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Help please. Win98SE Radeon 8500

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First post, by Alistar1776

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I have ordered and installed an ATI Radeon 8500 LE and installed it in my Windows 98 system. Display output firstly has these vertical off color lines running thru the screen. This is with a known working monitor by the way. Drivers seem to install fine, however after the driver install, and a reboot, i am greeted with the following error message:

"Graphics bus failure. The display driver has discovered incompatibilities with your system and is unable to use any accelerated graphics rendering. Please contact your PC manufacturer or retailer for assistance"

vertical dotted lines still present after driver install and reboot as well. System is a Gateway LP Mini Tower KAD K7-850. Original internals to my knowledge. appreciate the help as always!

Edit: Update!! vertical lines go away going from 256 color, to 32... all looks clear now. Maybe the monitor cant do 256 color? or is it still gpu related?

Edit 2: Further details... vertical dotted lines STILL appear when going thru boot sequence, and in dos mode.. however once it loads to desktop, this is in 32 bit color mode, the lines disappear. However as stated previously, the lines return on the desktop, when switched to 256 colors.

Reply 3 of 25, by arizonapalms

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Here's what I'd do that instance:
- Try the card in another machine and see what it does
- Try another card in that machine

This way you can rule out if its the card itself or the motherboard doing weird things.
It's also worth cleaning the contacts on the card with some isopropyl alcohol

Reply 4 of 25, by TrashPanda

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-06-28, 05:03:
I have ordered and installed an ATI Radeon 8500 LE and installed it in my Windows 98 system. Display output firstly has these ve […]
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I have ordered and installed an ATI Radeon 8500 LE and installed it in my Windows 98 system. Display output firstly has these vertical off color lines running thru the screen. This is with a known working monitor by the way. Drivers seem to install fine, however after the driver install, and a reboot, i am greeted with the following error message:

"Graphics bus failure. The display driver has discovered incompatibilities with your system and is unable to use any accelerated graphics rendering. Please contact your PC manufacturer or retailer for assistance"

vertical dotted lines still present after driver install and reboot as well. System is a Gateway LP Mini Tower KAD K7-850. Original internals to my knowledge. appreciate the help as always!

Edit: Update!! vertical lines go away going from 256 color, to 32... all looks clear now. Maybe the monitor cant do 256 color? or is it still gpu related?

Edit 2: Further details... vertical dotted lines STILL appear when going thru boot sequence, and in dos mode.. however once it loads to desktop, this is in 32 bit color mode, the lines disappear. However as stated previously, the lines return on the desktop, when switched to 256 colors.

Sounds like a Vram issue, I have a 4600Ti that does the same thing aside from the bus failure, it was Vram going bad and even baking the GPU didn't fix it.

Reply 5 of 25, by Alistar1776

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arizonapalms wrote on 2022-06-30, 05:08:
Here's what I'd do that instance: - Try the card in another machine and see what it does - Try another card in that machine […]
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Here's what I'd do that instance:
- Try the card in another machine and see what it does
- Try another card in that machine

This way you can rule out if its the card itself or the motherboard doing weird things.
It's also worth cleaning the contacts on the card with some isopropyl alcohol

ok, ill give it a shot when i get time. i gotta get another AGP machine setup to test the card. as for other cards in the same machine, it originally had an NV996 i think that worked perfectly fine.

Reply 6 of 25, by Alistar1776

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-06-30, 06:32:

Sounds like a Vram issue, I have a 4600Ti that does the same thing aside from the bus failure, it was Vram going bad and even baking the GPU didn't fix it.

id hate for it to be a bad card. i was stoked to see windows 98 running with a graphics driver for once 🤣. it what it is i suppose, id have to track down another one

Reply 7 of 25, by arizonapalms

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Basically anything from like 96 until 2003 *should* run OK
It's just tracking them down (and for a reasonable price) which is kind of hard
Depending on what games you play you can find something like an ATI 9600 or nVidia fx 5500, or something along those lines.

Reply 8 of 25, by H.W.Necromancer

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-06-28, 05:03:
I have ordered and installed an ATI Radeon 8500 LE and installed it in my Windows 98 system. Display output firstly has these ve […]
Show full quote

I have ordered and installed an ATI Radeon 8500 LE and installed it in my Windows 98 system. Display output firstly has these vertical off color lines running thru the screen. This is with a known working monitor by the way. Drivers seem to install fine, however after the driver install, and a reboot, i am greeted with the following error message:

"Graphics bus failure. The display driver has discovered incompatibilities with your system and is unable to use any accelerated graphics rendering. Please contact your PC manufacturer or retailer for assistance"

vertical dotted lines still present after driver install and reboot as well. System is a Gateway LP Mini Tower KAD K7-850. Original internals to my knowledge. appreciate the help as always!

Edit: Update!! vertical lines go away going from 256 color, to 32... all looks clear now. Maybe the monitor cant do 256 color? or is it still gpu related?

Edit 2: Further details... vertical dotted lines STILL appear when going thru boot sequence, and in dos mode.. however once it loads to desktop, this is in 32 bit color mode, the lines disappear. However as stated previously, the lines return on the desktop, when switched to 256 colors.

This card worth to be saved. Even if a repair / vram replacement is needed. Could you pleade share a photo of the glitches you see? (thise lines). Is it visible right on the post screen whem the PC is booting? I have a GeForce 4Ti 4200 and some other cards with such a probem. I have also met cards from the Gf4 era with faulty electrolytic caps - it very well simulated vram erors but after replacing them the card worked OK. And the caps were not bulging!! Plese post a photo of the card s well.

Reply 9 of 25, by Alistar1776

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H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-02, 08:18:

This card worth to be saved. Even if a repair / vram replacement is needed. Could you pleade share a photo of the glitches you see? (thise lines). Is it visible right on the post screen whem the PC is booting? I have a GeForce 4Ti 4200 and some other cards with such a probem. I have also met cards from the Gf4 era with faulty electrolytic caps - it very well simulated vram erors but after replacing them the card worked OK. And the caps were not bulging!! Plese post a photo of the card s well.

ok, i cant post the video due to size limits, but heres the card:

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Reply 10 of 25, by Alistar1776

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H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-02, 08:18:

This card worth to be saved. Even if a repair / vram replacement is needed. Could you pleade share a photo of the glitches you see? (thise lines). Is it visible right on the post screen whem the PC is booting? I have a GeForce 4Ti 4200 and some other cards with such a probem. I have also met cards from the Gf4 era with faulty electrolytic caps - it very well simulated vram erors but after replacing them the card worked OK. And the caps were not bulging!! Plese post a photo of the card s well.

Heres more images since the video is to big to upload:

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Reply 12 of 25, by Alistar1776

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arizonapalms wrote on 2022-07-03, 23:40:

If you have the tools, I'd try a recap for sure.

I do not have the tools, nor the skills for a recap. Ill see if i can find someone local that can do a recap

Reply 13 of 25, by H.W.Necromancer

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-07-03, 20:40:
H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-02, 08:18:

This card worth to be saved. Even if a repair / vram replacement is needed. Could you pleade share a photo of the glitches you see? (thise lines). Is it visible right on the post screen whem the PC is booting? I have a GeForce 4Ti 4200 and some other cards with such a probem. I have also met cards from the Gf4 era with faulty electrolytic caps - it very well simulated vram erors but after replacing them the card worked OK. And the caps were not bulging!! Plese post a photo of the card s well.

Heres more images since the video is to big to upload:

It has good capacitors but they can fail too and it can looks like a memory chip failure. One of the 470uF looks to have damage on top and it might be even pierced? It looks no SMD are missing but still look very carefuly. I have just hot gunned a card like - and than I found one missing part - replaced and it is running.
Check also the pads of the silver capacitors if they are really fixed good to the board.

Reply 14 of 25, by Alistar1776

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H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-04, 19:32:

It has good capacitors but they can fail too and it can looks like a memory chip failure. One of the 470uF looks to have damage on top and it might be even pierced? It looks no SMD are missing but still look very carefuly. I have just hot gunned a card like - and than I found one missing part - replaced and it is running.
Check also the pads of the silver capacitors if they are really fixed good to the board.

you think maybe a decent electronics shop could replace a memory module or capacitor? I have zero experience with component repair or soldering

Reply 15 of 25, by H.W.Necromancer

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-07-05, 06:58:
H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-04, 19:32:

It has good capacitors but they can fail too and it can looks like a memory chip failure. One of the 470uF looks to have damage on top and it might be even pierced? It looks no SMD are missing but still look very carefuly. I have just hot gunned a card like - and than I found one missing part - replaced and it is running.
Check also the pads of the silver capacitors if they are really fixed good to the board.

you think maybe a decent electronics shop could replace a memory module or capacitor? I have zero experience with component repair or soldering

Do not know where you live. This is more a work for some ethusiast - "pro" but used to work on such things. Not a regular TV repair shop. But someone who is doing board level repair of notebooks, motehrboardS, gaming consoles...But I am just guessing based on my experience - to get those memory chips is possible sometimes on Ali or Ebay or they can be stolen from a wrack of another GPU, reballed and used again. Last resort is reballing and resoldering the main chip itself. But a repairer should start with checking if it has all the proper voltages, than he can remove/check/replace capacitors and than he can try to figure out if a memory BGA chip or the GPU chip could have been the problem. Depends on how much money you wish to spent on saving this card. Avoid some DIY hotair reflow before some one more experienced will check it. My bad experience! But if you find some one with a InfraRed station - good reflow may help.

Reply 16 of 25, by Alistar1776

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H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-05, 17:35:

Do not know where you live. This is more a work for some ethusiast - "pro" but used to work on such things. Not a regular TV repair shop. But someone who is doing board level repair of notebooks, motehrboardS, gaming consoles...But I am just guessing based on my experience - to get those memory chips is possible sometimes on Ali or Ebay or they can be stolen from a wrack of another GPU, reballed and used again. Last resort is reballing and resoldering the main chip itself. But a repairer should start with checking if it has all the proper voltages, than he can remove/check/replace capacitors and than he can try to figure out if a memory BGA chip or the GPU chip could have been the problem. Depends on how much money you wish to spent on saving this card. Avoid some DIY hotair reflow before some one more experienced will check it. My bad experience! But if you find some one with a InfraRed station - good reflow may help.

I know, i was asking more generally if A computer shop would be able to do the repair. I think Ill try to find a CRT from about late 90s era to test the card again before getting another card. Ive heard other opinions say maybe it will work better from a CRT instead of the LCD.

Reply 17 of 25, by H.W.Necromancer

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Alistar1776 wrote on 2022-07-07, 05:10:
H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-05, 17:35:

Do not know where you live. This is more a work for some ethusiast - "pro" but used to work on such things. Not a regular TV repair shop. But someone who is doing board level repair of notebooks, motehrboardS, gaming consoles...But I am just guessing based on my experience - to get those memory chips is possible sometimes on Ali or Ebay or they can be stolen from a wrack of another GPU, reballed and used again. Last resort is reballing and resoldering the main chip itself. But a repairer should start with checking if it has all the proper voltages, than he can remove/check/replace capacitors and than he can try to figure out if a memory BGA chip or the GPU chip could have been the problem. Depends on how much money you wish to spent on saving this card. Avoid some DIY hotair reflow before some one more experienced will check it. My bad experience! But if you find some one with a InfraRed station - good reflow may help.

I know, i was asking more generally if A computer shop would be able to do the repair. I think Ill try to find a CRT from about late 90s era to test the card again before getting another card. Ive heard other opinions say maybe it will work better from a CRT instead of the LCD.

Good point! Try an old monitor and if you can get a cable you can try also the TV OUT available on this card. It would be interesting to know if it changes anything. Wish you good luck and will be happy to know hot it goes. It is a nice card and I am trying to save as much nice old HW as possible. ..

Reply 18 of 25, by Alistar1776

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H.W.Necromancer wrote on 2022-07-07, 08:51:

Good point! Try an old monitor and if you can get a cable you can try also the TV OUT available on this card. It would be interesting to know if it changes anything. Wish you good luck and will be happy to know hot it goes. It is a nice card and I am trying to save as much nice old HW as possible. ..

As soon as I find out something, itll be posted in this thread.

Reply 19 of 25, by Alistar1776

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Update: I got back around to messing with the system a few days ago, and the Radeon 8500 has kicked the bucket entirely. 8 beeps with no display. So, ill be in the market for another gpu. maybe a pci one? ive heard those are more reliable