Anyone remember this old-school bug?

[lti]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

I used to use a laptop with a VIA KN133 chipset, and my only desktop computer uses the old SiS 5598 chipset. They both suck, but I think the worst part of them is the video driver. The SiS integrated video actually performs better at 1280x1024 than the GeForce 4 card in my parents' computer.

I think the installer can only handle a few models of USB floppy drives.

I think he is using the forum post for the screenshot and wants to know why that particular ancient hardware combination did the same thing as that netbook.

[y_not]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

I used to use a laptop with a VIA KN133 chipset, and my only desktop computer uses the old SiS 5598 chipset. They both suck, but I think the worst part of them is the video driver. The SiS integrated video actually performs better at 1280x1024 than the GeForce 4 card in my parents' computer.

I will admit, there were a few VIA based boards that worked just fine. I personally have worked on some. Others are BLEEEEEPPP!!
Just like the simple fact than WinME totally blew chunks, but ran super, uber happy on some computers and never had any more problems than Win98/SE did. They were mostly AMDs though, go figure!

SiS.... better than GeForce 4?? No way, surely it's your parent's computer hardware, corrupted OS that runs, but does so poorly. Yeah, they do that.
Low resources, bad driver set for the card. Failing or low end PSU starving the system for voltage. Overheating, activating PROCHOT, skipping CPU clock cycles for thermal control, etc...

I have never seen an SiS that could even remotely play any decent game.
But I never tried much. LOL

I think the installer can only handle a few models of USB floppy drives.

That rings a bell, I never monkeyed with it much, as I always integrated the drivers using the OPK tools. Which was a ROYAL PAIN!! GRRRR

I think he is using the forum post for the screenshot and wants to know why that particular ancient hardware combination did the same thing as that netbook.

I figured it was something productive like that. Still, OS's do stupid & funny things.... scratch that. Electromechanical things do... PERIOD! HAHA
I have seen things more weird than this. OS's that managed to install and finish /w no crashing or errors. But refused to run properly, despite the fact it looked like everything was fine. The problem turning out to be a bad CD/DVD, bad burn of a slip streamed copy, bad optical drive, whatever. So CWWAAAAZZZYYYY MANNN!!!

[lti]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

I will admit, there were a few VIA based boards that worked just fine. I personally have worked on some. Others are BLEEEEEPPP!!
Just like the simple fact than WinME totally blew chunks, but ran super, uber happy on some computers and never had any more problems than Win98/SE did. They were mostly AMDs though, go figure!

I actually dug that old laptop out to test some hardware. It does have some weird issues, like crashing with a BSOD when something attempts to display 3D graphics and not booting unless the northbridge has a heatsink on it, but it's normal for an HP made after the Compaq merger to do weird stuff.

SiS.... better than GeForce 4?? No way, surely it's your parent's computer hardware, corrupted OS that runs, but does so poorly. Yeah, they do that.
Low resources, bad driver set for the card. Failing or low end PSU starving the system for voltage. Overheating, activating PROCHOT, skipping CPU clock cycles for thermal control, etc...

I think there is something wrong with their computer, but I don't know what the problem is. There is actually no graphics driver installed because installing the driver makes everything slower.

I have never seen an SiS that could even remotely play any decent game.
But I never tried much. LOL

The 5598 chipset doesn't support hardware 3D acceleration, but that's what Voodoo cards were for. 2D stuff runs surprisingly well.

[Heihachi_73]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

I'd take a VIA or SiS chipset over an i810/810E/815 board with 3 PCI slots any day. There can't be anything worse than opening up an older PC only to find the Intel 8281x graphics chipset and no provision for an AGP slot on the board (e.g. not even a place where an AGP slot may have been optional but not populated, just more circuitry taking up space directly above the PCI slots).

HP Pavilion 500 (i810E) and Compaq DeskPro EN (i815) are two examples of such PCs. The former is a standard MicroATX board with a SFF Bestec PSU while the latter is in its own SFF case with custom shaped PSU and 3 PCI slots on a PCI riser card.

[SuperDuty]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

The i815EP was actually a pretty good chipset back then, its main drawback was it was limited to 512Mb of PC133...paired with a 1.3Ghz Celeron Tualatin processor and a Voodoo 5 5500, you get a pretty good computer.

Now the i810 and i810e on the other hand....what a pita.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

Agreend I have yet to see a VIA board I've ever liked. SiS was good in the 486-age, but past that, it's just "OK" but not great.

PC Chips was a motherboard manufacturer that used VIA extensively and it's no small wonder their boards tend to be crap.

I have a Chaintech board (which should be a semi-reliable brand, but is plagued with bad capacitors) that had the KT133 chipset. It would hang on busmaster transfers to a video capture card (but is fine to its on-chip UDMA)... due to likely bug in the chipset. I had a P4 board with the VIA chipset, and could not figure out why it was so slow...when I replaced just the board with a i865 board, it instantly got faster without changing the CPU. However it actually was stable with busmaster transfers (it was the replacement for the KT133).

I still have one more VIA board, all others are gone. This is also on a semi-reliable brand: Tyan. Without a lot of benchmarks this board too is dodgy and seems slower than my 440BX-based board despite it being 133MHz capable and the 440BX not. Alas being able to use 512M SDRAM DIMMs is the only reason why I still "use" it...

[999999999]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

I don't get it. If you described the problem correctly then all you have to do is toss in some old $0 PCI video card to get past the installation stage. Granted, you had to be aware this was possible, but sometimes it's far easier to just pick a known workaround than try to invent a new one.

Regarding other OS, IMO WinXP is clearly the best combination of versatility, performance, and stability for that era of system.

If it were meant to be a fileserver, maybe not as much but then even i810 video would be fine. Ironically enough I happen to have a ~ 14 year old i810 based fileserver still running. I'd trash it but it's still useful for slower file access once I tossed a couple SATA RAID cards in it.

There's one area where intel had a decisive advantage over Sis or Via, far better PCI bus performance. You're still only working with 133MB/s but at least on intel chipsets most of that was usable.

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

If you described the problem correctly then all you have to do is toss in some old $0 PCI video card to get past the installation stage.

That's what I basically did. This is a real bad bug! With the Voodoo 3 back in, it always gets past this real early stage where it just has to initialize a traditional-VGA mode. -> (That's where the GeForce 2 fails at, even though all other installers never show symptoms)
But this problem don't occur with the installer for Windows 2000.
WTF Microsoft?

[999999999]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

I'm not one of MS's biggest fans but didn't they write the code before GF2MX came along? Even so, that is one of my bigger gripes with them, that their record has been more willingness to tack on features I don't care about (or specifically do not want) than bug fixes.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

back in the day you could move an intelchipset to any other. Till later ICH's intel was always just an inf update, using all windows built in drivers

[cheapie]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

Speaking of video cards, I used to have a Diamond "Stealth64" PCI video card. At least, that's what the sticker on it said. Underneath the "Stealth64 video" sticker, "STEALEH64 VIDEO" was silkscreened on the board. Anyway, for some reason, it only worked in the old (approx. 1997) computer that I found it in. I tried installing it into my newer (2007) computer, and I got a beep code (AwardBIOS, "beeeeeeep beep beep"). Any ideas as to why it only likes old computers?

[RJARRRPCGP]

Re: Anyone remember this old-school bug?

Anyway, for some reason, it only worked in the old (approx. 1997) computer that I found it in. I tried installing it into my newer (2007) computer, and I got a beep code (AwardBIOS, "beeeeeeep beep beep"). Any ideas as to why it only likes old computers?

Sounds like future boards ignore legacy PCI video cards.