VOGONS


First post, by Betelgeuse

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I have a 98Se build with a Tualatin 1.4GHz/512MB RAM/i815 mobo, etc. Had it running with a 6800 but the card crapped out so I decided to put in a Radeon X850XT which I had lying around. However, since then nothing but problems. Could not install drivers without a crash (Catalyst 6.2), and after installing drivers CCC did not install. After installing the drivers and having the machine boot into Windows, I have weird display corruptions. For example, the mouse pointer will be corrupt when resizing windows, the little PC icon in device manager will be corrupted, etc. 3D is unusable since it's all just a garbled mess (doesn't crash though). I tried Driver Cleaner, manually installing drivers, removing all registry entries referencing ATI or Nvidia, nothing helps. System is fine in safe mode, as soon as drivers for the video card are installed it's just a mess. I put in a Radeon 9800 Pro and the same problem so I'm certain it is not a bad video card. Put in a 6800 Ultra and again no problems with this card, works without problems. At this point I really don't know what the issue is or how to fix it. So any suggestions would be helpful. Some other info about the system: it has 2x Voodoo2 in SLI, SB16, and an MPU-401 ISA card (Roland-compatible MusicQuest clone), and lastly an Adaptec 29160 U160 SCSI controller driving 1 SCSI drive. On board sound and video are disabled.

Reply 2 of 57, by Betelgeuse

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
Reputator wrote:

Is Catalyst 6.2 the only driver version you tried?

Yes, I thought this was the only version to support X850 and Win98. Tried finding earlier versions but couldn't for Win98.

Reply 4 of 57, by Imperious

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Lack of Power supply Grunt perhaps?

I had no issues with my x850pro in my ancient KT7-Raid in Win98se.

Atari 2600, TI994a, Vic20, c64, ZX Spectrum 128, Amstrad CPC464, Atari 65XE, Commodore Plus/4, Amiga 500
PC's from XT 8088, 486, Pentium MMX, K6, Athlon, P3, P4, 775, to current Ryzen 5600x.

Reply 5 of 57, by Betelgeuse

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
Imperious wrote:

Lack of Power supply Grunt perhaps?

I had no issues with my x850pro in my ancient KT7-Raid in Win98se.

It's something with Windows, not hardware as this card worked before in this system. The PSU is an 500W EVGA, which is more than enough I think. Apart from reinstalling Windows (the LAST thing I want to do), I'm out of ideas.

Reply 7 of 57, by kanecvr

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I've encountered this issue before, on two separate occasions. The X850XT is a hungry card and needs a beefy PSU - 400-450w 80+ certified with a strong 12V rail. I swapped the 400w OEM (delta electronics) non certified PSU for an antec earthwatts 430w unit, reinstalled windows, chipset drivers, direct X 8.1, Catalyst 6.2 (in that order) and the issue went away. If you are running win98 you need to do a clean re-install. If you are running XP SP3, simply unistaling the video driver (both nvidia and ATi) should work. If you are using SP1 or SP2, you might need to do a clean install just like with win98.

Hope this helps.

Reply 8 of 57, by meljor

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Maybe 6800 crapped out because of a bad psu?

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1

Reply 9 of 57, by havli

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Bad PSU is a possibility, however X850 XT is not that power hungry... in my tests the whole system (4.5GHz 2500k, MB, single HDD) consumes just below 200W. When using Tualatin system, it should be even less. Also OS reinstall is usually not needed, unless your Windows are in very bad shape.

Anyway given these issues only happed when using ATi GPU, it is most likeky SW related - souds like some king of resources conflict perhaps... X850, V2 SLI, SCSI, 2x audio is a lot for one system?

HW museum.cz - my collection of PC hardware

Reply 10 of 57, by Betelgeuse

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I think it may be a resource conflict, but with what I do not know. I don't think it's a PSU issue as the 6800 Ultra is more power-hungry (2x molex connectors on it versus the 850) and it works fine. It's a very weird pointer corruption and certain images in dialog boxes. CCC also does not load. I'm at a loss on how to fix it really.

Reply 12 of 57, by agent_x007

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

If it's a resource conflict, you should see a "not enough reasources to use... device" error each time GPU driver loads and in Device manager a "x" sign near GPU.

Also, Win 98 doesn't like hardware changes like that.
If you have an option, try to do a clean install of win98 with x850 xt installed from the start (on different HDD/partition).

157143230295.png

Reply 13 of 57, by KT7AGuy

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

Can you remove some RAM? Try dropping down to 256MB and see what happens. I know it sounds crazy, but I once had a similar problem and removing some RAM is what fixed it.

Reply 14 of 57, by Betelgeuse

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie
KT7AGuy wrote:

Can you remove some RAM? Try dropping down to 256MB and see what happens. I know it sounds crazy, but I once had a similar problem and removing some RAM is what fixed it.

I did try this but unfortunately it made no difference. I'll be installing Windows again on a different HDD and see if it fixes the issue.

Reply 15 of 57, by Fusion

User metadata
Rank Member
Rank
Member

I loved that card. I flashed my X850Pro to a X850XT PE. Happiest day of my life. 😉

Pentium III @ 1.28Ghz - Intel SE440xBX-2 - 384MB PC100 - ATi Radeon DDR 64MB @ 200/186 - SB Live! 5.1 - Windows ME

Reply 17 of 57, by Dunuin

User metadata
Rank Newbie
Rank
Newbie

I've got the exact same problem. I installed IE6 SP1, .NET-Framework 1.1 & 2.0, DirectX 9.0c, all drivers, patched the latest BIOS and updated windows to the latest version. It runs fine in 2D with the default windows drivers and I get no error while installing all Win98 compatible catalyst drivers I found online (6.2, 5.9, 5.2, 4.11, 4.7). But after rebooting icons are corrupted and I get a message that the drivers cant be started.
I've got no Voodoo nor an onboard gpu, so that wont fix it. I tried different options in BIOS but nothing helped. What else could be a problem?

Hardware is:
GPU: Palit XpertVision Radeon X850 XT 256MB AGP
CPU: Athlon XP 1700+ Palomino
Mainboard: MSI K7T266 PRO2-RU
RAM: Kinston 1x 512MB DDR (KVR266X64C2) (also tried a second 512MB or two 256MB DIMMs)
Soundcard: Soundblaster Live Platinum
PSU: BeQuiet 400W (also tried a Seasonic 400W with more 12V but less 5V power)
Drives: 80GB HDD, DVD Burner (Lite-On DH-20A4P), 1,44MB Floppy, 120GB SSD with SATA to IDE adaper (not working)

Reply 18 of 57, by swaaye

User metadata
Rank l33t++
Rank
l33t++

Did you install VIA chipset drivers? My first suspicion is the motherboard being a problem in some way. I've never tried a X8x0 card on a KT266 board.

I would also remove all other PCI cards and disable any PCI peripherals on the board (like USB 2.0, firewire and IDE/RAID chips) and see if that changes anything.

Also might be fun to see if WinXP magically works fine.

Reply 19 of 57, by havli

User metadata
Rank Oldbie
Rank
Oldbie

I assembled win98 system with Radeon X850 Pro AGP (R481) recently. I didn't have much time to try it properly, but Catalyst 6.2 installs just fine, 2D works and D3D as well. I tried just one DX6 game... which is not much I admit, but it worked.

My system however is Core2 on i865 board.

HW museum.cz - my collection of PC hardware