Video Driver Problem, Win98 / X850 XTP

[imported_Kiwi]

The Catalyst 6-2 drivers for Win98/ME work fine with an X800 XT and an X850 Pro in other PCs here, but the downloaded install's setup claims it has no drivers for this video card. The CD I have didn't have Win98 on it, and the other two X8**'s were OEMs, without any CD. The closest I've come to getting it working is with an ATI CD for my Radeon 9800 XT, which has many drivers from 2005 on it, including several "800 / 850 Series" drivers.

The first one of those I tested seemed to work fine, with no indication of why it will suddenly shut itself down after a time period varying between 15 and 45 minutes. Any AT folks here have experience with this ?

 

[themisfit610]

Could be something besides the display drivers. Win98 is really shot with new hardware... what are your other system specs?

~Misfit

 

[imported_Kiwi]

I'd refer you to the "Rigs" on My AnandTech, but all of those are at least a year out of date, maybe two, since they broke that part of the web site and left it that way.

Asus A7N8X
XP 3000+, 400 FSB version
Twin Seagate 120 GB Hdds
2 GBs Kingston HyperX DDR500
(limited to 512 for W98se)
Sparkle 550 W PSU
Kingwin 424 case

 

[Rottie]

Why windows 98? upgrade to windows xp please!!! your rig will be fine with win xp and x850xtpe

 

[imported_Kiwi]

The PC in the bedroom has dual booted Win98se/ Win2000, with the X850 Pro, and previously had a flashed X800 XT running as an XT Platinum. Worked fine in Win98. This one is dual with XP, which I still dislike, although not as badly as I disliked RCT1 & RCT2 of Vista. My problem is that the CD's I have are on either side of the W9X to WinNT divide. The older one has plain X850 drivers, apparently, not XTP, althought they should work, and I expect one or another is going to, when I pin it down.

 

[Rottie]

do you really need CCC for Win 98? How about if you just install driver without CCC and maybe you can use ATI Tool?

 

[imported_Kiwi]

I've never used the CCC. There is a point in the install where you can choose to take only the driver without the Control Center. I can't recall if it's the same for Win2K/XP right now (that driver just whizzed through its paces, leaving no memory of anything in particular behind).

The only drivers that I have found still in existence include the CCC, but with the above option to choose, *IF* you ever get that far, or if it ever works without aborting. I'm sure that in the way back, when CCC was still new, both versions of ATI drivers were readily available for Win9X OSes.

Meanwhile, I have forced a driver for an X850 Pro to work, and as long as I leave it on 16-Bit color, not 32-bit, it works.

I don't need Win98 often for what I want to do, and this may work out. I used the late production ATI CD that was with a Radeon 9800 XT (its install choked the same way), but I could point the Device Manager's "Upgrade Drivers" function at the INF files in the CD's Win9X folder, find some "800-850 Series" drivers, and pick one.

When I tried setting it to my usual 1280 by 1024 and 32-Bit color saturation, the card would eventually shut itself down, somewhere between 20 and 40 minutes after I booted into Win98se. Instead, I started from 800 by 600 and 16-Bit, but could only handle that a few minutes. 1024 by 768 isn't as bad.