I found the solution! I found a BIOS update for this card on Dell's website, I flashed it, and it is now working with Windows 98, tested on two different motherboards! After flashing it in my 8KRA2 with WinXP, I took it out and installed it in my M930LMR running Win98 and it went straight to the desktop and allowed me to install the driver. I then took it out and put it in my i875 P4 board and formatted the XP install and installed Win98 and it completed with no issue. That has never worked before, so the BIOS update really did the trick!

I wonder what in the old bios was causing it to behave weirdly with Win98 .. perhaps something to do with how it was using AGP.

I agree with TrashPanda that this is a surprise. I've never updated a GPU BIOS before and wouldn't have even thought to try. Very interesting!

Can you link to the Dell driver page for this?

There's nothing in the description indicating that it would solve this issue, but I felt that it was worth a shot since nothing else had worked. I doubt this card was ever released in a system with Win98, so this issue might have been so rare as to be almost nonexistent.

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drive … driverid=r42775

Congrats on solving the issue !

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-27, 16:04:

Congrats on solving the issue !

Thanks, it's a good feeling. And now if anyone else has this issue, Google should lead them here.

Also, it's a good card - for comparison, here's my 128 meg Ti4600 in the same system with the same driver scoring about 1,000 points more.

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-03-27, 16:29:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-27, 16:04:

Congrats on solving the issue !

Thanks, it's a good feeling. And now if anyone else has this issue, Google should lead them here.

Also, it's a good card - for comparison, here's my 128 meg Ti4600 in the same system with the same driver scoring about 1,000 points more.

I have recently got a Quadro4 980 XGL so I wonder if that too has issues with 98, I have a 98/xp dual boot system and the card tested fine under XP but I didn't bother to check with 98 as I dont have drivers for it on that machine. I will say the card is a beast and happily beats any other GPU I have tested in that system, it even beat the broken Ti4600.

But I will check it under 98 and see if it has the same issues your Quadro did.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-28, 03:03:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2022-03-27, 16:29:

weedeewee wrote on 2022-03-27, 16:04:

Congrats on solving the issue !

Thanks, it's a good feeling. And now if anyone else has this issue, Google should lead them here.

Also, it's a good card - for comparison, here's my 128 meg Ti4600 in the same system with the same driver scoring about 1,000 points more.

I have recently got a Quadro4 980 XGL so I wonder if that too has issues with 98, I have a 98/xp dual boot system and the card tested fine under XP but I didn't bother to check with 98 as I dont have drivers for it on that machine. I will say the card is a beast and happily beats any other GPU I have tested in that system, it even beat the broken Ti4600.

But I will check it under 98 and see if it has the same issues your Quadro did.

The 700 was released in early 2002, the 980 in late 2002, so maybe the BIOS was more mature. But if it does have an issue with Win98, hopefully it too will have an update out there that will cure it.

How I feel when I find a fix for an issue like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fEBmh_zE9Yo