Gainward Riva 128ZX only displays black and white \ VOGONS

Gainward Riva 128ZX only displays black and white

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First post, by Nunoalex

Posted on 2025-01-02, 12:32

Nunoalex Offline

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I was wondering if someone can help me with my Riva 128ZX AGP video card

It works well but it only displays monochrome (Black and White)
This is very strange because it is not a problem with a specific RGB channel as white supposedly uses all channels no ?
The card seems to be working well besides the monochrome... there are no artifacts or strange behaviors

I am thinking this could be some corrupt BIOS data on the card?
But unfortunately there is no BIOS file for this card on the RetroWeb
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/gain … rd-cardex-128zx

This is a picture of a similar card to mine

does anyone know about a similar situation ?

Thanx for the help

Nuno

Reply 1 of 4, by Imperious

Posted on 2025-01-02, 13:05

Imperious Offline

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Red, Green, and Blue all turned on at maximum equals white. So You do not have a problem with the RGB outputs.
What's the rest of the setup? Maybe there is something in the driver utilities that can be adjusted, although why it would default to Greyscale I have no idea.
Technically it's Greyscale, not black and white.
I have a normal 128 and a ZX128 in my collection but both worked no problems.

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 2 of 4, by BinaryDemon

Posted on 2025-01-02, 13:26

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Almost every time I see a similar thread, the issue is with the VGA cable. Have you tested the cable with another card/monitor?

Last edited by BinaryDemon on 2025-01-02, 23:38. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 3 of 4, by revolstar

Posted on 2025-01-02, 21:08

revolstar Offline

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I had a similar problem and the vga socket on my gpu (bent pins failing to make contact) was the culprit.

Win98 rig: Athlon XP 2500+/512MB RAM/Gigabyte GA-7VT600/SB Audigy/GF FX5700/Voodoo2 12MB
WinXP rig: HP RP5800 - Pentium G850/2GB RAM/GF GT530 1GB
Amiga: A600/2MB RAM
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PS2: Fat, FMCB

Reply 4 of 4, by Nunoalex

Posted on 2025-01-03, 12:26

Nunoalex Offline

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BinaryDemon wrote on 2025-01-02, 13:26:

Almost every time I see a similar thread, the issue is with the VGA cable. Have you tested the cable with another card/monitor?

OMG !
You guys are so good!
It really seems there is something wrong with the cable or the VGA connector on the card as I moved the cable and plug a bit and the colors did come !
It must be something on the card as I have plugged that monitor to countless other cards without issue.
I sprayed some deoxid and maybe I will reflow the 15 pins of the VGA connector on the card.

But there is still something wrong with the card as sometimes on windows there are some yellow or blue patches appearing, they come out when I resize the screen but they come back after a few minutes.

Thank you so much !

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