T23 Video Driver error on Win98

[DoubleFace]

Hello. I've got T23 recently and decided to install Win98 on it. I worked pretty fine, played couple of games while waiting for replacement parts. I changed disk drive, thermal grease, battery and hinge. I tested it on Win2000 partition it came with and it worked fine. But the problem started when I installed Win98 on it again.

First strange thing is that startup screen is not always filled all the way. Then after I install drivers, after reboot it is never set to highest resulution and I have to do it manually. Then, next reboot after driver installation, the system stops loading after boot screen, I get black screen and nothing. After hard reboot, the systems boots in the lowest possible resolution, with 16 colors, and I get a message box that drivers are not set up well or not working with the device. Of course the device manager still displays the installer driver. Any clues, should I just give up on Win98, is there any reason it worked before but now it doesn't?

[RealBlackStuff]

If you can, upgrade to W98 Second Edition, it has much improved drivers.
Or find Windows XP FLP (Fundamental for Legacy PC), runs great on a T23.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_F ... Legacy_PCs

[DoubleFace]

Actually I've been running Win98 SE in the first place, sorry for not being specific.

And WinXP wouldn't really work for me. I'm trying to make it a retro PC build, so any system from 9x family would be the best. I have T43p with XP for running early XP games anyway.

For a moment I thought the main suspect would be the new HDD, as previous configuration with old one worked fine. I ran one more test with original HDD and the problem reappeared. It wouldn't really bother me that much if not for the fact that Windows 98 SE worked well before I started messing around with PC, and now it refuses to accept Win98 and this video driver.

Is there something else I can diagnose before I just give up on this machine?

[cadillacmike68]

Have you considered trying the S3 video driver for the T22 on it? They are both S3 Savage, with the T32 being a higher performance one.

[RealBlackStuff]

I have two T23 machines left.
One with XP-Pro/SP3 (for removing passwords) and one (as a reserve) with Windows 2000 on it.
Both still run like champs and both still have working original (T30) batteries.
I fire them up at least once a month to keep them alive.
If I find some time, I'll try W98SE on the spare.

[DoubleFace]

Have you considered trying the S3 video driver for the T22 on it? They are both S3 Savage, with the T32 being a higher performance one.

Just tried it, it won't even allow me to install it, saying that basic driver is most "suitable" and recent.

I have two T23 machines left.
One with XP-Pro/SP3 (for removing passwords) and one (as a reserve) with Windows 2000 on it.
Both still run like champs and both still have working original (T30) batteries.
I fire them up at least once a month to keep them alive.
If I find some time, I'll try W98SE on the spare.

That would be cool, thanks for any help. Meanwhile I'll try to see how this driver behaves on 98FE.

[JBUK]

I dug out a T23 and found an old powerquest drive image and after going through several old HDDs finally found one which would accept restoring the image. It would only boot to safe mode where I was able to see the video drivers. Have you tried booting into safe mode to see if the display is normal although obviously not 1024x768.
The drivers, version 4.13.01.2026-12.32.36, are as follows:
S3_8M.DRV
S3_VDD8M.VXD
VMM32.VXD
VMM32.VXD

If things look do not look normal in bios or safe mode I think it is more likely to be a hardware fault than drivers. If it will help I can post the list of files in the driver setup folder on the C: drive.

[DoubleFace]

I have actually managed to get hold of second T23 in much better condition than previous one. I tried it and the issue remains the same. On the other hand when I install Win98 FE, there are no problems with video driver. The boot screen is still not filled all the way, but other than that, nothing funny happens with graphics except when I switch to True Color, but I guess it's too much to handle for video card this old.

On the other hand I seem to have more issues with other drivers when on FE. I can't install generic "NEC" PCMCIA card with USB 2.0, IBM PM driver installs well, but doesn't respond afterwards, the same for Ethernet Driver. I also tried to install battery driver to get that nice gauge in task bar, but after installation I also get an error that this application stopped working.

You can get me those drivers, I will give a shot with 98SE one more time. Though I wasted almost 2 weeks trying to get this to work, I still have some hope.

[RealBlackStuff]

Check the Drivers link at the top of this page.

[ThreeIguanasPerSecond]

install S3's ChroMetal 4.5 unified driver package, but i'm not very sure if it'll work because S3's driver support is known to be absolute crap.

there's no .exe to run the setup for that driver, so install it via device manager by using the 'update driver' method on 98SE, don't use this on 98FE.

[DoubleFace]

Ok, I thought there is some alternate driver he was speaking of. I've already exhausted driver list on the top, I actually find it incomplete, as I still had to manually find drivers for some of unknown devices.

install S3's ChroMetal 4.5 unified driver package, but i'm not very sure if it'll work because S3's driver support is known to be absolute crap.

there's no .exe to run the setup for that driver, so install it via device manager by using the 'update driver' method on 98SE, don't use this on 98FE.

I tried it and so far it looks promising. It booted right into correct resolution, so I will see how it cooperates with the rest of drivers.

[DoubleFace]

Nope, this one is not working either. After I installed Ethernet Driver, the computer locks up during shutdown. After restart I get black screen after boot screen. Then after next restart I get low resolution mode. One last thing to try is to install only the essential drivers, like audio and video, and PCMCIA card for USB 2.0 support, unless things like IBM PM device and SMBus driver are necessary or improve performance.

If that won't work I will revert back to 98FE. While it wasn't quite cooperative with my PCMCIA card, and battery drivers were all acting weird, at least video driver seemed fine.