Can't use SiS 315 AGP video card with old FIC VA-503+ motherboard

[larrymoencurly]

I bought a Kaser AGP video card based on the SiS S315E chip and wanted
to test it in an old FIC VA-503+ mobo (Socket 7, VIA MVP3 chipset).
It worked in DOS, but with Windows 98SE I could never get a successful
boot, except in Safe Mode. The computer would either simply wait
forever at the C:> prompt after it started started to enter Windows,
or I'd get a Windows screen that was all black except for a stationary
hourglass cursor (CTRL-ALT-DEL did nothing).
The video BIOS cacheing was turned off, and video BIOS shadowing was
turned on and off. I did switch the display to standard PCI VGA
before installing the card, and I tried VIA 4-in-1 drivers ver. 4.25,
4.29, and 4.38 I also tried booting to Safe Mode and removing every
display adapter listed.

The card works fine in other motherboards: ECS K7VTA3 v. 8 and K7S5A
Pro and even a 440BX.

 

[Alex Zorrilla]

Have you set the BIOS to assign an IRQ to the graphics card? Go into the
BIOS --> PCI/PnP Configuration --> Assign IRQ for VGA --> Enabled.

--Alex

 

[larrymoencurly]

Have you set the BIOS to assign an IRQ to the graphics card?
Go into the BIOS --> PCI/PnP Configuration --> Assign IRQ
for VGA --> Enabled.

I tried it both ways - same result. I also tried both automatic and
manual IRQ settings, and all the PCI cards were removed.

 

[farmuse]

boot into safe mode and remove all old video adapters, you cant
see all the garbage in normal mode. Do the same for monitors ~

 

[larrymoencurly]

boot into safe mode and remove all old video adapters, you cant
see all the garbage in normal mode. Do the same for monitors ~

That was one of the first things I tried, but it didn't help.

I think that this mobo or its VIA drivers are causing problems because
just the other day I wasn't able to install a D-Link network card --
the plug & play didn't do anything on reboot, and the card didn't show
up in the Device Manager, but that may have been due to D-Link's
software because I've read that other people have had similar problems
with D-Link, and a D-Link USB network adapter would install on one USB
2.0 port but not the other (I used an NEC-based USB 2.0 card,
supposedly the least troublesome kind). I also couldn't get Windows
to boot right with an SiS 315 AGP card, and then there was the problem
of a VIA-based USB 2.0 PCI card causeing this motherboard to be 100%
dead, yet the same card worked fine in an older mobo with an older VIA
chipset (even shares the same south bridge) and all of my really old
SiS and Intel chipset mobos.

 

[edi]

Don't be suprised if there is some lack of power in your system. I'm aware
that this may look
silly, but from my experience with this board while changing locations and
movin' in to another city, I experianced many sys disfunctions in relation
with the general electrical current quaility on thoes locations, so mabe it
is yours power supply.
Whel this applies on my country, witch is Croatia in Europe where we
depend on mercy of ours local 'monopolistic' general infrastructure service
providers, as we only recently have accepted on repubic level a law
concernig protection of consumers rights.
But aside of that, many glitches concernig this board still remain a
mistery to me. Allthoe I think of myself as an XP in Hware. But all thoes
old legacy industry standards implemented in our BIOS OS-es in PC-s declared
by IBM PC AT/ATX architecture standards offers to many companys witch
produce hardware especially MB-os a way to implement new technologies in a
disrespectfull way towards us, the end users.
This may seam disscouraging, but it just may be that without any
previous clear announcments our hardware industries are sometimes leavin' us
without proper support by implemeting tech.-s with dissregard to declared
standards.
I'm havin' second thougts 'bout posting this reply concernin' my gramar
(haha) and as it overcomes your problem witch also could be mine. So I'll
post it as a reply and as a new topic.

And as a third thought, maybe we should all get and IBM ACE degree,
concerning our efforts to put theirs crapy products to work. Or I am just an
daydreamin', ethousiastic amater.