Well, there may be progress in the next few days, as after a row with Paypal, two new old graphics cards may arrive today, and maybe we'll see what the problems were.

However, although ME usually gives me few problems, on that very machine, the one the new card will be for, soon after I ordered the new cards, I suddenly got a 640x480 display (usually rectifiable by a quick poke at display setting) AND (and here comes the catch) NO MOUSE POINTER. Changing the mouse had no effect.

Most likely, this is ME having eaten its mouse drivers, so I am up for an OS over-the-top re-install of ME and/or a format C and start again, (which will necessitate a fair bit of copying files and, to be safe, removal of the second hard drive) unless anyone knows exactly which files in 98SE are the mouse drivers, and I could then try copying those drivers across on a floppy.

However, it does occur to me that there might be other explanations. First, it might be related to the graphics card - and worse, all that wiggling of the old graphics card might have broken a track on the motherboard leading to the PS2 port - although I would expect that to result in a visible but immovable mouse pointer.

Such fin (when I get some spare time to play with it all).