PCI graphics card for NT on XP machine?

frobisher · 22-09-2006 7:31am #1

I'm trying to get an old 4 monitor PCI graphics (MVP Workstation) card to work on my PC running XP home. At one point I had one of the 4 monitors displaying a corner of the desktop but have pretty much had no success beyond that. The drivers and software (STB Mediator 2) are written for Windows NT and appear to load fine but when I look in the device manager I can see that little yellow exclamation mark on three of four new devices (the card seems to operate like 4 small cards on one).
Anyone got any thoughts?

zAbbo · 22-09-2006 7:36am

NT4 drivers won't work on XP (or 2k)

Are there any updated drivers for that card that support 2k/xp

frobisher · 22-09-2006 9:06am

I've had a poke around on line but haven't been able to find anything unfortunately.

8T8 · 22-09-2006 3:19pm

Is this the card - according to that the card is powered by NVIDIA's Riva 128 chip but NVIDIA never created dedicated XP drivers for those just stock built into the OS if I recall.

That's pretty much an oddity of a card I wouldn't count on finding drivers for it as STB no longer exist, they were bought by 3DFX who went out of business and the remains were purchased by NVIDIA.

I think you would be better off getting a more modern PCI graphics card with dual VGA ports (get two for 4 display support), it would be a lot easier.

frobisher · 22-09-2006 5:55pm

That's the one all right. Damn, I can't believe I made such a school boy error! I knid of thought that XP had some retrospective mode for running programs in previous editions of windows too.:o

quaidox · 22-09-2006 9:03pm

frobisher wrote:

That's the one all right. Damn, I can't believe I made such a school boy error! I knid of thought that XP had some retrospective mode for running programs in previous editions of windows too.:o

yes there is a utility in xp that allows programs written for 95/98/NT to run under xp, called program compatibilty wizard or something like that, but i don't think it will work for old hardware drivers....

frobisher · 24-09-2006 9:40am

I can get it so that one of the four outputs from the card works but the others just show that little yellow exclamation mark in the device manager (does that mean there's a conflict?), when I check the properties of the non working card outputs I get "This device cannot start (Code 10).

Surely if one channel (without me needing to install drivers) will work there will be hope for the others?

8T8 · 24-09-2006 1:10pm

Probably not, plus the RIVA 128 (NV3) is very old in terms of age for a GPU (actually what you have on your hands some people would probably buy as there are some GPU museums/collectors that might be interested).

The regular RIVA 128 only ever supported one display out possibly two max I think, I would imagine that card you have has some custom logic on board that gives it it's 4 VGA outputs which is why without the specialized driver it most likely wont work.

If you were really determined I recall there was something about Win2K drivers for the RIVA 128-ZX which was the same card with more RAM, if you can locate these then there is a small chance they may work in XP (a very small chance) I tried searching Google myself but came up empty handed.

What sort of motherboard do you have one with AGP/PCI ports or just PCI only ?

Two low end graphics cards would give you the 4 outputs you desire [1 AGP & PCI] or [2 PCI] as long as you keep them from the same camp e.g. all NVIDIA or all ATI you wont have any trouble with the drivers. Ultramon comes highly recommended for managing multiple displays in XP as WinXP is pretty lame in this area.

PCI graphics card for NT on XP machine?

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