🚀 go-pugleaf

I got it working!

The underlying problem was probably that I was out of interrupts on the
SE440BX motherboard.  With the @$@#$* onboard Crystal Sound gobbling two of
them, plus an Ethernet card, serial and parallel port and so forth, I was
already low, but I had added an old Adaptec 1510 earlier this year when I
needed to get a SCSI tape drive working, and that took another irq.  As
several people have noted, the V550 wants an interrupt for the AGP.  Some
BIOSes let you explicitly assign it one, but the Phoenix on the Seattle
board just trusts you not to use them all up!  If you do, the 550 just isn't
recognized.

During the course of troubleshooting, I upgraded the Diamond card to the
latest BIOS (1.95) with no ill effects, and the Micron motherboard BIOS to
release P07 - the latest rev they have approved through on their website.
Intel's own ROM images go up to P10 but you cannot flash an Intel image onto
the Micron board, it gives you an invalid header string in IFLASH.EXE.  And
supposedly those newer Intel images have bugs, which is probably why Micron
is still at P07.

Other hints that were very helpful included
  * Clearing the Extended Configuration data area after messing with the
Peripheral or Resource configuration in the BIOS setup, and before
rebooting.  If you don't, PCI assignments stay the way they were before the
change, leading to errors or wasted effort.  I don't know why you should
have to do this step manually, but forewarned is forearmed.
  * Actually powering down rather than soft booting after installing the
Viper drivers.
  * Going through the Event Log with a fine toothed comb for clues after a
failure.
  * Using NT Diagnostics to see what the dice roll gave you this time!

I did not end up having a problem with Service Pack 4 recognizing the Viper
drivers, once I freed the interrupts, cleared the Extended area and powered
down before booting.  It wasn't necessary to back out to SP3.

It *was* necessary to clear out a Real3D Starfighter AGP service (r3dstar)
after experimentally installing a Starfighter board to see if my AGP port
was good.  Even after changing to VGA and then to Viper, that r3dstar
service hung around failing on a resource conflict.  Something to watch for
if you switch cards.

Like a lot of troubleshooting odysseys, this was frustrating at first but
ultimately educational.  My thanks to everyone who posted or mailed helpful
suggestions - except for whoever had that smart aleck remark about "spending
50 cents and calling Diamond" - of course I called them (and Micron) first,
spent an hour each on hold, and in each case ended up with a very nice call
desk person who spent a few minutes reading to me from the same FAQs and
troubleshooting guides I had already downloaded from the Diamond and Micron
websites, respectively, before picking up the phone.  Only then did I post
here, because the Net is usually smarter than today's script-driven tech
support departments.

Happy New Year!  The Viper is awesome under NT by the way.  Next stop, Win2K
Beta :)