VOGONS


First post, by richardoswald

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Hello Vogons,

Does anyone know if the ATI Radeon x850 (PCI-E) is compatible with Windows 95 (OSR 2)? I had success using it in the same machine using Win XP S3, Win 98SE, and MS-DOS 6.22. But Win95 crashes after a fresh install. When I enable the onboard VGA, and plug into that, I can at least get into windows and install the drivers for the x850 (w/ errors though more on that below), although I'm not sure if I have the correct drivers (using Catalyst 6.2) or if it's even supported in Win95. It does show it's installing win95 drivers without errors during the install in onboard video mode, but still it crashes the same way if I boot back into PCIE mode. So in essence no change in PCIE mode, drivers or not.

Here are my specs (for more details please see the attached MSINFO32 report)
Motherboard: GA-G41M-ES2H rev 1.3
CPU: Pentium Dual-Core E6500 @ 2.93GHZ
RAM: 3327MB
SSD: 2GB Fat32 partition
GPU: ATI Radeon x850 XT (PCI-E) 256GB RAM
OS: Windows 95 OSR 2

Community Patches installed:
Fix95CPU
Rloew's Patchmem
Xusbsupp

Using PCIE only mode (the mode which will always crash and shutdown(after fresh install and also after driver install (which I'm able to get installed via the onboard video mode shown below). It specifically auto shuts down after the Windows 95 splash screen. When I do the "step-by-step confirmation" it crashes after the "Load all windows drivers" step. I attached my bootlog.tx and bootlog.prv below.

The attachment BOOTLOG.PRV is no longer available
The attachment BOOTLOG.PRV.txt is no longer available

Using Onboard video mode (set in BIOS) while plugged into onboard, I'm able to see and install the x850 drivers (6.2 catalyst) . I'm hopeful as you can see it dynamically goes to the windows 95 setup and installs the drivers w/o any errors during installation (except for a VC6 error at first which I was able to fix w/ installing VC6RedistSetup_enu)

The attachment IMG_2158.jpeg is no longer available

But upon reboot I receive these errors.

The attachment IMG_2160 2.jpeg is no longer available

These may be a red herring since I'm using the onboard vga. I wish I could know if I'd get the same errors in PCIE mode but can't boot into it even after the drivers are installed (same crash symptom as earlier.
I also have an msconfig32 report with more data

The attachment msinfo32_win95.TXT is no longer available

Reply 1 of 8, by leileilol

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no

ChangeDisplaySettingsExA is a Win98 kernel function

Catalyst 6 only officially supports Windows 2000 and XP

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 2 of 8, by richardoswald

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leileilol wrote on 2025-10-01, 05:42:

no

ChangeDisplaySettingsExA is a Win98 kernel function

Catalyst 6 only officially supports Windows 2000 and XP

Thanks for the confirmation on the official support for 6.2. But what about unofficially or another driver? I've seen two posts out there that hints it should be working in 95

StriderTR wrote on 2023-05-15, 07:05:

It was powered by an AMD Slot A 700MHz processor, 768MB of RAM, an ATI Radeon X850 Pro 256MB AGP graphics card, and an ISA Creative AWE 64 Gold. All plugged into a versatile A-Open AK72 motherboard that supported USB, AGP, PCI, and ISA. Thankfully, Windows 95 OSR 2.5 can be patched to include AGP/USB support so I was able to have much of the power of Windows 98 while still running my preferred Windows 95.

I realize that's AGP vs my PCI-E but perhaps the same driver would work. [/quote]

And this from msfn

The ATi Radeon 8500 works in Windows 95 according to @LoneCrusader, and apparently the same applies for the Radeon 9200. I'd like to say that 7xxx/8xxx/9000/9200/9500/9700 Radeons work, since they are listed as compatible with supposedly 95-compatible drivers from 2002.

But my Mobility Radeon 7500 just boots to a blank screen with any 95-compatible driver installed.

I'm starting to think that since it shuts down after the splash screen(fresh install w/o drivers or w/ drivers) it's something else, perhaps a hardware conflict. But no issues in win98SE or XP w/ same hardware.

Reply 3 of 8, by leileilol

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Radeon 8500/9200 was two generations earlier!!! Windows 95 had months to go for official support (ended late 2001)! PCIe didn't exist!

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 4 of 8, by marxveix

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9000 series has some drivers or modded drivers for Win95, but i do not know for newer ATi cards. For Win98ME there are x850 drivers.

Best ATi Rage3 drivers for 3DCIF / Direct3D / OpenGL / DVD : ATi RagePro drivers and software
30+MiniGL / OpenGL Win 9x dll files for all ATi Rage3 cards : Re: ATi RagePro OpenGL files

Reply 5 of 8, by richardoswald

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Ah I see. Assumptions were definitely made on my part.

Another dumb question, why can't I simply get a video output in Win95 when I can in MS-DOS 6.22? I don't care at this point for 3d rendering w/ 95. It's odd that I can game in MS-DOS 6.22, 98SE and XP, but Windows 95 will just crash on me. I'd be a happy camper if I could at least get a 16 color low-res output similar to DOS at this point.

Reply 6 of 8, by leileilol

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Windows 95 doesn't use VESA like later DOS games do, but also X850's well after the extended VBE era where later VESA support is more stripped and well outside UniVBE/SDD's support window (1993-1998) so it's not all great for late DOS either. If you wanted a X850, then that mind was set for fast 1280x1024 Quake 4 and Battlefield 2 - dos gaming was long dead. DOSBox was just starting to get a dynamic recompiler.

apsosig.png
long live PCem

Reply 7 of 8, by leonardo

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It was a stretch to get the Radeon 9x00-series to work on Windows 95, as driver support by ATi was officially discontinued. Unofficially, there were a number of beta drivers that were still compiled that were compatible with Windows 95, and through the discovery of those we were able to find support for cards as fast as the Radeon 9800 Pro.

However AFAIK that's the end of the line. Never say never, but I haven't been able to find anything later.

Why can't you use your card as a standard VGA or SVGA graphics adapter then - that's a good question. Looking at the specs for your PC, you are so far above what Windows 95 was ever intended to run on, I hazard to guess. Maybe you need to tone down a bunch of those chipset settings, limit video memory allocation, etc.? You have more VRAM than most 95-users ever had RAM. 😁

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 8 of 8, by richardoswald

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Again thanks for explaining guys. Regarding toning down my settings, everything is set to fail-safe settings in bios and I disabled all features that were possible. Win95 was mainly just for nostalgia purposes only, I wasn't intending to do heavy gaming in them, like I plan to for DOS, 98, and XP. I'll be happy with those. I'll have to throw in the towel for Win95 on this one.