Try and check for an option called USWC write combining or write caching and set that to UC (uncached).

subhuman@xgtx wrote on 2025-12-16, 13:57:

Try and check for an option called USWC write combining or write caching and set that to UC (uncached).

Thanks for the tip. I checked the BIOS and didn't see a setting by that name. I think that FASTVID does something with that feature too, but I haven't been using that either.

Seems strange that this specific card would have a problem with it though since my other Trio64v+ doesn't crash. I even tried swapping the BIOS chips on the cards and only the Viewtop card has issues, regardless of BIOS.

I'm suspicious of those jumpers but I just have no idea what they're for.

EDIT: Did some more troubleshooting to narrow things down...

Installed these drivers just to change things up (even though the other ones work fine for other Trio64V+ cards and with this card on another board). At first it seemed like this made a difference, I was even able to change refresh rates... but when I went to device manager it froze when I clicked to open the properties for the video card. I thought it might be a CPU speed issue, so I swapped to a PII 266 (from a PIII 850) and froze at exactly the same spot... clicking to open the properties of the video card. 🤷

Its strange because I noticed this before too... that certain specific actions tended to make it freeze. Like, right clicking the desktop to bring up the context menu would reliably lock the system. Even though doing this works fine with the exact same Windows install on a different motherboard... 😕

I swapped SSDs from my other tester to this one to get the exact same Windows install and it froze on that one too once the drivers were installed. The card works fine on that same Windows install when hooked up to other system (VIA MVP3+ with K6-2 500).

I'm about ready to just start moving jumpers around but I'm always afraid that one is for "send 5v directly to the VGA port!" or something crazy like that. 🤣

Here are pictures of my specific card, just in case that ends up being relevant.

Whelp... the plot thickens!

I was testing some more cards today and stumbled upon this one.

I think this the only other card I own with all socketed memory, so another good reliable candidate for testing memory, right?

Nope! It also freezes up my 440BX test system in exactly the same places as the Viewtop card! Blehhh...

So, I guess the good news is that it is very unlikely to be a physical defect with either of them. Right down to freezing the moment I click "Properties" on the video card in Device Manager... exactly the same behavior for both cards, and no visible artifacting.

I have attached the BIOS for this card to this post as well. I did a basic comparison with windiff and the two BIOS files are completely different. This one is version 1.02-02 and it is actually branded by Phoenix Technologies, which is a bit unexpected for a generic VGA card. Anyway, the BIOS isn't real important because I already tried swapping BIOS chips to no avail with the other card.

If I feel like obsessing over this any further I can probably compare the layout of these two cards to one of my working cards to tell if there is any obvious difference in the resistor layout.

EDIT: Also, the FCCID on the card says it was granted to National Advantages Computer Inc of Taiwan in March of 1997. Looking up that name I see that the company is also referred to as "N4". I'm not sure what the "Path 4II" is referring to... but I like the little scorpion, so yeah, that's probably part of how I ended up with whatever lot this card came in over the past year. 😅

Also, the FCCID includes "SCORP" so, I'm guessing the card was called a Scorpion or something.