Switching video cards

[AndyM]

I'm adding a new puter at the office and would like to move a video card from my old workstation to this new one. The old one has WIN98SE, on a k62-400, soyo board. The card is an ATI Rage Pro 8MB PCI. I want to remove the ATI and replace it with a Tident L'Image 9750 2MB AGP, then use this older setup in another location. Trouble is, when I pull the ATI and install the Trident, I can't get a video signal. I've tried pre-installing VIA AGP drivers, I've tried changing video adapter to "Standard VGA". And I've tried "Standard PCI Display Adapter" (I think...).................
What is supposed to be the setting for display prior to replacement of a card? I suspect that to be my problem but does anyone here know off the top of their head? Thanks.

[morriswindgate]

To change the video card, you first go into the device manager and remove the display adapter entry for that card. Then you shutdown and remove the card and replace it with the new one. Restart the computer and then install the drivers for it.
The real question, is why are you wanting to use a 2MB Trident in the computer instead of getting another ATI Card? Trident has basically when under and support is non exsistant. Trident was a chip maker, like NVIDIA and many of the companies that produced the Trident based cards are also out of business so you cannot get the card specific drivers for many of these cards, and the available Generic Drivers for the Trident chip does not work with many of these cards. And finally, while they were great when they were introduced, they suck by today's standards and if you can get it to work the results may not be good.

[AndyM]

Thanks for the response. Well...I have the Tridents laying around and I will only be viewing office programs and the like. So why not use what I have? I'm cheap, for Pete's sake!
I want to put the ATI in MY workstation, let the help use the other....

[mike breck]

Hi AndyM,

I have always believed it's good practice to remove the old video drivers before installing the new drivers.

See here for the basic sequence

http://forum.pcmech.com/showthread.p...threadid=18832

You would just change the references from NVidia to ATI. IF you don't want to do manually then I believe ATI, like Matrox, has a utilty for removing drivers. However, I'm not sure whether their utilty works with older cards like yours. Check the ATI website very carefully before using it. If in any doubt, just do it manually.

It seems to me if the Trident IS compatible with the mobo, then you should get a basic 16 color 640x480 using the Standard PCI Display Adapter. I would try to get this basic display first before bothering about adding the Trident drivers.
This will show that the card will work with the mobo.

You can then add the drivers for the Trident at yout leisure.

HTH