ATI All-in-Wonder Fun

**houseisland** · October 3rd, 2009, 11:23 AM

Q: Why does ATI issue new drivers?

A: Because you finally managed to get the last ones to work.

Q: Why does the All-in-Wonder owner spend 55 minutes out of every hour struggling with driver/software issues.

A: So he can spend the other 5 minutes watching a black screen with TV audio but no TV video.

My TV is in for service.

So I thought I would pull the Athlon XP 2500+/All-in-Wonder 9600 box from the stack of cases and plug it in.

It had been working perfectly (if one ever make that claim about anything with an All-in-Wonder card in it) when I unplugged it.

And indeed when I plugged it back in, it was working just fine again.

But then I used the ATI remote to mute the sound and the close captioning, which does not work by the way - just gibberish, came on and would not go away when the sound was un-muted.

In stead of getting my lazy butt up off the couch and using a keyboard and mouse to turn off the close captioning, I boldly and foolishly used the remote. In my exploratory efforts, I found a button marked "B" that toggles through signal input choices. And then all channels were black.

I dimly remember defeating this problem once before. But quite frankly, I just don't care anymore.

Here I stand as an object lesson for all, a fool, who once in the distant past stepped off the path of righteousness by actually buying an All-in-Wonder and who now is cursed forever.

I can't even claim that I was led astray by others... "well.... I was at a party and all the cool people were doing All-in-Wonders.... this guy came over and said .... here ... try some of this ... now... now... look at me ... "

Well... I could claim it but you wouldn't believe me, would you?

Edit: And worse .... I have a box with couple more that people have given me.... Why did I take them?

____________________________________________

It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

**houseisland** · October 3rd, 2009, 02:54 PM

On a Thursday evening, under a full moon, bury a half cumquat in your garden together with an VLB Mach 64 card, squint sideways to the right, spin around withershins 13 times saying "There's no place like home," and read here:

http://forums.amd.com/game/messagevi...VIEWTMP=Linear

And it might just work....

I am leaning to the TV on Demand registry hack.... haven't tried anything yet, though.

____________________________________________

It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

**houseisland** · October 4th, 2009, 11:38 AM

For those who keep up on their ATI iconography...

Victory is mine.

Reg key hack. WDM driver reload.

____________________________________________

It is my pure and virtuous heart that
gives me the strength of ten!

**Ferrit** · October 4th, 2009, 12:30 PM

Been using a Hauppage card for quite sometime now
vista and win7 like it

**houseisland** · October 4th, 2009, 05:17 PM

Thanks, Ferrit.

I have a newish Pinacle HD one that I haven't gotten around to doing anything with. The person who gave it to me, didn't give the disks. No disks -- No key. No key -- No software download from Pinacle. Not that is is any kind of insurmountable obstacle. I should probably put my effort into getting this one working.

I also have an Asus custom-built-for-HP one from a dead HP Media Center PC that somebody else gave me.

I have at least three or four more All-in-Wonders, ranging from a Rage 128 to whatever -- all given to me by haggard, wraith-like zombies, once human but no longer.

Ironically the card with the least trouble ever was an el-cheapo Zoltrix one. But it is in my daughter's Unbuntu PC now.

Oh well... the 9600 All-in-Wonder is working again now, well.... almost as well as it ever worked.

And truth be told, it mostly worked OK until SP2 (or was it SP1?) for XP and then it didn't work at all and every new ATI driver release after unleashed fresh new horrors.