[FearFactory]

My Viper550 wont boot into svga mode in w2k build 2031... I can hit f8 at bootup and select vga mode and it works great. ive tried every tnt driver there is and none of them work. any ideas? When I let it boot to svga mode everything goes blank after the loading progress screen(says win2k pro on it)
and it hangs there.
my machine:
Abit bx6 2.0
Celeron 300a @467mhz
SB 128PCI
Diamond Viper550
IBM Deskstar 16.8g
PEL 1600 Scsi card (yes its junk)
USR 56k Internal
Netgear FA310TX network card

[greenail]

my bx6 v770 and oc'ed celery 300 work fine with win 2k

[fargo]

I have:
p3b-f
celery 433 s370
diamond viper 550 AGP
and some more stuff
Works fine with win2k 2099, detected in win2k as nvidia riva tnt card

[YuppieScum]

Try dropping your FSB speed back down to 100Mhz or even 66Mhz - always a good plan when things behave a bit oddly - then start uping things only when you have a stable basis.

[FearFactory]

Could it be that my viper 550 is an early edition or something that might not be compatable? i upgraded the firmware to 1.95c and it still gives me the same crap... oh actually i forgot to add, i tried my brothers asustek v3400TNT(i think?) and i started it up once and got the same problem after it installed a driver then i gave up. Could it be my motherboard? i upgraded the firmware on that also so its the newest revision so im still lost

thx.
Jeff

[euankirkhope]

ME TOO!!!

I have a Velocity 4400, with the same problem. The fix for this probem is to use WHQL Win98 certified drivers (in my case), not the standard microsoft/ NV4 files.

The only drawback is opengl will hang the computer with the new dark blue style screen of death.

[euankirkhope]

PS

None of the detonator drivers direct from NVIDIA work, i've tried then all 9x/NT/2000, and the beta ones that legally haven't been released yet, upto v2.17.

I think it's something to do with the ramdac and the mutliple outputs for tv/s-video etc. So connect up a tv and check!

[YuppieScum]

Well, my Creative TNT has worked with every release of W2K drivers, under 2031, 2072 and 2099...

Check your BIOS...

[euankirkhope]

Some people aren't as fortunate as others.
My bios is fine. Tried both installing win2K with and without dmpi, the latter fixes irq routing errors, however the tnt still shows a blank screen. It as if the display is being redirected to the tv out, or s-video. Or the reference drivers don't understand the ramdac, as only the STB win98 drivers work in SVGA. No D3d and no opengl

[YuppieScum]

Well, the Diamond Viper550 is listed in the HCL or it ought to work, so try this...

Yank the SB, USR and net cards from the machine, and clock the CPU back to it's native speed, and install the OS native drivers. If it still doesn't work then either the card or the mobo is not quite right...try the card in another mobo, or another card in your mobo...

[euankirkhope]

Guess What i tried it! Even though my computer isn't overclocked (unlike bloke up top) and it worked. Twice.

The only problem is that the computer wouldn't shut down. After reseting it would take 3 tries to get it back. Also i tried reinserting one pci card, and it would hang as before. After a while it completly died. Tried a few other card and my isa modem. None worked with the TNT.

The setting i used were for others:

Hardware

AMD K6-2 450 (100Mhz) @ 66x4.5
FIC VA503+ viatech MVP3 motherboard 1 MB cache
128 MB pc100 8ns @ 66 Mhz non PC100
CPU and AGP set to use same clock speed
AGP bios set to 256 MB aperture
All other Bios settings at default, except for AGP use interupt.
IDE 0 M Samsung 6.4Gb HD on UDMA33
IDE 0 S None
IDE 1 M LS 120
IDE 1 S Creative 24x
NO PCI card inserted
NO ISA card inserted
USB disabled
Floppy disabled
COMs and LPT disabled

Software

Win2K 2072 Advanced Server
Install win2000 with DPMI disabled in txtsetup.sif.
Everything else clean (untouched).

PS setting the K6-2 to 300Mhz disabled the MTRR's which were introduced from the revision 8 onwards which knackered win98s timing loops etc. So it needed reinstalled.

Thanks Yuppiescum.

[YuppieScum]

Try kicking the AGP Aperture Size to 32MB!

This setting (IIRC - I'll be corrected if I get this wrong) should be set well below available memory, as it sets the maximum main-memory used as a texture buffer for the vid card. Setting it too high can have "unpredictable" results...

[euankirkhope]

Yes your right it should be half the main memory, but in the STB faq it says set to max if there are compatabilty problems. Usually it is set at 64 MB on my computer, I've tried4, 8, 16, 32, 64...

Most likely the problem is all down to the motherboard. I've got a ATI Rage Pro 8MB 2X AGP, and it works straight out the box!