Diamond Speedstar A90

[smokin]

I picked up a few of these cards to get some cracking boxes up and running, and I have run in to a problem. Put one in an ECS K7S5A board with a 1 gig Duron, and after messing with it a bit..runs fine. Put another in a second machine..same motherboard..256 megs DDR 2100..and it freezes as it's loading the desktop...if it gets that far.. Both machines are overclocked to 1.33, but going back to default on the "problem" box doesn't work. I updated the vid card bios, which supposedly cures the ills..but no go. I'm up and cracking in safe mode..but it sure would be nice to use the machine for other things. The hard drive already had Windows on it..would a clean install help? Any thoughts?

[Socal]

Which Win OS, smokin?

[smokin]

Doh!
Windows 98SE
:)

[Mntsnow]

What version of driver? I used to use the A90 in a ton of system builds and it was very reliable for me..... I'll check my archive's when I get home and see what version(s) of drivers I most likely have for it.

[caddmannq]

Just off the top o' my bald head....

Did you try switchin' the two cards between the machines?

What card was previously installed on that HDD? Some vid drivers do not uninstall cleanly at all. (ATI Rage & #9 come to mind...) A re-format might definately be in order.

[smokin]

Well..I formatted..drivers are from the disk that came with the card..no go..vid card bios is updated..grrr..put a 4 meg card in there for now..I heard this vid card may have troubles with DDR ram?..is that a possibility?
..what drivers do you have Mntsnow?

[Mntsnow]

Sorry for the slow reply Smokin....I'm looking for the correct cd that has archived vid card drivers on it....Should have ATI, Diamond, SIS, Trident ect on it...

Edit:

Found it....

Win98 = Version: 8.20.11 (http://www.xtremepccentral.com/downloads/downloads/a90_win9x_82011.exe)

W2K = Version: 8.30.20 (http://www.xtremepccentral.com/downloads/downloads/a90_win2k_83020.exe)

nt4 = Version: 8.19.05 (http://www.xtremepccentral.com/downloads/downloads/a90_nt4_81905.exe)

I'm guessing these drivers are from Q1 of 2000 or so as not long after that Diamond went out of production.

[smokin]

Thanks Mntsnow!
I'll put the card back in and give it a try..will post back with results
:)

[Mntsnow]

Best of luck! :)

[smokin]

Well I guess the A90 just hates the SIS 735 chipset, or DDR ram. Looks like I was lucky with the first board. So..I swapped them into machines running Intel BX boards..and the new drivers work perfectly.
Thanks Mntsnow
:)