Note down all your CMOS settings then clear it, install card again... sometimes the PnP pci resources get kinda "fragged" and can't sort themselves out.

It could be that the board only supplies 5V to PCI cards and the Rage 128 is expecting 3.3V.

I have a variety of PCI graphics cards that simply will not work in socket 7 boards.

I was thinking it would have 3.3V by the time it had USB, but then Acer were doing weird stuff between 96 and 00, own PSU standards, halfassed ATX in a more AT form factor.

If it had soft power on, and a normal looking P9 P10 AT connnector (possible wired different) and then another connector that looks similar going into the motherboard elsewhere, or near main power, then that is usually one of their halfassed ATX ones and the other connector has 3.3V on it, which theoretically should be supplying PCI 3.3V. If you have a PCI POST card it should have an LED for whether there is 3.3V on the slot or not.

Now if it's not there, there are options for feeding it in, but can be less complex or more so, depending on whether each 3.3V pin is isolated at each slot, or still connects to a trace that is not powered.

Anyhoo, here's the adding 3.3 thread... Adding 3.3v to pci adapter(Released)

I think you guys might be right in that the board isn't supplying 3.3V to the PCI slot. I was reading earlier that some early ATX or cross AT-ATX boards didn't do that, and looking at this board (Socket 7, of course) it has the AT-style plugs from the PSU, but it has PS/2 and USB. So it seems like one of those funky half-AT-half-ATX boards. I also noticed that when you shut the computer down it wants a button press to do so with Win98 prompting that it's safe to shut down the computer. I remember that from AT, but not ATX.

Would a newer (relatively...) card like an FX 5200 work better? I had also read that later PCI cards used a signal converter to bypass the issue.

Well, I found a PowerMac G4 in my garage that I forgot I had. I was kind of hoping it'd have a nice PCI 3D card but it was AGP. But it did have a 512MB stick of PC133...

I pulled the 2 32MB sticks out of the Acer rig and plopped the 512MB stick in. It halved it, only detecting 256MB on POST, but holy cow what a difference it made. That Trident Blade 3D 9880 was already putting in some good work but I was having issues with some 'newer' games like X-Wing Alliance. Now with the (detected) 256MB RAM I was able to max the game out and it runs smooth as silk with the 3D settings maxed.

I guess I'll be sticking with the 9880. It's showing itself to be a little trooper of a card.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-18, 12:36:

I was thinking it would have 3.3V by the time it had USB

Hardly. USB has been around since 1995 - and uses 5V itself - but 3.3V to the PCI slots was only really a thing since ATX 2.2 and the Intel 8xx series chipsets and their reference designs from 2000 onward. Your regular i440BX board, for example, won't have 3.3V power to the PCI slots.

ramp4ge wrote on 2026-05-19, 01:26:

I think you guys might be right in that the board isn't supplying 3.3V to the PCI slot. I was reading earlier that some early ATX or cross AT-ATX boards didn't do that, and looking at this board (Socket 7, of course) it has the AT-style plugs from the PSU, but it has PS/2 and USB. So it seems like one of those funky half-AT-half-ATX boards. I also noticed that when you shut the computer down it wants a button press to do so with Win98 prompting that it's safe to shut down the computer. I remember that from AT, but not ATX.

Would a newer (relatively...) card like an FX 5200 work better? I had also read that later PCI cards used a signal converter to bypass the issue.

Why not just get 3.3V to the card?

There are multiple approaches, including modding the card, modding the board or inserting a special PCI card that converts 5V to 3.3V for the bus.

With FX5200 you might also encounter this issue. Some can run off 5V, some only work on 3.3V. It differs per card and is as a rule poorly documented.

dionb wrote on 2026-05-20, 09:59:

Your regular i440BX board, for example, won't have 3.3V power to the PCI slots.

I believe late BX designs employed 3.3v enabled PCI slots. At least I recall several BX boards I owned being 3.3v compatible, notably ABIT's BE6-II, BX133-RAID, ASUS' P3B-F and MSI's 6163 starting with Rev 2 I believe (IIRC Rev 1 didn't have it.)

dionb wrote on 2026-05-20, 09:59:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-18, 12:36:

I was thinking it would have 3.3V by the time it had USB

Hardly. USB has been around since 1995 - and uses 5V itself - but 3.3V to the PCI slots was only really a thing since ATX 2.2 and the Intel 8xx series chipsets and their reference designs from 2000 onward. Your regular i440BX board, for example, won't have 3.3V power to the PCI slots.

It was in the PCI 2.0 standard from 1993, but in theory anything that can't take 5V should have the notch toward the back of the PC instead of on the end nearer the front.

But then I guess you get cards like this, with universal notches...
https://theretroweb.com/expansioncards/s/ati- … ro-pci-32mb-sdr
But made after 2002, when PCI 2.3 deprecated 5V, but somehow it wants to fit into a 5V slot still.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-05-20, 12:56:

[...]

It was in the PCI 2.0 standard from 1993, but in theory anything that can't take 5V should have the notch toward the back of the PC instead of on the end nearer the front.

The keying refers to signaling levels, not power delivery. These cards are keyed for 5V and can indeed accept 5V signalling without losing the magic smoke, so the keying is technically correct, if pretty pointless if they don't work without 3.3V power delivery.

dionb wrote on 2026-05-20, 09:59:

Why not just get 3.3V to the card?

There are multiple approaches, including modding the card, modding the board or inserting a special PCI card that converts 5V to 3.3V for the bus.

With FX5200 you might also encounter this issue. Some can run off 5V, some only work on 3.3V. It differs per card and is as a rule poorly documented.

Is there a link to such a PCI converter card? I looked and found some ribbon risers that would work, but they don't say they convert the voltage, they just go with whatever voltage the slot is providing, 3.3V or 5V. I can't find much in the way of adapters and I'd rather not mod the card.

ramp4ge wrote on 2026-05-21, 03:55:

dionb wrote on 2026-05-20, 09:59:

Why not just get 3.3V to the card?

There are multiple approaches, including modding the card, modding the board or inserting a special PCI card that converts 5V to 3.3V for the bus.

With FX5200 you might also encounter this issue. Some can run off 5V, some only work on 3.3V. It differs per card and is as a rule poorly documented.

Is there a link to such a PCI converter card? I looked and found some ribbon risers that would work, but they don't say they convert the voltage, they just go with whatever voltage the slot is providing, 3.3V or 5V. I can't find much in the way of adapters and I'd rather not mod the card.

This would probably be the easiest option:
https://github.com/chadr/PCI-Voltage-Blaster

Limitation:

NOTE: Most +5V only PCI motherboards don't route the +3.3V pins between slots. You will have to add bodge wires on the back of your motherboard between the slot with the Voltage Blaster and the slot that needs +3.3V.

To see if this applies to your board, test for continuity between 3.3V pins (eg. A 21, 27, 33, 39, 45, and 53 - and B 25, 31, 36, 41, 43, and 54) on the different slots. If there's continuity, that Voltage Blaster is all you need. If not you'd need to bodge between slots.

Alternative:
Adding 3.3v to pci adapter(Released)
(basically a PCB with the bodge ready-made)