I've been helping a friend set up Win98SE to run on a Gateway M305CRV
notebook, via System Commander 8.1. (WinXP home runs on the "other"
partition.) A problem I've not been able to solve is to get higher
screen resolution than 640/480/16--the monitor type can be configured to
be an 800/600 or 1024/768 "flat panel" w/ generic driver(s) from the
Win98SE CD, but it's not been possible to get the display adapter to be
other than a "standard" VGA type.

The option to force 640/480/16 is _not_ selected in MSConfig's
"Advanced" section.

Gateway appears not to have any display-related drivers for late model
notebooks at their Web site other than for XP/NT.

I've searched the Web for Win98SE display adapter driver files for the
specific Gateway model--no luck. Would be willing to try other
drivers--does anyone have an idea of the manufacturer of the display
adapter in the M305CRV? (Would guess it's the same as for other Gateway
models in the same series.)

Any tips on locating a generic Win98SE driver for a notebook display
adapter? (Something analogous to the generic "flat panel" monitor
drivers on the Win98SE CD.)

Thx for any thoughts and/or advice.

John P.

You won't find a driver for that particular computer. What you have to
search for and find is a W98 driver for the CHIP that that computer's
video card uses. And even if you find one, there is no guarantee that
it will be otherwise compatible with the laptop, but in this type of
situation, what you do is look for chip-level drivers, not model-level
drivers.


John P. wrote:

I have one of these as well, and this is the very reason that I haven't
reverted the machine to 98SE. I'm sure that no drivers exist for many of
the motherboard resources or the video chip. The machine is too new and the
OS is too old.

They'll get you coming and going...maybe there's a Linux driver for the
thing. I've been pretty happy with XP, since I got it with the machine;
even though all my others have 98SE.

jak

"John P." <krumpit@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:mc2dneZ2wferjojfRVn-vg@adelphia.com...

Thx for the reply, Barry—I hadn't considered chasing a driver as a
function of video chipset.

Research at the Gateway site reveals that the M305CRV uses the Intel
852MG video chipset...and search at the Intel site turned up a Win98/ME
driver file ensemble for the chipset.

Close, but no cigar. None of the four display adapter versions
contained in the file ensemble seems to match the M305CRV's specific
hardware.

Any/all other suggestions are welcome.

John P.

Barry Watzman wrote:

I was prescient enough to advise my friend beforehand not just to leap
into formatting the HD and installing Win98SE. The dual-boot config
effected by System Commander works smoothly, and I was hoping to find
any/all drivers needed so he could use a broad range of Win98SE's
capabilities and not have to restart from the other (WinXP) partition to
do "other" things.

The need for Win98SE is so he can run a professional application that is
DOS-based...that he's not able to get to run correctly on his desktop
system that uses XP, whereas it works fine on his older desktop system
that uses 98SE. (Setting compatibility for the app in XP apparently
isn't sufficient.) The goal is to be able to run the app on the
notebook at the job site.

I haven't gotten the app's disks to install it on the notebook yet, and
I'm hoping that the DOS environment in the 98SE partition will be
satisfactory. If so, he'll have to live with booting from the XP
partition to do much of anything else.

Still seems odd that the family of generic display drivers included with
98SE seems to support a broad range of display adapter cards in desktop
systems...but comes up short on a portable system. Maybe it's an issue
of "integrated" video vs. dedicated card. ::shrug::

John P.

jakdedert wrote:

John P. wrote:
Go to www.intel.com -> downloads, and search for 852GM - that should
chuck up the download link for your graphics controller device driver.
win98se will be in there ....

But before you try to install it, make sure you also download and
install the relevant "chipset drivers" for 852GM. You _must_ do this
first before installing the graphics drivers.

--
...

I am not a marketing target ... I am a free man.

Success!

It took a bit of doing, but the Gateway M305CSV is now able to run
Win98SE at high resolution--have gone as high as 1024 x 768 and full
(32-bit) color.

The driver ensemble that configured the display adapter is from Intel,
at this URL:

http://downloadfinder.intel.com/scri...9&DwnldID=7005


I had flailed away w/o progress for several hours, with the result being
only that attempt to install and configure the display adapter as an
Intel device left the adapter with a yellow "!" in normal mode and
multiple adapters installed when examined in Safe mode. Deleting all of
those in Safe mode, restarting the system, allowing it to find the
adapter, and steering the Hardware Lizard to the folder containing the
Intel driver ensemble did the trick. There are now two high-res
monitors defined (typical of modern display adapters) and the Systray
util for the display has a broad range of selectable resolutions...going
so high that I doubt it would be useful on the M305CSV's screen.

I also downloaded a util from the Intel site that IDs Intel chipsets--it
revealed that the M305CSV's video chipset is the 82852/82855 GM/GME,
which is needed to know when selecting from the hardware list in the
installation/configuration mode.

There are still several PCI hardware items left to configure (USB,
sound, modem, et al.)--I opted to disable all of them until I got the
display sorted out and will enable one by one.

Thx for the advice, all.

John P.

jakdedert wrote:

Re: "I'm sure that no drivers exist for many of the motherboard
resources or the video chip. The machine is too new and the OS is too old."

You are probably wrong. 98 drivers still end up existing for most
chips. [Well, for 98SE anyway, which can support WDM model drivers.
However, for 98 (1st edition), you are probably right.]

It may take some effort to track them down, but they probably exist.


jakdedert wrote:

I would try them anyway. All four of them, one at a time (use an old
"scratch" hard drive).

This can get very, very time consuming, but I've been able to get 98SE
"fully" supported on several "XP only" laptops. However, it takes about
40+ hours to do it, in a typical case.


John P. wrote:

The better way to do this, until you have a set of drivers known to work
on the target system, is to use an old "scrap" hard drive for your
"experimentation" and leave the actual system drive completely
untouched. You can pick up a 2 to 4 gig drive very cheaply on E-Bay.


John P. wrote:

"John P." <krumpit@adelphia.net> wrote in message
news:0uedne4hPq5q_4jfRVn-jA@adelphia.com...
some finagling to get it to run correctly in XP, but after that I've had few
problems....

jak