If its a socket 7 VIA board the issue is likely not the card but the buggy and poor agp implementation on that chipset. The likely works fine on a BX or a intel board. If it was a PCI card it would likely give you no problems, on a VIA chipset like how voodoo 3s work fine becasue they lack the agp features that are buggy on VIA. Different cards have different problems some can be worked out through drivers others theres no hope.

Warlord wrote on 2021-02-05, 23:58:

If its a socket 7 VIA board the issue is likely not the card but the buggy and poor agp implementation on that chipset. The likely works fine on a BX or a intel board. If it was a PCI card it would likely give you no problems, on a VIA chipset like how voodoo 3s work fine becasue they lack the agp features that are buggy on VIA. Different cards have different problems some can be worked out through drivers others theres no hope.

Its a PCI card with a socket 370 CPU Socket. Specifically i have a 933 MHz Pentium III with a 133 MHz FSB and an 8 MB PCI Savage 4. I might test it in my Pentium 4 computer and see if that works but I'm not sure. Again it's less of an issue and more of an annoyance.

check the bios setting for VGA or Display INIT order. Somtimes there is a option to INTI PCI or AGP 1st or 2nd and you can change the order in which the bios scans for dipsplay INIT.

Warlord wrote on 2021-02-06, 21:31:

check the bios setting for VGA or Display INIT order. Somtimes there is a option to INTI PCI or AGP 1st or 2nd and you can change the order in which the bios scans for dipsplay INIT.

It's already set to PCI

try to manually assign a free IRQ to the card in the bios.

Warlord wrote on 2021-02-06, 22:25:

try to manually assign a free IRQ to the card in the bios.

There doesn't seem to be a way to do that. It is an award BIOS if that helps.

interesting I can manually assign IRQs in my award bios on my via socket 7

Make sure the following are set accordingly (your BIOS may not have these options):
Video BIOS caching set OFF.
Turn off Byte Merge and/or Write Combine, if they are BIOS options. (Use the FASTVID speedup from Phil's Benchmark Suite to manually enable write combine for DOS games.)
Some really janky VIA boards *cough*PC Chips*cough* get fussy when Delay Transaction is enabled too.
You could also give the VIA PCI Latency patch a go too, to rule out a stupid PCI timing issue.

Also, you may want to try the VIA Hyperion set if the 4-in-1 set doesn't want to play ball with the Savage4. Allegedly the Hyperion set is a little bit slower, but I haven't noticed much of a speed difference between the two personally.

Eep386 wrote on 2021-02-07, 02:45:

Make sure the following are set accordingly (your BIOS may not have these options): Video BIOS caching set OFF. Turn off Byte Me […]
Show full quote

Make sure the following are set accordingly (your BIOS may not have these options):
Video BIOS caching set OFF.
Turn off Byte Merge and/or Write Combine, if they are BIOS options. (Use the FASTVID speedup from Phil's Benchmark Suite to manually enable write combine for DOS games.)
Some really janky VIA boards *cough*PC Chips*cough* get fussy when Delay Transaction is enabled too.
You could also give the VIA PCI Latency patch a go too, to rule out a stupid PCI timing issue.

Also, you may want to try the VIA Hyperion set if the 4-in-1 set doesn't want to play ball with the Savage4. Allegedly the Hyperion set is a little bit slower, but I haven't noticed much of a speed difference between the two personally.

Haven't installed the VIA PCI Latency patch yet might do that tomorrow. I enabled those other settings and that seemed to help a bit. What was happening is a lot of times when I would turn it on it would usually boot up to a black screen with the Windows hour glass in the middle and the system was completely locked up and then I'd restart it'd tell me Windows failed to load last time and I'd boot as normal and then it'd boot again and then when the little Window would come up for Microsoft networking it would begin to render the outline and the X button and then freeze. Then I'd restart again and it usually would successfully boot then. After changing those options in the BIOS it seems to have fixed that last one but still hasn't fixed the Black screen with the hour glass although that seems to be happening less. I also already had the Hyperion drivers installed so perhaps maybe I could try the reverse of what you suggested and try the 4 in 1 driver. I'll try installing the PCI Latency patch tomorrow and see if that fixes it.

You generally want Video BIOS caching Disabled at all times, as that does not speed anything up, and has a known history of causing weirdness and crashes when video BIOS caching is enabled. The regular BIOS shadow does a fine enough job of keeping the Video BIOS on the quick for most cards.

Also check the following options:
- PCI interrupts Edge triggered instead of Level triggered (supposedly helps some Voodoo3 cards, maybe it'll help your Savage4 too?)
- Turn OFF any Spread Spectrum options you find. You're not doing EMC regulation testing (and probably not running the computer in the same room as your HAM radio equipment) so you don't really need such options on anyway.
- Turn OFF Advanced Power Management/APM. Also turn off unused serial/parallel ports, and then Reset ECSD / Configuration Data (if available) to ensure that the PnP subsystem isn't trying to "share" IRQs behind your back. If the system stubbornly insists on sharing IRQs it shouldn't, try marking said IRQs as ISA / Legacy IRQs in the BIOS (usually under an option labeled to the theme of 'PnP Resource Configuration').
- Another, less intuitive but still simple thing to check: try plugging the Savage4 into a different PCI slot. Depending on how the BIOS allocates PCI IRQs some cards "like" certain slots better than others on a given board. It seems silly but it sometimes helps!

You may also wish to try a different Savage4 driver set. There's an 'Engineering BitFlip' set that seems rock-solid on my end, though that might be simply because I am running an AGP model (Number Nine Savage4 Xtreme AGP). Not sure what exactly is different with this, but give it a shot.

This release is the only driver running stable with my generic savage 4 8mb card

Eep386 wrote on 2021-02-07, 08:44:

You generally want Video BIOS caching Disabled at all times, as that does not speed anything up, and has a known history of caus […]
Show full quote

You generally want Video BIOS caching Disabled at all times, as that does not speed anything up, and has a known history of causing weirdness and crashes when video BIOS caching is enabled. The regular BIOS shadow does a fine enough job of keeping the Video BIOS on the quick for most cards.

Also check the following options:
- PCI interrupts Edge triggered instead of Level triggered (supposedly helps some Voodoo3 cards, maybe it'll help your Savage4 too?)
- Turn OFF any Spread Spectrum options you find. You're not doing EMC regulation testing (and probably not running the computer in the same room as your HAM radio equipment) so you don't really need such options on anyway.
- Turn OFF Advanced Power Management/APM. Also turn off unused serial/parallel ports, and then Reset ECSD / Configuration Data (if available) to ensure that the PnP subsystem isn't trying to "share" IRQs behind your back. If the system stubbornly insists on sharing IRQs it shouldn't, try marking said IRQs as ISA / Legacy IRQs in the BIOS (usually under an option labeled to the theme of 'PnP Resource Configuration').
- Another, less intuitive but still simple thing to check: try plugging the Savage4 into a different PCI slot. Depending on how the BIOS allocates PCI IRQs some cards "like" certain slots better than others on a given board. It seems silly but it sometimes helps!

You may also wish to try a different Savage4 driver set. There's an 'Engineering BitFlip' set that seems rock-solid on my end, though that might be simply because I am running an AGP model (Number Nine Savage4 Xtreme AGP). Not sure what exactly is different with this, but give it a shot.
S3_Savage4_Win9x_Engineering_BitFlip.zip

I tried this driver and your other suggestions and still nothing. I think I'm throwing in the towel here I think I'm just going to get an AGP capable motherboard and get an Nvidia GeForce 256 or something along those lines. Thank you everyone for your help even if it was for nothing.