Soft Quadro No Workie

Well, my first attempt at "hacking" my nVidia Geforce Go5200 was a failure.
Luckily, it wasn't a total disaster as XP allowed me to simply rollback to a
previous configuration. That doesn't make it any less annoying, as I have
read many times how easy this is supposed to be. I ran through the
procedures step-by-step, but when I finally re-booted my computer expecting
to see a wonderous, brilliant array of color, all I saw was a pretty blue
screen sans menus, icons, or cursor. It took a "hard shutdown" to get out, a
boot to safe mode to delete drivers, and a re-install of the Go5200 drivers
to return to normal.

Okay..question time. I would like to try this one more time, but only if
someone out there in Quadro land has ever succesfully turned on the Quadro
capabilities of this particular card.

Dell Latitude 5150
3.06MHz
512MB RAM
nVidia GeForce Go5200
Windows XP Pro

Anyone done it right?

Richard

 

somone else will have to say if this is true. even if you get soft
quadro working on a GeForce 5200. it wont enable realview in
solidworks.

 

Welcome to Soft Quadro. I went thru the same headaches (it took about 5
tries to get it to work). Most likely I was experiencing a "user error".
In the end I did get it working and it got rid of the memory limitation but
did nothing for performance. I ended up purchasing a real Quadro card and
my headaches magically disappeared! If this is an option for you (my card
is a Quadro4 580 XGL which I purchased for $200 or $300, I don't remember)
then I'd recommend skipping the Soft Quadro and going for the Hard Quadro
option. This was mostly my route of choice because once I got my computer
running, I still had three others to do. Screw that.

 

Gee, thanks. Kind of like getting invited to a party at the Hilton and then
finding out that Paris won't be there.

Yep, tried it a few times. I'm sure it was user error also, and I hope I
didn't imply that my instructions weren't adequete.

I don't think that's an option. It's a brand new laptop and I wouldn't try
to replace the card even if it had one (it's a chip, isn't it?). Since I've
not yet seen the infamous "multiple window slowdown" reportedly associated
with this card, and now I fnd out even with a succesful "hack" I won't get
RealView, I think I'll just live vicariously through others that do.

Thanks eveyone for all the help.

Richard

 

Hi Richard,

I have successfully hacked my nVidia Geforce Go5200 into a Quadro FX 500. I
have a Inspiron 5150 and XP running 3.2GHz with 1GB RAM. RealView works and
it's pretty neat. Here is step by step how I did it.

1. Downloaded the 52.14 driver (10/19/03) from guru3d.com and unzipped it
to a directory.
2. Ran Rivatuner and ran the NVStrap antiprotection script.
3. Ran the SoftQuadro4 script
4. Low-level system tweaks, NVStrap driver settings should be AGP
Sideband... Determined by VGA BIOS, AGP fastwrites... Determined by VGA
BIOS, Graphics adapter identification custom and use 032B (NVIDIA Quadro FX
500)
5. Re-Boot and when it tells you new hardware found, choose the
"nv4_disp.inf" in the directory you unzipped the driver to.

I hope this works for you
Joe Payne

 

Mr. Payne,
Where have you been all my life?

I will try it this evening and let everyone know how it went. I was quite
disappointed to hear earlier that it wouldn't enable RealView. One of our
designers here at work got a new Dell machine with the Quadro card and
RealView is as you say - "pretty neat". I do a lot of presentations (user
groups and such) and was looking forward to sharing.

Okay, lunch time...forget this evening, I'm going to try it right now.

Richard

 

Okay Joe, your hero status depends on your answer.

I was successful in applying the hack, and I've got RealView (woohoo).
Problem is now I get a BSOD caused by the driver getting stuck in an
infinite loop. This happens when I rotate the view around. It's happened
twice now, once at 1600x1200, and again at 1280x1024.

Have you seen this? Any ideas on settings that might solve the problem?

(besides turning OFF RealView you wise guys)

Richard

 

Hi,
I'm glad you got RealView to work, I'm sorry that now you crash. I haven't
had and crashing problems due to rotation. Here are some of my settings:
Antialiasing and Anisotropic is application controlled, OpenGL is
Solidworks, everything else Nvidia is default. I have not overclocked the
card or used Rivatuner to change anything but the SoftQuadro stuff. I am
running at 1600x1200 on only the laptop display. Duo monitors doesn't
really work.
Can't think of anything else, good luck!

Joe

 

Joe,
Looks like the "SolidWorks OpenGL" setting has fixed it. I am happily
rotating, zooming, and applying Silver and Gold materials to my parts. Thank
you very much for all of your help.

Richard

p.s. did you ever know that you're my hero...

sorry bob z. - really, I'll never, ever do that again.

 

Glad to do it.

Joe

 

pps. I've never, ever done this kind of thing before, have you?

Jerry Steiger
Tripod Data Systems