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Upgrade to TNT2 not working

N

Napalm Frog

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 21, 2002
Messages
81
Before passing my oldest computers off to my younger brother, I was thinking of doing some really cheap upgrades to it. It is an Aptive E3U, from the end of 1998. It came with 350 MHz AMD K6-2, 64MB SD-RAM (upgraded to 192), a 70W PSU (upgaded to 250W), and the real kick in the pants, an onboard ATI Rage 4MB video card :eek:.

I wanted to do saomething about the video, so purchased an OEM TNT2 from a local retailer. I attempted to install it into the Aptiva's only PCI slot, but for some reason, it does not work. I changed the bios to detect the card, but it does not show up, and will continue to boot through the bios (using the onboard), and stall before windows can load. There are no jumpers in the vicinity of the onboard chip, except for a VGA interrupt.

I wanted to know if somebody can aid me with this older stuff (I am only familiar with post-2000 stuff, but that shouldn't be an excuse). Is it that the TNT2 is too new for the Aptiva? As far as I know, the Aptiva meets the minimum specs for the card, and I know the card works, as well as the PCI slot (all previously tested by myself).

Any help would be appreciated in getting it to work, or at least to get thebios to detect, and thanks in advance.
 
Napalm Frog said:
Before passing my oldest computers off to my younger brother, I was thinking of doing some really cheap upgrades to it. It is an Aptive E3U, from the end of 1998. It came with 350 MHz AMD K6-2, 64MB SD-RAM (upgraded to 192), a 70W PSU (upgaded to 250W), and the real kick in the pants, an onboard ATI Rage 4MB video card :eek:.

I wanted to do saomething about the video, so purchased an OEM TNT2 from a local retailer. I attempted to install it into the Aptiva's only PCI slot, but for some reason, it does not work. I changed the bios to detect the card, but it does not show up, and will continue to boot through the bios (using the onboard), and stall before windows can load. There are no jumpers in the vicinity of the onboard chip, except for a VGA interrupt.

I wanted to know if somebody can aid me with this older stuff (I am only familiar with post-2000 stuff, but that shouldn't be an excuse). Is it that the TNT2 is too new for the Aptiva? As far as I know, the Aptiva meets the minimum specs for the card, and I know the card works, as well as the PCI slot (all previously tested by myself).

Any help would be appreciated in getting it to work, or at least to get thebios to detect, and thanks in advance.
Click to expand...


see if you can compare the pci slot spec on the aptiva to card requirements first...
 
You'll never get it too work.

I tried to update a system similair to yours, a K6-500 with 8Mb inbuilt mobo. The bastard motherboard won't use anything but the inbuilt video. I think IBM did it on purpose, so if I wanted to upgrade I'd have to buy a whole new PC off them. These days they don't do this, but back then they did.
 
oVerCaffeinated said:
You'll never get it too work.

I tried to update a system similair to yours, a K6-500 with 8Mb inbuilt mobo. The bastard motherboard won't use anything but the inbuilt video. I think IBM did it on purpose, so if I wanted to upgrade I'd have to buy a whole new PC off them. These days they don't do this, but back then they did.
Click to expand...

My mother bought an old IBM, with a K6-2 350Mhz in it back in 1998. It had an onboard video, Rage I think. I disabled it, and put in a Voodoo3 years ago. It worked fine.

Napalm Frog, I saw where you said you changed the BIOS to detect the card. Does that mean that you disabled the onboard video, or something else? There really shouldnt be anything else but that to do. Those old cards are from the same time frame, they should work fine.
 
In the bios, I had the option of "Onboard" or "Auto". The former is exactly what it means, and the latter (as stated in the bios) says something to the likes of that if it detects an auto-enabling videocard, it will disable the onboard controller and switch to the one it just found...but it does not find it...
 
oVerCaffeinated said:
Maybe Voodoo's work and TNT's don't :confused:
Click to expand...

I originally wanted a Voodoo 2 or 3, but couldn't get my hands on one anywhere (I'm too young for eBay ;) ).

This is annoying me, cause it seems as though it should be simple.
 
Hello,

I have done alot of upgrades on older computers, and have come accross several OEM TNT2 PCI cards with 16MB RAM that don't seem to work on most all Socket 7 or Super Socket 7 motherboards. I'm not sure if it's a PCI compliance issue or what. I recently had one of these cards given to me that I was gonna upgrade a friend with a Via MVP3 Super Socket 7 chipset board (K6-2 500) for better DVD playback, and I tried it in several different boxes (2 socket 7 boxes, 2 super socket 7 boxes, 2 P3 440BX boxes, and my current box in my sig). The card only worked in my current system, and one of the P3 systems!!!!!!!
My suggestion is to try another card if it's within reason. I bought a cheapo Jaton Geforce 2 MX400 32MB PCI card from newegg that worked perfectly in his system, that the PCI TNT2 wouldn't even boot with.

Here is a link to the OEM TNT2 that is 'fussy': http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=40161&item=5112910771&rd=1

Here is the Jaton I got that works super (and even allows for some Q3 Arena): http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=14-139-150&depa=1

Good luck.
 
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I bought a LeadTek Geforce2 MX 400 and that didn't work either, I gave it to my friend and it worked in his box (until 1 year after it died).
 
My card seems 99% identical to that card in the first link. I will try to find a better card, to think I wasted $10 on this (I already passed the 7 day return limit :( ).

Still am trying to look for some way to make it work...though my patience is wearing thin.
 
Hello,

Thanks oVerCaffeinated, that reminds me that I have seen certain PCI Geforce 2 MX400 cards that have the same no boot problem as the OEM TNT2 cards in many older mobo's. They are larger cards with a 128-bit bus (example: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=40161&item=5112509347&rd=1). I tried the Jaton out of curiosity, as I have run into this problem so many times.......not expecting it to work. It did though! I'm guessing here, but the Jaton card has a different style BIOS chip on it then the cards that don't seem to work in the Socket 7 boards. Maybe the card was designed to be more compatible????
 
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this may or may not help
but IMO dump gas all over it and inside the machine and throw a match in it....just watch out for th caps, they seem to blow up and attack you LOL!



p.s. yes i have put mobo's and all kinds of shit on fire =]
 
Might be a buggy BIOS, if you can find the manufacturer and model of that board (usually OEM's use boards from Intel, Biostar, MSI, etc) you might flash it to a retail counterpart. I had to do this to a board from a Compaq once because some of the IDE options were missing in the BIOS. It's a long shot and probably not worth the effort though.
 
Disable the onboard video, and make sure you have it set to boot pci not onbard video first and should work fine.
 
when you plug the monitor into the TNT2 does it show up in bios? What os are you running? If it does then I would say remove all your onboard drivers, put the card in, reboot. If it crashes half way through OS boot up I would say its not happy with driver settings.

You also might want to put this card into a second machine (yours) boot up and see if windows recognises the hardware. Troubleshoot from there.
 
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