[dencorso]

Let me understand this right: The NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT AGP with 512 MiB RAM would normally take 512 MiB in the System Arena (i. e., somewhere at adresses comprised between 0xC0000000 and 0xFFFFFFFF). Using the /A switch would move this AGP addresses to the Shared Arena, uncluttering the System Arena. Do you envisage problems due to a half-full Shared Arena? I cannot right now reread those old threads (but will do so soon)... did you reinvestigate the 512 MiB video problem since then?

[rloew]

dencorso, on 23 June 2010 - 04:58 PM, said:

Let me understand this right: The NVIDIA GeForce 7950 GT AGP with 512 MiB RAM would normally take 512 MiB in the System Arena (i. e., somewhere at adresses comprised between 0xC0000000 and 0xFFFFFFFF). Using the /A switch would move this AGP addresses to the Shared Arena, uncluttering the System Arena. Do you envisage problems due to a half-full Shared Arena? I cannot right now reread those old threads (but will do so soon)... did you reinvestigate the 512 MiB video problem since then?

When I first heard about the 512MB Problem, I ran some tests on an ATI All-In-Winder 128 PRO AGP Card. I observed that it immmediately allocated 128MiB of System Area Space. I knew that this would be a major problem at 512MiB. I have not seen the Shared Arena get used so heavily, so I added the /A Option in the hope that it would help. When I finally obtained a 512MiB NVidia Card, with Windows 98 Drivers, I observed that this did not occur. I assume that the Driver banks the AGP Aperture using a smaller window to avoid tying up resources. This is why I DON'T think the /A option will help.

[dencorso]

rloew, on 20 July 2009 - 10:35 PM, said:

I have tried a 512MB 8400GS in my ECS 6100SM and Gigabyte MA78GM Computers with the 82.69 Drivers. Both crashed in bootup on the second initialization of NVCORE.VXD. The Motherboard Video on the ECS 6100SM also failed in the same manner, regardless of AGP Aperture size.

Tests with a 512MB 6200 show that the VRAM size is not an issue with the 77.72 or 81.98 Drivers, so it is unlikely an issue with the 82.69 Drivers.

Unlike my 128MB ATI Radeon card, these drivers do not allocate all of the AGP space at one time. This is the likely cause of problems using 512MB Graphics cards, that other people have reported, since this would exhaust System Arena Memory unless the File Cache is made very small. I also tried reducing File Cache without result.

I'm now looking at the old threads, so I've singled out that relevant old post by RLoew to quote here just for easier reference for everybody involved.

That said, the existing unsolved problems are:
(1) There is no known driver for 9x/ME that supports any Series 8 or higher nVidia Cards (which is not relevant here).
and
(2) No one has ever got any nVidia Cards having more than 256 MiB to work with 9x/ME.

To solve problem (1) would require other yet unknown unofficial drivers to surface (very unlikely) or extensive reverse engineering of the extant XP and 9x drivers, followed by the correct porting of the new capabilities to the 82.69 driver (a possible but substantial work, even more unlikely to ever be undertaken).

Problem (2) may require more intensive testing, but still seems to be possible to solve completely, either by relocating memory or by somehow reversibly disabling part of it before loading windows 9x/ME (hence making it behave as a 256 MiB VRAM card, only for 9x/ME).

[rloew]

dencorso, on 24 June 2010 - 09:51 AM, said:

rloew, on 20 July 2009 - 10:35 PM, said:

I have tried a 512MB 8400GS in my ECS 6100SM and Gigabyte MA78GM Computers with the 82.69 Drivers. Both crashed in bootup on the second initialization of NVCORE.VXD. The Motherboard Video on the ECS 6100SM also failed in the same manner, regardless of AGP Aperture size.

Tests with a 512MB 6200 show that the VRAM size is not an issue with the 77.72 or 81.98 Drivers, so it is unlikely an issue with the 82.69 Drivers.

Unlike my 128MB ATI Radeon card, these drivers do not allocate all of the AGP space at one time. This is the likely cause of problems using 512MB Graphics cards, that other people have reported, since this would exhaust System Arena Memory unless the File Cache is made very small. I also tried reducing File Cache without result.

I'm now looking at the old threads, so I've singled out that relevant old post by RLoew to quote here just for easier reference for everybody involved.

That said, the existing unsolved problems are:
(1) There is no known driver for 9x/ME that supports any Series 8 or higher nVidia Cards (which is not relevant here).
and
(2) No one has ever got any nVidia Cards having more than 256 MiB to work with 9x/ME.

To solve problem (1) would require other yet unknown unofficial drivers to surface (very unlikely) or extensive reverse engineering of the extant XP and 9x drivers, followed by the correct porting of the new capabilities to the 82.69 driver (a possible but substantial work, even more unlikely to ever be undertaken).

Problem (2) may require more intensive testing, but still seems to be possible to solve completely, either by relocating memory or by somehow reversibly disabling part of it before loading windows 9x/ME (hence making it behave as a 256 MiB VRAM card, only for 9x/ME).

Part 1 of that quote is still true.
Part 2 is out of date.

Almost immeditely after I said it, I heard that at least one person had succeeded.
Subsequently, I was able to use a 512MiB 6200 Card, and more recently, a 512 MiN 7200 PCI-E Card.
Apparently NVidia already implements your second suggestion for issue #2 by not loading all Memory at one time.

[Zollex]

Hello? You know if I can exchange on the fly with the integrated video card agp? That way I could use the Intel integrated on win98 without unplugging your video card agp.

[Cyker]

Zollex, on 24 June 2010 - 03:53 PM, said:

Hello? You know if I can exchange on the fly with the integrated video card agp? That way I could use the Intel integrated on win98 without unplugging your video card agp.

What I did:
Have 7950GT plugged into AGP slot
9200 SE in PCI slot

BIOS -> Make PCI slot primary video card

Win98 - Install drivers for 9200SE, abort driver install for 7950GT and disable in device manager
Win2000 - Abort driver install for 9200SE, Install drivers for 7950GT, force 7950GT to be 'Primary (1)' graphics card and disable 9200SE
Linux - Only compile in drivers for 7950GT

It's a lot easier when your GFX cards are made by different people; I was going to use a GF7950GT AGP and a GF6200 PCI but then realized it would be a bit trickier, to stop the PCI card being the primary.

And of course, if you have two monitors rather than just one with loads of input sockets, feel free to enable both graphics cards in OS' that support them!

However, if you have one of those retarded motherboards that forcibly disables the on-board graphics chip if an external one is used, I'm not sure what you can do

This post has been edited by Cyker: 24 June 2010 - 04:37 PM

[Zollex]

Here's what's in my bios ...
Init. Graphic Adapter Priority
This allows you to select [PCI/AGP] and [AGP/PCI] as the initial graphics
adapter priority. The default vaule is [PCI/AGP].
http://europe.asrock...ual/775i65G.pdf

[Cyker]

Is there anything else in there about enabling/disabling the onboard graphics?

I think if you put it on PCI->AGP it will allow you to use both tho', with the AGP card becoming the secondary card.

AGP->PCI is preferred, but you'd need to test whether that causes the onboard graphics to be disabled...

[Zollex]

If I plug-in the agp card the on-board card automatically disabled...

[Cyker]

Aww

I don't know how to stop that

[Cyker]

Soo... Dave! Any luck?!

[Tripredacus]

Zollex, on 26 June 2010 - 04:59 PM, said:

If I plug-in the agp card the on-board card automatically disabled...

That's usually normal for an on-board graphics chipset to do. It doesn't always work but its supposed to. Does your AGP card only have 1 video out?

[Dave-H]

Cyker, on 28 June 2010 - 08:30 AM, said:

Soo... Dave! Any luck?!

Not yet!
I was away until yesterday, and I'm now trying to sort out another problem on the PC which I want to fix before I back everything up and try the new card.
I'm away all day tomorrow too unfortunately, so it looks like it will now be Wednesday before I get to it.
Just hope the weather cools down a bit (if you're in England you'll know what I'm talking about!)
Can't summon up much enthusiasm for anything at the moment!

[Cyker]

Dave-H, on 28 June 2010 - 01:51 PM, said:

Just hope the weather cools down a bit (if you're in England you'll know what I'm talking about!)

*meltmeltsweat* Sadly I do know what you're talking about!

This post has been edited by Cyker: 28 June 2010 - 03:00 PM

[Zollex]

Tripredacus, on 28 June 2010 - 08:39 AM, said:

Zollex, on 26 June 2010 - 04:59 PM, said:

If I plug-in the agp card the on-board card automatically disabled...

That's usually normal for an on-board graphics chipset to do. It doesn't always work but its supposed to. Does your AGP card only have 1 video out?

This is my video card:
http://www.twenga.it...s-card-468077-0
It 'can put a PCI video card and use that when I use through bios win98?

[Cyker]

Yeah, you'll never get that working in Win98
(Well, unless rloew branches out into custom driver writing )

Hmm... well you'll have to hunt around in your BIOS for an option to keep the onboard graphics enabled when a graphics card is plugged in.

If you have an AWARD/Phoenix BIOS, you may need to do CTRL+F1 at the BIOS main menu to unlock any hidden options. If you have an AMI BIOS you're probably out of luck because they suck.

Also, check your motherboard manual - If the onboard graphics chip is connected via AGP, give up; You can't have two AGP cards running in the same system so the other one will be forcibly disabled.

Your only option in that case is you're going to have to buy a PCI graphics card (S3 Virge (rubbish), Radeon 9200SE PCI (less rubbish) or nVidia 6200 PCI (better) or the my-mate-says-he-saw-one-in-hong-ong rare nVidia 6600 PCI (impossible)) and have a dual-card system like I do. (Hope you got good quality monitor buttons or KVM switch then )

[Dave-H]

Well, tried the card out today, and I have good news and bad news!

The good news is that the card works in Windows 98!

My main worry after I'd uninstalled the ATI drivers and substituted the card was that Windows 98 wouldn't start at all.
Well, it did start OK (thanks to Rudolph's patch I suspect, although I wasn't going to uninstall it to confirm that!) and the only problem I had was getting the drivers to install.
The driver setup program said that there were no nVidia graphics chips detected, and aborted the installation.
I eventually had to follow Maximus-Decim's backup instructions, which involved extracting the files from the installer and directly updating the graphics card drivers from the inf file therein.
That all worked fine, and I was able to set the resolution and colour depth to what I wanted.
All well and good, well pleased.

Unfortunately it then all went horribly wrong (before I'd modified the Windows XP side fortunately.)
I went away for a while, leaving the system on, and when I came back an hour or so later, I was greeted with a blank monitor and a very worrying smell of burning!

The new card has a power connector on it, which I assume is to power the on-board fan and perhaps other parts of the card.
I had connected this to a power supply outlet (it's a standard disk drive type connector.)
One of the cables on this connector had actually melted!

Needless to say the card was now dead.
I put the old card back in, and the system still produced no video, filling me with dread that I'd actually damaged something on the motherboard.
Fortunately after a few attempts it came good, otherwise I wouldn't be typing this!

So, it looks as if the board will have to go back.

Before I contact the seller, can someone confirm that I didn't do anything wrong which might have blown it up?
The instruction guide that came with it doesn't mention the power connector at all!
If anyone else has one of these or a similar card could they confirm that it just connects to a standard power supply output?

I'm very puzzled that the card did apparently work fine for at least half an hour. I wasn't there when it failed, so I don't know what could have happened.

Anyway, the main reason for this thread, getting it to work in Windows 98, was a great success, so I hope that at least will give comfort to others that it is possible!

[rainyd]

Dave-H, sorry to hear, that your graphic card has died. Maybe PSU was too weak for it?

Btw, that was 512 or 256 MB version?

This post has been edited by rainyd: 30 June 2010 - 03:11 PM

[Dave-H]

rainyd, on 30 June 2010 - 03:11 PM, said:

Dave-H, sorry to hear, that your graphic card has died. Maybe PSU was too weak for it?

Btw, that was 512 or 256 MB version?

It was the 512 MB version.
I think my power supply was too strong rather than too weak!
It's much more likely that the card was actually faulty, or I connected it wrongly (I hope the former!)

[dencorso]

If you had connected it wrongly (I don't think that's actually possible without use of undue force, because the molex connector has two cut-out corners to prevent it from being plugged the wrong way) the card would have fried right away, not after 1h, IMO. If your card's connector is mounted like the one in the attached picture, the the correct position is as depicted (the yellow cable on the same side as the agp connector). Now, are you sure it was the card and not the power supply that got fried (or maybe both)? It *is* possible that the video card remains good, despite having fried the molex.
Many video cards do connect to a standard 4-pin or 6-pin power supply line. Yours draws a lot of current from the 12V line, from what I just read around. Was it the pin connected to the yellow cable, the one that melted, perchance?

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