VOGONS


First post, by Dirge

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Hi All! I recently received a AN430TX board I ordered from Ebay. The seller had specified onboard VGA, but the pictures were for the version with no onboard VGA. I went ahead and bit, as all my other old systems have various generations of Sound Blasters, and I was interested in the onboard Yamaha OPL and wavetable on this board. Plus I never had a Pentium MMX/430TX system back in the day. I went from a Shuttle HOT 557 430VX/P133 to a Shuttle HOT 603 AMD 640(VIA)/K6-200 system.

My question is this for anyone who has one of these boards, how does the onboard ATI Rage behave with a PCI video card installed in the system? I have a feeling I'm going to have to deal with the jankiness of a disabled VGA adapter in Win95 device manager, but I was hoping someone could give me some good news that the onboard video will automagically disable itself. There are no jumpers or BIOS options that I could find in the manual. I would just find out for myself, but I'm not going to have the processor or RAM for a few more days. My stash is light on P1 era hardware. TIA.

Reply 1 of 9, by The Serpent Rider

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No, it doesn't. It acts as a secondary video card. You can disable it in device manager with few clicks.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 3 of 9, by kepstin

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Interesting, I had thought there would be a bios option to disable the onboard VGA. One thing to note is that the version of the board with VGA has 1 fewer PCI slot than the version without VGA (presumably they wired up the Rage chip electrically to the "removed" PCI slot).

I actually have the version of the board without VGA, but I kind of wanted the one with - I'm using a Voodoo 2 in it, and had to dig up an extra 2D card. (That said, I had a spare Matrox Millennium, so it all worked out in the end.)

Reply 4 of 9, by TheMobRules

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I have an LT430TX, more precisely an OEM version of the board that came from a Gateway 2000. It has onboard ATI Rage video but no sound.

Interestingly, the onboard video works only when using the Gateway BIOS. If I flash the generic Intel BIOS, I can only use the board with an add-on PCI video card and can see the ATI in the list of PCI devices, but it refuses to work on its own.

In either case the onboard video never gets disabled when using another PCI card, it will always show up in the device list.

Reply 5 of 9, by Dirge

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kepstin wrote on 2021-02-12, 06:47:

Interesting, I had thought there would be a bios option to disable the onboard VGA. One thing to note is that the version of the board with VGA has 1 fewer PCI slot than the version without VGA (presumably they wired up the Rage chip electrically to the "removed" PCI slot).

I actually have the version of the board without VGA, but I kind of wanted the one with - I'm using a Voodoo 2 in it, and had to dig up an extra 2D card. (That said, I had a spare Matrox Millennium, so it all worked out in the end.)

I agree about the option to disable the onboard VGA. This motherboard strikes me as being a higher-end, relatively expensive board for its time.

Yeah, I've got my old Voodoo 2 I was planning on putting in it, but it's an unknown quantity. I had some issues with it locking up my PIII system, and just yanked it out. I wish I still had my Voodoo 1, but I gave it away before the 90s were out. I've never been a big fan of ATI, especially the pre-Radeon Rage series. I'll probably put a spare TNT2 M64 in it. It should have good performance/compatibility in DOS, and I should have OK 3d performance out of it in Windows, even if the CPU can't fully drive it. I've got a Millennium II I could put in it, but it's in my PPro system, and I'd rather leave it there.

Reply 6 of 9, by The Serpent Rider

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This motherboard strikes me as being a higher-end, relatively expensive board for its time.

On the contrary. These boards were designed to cut as much corners as possible, which is typical for OEM. Although some of that corner cutting is useful 25 years after.

I must be some kind of standard: the anonymous gangbanger of the 21st century.

Reply 7 of 9, by turtleboy211

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TheMobRules wrote on 2021-02-12, 09:08:

I have an LT430TX, more precisely an OEM version of the board that came from a Gateway 2000. It has onboard ATI Rage video but no sound.

Interestingly, the onboard video works only when using the Gateway BIOS. If I flash the generic Intel BIOS, I can only use the board with an add-on PCI video card and can see the ATI in the list of PCI devices, but it refuses to work on its own.

In either case the onboard video never gets disabled when using another PCI card, it will always show up in the device list.

I have a Gateway 2000 with the same board. Intel bios disabled video. Where did you find a Gateway Bios?

Reply 8 of 9, by TheMobRules

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turtleboy211 wrote on 2021-02-16, 22:40:

I have a Gateway 2000 with the same board. Intel bios disabled video. Where did you find a Gateway Bios?

In my case it originally came with the Gateway BIOS, but I also found the latest version online years ago:

Filename
7502875.exe
File size
445.37 KiB
Downloads
81 downloads
File license
Fair use/fair dealing exception

If you currently have the Intel BIOS, you probably need to use the recovery mode to flash the Gateway one, otherwise the update will probably fail when it checks the boot block.

Reply 9 of 9, by turtleboy211

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TheMobRules wrote on 2021-02-17, 01:10:
In my case it originally came with the Gateway BIOS, but I also found the latest version online years ago: […]
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turtleboy211 wrote on 2021-02-16, 22:40:

I have a Gateway 2000 with the same board. Intel bios disabled video. Where did you find a Gateway Bios?

In my case it originally came with the Gateway BIOS, but I also found the latest version online years ago:

7502875.exe

If you currently have the Intel BIOS, you probably need to use the recovery mode to flash the Gateway one, otherwise the update will probably fail when it checks the boot block.

Dude you are a saint.