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First post, by thevdm

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Hi,

I have a Trident TVGA9200CXR video card for a DX2 66. The graphics card works perfectly in DOS mode and with games like Doom/Wolf3D, it even works fine for installing Win3.11.

When loading Win3.11 I get the splash screen followed by the monitor showing a no signal message then going to sleep

Things I've tried so far:
* Multiple monitors (older 4:3/5:4 LCD and a couple of CRT's including an Eizo FlexScan that supports more modes than I can think of)
* Multiple drivers (Standard VGA/SVGA/Others that come with Win3.11, proper Trident drivers - the Trident installer requires Win3.11 but can still be installed via Windows setup and selecting disk)

I would have thought this was a driver/monitor support issue but it's not looking to be the case. The card has 1MB memory soldered and empty sockets for another 1MB, still plenty for the time and shouldn't cause errors with 16/256 colours.

Attached is a picture of the card from the ebay listing, there are a couple of jumpers on there - Could that be the problem?

It's likely been over 20 years since I've setup a VLB card so feel free to treat me as a novice 😁

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A nostalgic pile of laptops from the late 80's to late 90s.

Reply 2 of 8, by Horun

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Hmm it is an Ara Tech Co Ltd 9200CXR-ARA1A, dated late 1993 from FCC ID. Unfortunately they did not have a web site back then AFAIK...
Yeah try a diff cable. Also: what motherboard ? What CPU ? what bus speed are you running ?
You have 5 jumpers and typically If at 40Mhz you need to find the Wait state jumper and change to 1ws not 0, also one of the jumpers be for memory size, sometimes another for IRQ usage (usually 9), another sometimes for Interlaced/non interlaced mode.
The other one am not sure of (none of my VLB have more than 3 jumpers, but they differ depending on the card)

The data sheet does list the data bits to be set (which are typically by jumper). http://vgamuseum.info/images/doc/trident/tvga9200cxr.pdf
The ones that pop to me are: MD22: VL-bus operation (CPU clock {>33Mhz, =<33mhz}) , MD20: selects VL bus time base, MD15: selects 386VL-Bus or 486VL-Bus.
BTW The Windows 3.1 driver for Trident 9200CX is same as the 8900CL as far as I know.

Will dig a bit deeper but am guessing the issue is with Win trying a diff mode than DOS and it could be jumper related...

ADDED: We need a better picture OR tell what the jumper labels are. I can see J1, JX8 and J8 but cannot read what the other jumpers are labeled.
On other Trident VLB the JX jumper is for Bus Speed. Closed is for >33Mhz, open is for 33Mhz or less. Yours is open so if running a 40Mhz bus it will be an issue.
That is all I got for now....

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 3 of 8, by Eep386

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Possibly an issue with the video BIOS on the card?

Life isn't long enough to re-enable every hidden option in every BIOS on every board... 🙁

Reply 4 of 8, by Anonymous Coward

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9200CXR. That's a weird one I don't see often.

"Will the highways on the internets become more few?" -Gee Dubya
V'Ger XT|Upgraded AT|Ultimate 386|Super VL/EISA 486|SMP VL/EISA Pentium

Reply 5 of 8, by Eep386

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9200CXr is the direct predecessor to the 9400CXi - it's almost the same exact thing, except it doesn't have a hardware mouse cursor sprite.

Life isn't long enough to re-enable every hidden option in every BIOS on every board... 🙁

Reply 6 of 8, by dondiego

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Most likely the card is running on interlaced mode, either use a lower resolution or change the jumper.
Get the specs of the chip or for the 9400Cxi and see the resolution you're trying to use.
Edit: There are no jumper settings for the reference card in that sheet linked above but 800x600 sould run fine.

LZDoom, ZDoom32, ZDoom LE
RUDE (Doom)
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Reply 7 of 8, by thevdm

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Hi

Apologies for the delay and thank you all for your help.

I've attached a photo of the card with the jumpers labelled, there is a list of the jumpers here - https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/graphics-cards/P … VGA9200CXR.html the card listed on Stason is slightly different but I imagine the jumpers are the same.

The PC I'm using it in has a IH4077CN-0K-0M motherboard with a DX2 66 (33Mhz FSB)

Hopefully the BIOS is OK, otherwise it's time to buy a DIP programmer 😁

Thank you
Jim

Edit - The motherboard is actually a PWA-IH4077C

Another quick update - I've dug out an old Viglen Envy monitor (as I've been sharing one VGA cable between the monitors and that CRT has a built in cable), still no joy, as soon as the Win3.11 splash screen goes away the monitor goes to sleep. Might be time to invest in another VGA cable. The one I'm using is good quality, but also about 8 foot long which may not be helping.

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Gaming rig: Dell Dimension XPS T500 - PIII 500 - 288MB RAM - Voodoo3 3000 - SoundBlaster Live! Value - DVD-ROM - CD-RW - 3.5" 1.44 - 98SE & 2000 dual boot
A nostalgic pile of laptops from the late 80's to late 90s.

Reply 8 of 8, by thevdm

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Quick update.

I've managed to get this card working. I had to install a TVGA 9200 Dos driver which then allowed the card to load Windows 3.1 correctly.

The Windows driver alone doesn't work, instead both the Dos and Windows drivers are required.

Although a seperate site, is there a way to register on vogonsdrivers to upload the TVGA 9200 Dos/3.11 drivers, not sure if I'm missing something?

Gaming rig: Dell Dimension XPS T500 - PIII 500 - 288MB RAM - Voodoo3 3000 - SoundBlaster Live! Value - DVD-ROM - CD-RW - 3.5" 1.44 - 98SE & 2000 dual boot
A nostalgic pile of laptops from the late 80's to late 90s.