Upgrading monitor boards/drivers to SVGA

Channel Hopper

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Probably a stupid question, but I cant find an answer that makes an upgrade easy

Got hold of a Pentium III PC for experimentation , running on a Hansol 510a monitor (very nice picture). Photoshop is installed, but refuses to run on anything less than 256 colours.

The colour settings in Control Panel / Display, cannot be moved upwards from 16 colours. I am assuming there is a need to upgrade the monitor board to something more modern.

Is there an easy way to distinguish between VGA and SVGA boards just by looking , as I have a few in a box upstairs. Is this all thats needed ?
 

rolfw

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PoloMint

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Also try turning the resolution and refresh rate down a bit and see if you can get 256 colours. I seem to remember some old graphics cards going right down to really basic spec if you turned the resolution up at all.

As Rolf says, most P3 systems made could at least do what you are wanting. It would have to have been a real budget system made for something quite basic not to.

Not sure of a way of telling the difference just by looking at the card, try putting the fanciest or most modern looking of your spares in and see.
 

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PoloMint said:
Also try turning the resolution and refresh rate down a bit and see if you can get 256 colours. I seem to remember some old graphics cards going right down to really basic spec if you turned the resolution up at all.

As Rolf says, most P3 systems made could at least do what you are wanting. It would have to have been a real budget system made for something quite basic not to.

Not sure of a way of telling the difference just by looking at the card, try putting the fanciest or most modern looking of your spares in and see.


Hmmm, Its a Gateway 500LS running Win 98 first version and the resolution/refresh are at a minimum already, still a choice of 2 or 16 colours. Tried the board with the fancy heatsink and fan, still no go.
 

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Sounds like a driver problem, when you put the fancy board in, what was it identified as?
 

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Its recognised as a standard PCI Graphics adapter (VGA).

Monitor is recognised correctly as a 510A.
 

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Your monitor may be vga only, if this is the case you cannot use an svga card properly, new monitor is the only answer. had a similar problem with one my sister was given.
 

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Ah but no, the other PC )a slower 450MHz model) gives a perfect picture on this monitor and Photoshop runs OK (running 16bit), so it must be the PC/card.
 

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If you have added a graphics card, it should have come with a drivers CD. There may be a setup program on there that will sort you out. If you don't have a CD, try to identify the card or its chipset - one of the chips on the board may say something like s2trio, nvidia, ati.
Alternatively, if you have the Win98 CD AND a valid serial number, rerunning the windows setup to upgrade the existing installation will often find a better driver

Peter
 

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Win98 version 1 is not plug and play and would need drivers but......do they exist for an OS which is pretty old?
 

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I think Nvida bundle all the drivers for their old cards in one installer file now, so if you have a card with an nvida chip on it you could try that and see if the drivers work.
 

kalamar

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Without drivers you will only get minimum resolutions.
 

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Well that might explain it.

Will try looking for the most obvious names on the chipset tomorrow (I hate looking /registering for downloads from sites I dont trust though)

Cheers
 

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Most decent companies don't require you to register.



Edit: Thinking about it, I don't reckon the onboard graphics chip will get above 256k. So you need a cheapish graphics card (with drivers) I think.

Who knows, it may be cheaper than chips.:D
 
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