For 2D only this should work: https://bearwindows.zcm.com.au/vbe9x.htm

No such hacked drivers exist. 6.2 and X850 are the final things for 98/SE/ME.

That "2D" driver is only a VESA wrapper, with zero GDI acceleration so things are going to be painfully slow when you move windows etc.
I primarly use it to give safe mode higher resolution and color count over the stock VGA driver it uses.

zyga64 wrote on 2023-02-18, 19:22:

For 2D only this should work: https://bearwindows.zcm.com.au/vbe9x.htm

Thanks I was chasing something ppl were calling the Limemaster VBE driver but turns out that it's that too.

My inner toddler has continued to go "Why? .... Why? .... Why?"... so I think the stopper is the new scheduling in the R500s, assigning tasks to emptiest shader pipes. I'm wondering if AMD wanted that tech in particular to potentially apply to Bulldozer. But anyway, seems to add a level of complexity over R400 that makes extending the drivers not possible... unless... you fool later R500 card into thinking it's a single quad budget variant, X1100, 1500 or something and I have heard suggestions about getting those working before. But really you hit a brick wall with TeraScale, which is where the cards actually become useful to have in more modern systems. So yeah, get you a tad further but not much, like finding a wide, fast flowing river to cross, and saying you can't go any further, but genius at the back goes "Yeah, but you can at least wade until it gets to your knees"

Then found another rabbit hole, that VBE/AF standard exists and how it's been used for everything apart from writing a 9x driver, meant to be 2D accelerated, so takes you from basic VGA performance to S3/GL-5434 or something, vs basic VBE 3.0 with no blitting or cursor etc.

Though at the point we get to these cards, a wild linux driver appears, open source radeon drivers... so I guess if you wanna get down and filthy and play in the mud with cygwin or similar then backporting that is slightly possible.

Anyhoo the VBE driver may suffice for what I had in mind, which was mostly file copy, trying old coverdisk content out, setting up stuff which only speaks fat32, mostly desktop donkeywork. Might need it for some old handhelds too, playing with Palm III and iPaqs.