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[TheChosen]

As of typing this, I still havent figured out what the heck I should do, so any help would be appreciated.

I dugged up this old Laptop: Compaq Armada V300. This one in particular. It has okay RAM, okay CPU, but not okay enough for say Half-Life 2.

However, I was thinking of making it into a old Windows 98 computer. For nostalgia, something I can play while on bed and just for fun. I got a Windows 98 Special Edition and it installs okay. Managed to get sound drivers too and it plays those okay too. Well, Midi sounds bit off but I can manage that. (You should hear the beeper on this.)

Problem is, I cant get the graphics hardware right. I dont know the specifics on what it is, thus I dont know the specific drivers it needs. And with that, Im stuck with 16 colors and 640x480 display. The colors alone are bad enough.

So If anyone knows what drivers I need or what should I do to figure out what I need or some other alternative way to fix all this, let me know. I've been to HP's site and tried stuff on Driverscollection, but none of them have helped for graphics. I also tried to use CPU-Z to identify the hardware, but it seems that some newer programs dont want to work on Windows 98 (figures).

EDIT: The hardware should go higher than that, because there used to be a Windows XP on this computer, and it looked okay. Even played Sims properly.

[The Fifth Horseman]

Try using Everest, I'm fairly sure I remember using it on W98: http://majorgeeks.com/download4181.html

[TheChosen]

Yes!

Using the Everest I've discovered that this thing has an ATI Rage Pro card on it. Took bit more effort to find out proper drivers but eventually I did (and from a place I should have looked in the first place: their website). Laptop now has good colours and good resolution. Cheers Fifth!

[dosraider]

For W9X/NT/W2K systems I would advise Lavalys's (Everest) first one: Aida32
http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...nfo/AIDA.shtml

Whilst dev is stopped now, it's fully functional and a complete sys snooper soft for use with older hardware.
No install needed, runs from USB if you want.

My 2 cents ......

[TheChosen]

Thanks. That actually seems to give bit more information of my system.

Either way, there's still few problems. While resolution and color is now fine, there are some weird graphical errors. Like this one for instance:


(Outlaws itself works okay!)

This shows up rarely, but it still weird. At one point the portraits at Maid Story were glitching out similarly, but now they're okay after installing sound drivers (??). This thing also made couple of DOS games to work all of sudden (despite them having no sound whatsoever).

I havent tried out that many DOS games yet, but so far there's only one set of those glitching: old Sierra adventure games. Space Quest looks like this:



Tried playing Police Quest too, with same results. Maybe its some sort of font problem, or something DOS related?

Other than that, there's a bit of ghosting too, but I think its because of the hardware itself.

Not real problems with the sound. Havent been able to figure out the soundcard settings yet so I can setup some games properly, but I'll figure it out eventually.

[Scatty]

Might be a damage on the graphics card itself, like from overheating once, or simply faulty hardware due to age reasons. Or it doesn't support some of the graphic modes correctly, which is rather unlikely.

[dosraider]

Maybe you could try the latest W98 drivers from HP (Compaq) ?
HP V300 drivers

There is also a 'Driver - Display / Monitor' driver listed besides the ATI Rage Mobility Driver.
Can be helpfull to use all the drivers from HP.

[Edit]
On the other hand, I have this baby:

I hook it up on the big telly for the grandkids when they are here.
I've put W2Ksp4 on it with the XP comp rollup.
Runs as a charm, and dosgames runs fine in dosbox. (Now yeah, don't expect something as Duke3D to run in highres in dosbox on that ol'thing, but then you run the winport for those....)
W2K runs better and steadier than W98 and has more possibilities. Another advantage is that the W2K drivers are fully developed and almost bug free by now.
XP: forget it, you would kill your HD (intensive swap file access !!!)

[TheChosen]

Well, its finally fully ready to be played. It took few nights.

So I tried installing some of the drivers you recommended Dosraider. Windows crashed and refused to work from there on, so I had to re-install everything again (it even said that "re-install windows". Couldnt even access Safe mode or DOS command-line). The ATI driver was older and acted weirdly compared to the one on ATI site and I still had problems with the sounds. Did like the enhancements though, and the agent program.

Getting sound drivers to work was a real pain in the ass. I had couple of different drivers, namely one linked by Dosraider and other I found while surfing. The linked one makes me possible to configure my soundcard for some games (like Daggerfall) while DOS games dont have anykind of sound. With the other driver, it was the opposite. Windows games and sounds worked okay for both.

So then I figured it out. First, I need to download the latest for ESS M2E http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport...kId=135&mode=3

And then the latest for Canyon3D, which was even more difficult to find.
http://driverzone.com/{a9ada7e6-61ba-474c-a8ff-24cdba5ab8a4}?id=1603111

But now, everything is finally set. Havent tried Space Quest yet, but I dont care at this point. At least majority of the stuff is finally working as it should be!

Thanks to GTX for helping me out with the sound.

[dosraider]

Aaaaah, the joys of getting old stuff to work
...... glad to hear you sorted things out in the end.