I was able to get the Creative Graphics Blaster RIVA TNT card working on my Biostar MB8433-UUD, UMC-based motherboard. I tried 9 sets of drivers from NVIDIA and Creative, but only the one dated 8-24-1998 seems to work. For all other driver revisions, I get Windows Protection error at boot or the system reboots when booting into Windows.
I have attached the working Creative TNT 486 drivers for anyone who runs into this problem. If your Dallas RTC is bad, I think the Biostar doesn't post.
The Creative ensuite even comes with a memory overclocking feature as part of the driver.
I have a tri-boot Win98/NT4/W2K system, so I tried the NT4 drivers from Creative, although the date is much later than 1998. After installing them, I get a BSOD with "page fault in nonpaged area".
I then tried to boot into W2K and install the Windows-default drivers. After installing the drivers, I get a BSOD with "KMODE EXCEPTION NOT HANDLED"
I may now need to go on a hunt for older NT4 drivers and W2K drivers. I did see some from '99 and '00 but those years didn't work for Win98SE, so it is likely that they struck 486 code out of all drivers after a certain date. The earliest NVIDIA released drivers I can find are from 1-27-99, which didn't work in Win98SE.
To what extent are the Creative drivers hacked versions of the NVIDIA releases?
@numerik
Does your Diamond card's drivers work in NT4 and W2K? I am surprised you could even boot with the NVIDIA drivers. It sounds like your graphics card is supperior to the Creative one in that it would even run with NVIDIA drivers from 1999. This tells me that NVIDIA might not have required Pentium code at this time.
noshutdown wrote:for a 486 rig, i would really recommend the earliest 1.xx~3.xx drivers. the newer driver, the more likely it would use 586 and mmx instructions.
I tried what I beleive was detonator v1.09. It still has a 1999 date. After that didn't work, I did not bother with v3.x. Do you have detonator drivers with a release date in 1998?
Plan your life wisely, you'll be dead before you know it.