Here's my situation:
I have an Intel TC-430HX motherboard with an on-board 2MB S3 ViRGE adapter (the kind that came installed with the Toshiba Infinia 7200 desktop machine). I have the most current update to the Bios (and, according to Intel, the last version ever). The board does not support AGP, and the Bios does not allow complete disabling of the on-board video adapter. (A previous version of the Bios did pretend to, but even with the on-board "disabled," Win98 and Win2k can still detect the adapter and attempt to use it.) When another video card is installed in the system (in my case, a Diamond Viper v550 PCI), the Bios automatically (and without any option to change) makes the installed card the primary display adapter and the on-board adapter secondary.
Problem: Windows 2000 doesn't support the ViRGE adapter as a secondary video card (although Win98 does). (S3 blames Microsoft for this; Microsoft says it's S3's responsibility to do something about it; S3 says it's a "legacy" device and will have no further development.) The consequence for trying is that neither graphic adapter device will start (Code 10 in Device Manager), and you get standard VGA on the primary monitor only.
It would appear that, on this computer, I'm forced to use the on-board ViRGE exclusively, as installing any other video card puts the system in a configuration where video is sent back to the dark ages.
Is there a way to make this work?
