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Help! What drivers do I use for this old Presario?!

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First post, by Snookeroo

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Greetings Vogons. As usual, I am stuck and you are my only hope!

I am doing a refurbishment on this handsome old Compaq Presario 7480. I have cleaned it all up and upgraded the RAM. I will be sticking with the original 550Mhz AMD-K6-2 processor and using the motherboard's onboard sound and video capabilities (don't worry, I won't be playing many 3D accelerated games on it).

I have done a fresh install of Windows 98 and am at the point where I need to install video and sound drivers, but this is where I become stuck.

I presume that Compaq would have shipped the machine with a setup CD containing all the drivers, but obviously I don't have this available to me. I have found a few drivers here, but I'm not sure if they are correct and they seem to be for specific fixes.
https://driverscollection.com/?H=Compaq%20Pre … SS=Windows%2098

I can't see any model information on the PCB of the motherboard. I'm at a loss! All the information I have is:

- Chassis clearly shows model number 7480
- See picture_2, shows "Compaq serial number H043FP331067"
- System Information section in the BIOS says "System ROM family 686S4"

Thank you in advance for any help. Cheers.

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Reply 1 of 7, by dionb

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Maybe too simple thinking, but how about just checking the chips for the (onboard) devices? First up check the motherboard chipset (I'd suspect SiS530 in this case), then video drivers (probably integrated in the SIS chipset) and finally locate sound chip and get Win98 drivers for that. Install in that order, so chipset drivers first, then the rest.

SiS still has Win9x drivers online, so if it's a SiS chipset, go to http://w3.sis.com/download

In general www.vogonsdrivers.com is a good location for individual drivers, but I'd generally get stuff direct form chip vendors if they still exist and have downloads.

Reply 2 of 7, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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Generally the DriversCollection downloads are fine, and it's a lot easier than trying to find individual files on the HP ftp servers eg the "System ROM family 686S4" is from Compaq SoftPAQ SP17455 and this is one of the links on DriversCollection.

Also, if you look on archive.org, there are some quick restore CD images which seems to cover your model - https://archive.org/search.php?query=compaq%2 … presario%207480

EDIT - based on this old thread - Old Compaq motherboard - Super Socket 7 - it's possibly a VIA board, a Compaq version MiTAC 5114vu - https://www.ultimateretro.net/en/motherboards/9594

Reply 3 of 7, by Snookeroo

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Thanks for all the suggestions guys. These are awesome!

You were absolutely right about it being a VIA board. This is a screenshot from the Device Manager. I will do some research to try and figure out what the difference is between VT501 and VT82C686.

I'll keep you all posted here on how I go. Cheers!

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Reply 4 of 7, by dionb

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Snookeroo wrote on 2022-01-10, 12:07:

Thanks for all the suggestions guys. These are awesome!

You were absolutely right about it being a VIA board. This is a screenshot from the Device Manager. I will do some research to try and figure out what the difference is between VT501 and VT82C686.

Do you by any chance mean the VT8501? That's the northbridge (memory controller, and iGPU) of the Via MVP4 chipset for (Super)Socket 7 CPUs. It contains a 'virtual' VT501 device, but that's not a separate chip.

The 686 (A (most likely) or B) is the southbridge, with most of the I/O on it.

You basically need:
- Via 4-in-1 drivers (https://d34vhvz8ul1ifj.cloudfront.net/Driver/ … A_4in1_443v.zip)
- Via/Trident VGA drivers (https://d34vhvz8ul1ifj.cloudfront.net/Driver/ … _Win9x_3136.zip)

Both of these come from Via's driver site: http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp

Reply 5 of 7, by Snookeroo

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I have installed the above two drivers. This is what I get:

- The VGA drivers worked great. I can now do 32 bit colour and res up to 1024x768.
- The 4in1 drivers appear to have absolutely no affect. When I run the installer the progress bar goes from 0% to 100% in a split second as if it didn't even do anything, then it says it was successful and that I must reboot my machine. When I reboot there has been no change; I still have no sound output, and when I go to the "add/remove programs" menu there are no 4in1 drivers to be seen.

Some screenshots attached.

Any other ideas what I can do to get chipset and sound drivers installed?

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Reply 6 of 7, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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Snookeroo wrote on 2022-01-12, 00:16:
I have installed the above two drivers. This is what I get: […]
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I have installed the above two drivers. This is what I get:

- The VGA drivers worked great. I can now do 32 bit colour and res up to 1024x768.
- The 4in1 drivers appear to have absolutely no affect. When I run the installer the progress bar goes from 0% to 100% in a split second as if it didn't even do anything, then it says it was successful and that I must reboot my machine. When I reboot there has been no change; I still have no sound output, and when I go to the "add/remove programs" menu there are no 4in1 drivers to be seen.

Some screenshots attached.

Any other ideas what I can do to get chipset and sound drivers installed?

Did you install the ESS Allegro Audio drivers from DriversCollection link in your OP?

Reply 7 of 7, by Snookeroo

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You're one step ahead of me! Excellent point.

I just had a look on the mb and saw that the sound card was an "ESS Allegro 1989s". I tried a bunch of different drivers for it, but this was the only one I found which worked:
https://www.driverguide.com/driver/detail.php?driverid=51815

With sound and video both working now I am going to test this thing out and see if it can run Age of Empires II.

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