schlang wrote:

ok, both cards do also not work in my K6...

I have checked the bios, there is no setting like "init display first: pci/agp"

Have you tried cleaning the contacts? That often turns out to be a problem judging from my own experience.

You can clean them with paper cloth+rubbing alcohol or a pencil eraser.

yeah I tried that, but no luck

tried a matrox g450 today, no luck...

It might be possible that you can't use any video card with DVI in a 486 motherboard at all. Just because the card is PCI and there are drivers for the Windows version you are using is no guarantee. It may not be usable with a very old CPU like a 486 or the card may require a later version of the PCI slot than what would be found on 486 PCI motherboards to work.

yeah it would be interesting what exactly is the k.o. criteria...

this is the only pci grpahics card with a dvi output which ever worked in my 486:
http://cgi.ebay.de/Infotronic-HS-Quasar-D-PCI … =item5adf2cd900

unfortunately the dos performance was a pain in the ass, so it was of no use for me...

I don't know how much memory the g450 has, but I believe it is a 32mb model which conflicts with the 16mb limit of the award bios

Here's something you can try, but that might even be too new for a 486.

http://cgi.ebay.com/Creative-Labs-16mb-PCI-TN … =item3a67206567

already did, check last page

Very strange that DVI will not work on a 486...
So iiuc, these cards will not work if they are DVI but the exact same cards using VGA will work?

Tetrium wrote:

Very strange that DVI will not work on a 486...
So iiuc, these cards will not work if they are DVI but the exact same cards using VGA will work?

It's not that DVI won't work per se, it's that the earliest cards with DVI ports on them may be too recent for a 486 to use. The same card with only a VGA out probably won't work, either. With a 486 motherboard probably only the earliest 3D accelerators like S3 Virge or the first ATi Rage cards would work and those don't come with DVI ports on them.

there are enough other pci cards (like ide/sata/usb/nic/...) that work with this board, so I just don't believe there is no graphics card that will work 😀

sliderider wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Very strange that DVI will not work on a 486...
So iiuc, these cards will not work if they are DVI but the exact same cards using VGA will work?

It's not that DVI won't work per se, it's that the earliest cards with DVI ports on them may be too recent for a 486 to use. The same card with only a VGA out probably won't work, either. With a 486 motherboard probably only the earliest 3D accelerators like S3 Virge or the first ATi Rage cards would work and those don't come with DVI ports on them.

I do know Rendition 2100 will work with a 486. Currently using one in an AP43, also with the SiS chipset. I have to say that I never tried any more modern graphics cards with a 486 but I'd recon it also depends on which PCI version your 486 board supports

DVI started appearing around 1999-2000 and we're talking about using a card from that era with a motherboard that is probably 5 years older. CPU power and hardware standards evolved a lot over those 5 years so it may not be possible for any video card with DVI to work. The TNT2 is about a 1999-2000 era video card and one of the earliest with DVI and if that doesn't work, it's not likely anything else will, either.

we'll see. the riva128 is from 1998 and works, but it it exists only with VGA

I remember having much trouble upgrading a compaq Pentium 90 with a PCI graphics card. Suspecting the trouble was caused by the lack of an "assign IRQ to VGA" BIOS option.
Cannot remember what did not work, but the S3 Virge worked, and a Riva 128 worked too.

I'm trying a matrox g2+ now, should arrive the next days

so now it's getting interesting. I got a matrox g2+, which actually should work (because I can hear the POST beep and also I can hear the hard disk loading into MS-DOS) but I'm not getting any output to my LCD

any suggestions?

Is it standard DVI? If so, have you tried a standard DVI cable (or a DVI adapter) instead of the one pictured?
Silly question, but have you disabled onboard VGA if it has any?

I've had the thing you described before when testing graphics cards on a board with onboard VGA. It can give all kinds of strange results including the one you described.
Best is to test it in a board that doesn't have any onboard VGA.

I don't have onboard vga, and I need the dvi splitter cable because it is a proprietary matrox connector

Just to be sure, the "DVI" you mention is really DVI and not P&D? (P&D looks exactly like DVI, but has 10 rows of pins instead of the usual 7. I had a lot of trouble getting my V3 TV's to display due to them having the strange P&D connector).

Actually, what you mention about not getting a display BUT getting the single short beep indicating the PC booted properly, indeed indicates that the card should work, but simply doesn't get it's screen signals to display on the monitor.
This is how I concluded both my V3 TV's were actually working before I dished out to get the correct P&D adapters 😉

Here's an image of the connector that should be on that card

http://ctsebay.piggycom.com//download.php?fid … 1230&action=big

You shouldn't be attempting to connect directly through that but through one of the connectors at the end of the splitter cable. Try both connectors because one will be for primary display and the other will be for secondary.