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No output from DVI ports on any ELSA Erazor III 32MB TNT2 Pro

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First post, by Ozzuneoj

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I recently purchased more than one of these and I'm sad to say that I can't get them to output to DVI at all.

I have tried using single-link and dual-link DVI cables going to my old Dell 2001FP and I get no display at all when the DVI cable is connected. I also tried connecting it via a DVI to HDMI adapter to a newer 1080P monitor just for kicks and it also did nothing there.

I don't believe it is a defect because I have more than one card to test and they are all exhibiting the same problem. Also, VGA seems to work fine.

I have checked for physical damage related to the DVI section of the card, and it appears that the tiny ribbon cables are intact and inserted fully.

These particular cards (with DVI) seem to be pretty rare, so there isn't much information out there about them, but I have found some reports of people having issues with DVI on older cards like this... some are also other ELSA cards (like a Geforce 256). I know the card can't do dual output, but I am only trying to use one at a time.

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Also, here is the datasheet for the Silicon Image SIL154CT64 chip.

It says that it only supports up to SXGA (1280x1024) and these monitors can do 1600x1200 and 1920x1080 natively, but it seems odd that it would just not work at all connected to anything that supports higher than that. Shouldn't it at least work in the BIOS and DOS when the system is asking for only the most basic output?

... also, what a crappy limitation for what was probably a way overpriced DVI card in April of 2000 (date on card label). I can run much older cards with at least 8MB of video memory at 1600x1200 on the desktop over VGA. DVI must have really been in its infancy back then.

EDIT: 🤯 Holy moly... I was just poking around in Windows with one of these installed and realized it detected as TNT2 Ultra... EDIT: Rivatuner and SIV32 report the core clock as 100Mhz for some reason, but they may be detecting it incorrectly due to being much newer programs meant for newer devices. TNTCLK reports the card correctly as having a 150Mhz core. TNTCLK and Rivatuner confirm that the memory is clocked at 183Mhz, which is Ultra speed and is actually correct for these SGRAM chips. I figured it was just misidentified by the driver, but I peeked under one of the heatsinks and sure enough... these are factory-labeled TNT2 Ultra cores. 😮

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... did not expect that. The heatsink is on the small side for an Ultra and has no fan... but ELSA seemingly knew what they were doing when the built the card, right?

Last edited by Ozzuneoj on 2024-05-06, 18:55. Edited 2 times in total.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 1 of 5, by dominusprog

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Check the connectivity between the two white ports that are connected via ribbon cable.

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Reply 3 of 5, by elszgensa

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This card seems to me to just digitize whatever would go out on the VGA port. Maybe neither of those monitors accepts digital in at 75Hz? Boot/BIOS screens, DOS "text mode", Win9x splash would be 75 and might now show up because of that.

Can you connect through VGA, boot Windows, then check whether it outputs at 60Hz? It already should, but best to make sure. In case it doesn't, set it to 60, then try again through DVI, giving it enough time to boot to the Windows desktop.

Reply 4 of 5, by Tree Wyrm

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I have several cards with that SIL chip. For DVI digital output if it gets EDID that it doesn't like there won't be an image. I solved this by using DVI EDID emulator between card and display (StarTech VSEDIDDVI). When connecting to capture card (DataPath Vision-E1S) I had to tweak default EDID to max out at resolution that chip supports. So yeah, it should work but it is picky about what monitor reports in EDID.

Reply 5 of 5, by Ozzuneoj

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Thanks for the input everyone! I appreciate it.

Tree Wyrm wrote on 2024-05-05, 20:38:

I have several cards with that SIL chip. For DVI digital output if it gets EDID that it doesn't like there won't be an image. I solved this by using DVI EDID emulator between card and display (StarTech VSEDIDDVI). When connecting to capture card (DataPath Vision-E1S) I had to tweak default EDID to max out at resolution that chip supports. So yeah, it should work but it is picky about what monitor reports in EDID.

Sadly, that's what I was suspecting. At $80 I don't think the EDID emulator is a feasible option for this card. I was really hoping these would make for easy drop-in DVI-ready cards to use in any old AGP system, but it seems you'd need a fairly old monitor anyway.

I do have some 1280x1024 monitors in storage so I'll pull one of those out tomorrow and try it. I'm sure it'll work.

... personally I hate the existence of 1280x1024 as a standard resolution since it isn't 4:3 and yet computers seem to pretend that it is... but, well... whatever... :p

As a side note:
EDIT: Rivatuner seems to be reporting clocks incorrectly. TNTCLK detects it properly as 150\183.

I tried to see if I could get these to run at 150Mhz since the core certainly should be able to, but I can't get Rivatuner to apply the overclock settings. No matter what I do, after I test the clock and then apply\OK the new speed it just reverts everything back to 100\183. I have googled it but understandably there is very little information still online regarding overclocking pre-geforce cards with Rivatuner. There are tons of settings in the "Power User" section of the program and I have tried changing some that were mentioned in old posts I found, but nothing is letting me increase the clock speed of these cards.

Anyone know what's going on here? Rivatuner was always my go-to overclocking program back in the post-3dfx days before MSI Afterburner and EVGA Precision (all based on the same code base of course).

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

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