Black Screen of Limbo w/ Radeon LE and Win2K: Did I fix it?

MaxDepth

Diamond Member
Jun 12, 2001
8,757
43
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Okay, let me set the stage:
A7V mobo
800 T-bird
Win98/Win2k dualboot
replacing ATI All-in-wonder pro w/ ATI LE

Using just the international driver CD (from Newegg), I installed drivers for Win98 (with DX7, not DX8). No probs, although the ATI AIW Pro does not unistall cleanly (some Regedit required). Powerstrip works like a charm, used reg hacks too.

Now, W2k. After driver installation and reboot. Monitor (15" legacy Panasonic) shows red light (green: receiving appropo signal; yellow: no signal; red: receiving incompatible signal). Can "hear" the naviagation around the desktop. Reboot to Safe mode, desktop appears. Download latest (not beta) W2K drivers for the Radeon 32 DDR card from ATI and install. Works for about an hour, then back to black screen. Shut down and wait till then evening (yeah, I hate it when working for a paycheck interferes with my "real" work). This time only 35 minutes before black screen.

Saw a post here about the VIA Apollo KT chipsets (4-in-1 drivers update). Yes, it pays to read through all the forums before posting a question. Installed the VIA updates as well as W2K SP2. Has not failed to black (yet) with 2 hour and 3 hour sessions w/ CorelDraw 9 and No One Lives Forever (game - its too cool). Some sparkles and DirectDraw issues, but no black screen.

However, in the Display Properties Settings -> Monitor, the properties tab for the monitor is greyed out. And the monitor is set for "A Standard Monitor." It didn't detect the monitor and it won't let me change it. Is it a problem with the ATI drivers, bad Microsoft Dlls or registry, or the Panasonic E50 monitor (legacy drivers for Win95 only at Panasonic site)?



:p
 

MaxDepth

Diamond Member
Jun 12, 2001
8,757
43
91
Because the pro (8 meg) was showing its age with some games. OpenGL was crapping on the system. Slow, slow, slow.

The LE is a $70 experiment. Something to have until the NVIDIA Crush chipset becomes commonplace or companies start programming with the ATI Charisma engine in mind.