Background story:
I have 10pcs of thin clients that run Win98. They came with NVIDIA graphic cards that did not work very well with old games like Duke Nukem 3D, Death Rally and so on...
I then tested a Rage 128Pro PCI (32MB) instead of the NVIDIA card, and all those older games worked like a charm.
This lead to a buy of 10pcs of Rage 128Pro cards... (All identical, boxed with driver CD. All marked with "CM3", both on box and on PCB. A bit suspicious.)
Now when I started to test them, only a few of them is found by Windows 98 as "All-In-Wonder Pro 128 PCI" in device manager, and work as intended.
The rest of the cards are found as "Standard PCI Grapchis Adapter (VGA)" in the device manager.
When having a look in the registry, they seem to have different vendor ID's.
I have done some Googling, and it seems possible to flash the FW on these cards.
This card seem to have been a standard card in Mac, so many has reflashed them for PC.
I need help with the flash procedure. And also, where do I find the firmware?
Can the current firmware be captured, since I have working cards?
I am very close to be able to flash a card now.
(This does not necessary solve my problem though)
Had to download a very old version of ATIflash. Newer versions did not find my ATI card.
Booted into DOS with ATIflash v1.0, and that version could find my card.
There is also an option for saving the current fw to a file.
So I will save the fw from a working card, and flash it onto one of the non working cards.
Couldn't help myself testing a flash before going to bed...
1. Read fw from working card
2. Flashed fw onto "non working" card (showing as vga adapter)
3. Flashed card still showing as "vga adapter", but now there are some small graphics malfunctions. Pixels little here and there...
4. Flashed back to old fw and card is back to normal.
Btw, there where some differences in fw file from working card and card only showing as VGA.
Like 36kb vs 40kb.
So don't think the card is physically broken. It's more a matter of fw...
Could it be a Mac version of the card?
Any ideas?
Are there fw versions online I can test with?
It was a desperate try. Hoped it would change the vendor id allowing the drivers to be accepted.
I did however just succeeded to install the drivers even though Windows didn't like them. And everything seem to work just fine! 😀
I removed the "Standard PCI Grapchis Adapter (VGA)" in device manager and restarted the PC.
At Windows startup it wanted to install the device again, and was asking for drivers.
At this moment I was allowed to choose the Rage 128 Pro drivers, even though Windows said it was the wrong drivers.
If I tried to update drivers in the device manager, Windows would just not allow me to use these drivers, because they where not ment for this adapter.
Got a similar error when trying to install via the ATI setup.exe file that came with the driver package.
The vendor ID on this card is:
VEN_1002&DEV_5452&SUBSYS_54461002
I have done some Googling, and it seems possible to flash the FW on these cards.
This card seem to have been a standard card in Mac, so many has reflashed them for PC.
As far as I know, that card was 66MHz-capable. These Macs had a special 32-Bit PCI-Slot that was intended for the video card,
which ran at 66MHz (as AGP did; the other slots were 64-Bit/33MHz). As far as rumours go, these Macs got PCI-slots instead of AGP,
because the chipset turned out to be buggy (AGP was heavily based on PCI). No idea, if that's true, though.
But since the early iMac G3 B/W had a faulty IDE controller, too,that idea would make sense.
"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel
Bad idea. If these were for mac, they won't boot at all as Byrd says.....
Main problem are old ati drivers, at time of release of these cards there were many incompactible drivers, you needed new driver for each version of chip.
You should try latest drivers from ati, they usually works....If not, your cards might have other chip than 128Pro. For example Rage Pro Turbo, Rage XL or some mobile version.
Sadly Atis download pages for old cards are broken and not working anymore....But you can always check for filenames of drivers and then use google.... https://support.amd.com/en-us/download/archive/legacy-98me
I would try 1st Rage 128 driver = WMER1284137192.exe , if this wont work then go for Rage PRO driver = wme-j5-30-1-b02.exe
Flashing bios from another card wont help, because chances of getting file from same clocked model is really low. You'll probably end with overclocked memory or core and screen errors...if not worse...
Vlask,
Guess I was lucky I didn't brick a card when playing around with flashing fw...
I did try the CD that came with the cards and also the latest Rage 128 from ATI homepage.
Now I tested all drivers from the link you posted. No luck 🙁
lazibayer,
I took some pictures of one of the cards.
All 10pcs looks almost exactly the same. You can tell on the PCB there are different batches.
The layout on the PCB is identical. Some IC's have different s/n and so on...
Any more ideas?
Card seem to work fine when forcing Windows to accept a Rage 128 Pro driver.
It would of course be nice to have correct drivers, but don't know how much more time I want to spend on this.
If I where to invent all 10 cards. What info would be of use?
* Vendor ID
* The flash utility gave me some info as well
* Anything else?
It seems that these cards are not made by reputable manufacturers. The sticker on the box says 128VR and the sticker on the PCB says 128Pro, and they are definitely not All in Wonder 128 Pro. I worry if they put the right GPU and the right BIOS on the board....
vlask wrote:Bad idea. If these were for mac, they won't boot at all as Byrd says.....
Main problem are old ati drivers, at time of release o […] Show full quote
Bad idea. If these were for mac, they won't boot at all as Byrd says.....
Main problem are old ati drivers, at time of release of these cards there were many incompactible drivers, you needed new driver for each version of chip.
You should try latest drivers from ati, they usually works....If not, your cards might have other chip than 128Pro. For example Rage Pro Turbo, Rage XL or some mobile version.
Sadly Atis download pages for old cards are broken and not working anymore....But you can always check for filenames of drivers and then use google.... https://support.amd.com/en-us/download/archive/legacy-98me
I would try 1st Rage 128 driver = WMER1284137192.exe , if this wont work then go for Rage PRO driver = wme-j5-30-1-b02.exe
Flashing bios from another card wont help, because chances of getting file from same clocked model is really low. You'll probably end with overclocked memory or core and screen errors...if not worse...
And unfortunately it doesn't have the OP's string, which is probably the reason why it refuses to install.
I'd say,
1, if force installation works and you don't reinstall drivers much often, stick with it.
2, return the cards that give you problems.
3, modify the PCI device strings in the driver so it might install automatically, but it will break WHQL certification and won't give you much benefit.
4, modify the PCI device string in the BIOS.
Since the card came with driver CD, what are the PCI IDs supported by the driver CD?
All 10 boxes have the exakt same driver CD with the same content.
One card installed as "Xpert 128" and another as "All-In-Wonder 128 PCI". And then there are cards that have different vendor ID's, so the drivers won't load.
I bought all the cards at the same time from a shady Ebay seller.
The price was €5 each. So can't really complain...
Can I just edit these rows and add the vendor ID for each card? Will the drivers be accepted after that?
How does Win98 react to broken WHQL certification?
I added a line with the correct Vendor ID/Device ID in the .inf file.
Win98 loaded the drivers without any complaints at all.
This will be my solution:
Collect the device ID from all 10 cards and add a line for each of them in the .inf file. Giving me a driver package that will work with all the cards.
Windman wrote:I will reply to some of my own questions :) […] Show full quote
I will reply to some of my own questions 😀
I added a line with the correct Vendor ID/Device ID in the .inf file.
Win98 loaded the drivers without any complaints at all.
This will be my solution:
Collect the device ID from all 10 cards and add a line for each of them in the .inf file. Giving me a driver package that will work with all the cards.
Thanks all for your help!
You are welcome! If all your cards have the same vendor/device ID and only differ in the subsys ID you can just write a "superclass" string to include them all. For example,
"Rage 128 PCI" = 128_AGP, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_5452
It will match all cards regardless of the subsys ID.
Just FYI 128 Pro is one generation newer than 128. The pro version supports 4x AGP instead of 2x, but it doesn't make a difference for being in PCI version. Officiallytt the pro version has faster triangle setup engine, faster core and memory speed, but it's also subject to the settings in the video BIOS. You can use some tools such as GPU-Z and Sandra to find out what's the chip under the hood if you want to.
