There was some standards how to controll some class of HW. Now it disappeared ad new vendor-specific come. E.g. messed up #SERR - NMI routing on all new MB causing SB Live emulation doesn't work for DOS games. Or when look at VGA - nVidia have VESA VBE 3.0 which allow set refresh rate under pure dos via standard way - they removed silently this feature and still marking their VESA BIOS 3.0 but I'm not sure now if CRTC setting is mandatory for 3.0. And more...

Of course, it's about interaction between driver and hardware but when HW standard is changed you have to write a new driver (because vendor doesn't write drivers for old OS) - BUT how do you write new driver when you don't have any documantation to HW?

[xrayer]

Yeah, now I'm running on GF7300GT PCI-E - modified drivers 82.69 works fine. I use ZakMcKracken's version beacuse MGDX has some corrupted setup (it displayed dialog windows without text, only OK button and end with error - maybe problem is in SETUP.INI - when I replaced it by ZakMcKracken's one it installed too). I tested some games like GLQuake, Unreal T. , Unreal T. 2003 - all OK. I also compared performance to 6600GT and found that 7300GT is slightly worse. It I will upgrade then probably to 7600GT it would also work.

[lemming]

Yeah, now I'm running on GF7300GT PCI-E - modified drivers 82.69 works fine. I use ZakMcKracken's version beacuse MGDX has some corrupted setup (it displayed dialog windows without text, only OK button and end with error - maybe problem is in SETUP.INI - when I replaced it by ZakMcKracken's one it installed too).

I have exactly the same error (empty dialog boxes with OK buttons only). Where can I find "ZakMcKracken's version"?

(Installing manually leads to lockup after booting...)

regards,

arthur

PS: I'm trying to install a 7600GS on a WIN98SE (with AGP 4x)

[xrayer]

I have exactly the same error (empty dialog boxes with OK buttons only). Where can I find "ZakMcKracken's version"?

(Installing manually leads to lockup after booting...)

PS: I'm trying to install a 7600GS on a WIN98SE (with AGP 4x)

Try here: http://windows98.ic.cz in VGA section.

I'll probably buy 7600GS too because this 7300 have slightly less performance than my 6600GT.

[lemming]

Try here: http://windows98.ic.cz in VGA section.

I'll probably buy 7600GS too because this 7300 have slightly less performance than my 6600GT.

I tried that version. The Installer worked basically, but told me it couldn't find any nvidia device and aborted.

Then I told windows to fetch the driver from that installers directory, which worked (copied some files etc).

But: as soon as I restart windows with the nvidia driver activated, it freezes after the first appearence of the mouse pointer.

I changed from LCD on DVI to a CRT on VGA with no effect.

I disabled the various nvidia programs from the autostart (via msconfig). Then booting worked. But the display settings are 800x600@16bit, and as soon as I start any nvidia tool (no matter which one, even display properties crash), the pc freezes and the display is shut off (to power save mode).

At the 800x600 mode there are display errors, too (some dotted stripes and distortions).

All driver versions I tried, showed the same picture, as soon as I got them installed, the PC froze (and switched the display off) after booting.

With a MX440 card, the driver works without problems.

There should be no hardware problem, because when using linux, the PC works fine. I think, if there were wrong settings in the BIOS, they would affect linux, too. (In my BIOS there is no option to disable BIOS cachings as described in the readme).

I'm using a fresh installed windows image with only the necessary motherboard drivers installed, so there should be no problem caused by other drivers.

Are there any updates, that I should install (on a raw WIN98SE) before the display drivers?

Are there any other drivers, that I can try? It would be a good start to use at least 2D functions with 1280x1024. I don't need 3D acceleration that badly on windows.

I'm at my wits' end now. Has anyone ever successfully installed a 7600GS on Win98SE?

regards,

arthur

PS: I'm using a K7VT2, Athlon XP 2100+, 512MB DDR RAM and a few HDs

[xrayer]

I can report that 7600GS PCI-E works for me - I bought passive cooled card by Asus. I use setup.exe to install drivers and they find the card properly. After reboot it jumped to higher resolution and colors. I reuploaded the cuurent version I installed on site linked above.

The only one thing that doesn't work is refresh rate override - there's only "default" option and no choices for other freq. It worked with 6600GT. Anyway the refresh rates leaved set from previous install so I still have nice 85Hz. Is there some program or reqistry tweak to change it?

Here's a short comparison of all 3 VGAs on same system (I know UT2k3 is quite old and don't use new feats present on 7xxx)

UT2003 - 6600GT

botmatch-anubis.bat

6.414104 / 131.647461 / 235.257553 fps -- Score = 131.729263 500

GLQuake 192.5 FPS @500/500

UT2003 - 7300GT

22.087105 / 109.879433 / 247.155441 fps -- Score = 109.918694 350

25.551746 / 122.817650 / 239.012955 fps -- Score = 122.880478 400

34.479042 / 131.312286 / 235.985138 fps -- Score = 131.388199 450

GLQuake 178.3 FPS @350/350

GLQuake 208.0 FPS @400/400

UT2003 - 7600GS

27.910692 / 136.744904 / 241.676956 fps -- Score = 136.839706 400

39.587563 / 142.116074 / 236.930481 fps -- Score = 142.222290 450

23.092884 / 142.187195 / 239.293396 fps -- Score = 142.273376 500

GLQuake 201.8 FPS @400/400

GLQuake 228.2 FPS @450/450

GLQuake 243.9 FPS @500/470

Edited September 15, 2007 by xrayer

[vbdasc]

7600GT AGP works properly for me with v82.69 drivers. My MoBo is Epox 9NDA3J, with the NF3 Ultra chipset, the Windows is version 98SE. As my system suffers from the shutdown trouble, it is obviously not related to the PCI-e bus The only patches/updates I installed were DirectX 9.0c and the Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a. Try them.

[lemming]

The only patches/updates I installed were DirectX 9.0c and the Unofficial Service Pack 2.1a. Try them.

I tried both. Made no difference. PC still freezes after reboot.

[vbdasc]

I tried both. Made no difference. PC still freezes after reboot.

Unfortunately, VIA are known to produce some quirky and troublesome AGP implementations. Try forcing AGP 2x mode in the BIOS setup. Also try to disable AGP fast writes and sideband addressing.

P.S. You have installed the VIA chipset drivers, of course?

P.P.S. Playing with the "AGP aperture size" might help too (especially for VIA chipset motherboards).

Edited September 16, 2007 by vbdasc

[lemming]

Unfortunately, VIA are known to produce some quirky and troublesome AGP implementations. Try forcing AGP 2x mode in the BIOS setup. Also try to disable AGP fast writes and sideband addressing.

The card works fine with linux, so I don't think it's a hardware related problem.

P.S. You have installed the VIA chipset drivers, of course?

Yep. Fresh downloaded.

P.P.S. Playing with the "AGP aperture size" might help too (especially for VIA chipset motherboards).

Any hints on the value?

I tried now a different mainboard: MSI K8T Neo2-F V2.0 with a Athlon 64 3000+ (also AGP)

Exact the same error: as soon as the GeForce driver is enabled, the PC freezes after the next reboot.

Needless to say, that with the MSI mainboard linux also works fine with this video card.

I have only a few windows 98 programs left, and none of them needs 3D. Is there any possibility to run win98 with this card in a plain 2D mode with 1280x1024 and at least 16bpp? The W98 programs unfortunately need direct hardware access, so I can't use a virtualized system.

Edited September 16, 2007 by lemming

[xrayer]

I have only a few windows 98 programs left, and none of them needs 3D. Is there any possibility to run win98 with this card in a plain 2D mode with 1280x1024 and at least 16bpp? The W98 programs unfortunately need direct hardware access, so I can't use a virtualized system.

I searched for some universal VESA driver (like XP have) to use higher resolution on my portable 98se bootcd but nothing found.

BTW there's universal VESA driver for Windows 3.x I wonder nobody made it for Win9x.

[lemming]

Changing AGP settings in the BIOS had no positive effect.

But: if I disable display hardware acceleration, after installing the driver but before it gets started the first time, the PC does no longer freeze after booting.

It's not possible to enable the acceleration afterwards (freezes again), and all nvidia tools have to be banned from autostart permanently (otherwise it also freezes). But at least, I can set the resolution to 1280x1024@32bpp, the native resolution of my LCD.

Now that the PC doesn't freeze any longer, I was able to take a closer look on the display errors that unfortunately still occur.

I've taken a screenshot (http://files-upload.com/files/507334/7600gs_distortion.bmp, sorry for the crappy webspace). In the first line '101730...' you can see the original distorted text; it looks like smeared. The second line shows, how this error is increased, when the content (window) got moved around the screen a bit.

I'm still not really happy....