I believe the NT kernel always ran headless if no video card is installed.. If the BIOS complains about no VGA you can just set it to halt on no errors and it will proceed to boot. I'm pretty sure this was done since prehistoric times 😀

Trying to understand why Slimjet 38 (the last Win7-compatible version) does not run on my Thinkpad X32 with a fully updated 32-bit Windows 7. It starts and closes without showing the main window. Currently using Pale Moon 34 here, but its web-compatibility wasn't as good last I checked.

dr_st wrote on Today, 06:37:

No way! What surprises me is that Windows actually works without a display adapter. What is the ATITool Utility?

That's the driver ATI Tools uses (overclocking etc.). But currently no card is inside.

appiah4 wrote on Today, 07:57:

I believe the NT kernel always ran headless if no video card is installed.. If the BIOS complains about no VGA you can just set it to halt on no errors and it will proceed to boot. I'm pretty sure this was done since prehistoric times 😀

I've had that plan many times and done the "no error halt" change a couple of times, but all my previous boards I tested with it for whatever reason refused to boot. So this is my first time where it worked out.

Today, I tried out a new fan on the old heatsink of a GeForce 256 DDR. The whole thing booted once more!

However, MadOnion isn't happy with the drivers (says the ones I have don't support DirectX 7) and there are horizontal brightness/darkness bands consistent with voltage droop in the analog stage. I am 99% sure voltage droop banding only shows on static content. More importantly, I need to find more complete drivers so that I can stress test the VRAM...