Hi! Is it an ATI card? ATI VGA Wonder (+)? If so, that card is from the 1980s and predates Win 95 for many years.
If you're lucky, some Windows 3.x drivers were made for that card, still.
I wouldn't be surprised if the original drivers shipped with the card were on 5,25" diskettes and written for Windows /386.
But if a Windows 3.1 driver exists, it can be used under Windows 95 still.

There is a Win 3.1 driver in Vogons Driver library and also in the MS Win3.1 WDL which I can add to library also....

No, it's not from the 1980s. The original VGA Wonder is from 1988. The Wonder+ is early 90s. Either '90 or '91. The drivers are included with Windows 95.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-10-18, 00:26:

No, it's not from the 1980s. The original VGA Wonder is from 1988. The Wonder+ is early 90s. Either '90 or '91. The drivers are included with Windows 95.

Jeez, so it's two years younger then and merely 5 years behind Win 95.. 🙄
- But yes, strictly speaking, you're absolutely right. My bad. 😀

Thanks for mentioning that Win95 has some drivers on-board. 🙂👍
So maybe chrisNova777 has luck and said drivers are on that Win 95 CD or Win95 disk set.
It could be the case that Win95 can't auto-detect that ISA VGA and the driver must be selected manually.

To my defense, I was thinking of the original ATI VGA Wonder from 1988 (Chipset: ATI 18800).
The newer plus model is from 1990 (Chipset: ATI 28800).
That's why I thought that it uses the same VGA core and thus, uses the same set of drivers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATI_Wonder_series

The VGA Wonder+ was around for a while. ATi updated it with the VGAWonder XL and finally the XL24 (either '92 or '93). Anyway, ATi was definitely still selling it in 1993, and maybe even in 1994, so it's really not that big of a stretch for it to have Windows 95 support. I am pretty sure ATi never made a standalone driver package for VGAWonder in Windows 95 though. I would definitely have remembered that.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-10-18, 11:36:

The VGA Wonder+ was around for a while. ATi updated it with the VGAWonder XL and finally the XL24 (either '92 or '93).
Anyway, ATi was definitely still selling it in 1993, and maybe even in 1994, so it's really not that big of a stretch for it to have Windows 95 support.

Thanks for the information and for your understanding. 😀

Personally, if memory serves, I had a VGA Wonder 16 in my old AT PC (80286, 12MHz, BIOS date 1988)
- the VGA was integrated into the motherboard, along with a bus mouse interface.

PS: I didn't mean to sound like a jerk when I said "strickly speasking". It's just..
I share the opinion that a decade, or rather, the essence of it, doesn't abruptly end by the calendar turn of the decade.
I rather think that they smoothly flow into each other. So, say, the essence of the 80s or 90s were still present
for the following 2-3 years in which they softly faded away. But that's more a spritual/cultural thing, of course.

Anonymous Coward wrote on 2021-10-18, 11:36:

I am pretty sure ATi never made a standalone driver package for VGAWonder in Windows 95 though. I would definitely have remembered that.

I think you're right, yes. From what I remember, at the time hardware companies rarely did release separate drivers, if the OS shipped with one already.
That's different from today, I guess. Back then, companies saw no need to "update" existing drivers, except if a serious bug-fix was required.
Of course, there were drivers being distiributed by VGA card makers at some point. Companies/brands like ELSA etc did release them.
But the chip manufacturer itself, which made what we now call a "reference driver", had little interest to optimize or update driver for older hardware.

If it’s a 256k card specialized drivers won’t do much 800x600x16 colors

Even at 512k you get 256 colors at the same

I don’t think the wonder plus did any funky high res monochrome modes so nothing too far from vga at that point.

the driver i had tried to install was for the VGA WONDER XL24 and it didnt work for me

i didnt try the default drivers in win95... doh! 😀

i actually ended up taking that ATI ISA video card out of the pentium 75 system i had it in + just installed win98SE + a Radeon 7000 PCI card.
i needed the other ISA slot for MIDI / AUDIO related interface cards

Vgawonder+, xl and xl24 are all very similar, but they use different ramdacs. I would think the xl24 should be backward compatible with the older drivers, but not sure if the older models can use the xl24 driver for 256 colour modes. What I remember is that the hi color drivers of the xl and xl24 are incompatible.

You can also check out this: https://web.archive.org/web/20010330084939/ht … er_drivers.html.

When it comes to Win95 it says:

1Windows 95 - use the VGAWONDER driver provided with the operating system

Drivers for Win3.1x are available.

kind regards
soggi

Cool, thanks a lot! That site you linked to even has the ATI utilities and the VBE drivers!
It's definitely useful, even if the default drivers in Win 95 should work! 😎👍

This one is in the todo pipe for months (years?) like many other things… I will integrate it into my ATI drivers page (-> https://soggi.org/drivers/ati.htm), when time allows.

kind regards
soggi