First post, by Kralizec
This is my first post here so: Hello! Nice to meet you!
What I want to do: put together a PC to use with DOS and Windows 98SE.
What hardware I have:
- motherboard: Lucky Tech P5MVP3 with bios rev C
- CPUs: K6-2 500 MHz, K6-2+ 550 Mhz, MMX 166, MMx 200, MMX 233
- RAM: EDO 2 x 8Mb, EDO 2 x 16 Mb, SDRAM 128 PC100, SDRAM 128 PC133
- video cards: on PCI some S3, on AGP: ATI Rage PRO, GeForce 4 MX440, GeForce 256 SDR Creative CT6940 with only VGA output, GeForce 256 SDR NONAME with VGA and DVI output
- power source: something new and good on ATX
- hdd: actually "no" hdd but 8 Gb SD card with adapter
- adapter card for USB (don't know yeat the speed of USB) used for USB optical mouse
- sound cards: many to choose from (nothing fancy)
What I did till now: install Windows 98SE and "everything" was working (CPU KS-2, RAM SDRAM 128 PC100, no sound card, SD card 8 GB). I'll return to this "everything" later.
My first issue that I want to solve is to update the BIOS (now rev C) to a modified version D in order to be able to use K6-2+.
I tried to use the BIOS from here: Getting the AMD K6-2+ / K6-III+ to work on your Super Socket 7 board
I also tried to use the original version of BIOS rev D.
Both tries with the same result: an error.
To flash the BIOS I first entered into "Safe mode and only command prompt" mode and from there I run the Award Flasher versions 7.63 and 8.99.
I could save the existing BIOS on SD card without any problem but when I give the command to write the new BIOS file I get the error: "Unknown Flash Type".
What could be the problem what solution do I have?
Is there any way that the bios could be blocked? I couldn't find anything about something like that in documentation or on web.
My second problem is with the GeForce 256 cards under Windows 98.
With both of them after installing the Nvidia driver the image was only some vertical lines with all the drivers for Win 98 that I tried.
With same configuration and same driver the GeForce 4 mx440 worked without any problem (tested with 3DMark 2001 SE).
What driver should I use in order to be able to use those GeForce 256 under Windows.
While booting or when I use a generic driver under Windows everything works and the image is ok.
I thought that my both two cards were faulty but I test them on another PC: ABit AB-NF7-S V2.x, AMD Athlon XP 2000+, RAM 1 Gb DDR400, Windows 7 Professional, Nvidia driver 71.89
Both of them run the 3DMark 2001 SE several times without problems (at least the Creative GeForce 256).
So: what driver and settings I must use in order to run this cards under Windows 98?
And my last problem (for now) is with the Noname GeForce 256 card.
While running it under Windows 7 the image from card was with artefacts. Please see the attached image.
What could it be?
At the first attempt to run 3DMark on this card the program gave me an error: No supported card installed (or something like that). I pulled out and reinserted into motherboard and it "worked".
Maybe the memory modules? I tried to push on memory modules while running. No change.
The GPU chip?
The card VGA connector? I'll try to use a spray for contacts ...The cable is ok, no problem with the others cards.
I tried to use the DVI output in combination with 2 different adapters DVI to HDMI but no signal was received by the TV this way.
On the video card are only 2 SMD style electrolytic capacitors, all the others are ceramic types.
I'll try to replace those 2.
What else can I do to fix the card?
Long post but I thank you for any idea on each of my issues.