[M31]

I've built a retro Win98 (with XP in dual boot) computer consisting of a Pentium 4 Northwood 3.4GHz, Asus P4P800 motherboard and 1GB of Corsair DDR400 ram )soon to be 2GB after reading posts here on 98's ram limit and successfully testing with a friends 2GB DDR. Of course the 2GB will be useful when booting into XP, the current graphic card is an AGP ATI 9800 pro 128MB and this series of cards were the last from ATI with Win98 driver support.

However, having owned essentially this spec of computer when it was cutting edge years and years ago and using an ATI X800 replacing an ATI 9800 that made a big difference for what I do in XP, I'd like to do the same again but have the card work properly in my now well tuned and refined Win98SE install ... I've read about hacked drivers where you simply add an entry for the card driver somewhere? would this work OK or is it a clumsy not worthwhile workaround?

what about ATI Omega drivers, as I understand these stopped some time ago, but are there ones for the ATI X800/X850 cards? these would be ideal.

Any help on getting one of these cards working on this rig would be most welcome.

Oh yes, one of these X800/X850 cards would go up to 256MB compared to the current cards 128MB, would this have any effect on my Win98SE install I've finally managed to get working with 2GB, albeit letting the OS only use 512MB, which is ample for what I do with it.

Cheers.

This post has been edited by M31: 22 February 2010 - 02:42 PM

[LoneCrusader]

Welcome to MSFN

The system you have built is quite similar in specs to a system I have under construction, and I have used ATi Radeon 9800 XT's in several of my systems for some time. 9800 XT's have 256MB of RAM, so having a 256MB card will not bother your Windows 98 system. 512MB cards apparently do have problems, but I do not have any experience with this.

The ATi Catalyst 6.2 drivers are the last official ones for Windows 98. Although ATi's driver search for 98/ME will not lead you to it, this driver package contains drivers for the X800 series up to the X800 XT Platinum Edition. I have not used these myself, so I cannot vouch for their operability.

However, I will be very anxious to see if you get them to work, because I will be using them soon with my new system.
(Soyo P4I875P Dragon 2, P4 3.4 GHz EE Gallatin, 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR400 RAM, ATi Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition)

[M31]

LoneCrusader, on 22 February 2010 - 03:57 PM, said:

Welcome to MSFN

The system you have built is quite similar in specs to a system I have under construction, and I have used ATi Radeon 9800 XT's in several of my systems for some time. 9800 XT's have 256MB of RAM, so having a 256MB card will not bother your Windows 98 system. 512MB cards apparently do have problems, but I do not have any experience with this.

The ATi Catalyst 6.2 drivers are the last official ones for Windows 98. Although ATi's driver search for 98/ME will not lead you to it, this driver package contains drivers for the X800 series up to the X800 XT Platinum Edition. I have not used these myself, so I cannot vouch for their operability.

However, I will be very anxious to see if you get them to work, because I will be using them soon with my new system.
(Soyo P4I875P Dragon 2, P4 3.4 GHz EE Gallatin, 4GB Kingston HyperX DDR400 RAM, ATi Radeon X800 XT Platinum Edition)

Thanks for the welcome

I've done a Google search for ATI X800/X850 card drivers already and have downloaded what is supposed to be working drivers for this series of cards, but as of yet I've not bought another ATI X800/X850 card to test, am patiently watching UK Ebay for a decent low priced one, some folk are asking silly money for the older AGP versions I need!

Glad you mentioned the fact AGP 512MB cards can have problems in WinSE (hacked drivers or not?) because I do have an opportunity to try my old AGP ATI X1950 pro 512MB I gave to a friend and try modifying its driver to work in Win98SE, unfortunately I don't have the same opportunity to try X800/X850 cards any-more. I feel that the X800/X850 is a more appropriate graphic card bandwidth wise for this build than the current 9800 though, again talking about this rigs capability in XP as a useful everyday computer in my hobby room.

I'll certainly post back with my Win98SE experience using an AGP ATI X800 or (hopefully) X850 card once I nail one, but the latter seem quit rare or ultra expensive now, even on Ebay.

Cheers.

[LoneCrusader]

M31, on 22 February 2010 - 04:48 PM, said:

patiently watching UK Ebay for a decent low priced one

I'm an avid eBay watcher as well when it comes to these things, hopefully we don't end up bidding against one another sometime, haha.

M31, on 22 February 2010 - 04:48 PM, said:

Glad you mentioned the fact AGP 512MB cards can have problems in WinSE (hacked drivers or not?) because I do have an opportunity to try my old AGP ATI X1950 pro 512MB I gave to a friend and try modifying its driver to work in Win98SE, unfortunately I don't have the same opportunity to try X800/X850 cards any-more.

I have not attempted using a 512MB card myself, so I'm just relaying info that I have read elsewhere. Also, I remember a post by rloew, our resident RAM expert , where he was experimenting with a patch to support 512MB graphics cards in 98. I don't know if any further work has been done on it, and I don't have a 512MB card to experiment with. If you find a way to get it working, do let us know.

This post has been edited by LoneCrusader: 22 February 2010 - 05:02 PM

[M31]

LoneCrusader, on 22 February 2010 - 05:00 PM, said:

M31, on 22 February 2010 - 04:48 PM, said:

patiently watching UK Ebay for a decent low priced one

I'm an avid eBay watcher as well when it comes to these things, hopefully we don't end up bidding against one another sometime, haha.

M31, on 22 February 2010 - 04:48 PM, said:

Glad you mentioned the fact AGP 512MB cards can have problems in WinSE (hacked drivers or not?) because I do have an opportunity to try my old AGP ATI X1950 pro 512MB I gave to a friend and try modifying its driver to work in Win98SE, unfortunately I don't have the same opportunity to try X800/X850 cards any-more.

I have not attempted using a 512MB card myself, so I'm just relaying info that I have read elsewhere. Also, I remember a post by rloew, our resident RAM expert , where he was experimenting with a patch to support 512MB graphics cards in 98. I don't know if any further work has been done on it, and I don't have a 512MB card to experiment with. If you find a way to get it working, do let us know.

I will try the ATI AGP X1950pro 512MB in the next couple of weeks when I get a chance to borrow it again and report back, I've modified a .inf Nvidea graphic driver for my laptop before to let it use that un-supported driver and it worked fine, its got to be worth a try for this Win98SE rig.

Please let me know how you get on with the X800 Platinum 256MB, looks you will be trying this card flavour sooner than I will.

Meanwhile, I'm watching Ebay patiently for my own X800/X850 ... I owned two of them in the past and threw them out ... ARGH!!!

Cheers.

[rloew]

M31, on 24 February 2010 - 01:03 PM, said:

I will try the ATI AGP X1950pro 512MB in the next couple of weeks when I get a chance to borrow it again and report back, I've modified a .inf Nvidea graphic driver for my laptop before to let it use that un-supported driver and it worked fine, its got to be worth a try for this Win98SE rig.

If you can install a driver for the card and the Computer crashes or runs out of memory when opening DOS boxes, try my Demo RAM Limitation Patch using the /A option. It will run for 10 minutes which should be enough time to verify if it works. It will also let you use the full 2GB of RAM you have.

[M31]

rloew, on 24 February 2010 - 01:42 PM, said:

M31, on 24 February 2010 - 01:03 PM, said:

I will try the ATI AGP X1950pro 512MB in the next couple of weeks when I get a chance to borrow it again and report back, I've modified a .inf Nvidea graphic driver for my laptop before to let it use that un-supported driver and it worked fine, its got to be worth a try for this Win98SE rig.

If you can install a driver for the card and the Computer crashes or runs out of memory when opening DOS boxes, try my Demo RAM Limitation Patch using the /A option. It will run for 10 minutes which should be enough time to verify if it works. It will also let you use the full 2GB of RAM you have.

Thanks.

Where can I find this patch? I'll certainly try it and report back.

[LoneCrusader]

M31, on 24 February 2010 - 01:47 PM, said:

Where can I find this patch? I'll certainly try it and report back.

R. Loew Electronics Consulting

[M31]

Thanks.

Have downloaded the time limit demo, but I'll need to borrow the DDR 2GB again as well as at least a Ebay purchase of an AGP XT800/850 ... I'll try the intended AGP X1950pro 512MB experiment, but I don't hold out for much success with this card, it would be CPU limited with my P4 3.4 Northwood anyway ... My thinking is, if it can be made to work (hacked drivers or otherwise) then it would be done by now and reported on here? same goes to a certain extent with ATI's AGP X800/850 series of cards?

But somebody's got to be the first and I'll give it a go.

Might be a week or so before I can report back on the 2GB demo patch and X1950 512MB experiment, but my goal is for an AGP X800/850 to work with my old Thief and native WinSE games ... if I can get more than 512MB working in SE, so much the better.

Thanks for all help so far.

[halohalo]

Generally the core temperature of X800/X850 is around 60°C ~ 75°C in Win98se instead of 45°C ~ 60°C in Win2000, so you may need better VGA cooler.

Catalyst added X800(old R420 core) support since beta 4.11. You may try 5.2, 5.9 and 6.2, but it is better to install 6.2 first when you want to downgrade to 5.9 or below on some PCs.

I am using X800pro AGP(R420) and X850XT PCIe(R480)on my Win98se PCs. Although X800pro AGP works on Intel boards with 865 chipset, the AMD boards with ULi chipset is recommended for better compatibility and speed.

Besides, modifying .inf doesn't make X1K cards work in Win98se.

[M31]

Finally won a Sapphire X800XT PE 256MB AGP on ebay and will report back once it arrives and I replace my current 9800 with it in my Win98 SE machine.

Cheers.

[Tripredacus]

I'm running a 256MB 8600 Radeon in my Win98 PC and everything works with it. But I also originally tried a X1650 Pro 512MB card and worked on it a few days but no drivers would work for it. I tried the hacked ones too but got tired of getting the BSOD.

[M31]

Well, a Sapphire card eventually arrived from the Ebay seller today, took a while, first I waited a week before contacting him, he told me he was sure he'd sent it and would contact me that evening when he was home, no contact that evening, contacted him again the next day and he apologised, but the card was still with him and was now on its way, that was almost 2 weeks ago since I paid for the card ... the card that I won on his auction would have been perfect for this P4 Win98SE/XP dual boot machine I described in my original post ... except he's sent me a PCI-E X850XT not the AGP X800XT PE I won on my auction! Contacted him again to tell him, he said its a mix up and again would contact me this evening ... its now 9:40 PM here and no contact, guess I'll have to prod him again in the morning ... I hope it gets sorted out, in five years on Ebay and over 150 transactions I've never really had any serious problems ... his feedback is good though, so I'll be patient and hope he pulls through ... though I suspect there never was an AGP X800XT PE and he genuinely thought this PCI-E was that card, I've checked his history of sales and their was never an X850XT for sale from him for two years? the auction was definitely for an AGP X800XT PE though.

The good news is ... I took the opportunity to finally order 2GB (2x 1GB) PC3200 DDR400 ram from another Ebay seller (this 2GB DDR cost me more than my recent I7 build DDR3 ram cost!!!) with the lessons I've learned here, Win98SE booted up perfectly and I even chucked in my original 1GB ( 2 x 512mb) ram too to fill all four slots, Win 98SE has been running perfectly for two hours now like this, the total of 3GB will be useful for booting into XP of course.

Hopefully I'll get this ebay deal for the AGP X800XT PE sorted out soon.

Cheers.

This post has been edited by M31: 28 July 2010 - 02:38 PM

[M31]

Finally sorted, it was a mix up, and a AGP XT800XT PE was duly sent out, unfortunately I managed to break off a small capacitor or something, tried soldering it back on but no Joy ... My fault this time.

Soooo, won an Nvidea 6800GT 256MB AGP card on Ebay that does have Win98SE drivers, (and in reviews is about the same performance as an ATI X800XT) after un-installing the ATI software and using driver cleaner, it was pretty unstable, but I'd been installing and un-installing ATI drivers a multitude of times before hand, bit the bullet and did a fresh install of Win98SE and all is fine ... almost, the stock cooling fan is far too noisy, now looking to get an aftermarket cooler for it.

[Cyker]

Nice

The 6800 is slower than the X850 in raw fillrate, but as soon as shaders come into it the 6800 can take the X850.

The only problem with the 6800 is if you use the latest driver, you get this stupid stupid bug where Win98 won't shut down properly, but downgrading to an older one (77.?? I think; Someone else will know! ) fixes that and you don't really loose anything.

The X850 was a nice card apart from the lack of SM3 tho'. I sent mine to DaveH, but it arrived DoA
He's trying to get it to work still I think, but it's not looking good