Are you sure the card is healthy? Besides, why not use an AGP card anyway?

I habe 4 dfferent s3 pci cards, all work fine on everything else. Fail only with bx chipsets.

Your 2nd question, like i wrote before:
Because its my different kind of dream pc.

Put a different card, go into the BIOS and set the 'VGA Boot From' to PCI.

You could try a motherboard based on the Via Apollo Pro or ALi ALADDiN Pro II chipset then.

PlaneVuki wrote on 2025-06-28, 08:20:

Are there LX chipsets out there that can go to 100mhz fsb? LX is compatible with S3.

No there are not.

I have hard time to believe that the 440bx is incompatible with s3 trio\virge cards in general and with a quick google search I didn't find any other info and considering how much were common the 440bx boards and the s3 cards it would have been noted before. It could be an issue with the specific motherboard?

My main late DOS machine has an i440BX and an S3 Trio3D card and zero stability issues. I also use S3 Virge cards for testing boards, and my BX boards don't freeze after post with say a Diamond Stealth3D 3000 PCI (Virge/VX) This definitely sounds more specific than "all bx chipsets"

dionb wrote on 2025-06-28, 17:08:

My main late DOS machine has an i440BX and an S3 Trio3D card and zero stability issues. I also use S3 Virge cards for testing boards, and my BX boards don't freeze after post with say a Diamond Stealth3D 3000 PCI (Virge/VX) This definitely sounds more specific than "all bx chipsets"

Yeah this has got me curious, I have several BX boards and a PCI Virge around here somewhere.

I'll dig out the Virge tonight and try it in my CUBX-E and a slot 1 440BX Tyan board I have.

Freezing randomly in win 98 could be due to bad driver. Or you could have multiple worn out 440BX boards. I would remove all other cards, disable all ports and internal sound card and use one RAM stick only. Use the slowest CPU you have (ideally a slow Celeron).

Also: are these the boards you are overclocking that Covington on? In case of any issues, first thing to do is to roll back overclocks.

The most reasonable thing to do would be to try those cards with another bx motherboard but unlucky nowadays they are all except cheap.

PlaneVuki wrote on 2025-06-28, 08:20:

Hi ! […]
Show full quote

Hi !

I have a niche dream of pc:

Covington at 100mhz fsb + S3 pci card + windows 98

But what I discovered is that S3 pci and BX chipset are incompatible.

Gibabyte GA-BX2000 mobo with S3 trio/virge cards freezes randomly on win98.

Siemens Nixdorf D1107 mobo with s3 trio/virge cards freezes after post.

For both mobos other cards isa/agp/pci work just fine.

I could not find much info about this incompatibility on internet, except once somewhere someone mentioned it but I dont remember where.

So I am pretty sure that this isnt just me specific bug.

Have you known about this and is there a fix ?

Are there LX chipsets out there that can go to 100mhz fsb? LX is compatible with S3.

Plz dont question my taste of covington+s3. i know this is not common but i like this niche combo.

I briefly used a PCI S3 Virge 325 on an Abit BX6 V2.0 (440BX ) years ago and it worked fine. It was used with a 300MHz Covington based Celeron.

PlaneVuki wrote on 2025-06-28, 08:20:

Hi ! […]
Show full quote

Hi !

I have a niche dream of pc:

Covington at 100mhz fsb + S3 pci card + windows 98

But what I discovered is that S3 pci and BX chipset are incompatible.

Gibabyte GA-BX2000 mobo with S3 trio/virge cards freezes randomly on win98.

Siemens Nixdorf D1107 mobo with s3 trio/virge cards freezes after post.

For both mobos other cards isa/agp/pci work just fine.

I could not find much info about this incompatibility on internet, except once somewhere someone mentioned it but I dont remember where.

So I am pretty sure that this isnt just me specific bug.

Have you known about this and is there a fix ?

Are there LX chipsets out there that can go to 100mhz fsb? LX is compatible with S3.

Plz dont question my taste of covington+s3. i know this is not common but i like this niche combo.

I cobbled together a temporary setup on my messy workbench and it boots right into ME on my Tyan 440BX with a 4MB PCI Virge DX.
Specs:
Tyan 440BX Slot 1 board
Pentium 3 600 (Katmai)
256MB PC100
4MB S3 Virge DX

I just played some i76 (software mode obviously) and some Solitaire but it's booting up and seemingly working fine in anything that I open.

So far that's only Windows itself, Solitaire, i76 and CPU-Z.

I have no idea where my CUBX-E is at the moment so that will have to wait.

Anyway I've attached a photo of the hardware and a couple shots of CPU-Z reporting the board, cpu and graphics.

EDIT - I've also added a pic of the driver details, I'm just using whatever driver ME already had for the card, I haven't downloaded anything.

I have dug out the CUBX-E and basically done the exact same tests, it runs games in windows just fine with the Virge and took some CPU-Z pics.

I'm sure I have at least one or two other BX boards in storage but I'm not going to get those out just for this.

I also don't remember ever running into S3/440BX compatibility issues back in the day as I ran a Celeron 466 with S3 Trio 3D and Voodoo 2 setup for a while.

At this point PlaneVuki I kind of think you have some defective hardware.

Specs:
Asus CUBX-E
Intel Pentium 3 1.4S (powerleap adapter)
128MB PC133
S3 Virge DX 4MB PCI

PlaneVuki if you're using the same ram for all of this you should memtest the hell out of it with memtest86. Also look closely to see if there is any damage on your S3 cards.

pete8475 wrote on 2025-06-29, 20:04:

PlaneVuki if you're using the same ram for all of this you should memtest the hell out of it with memtest86. Also look closely to see if there is any damage on your S3 cards.

This and also making sure that no unintentional PCI bus overclocking is taking place.
As has been mentioned before, testing without any overclocking would be a good test too.

Actually, I would suggest setting everything to conservative values/defaults (clocks for RAM/FSB, memory timings, wait states, etc) and then trying to reproduce the issue and, if still present, running the memtests.

Odd issues like this can be time consuming to narrow down. Best of luck, PlaneVuki .