Viper V550 vs nVidia TNT BIOS etc

[djfw]

Hi,

I am running a Gigabyte system with a Diamond Multimedia video card under W2K.

In BIOS-Info I have:
BIOS-Info, c't/Andreas Stiller, V. 1.5 10/00
Computer ID : FC, SubTyp: 01, BIOS-Level: 0
Rechnertyp : AT-3, Konfigurationsbyte $74
Maustreiber : nicht gefunden
Bus : ISA/PCI
Hauptspeicher : 640 KB, davon verf

[cp]

the most recent diamond version is 1.94E

there is however a generic TNT bios version 2.04.24 that works on all NVIDIA TNT vga cards. it might be a bit tricky to get it into the flashrom of a diamond V550. they use a generic flashrom that is not supported by the nvidia flashtool. so you'll need the diamond flashtool and the generic vga bios. as far as i can remember that was the only pitfall with diamond TNTs. i already flashed a bunch of cards (V550 and V770).

make sure you get the correct bios if you use a generic bios.. don't use any TNT2 bios. they will not work with the TNT chipset. and stay away from the M64 bios as it's for the crippled TNT2 with 64bit memory bus (the standard memory bus is 128bit wide).

last driver that supports TNT/TNT2 (according to NVIDIA):
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_71.89.html

stay away from any other drivers!

[djfw]

Thanks for the info, it has been a great help.

I located references to another Diamond BIOS numbered 1.95e4904 and wondered if it might be even more recent, but could not find a copy of it. Not to worry, I went to get 2.04.24 at whitebunny (WB), but it seems to have disappeared down it's burrow I did find it at:
http://drivers.mydrivers.com/drivers/22 ... TNT-(lchsd)-BIOS-2.04.24
Going by the cached copy of the WB nVidia page the ch in lchsd refers to the type of tv out on the card. My card does not have a tv out. I flashed it using NV4flash which was in the zip of 195c0550 and the BIOS seems to work fine.

The Diamond site appears pretty much useless for Win2k drivers. They mention NT4 in the one that they list for the V550 (VIPER v550 NT4 v4.00.1381.0203.exe) which appears to be a lower rev than device manager reports which is 5.00.2165.0327 for both nv4.sys and nv4.dll.

The driver confusion that nVidia create is intense. When I follow the screen search facility it takes me to the 78.01 page where the products supported list explicitly says TNT2 not supported and no mention of TNT. Take the link to 71.89 and the products supported list refers to 71.84 and TNT2 with no TNT! When I go to their ftp site and download the release notes I get no reference of TNT in the 71.84 version or back at 67.02 in the supported products list. So if I download the driver packages themselves and open 84.20_forceware_winxp2k_english.exe the readme.txt file says that TNT is supported! Downloading later versions of the drivers reveals no readme.txt files so they are a mystery as far what they support!!! What a disaster, as far as documentation is concerned.

OK, so is there a way of checking the driver packages for what they actually support without relying on accompanied documentation?

[cp]

too bad whitebunny seems to be gone :( it was a great ressource.

the latest driver for NV4 (TNT) is 71.84..but only the BETA driver supports the TNT. get it here:
http://www.nzone.com/object/nzone_downl ... 71.84.html

if you prefer a non-beta release you're stuck at 66.93. get it here:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_66.93.html

[djfw]

Hi cp,

Interesting information! I guess I will take your advice as it stands. You speak quickly and with authority.

Last thing though, I am genuinely interested to know how you know what are the appropriate revs on the drivers, counter to all sorts of info that nVidia put out in all sorts of ways. Is there a way of checking something in the driver packages (with or without a tool) that can confirm the boards that are supported? (FYI I spent 10 years as a mainframe sysprog and wrote a lot of driver level assembler, so technical responses are OK with me, I just have not spent any time at the technical level with Windows before). I have looked at all of the ascii type files in a number of the packages and none of them are definitive, so I have not found it out myself. Thanks for indulging my curiosity

Cheers,
David.

[cp]

there are .inf files in the driver archive which hold the pci ids of the supported devices. the chips are called by their codenames, not their marketing names: TNT would be NV4, TNT2 is NV5,...
i just followed nvidias instructions, downloaded a few archives and took a look at the .inf files if they contained support for NV4. that's all :)
i don't know if the later drivers still contain driver level support for older cores. tweaking the .inf files or forcing an installation (read: install files by hand ;)) would be an approach. or even disassembling..but i wouldn't go that far anyway.