foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 21:57:

The Graphics Card, I managed to find a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 2mb (Upgradable to 4mb) S3 Virge. Fantastic DOS support and I was interested in some of the wrappers and patches for the S3 Versions of Games. There's some great info on Vogons and managed to find most of the patches for Games that run on the card. I'll call it out now, it's terrible for 3D 😀

Yes. Yes it is terrible. I had an 8 MB (upgraded!) Virge/VX back in the day, and it totally lived up to the "3D decelerator" name. You could always get a cheap PCI Geforce or Riva TNT2 for 3D that doesn't suck, although they don't do 3D accelerated DOS games. The only DOS 3D accelerator worth having remains a 3dfx Voodoo, and those are so very expensive nowadays...

foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 21:57:

Onto the Sound Card. I believe this card came with the machine. It's period correct and actually not bad. It's an ESS AudioDrive with the ES1868F Chipset. It's a decent compatible Sound Blaster compatible Sound Card. I've also noticed in a number of games I am able to select the ESS AudioDrive selection. However, I have noticed that some of the sound effects are 8bit. It has a Wavetable header.

It's nice there are so many wavetable boards to choose from now, and they sound so much better than the original WaveBlaster too.

foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 21:57:

There is a Intel Pro100 PCI NIC in there, but have ordered a 3COM ISA Network card so I can use mTCP.

That's unnecessary AFAIK. The Intel cards have DOS packet drivers available. The PCI card will perform so much better and be dramatically less hassle.

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-17, 22:54:

Yes. Yes it is terrible. I had an 8 MB (upgraded!) Virge/VX back in the day, and it totally lived up to the "3D decelerator" nam […]
Show full quote

foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 21:57:

The Graphics Card, I managed to find a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 2mb (Upgradable to 4mb) S3 Virge. Fantastic DOS support and I was interested in some of the wrappers and patches for the S3 Versions of Games. There's some great info on Vogons and managed to find most of the patches for Games that run on the card. I'll call it out now, it's terrible for 3D 😀

Yes. Yes it is terrible. I had an 8 MB (upgraded!) Virge/VX back in the day, and it totally lived up to the "3D decelerator" name. You could always get a cheap PCI Geforce or Riva TNT2 for 3D that doesn't suck, although they don't do 3D accelerated DOS games. The only DOS 3D accelerator worth having remains a 3dfx Voodoo, and those are so very expensive nowadays...

foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 21:57:

Onto the Sound Card. I believe this card came with the machine. It's period correct and actually not bad. It's an ESS AudioDrive with the ES1868F Chipset. It's a decent compatible Sound Blaster compatible Sound Card. I've also noticed in a number of games I am able to select the ESS AudioDrive selection. However, I have noticed that some of the sound effects are 8bit. It has a Wavetable header.

It's nice there are so many wavetable boards to choose from now, and they sound so much better than the original WaveBlaster too.

foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 21:57:

There is a Intel Pro100 PCI NIC in there, but have ordered a 3COM ISA Network card so I can use mTCP.

That's unnecessary AFAIK. The Intel cards have DOS packet drivers available. The PCI card will perform so much better and be dramatically less hassle.

Thanks for this, I've actually downloaded the packet drivers from the website last night. However, looking at them - I may of grabbed the Pro/1000 instead of the 100. Will give it another go!

Edit - Got it working, thanks!

Any suggestions on the Wavetable boards? I've never had one before. Assuming any will fit?

Nice work on that case!

I love this build very nice

I also miss the sound of that old quantum in my old mac

foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 23:03:

Any suggestions on the Wavetable boards? I've never had one before. Assuming any will fit?

Any but the very largest will fit on your sound card. The DreamBlaster S2 or X2 are popular choices around here; they are sold on serdashop. The S2 in particular is inexpensive.

Benchmarks (Using DOS Benchmark Pack (PhilsComputerLAB)

3DBench 1.0C - 1822
Chris's 3D BenchMark - 172.0
Chris's 3D BenchMark 640x480 - 53.5 (32.1 FPS)
PC Player Benchmark 640x480 - 16.7

Doom Min Details (Slower PCs) - 2134 Gametics in 324 Realtics
Doom For Faster PCs (Max Details) - 2134 Gametics in 1090 Realtics

Quake Timedemo - 24.6fps
Quake Timedemo 360x480 - 11.3fps

Speedsys

Processor Benchmark: 91.24 (With the 6xopt80B TSR, using "6x86opt.exe -x -F -A -v" - 91.41)
VESA Memory : 16462 KB/S

LightStruk wrote on 2021-02-18, 13:23:

foey wrote on 2021-02-17, 23:03:

Any suggestions on the Wavetable boards? I've never had one before. Assuming any will fit?

Any but the very largest will fit on your sound card. The DreamBlaster S2 or X2 are popular choices around here; they are sold on serdashop. The S2 in particular is inexpensive.

Thanks, just ordered a S2.

Installed SciTech Display Doctor 6.53 to enable some games to run in SVGA VESA.

Psycho Pinball
Really pleased with the image quality here. Very Sharp on the DELL 4:3 2007FPb Monitor.

Duke 3D. Colors look a little washed out?

Blood 640x480, again colors looked washed out here?

Starts to chug later into the level. Need to resist swapping out the Cyrix for the 233MMX..!

Install brand new (Old stock) rubber case feet...

Really pleased for DOS to be communicating on my network. Thanks to LightStruk I now have the Packet driver for the PCI Intel Pro100 running. I had tried to get this working previously but it looks like I was using the Pro1000 packet driver which obviously failed to work.

I'm using the fantastic Brutman mTCP tools http://www.brutman.com/mTCP/. Upon booting, the packet driver is loaded via Autoexec.bat. Then I'm able to use the mTCP DHCP program for the card to get a DHCP address, then we are able to use FTPSRV, FTP File Server which is so valuable on transfer files in/out of the machine. Thanks to this, I'm booting directly to DOS and have disabled the Windows 95 splash screen.

mTCP FTP Server

Awesome stuff! Good job! 😀

SpeedSys Benchmarks

I've had a considerable amount of issues with the Intel Pro100/S card in Windows. I've managed to find the driver that works and with a little configuration, it's working. The mTCP tools are working perfectly in DOS with the Intel100 Packet driver. So handy for dumping the contents of the hard drive before rebuilding Windows e.t.c.

Further testing of "S3 Specific" games with patches is quite fun, in most cases actually runs and looks worse than the default software version. Decent 2 is the exception here. It runs well (Most of the time congested areas the frame rate dips) and looks very sharp. Probably the best experience I've had with the card. Very playable.

Screamer Patched looks much worse than the SVGA version (STARTH) Blurry in places, such as the rear of the car, the frame rate is comparable with the SVGA version but constant clipping - don't think the screenshot picks these up. Running this on the Medium setting. The installer for the patch is great however, very easy and a High, medium and low settings scaling for different setups is welcoming.

I've ordered a Cyrix MII 300, waiting for that to arrive. From what I can see, there should be no reason why it should not work on the ABIT PX5, given that the actual clock speed is 233mhz. Some SVGA games are struggling in SVGA mode. This will hopefully prevent me from sticking in my Intel Pentium MMX 233! 😀

foey wrote on 2021-02-23, 15:35:

I've ordered a Cyrix MII 300, waiting for that to arrive. From what I can see, there should be no reason why it should not work on the ABIT PX5, given that the actual clock speed is 233mhz. Some SVGA games are struggling in SVGA mode. This will hopefully prevent me from sticking in my Intel Pentium MMX 233! 😀

This is the path I went down with my Cyrix machine and I've been really happy with the performance of the MII 300 - it's the only retro machine I use these days and I play some SVGA games like Duke3D, Descent 2, Europress Rally, etc. Having a good VGA card is important though too - I don't know how that S3 compares to the usual suspects (ARK2000, Tseng 6000, Matrox, etc). I've also found that using 6x86OPT to enable a LFB helps noticeably with your SVGA framerate - you might need to use Univbe as well depending on the VGA card.

For comparison my processor benchmark score in speedsys is 165.29

And my SVGA score in PCP bench (640X400 8bpp LFB) is 32.7

I've also found that with a combination of SETMUL and AT-SLOW I can get a nice smooth slowdown to 486SX33 speeds, so games like Ultima7, etc play perfectly.

Good times!

badmojo wrote on 2021-02-23, 22:29:

This is the path I went down with my Cyrix machine and I've been really happy with the performance of the MII 300 - it's the onl […]
Show full quote

foey wrote on 2021-02-23, 15:35:

I've ordered a Cyrix MII 300, waiting for that to arrive. From what I can see, there should be no reason why it should not work on the ABIT PX5, given that the actual clock speed is 233mhz. Some SVGA games are struggling in SVGA mode. This will hopefully prevent me from sticking in my Intel Pentium MMX 233! 😀

This is the path I went down with my Cyrix machine and I've been really happy with the performance of the MII 300 - it's the only retro machine I use these days and I play some SVGA games like Duke3D, Descent 2, Europress Rally, etc. Having a good VGA card is important though too - I don't know how that S3 compares to the usual suspects (ARK2000, Tseng 6000, Matrox, etc). I've also found that using 6x86OPT to enable a LFB helps noticeably with your SVGA framerate - you might need to use Univbe as well depending on the VGA card.

For comparison my processor benchmark score in speedsys is 165.29

And my SVGA score in PCP bench (640X400 8bpp LFB) is 32.7

I've also found that with a combination of SETMUL and AT-SLOW I can get a nice smooth slowdown to 486SX33 speeds, so games like Ultima7, etc play perfectly.

Good times!

Thanks for the tips - I'll try the switches and report back. Are you using the same switches on the MII?
I'm sure I've stumbled on your post of your setup whilst I was in the middle of building mine. Was your setup with the Wheel playing RAC Rally Championship? Love that game - It was my first game I had on my Family's P75. I've just received the X-MILES Add on which I found on ebay. Adds around 10 tracks - Nothing to write home about TBH, I was expecting more! Although some of the new tracks are wider.

Using UniVBE 6.53 with the 6xopt80B TSR,

1"6x86opt.exe -x -F -A -v -linbuf"

(UniVBE has to be loaded into memory before 6x86Opt is run)

I'm seeing some slightly higher results...

3DBench 1.0C - 1822 > 1832
Chris's 3D BenchMark - 172.0 > 172.4
Chris's 3D BenchMark 640x480 - 53.5 (32.1 FPS) > 65.6 (39.3 FPS)
PC Player Benchmark 640x480 - 16.7 > 18.5

I also went back to sense check that just UniVBE was not making the difference. I rebooted and just loaded up UniVBE and got the slower results. So this switch is working! Thanks!

Nice! Yes I'm using those switches with the MII, and yes that was my post with the wheel 😀 It's such a great game, the only driving sim I play these days. And lolz yes I saw your post RE the X-Miles add-on; I didn't know that existed so I've set up an eBay alert.

I think the main benefit that 6x86opt provides is enabling the framebuffer, which is great for SVGA. Something else I've just 'discovered' recently is unirefresh, which you can use if univbe is able to get you VESA3 support. It doesn't improve the frame rate but it does allow you to set a higher refresh rate in DOS (I've gone with 75Hz) which makes things easier on the eyes in SVGA modes. Duke3D feels smoother for example.

I hope your board accepts the MII 300 and I'll be interested to see what your benchmarks look like with that bad boy installed - even Quake runs well with that chip which is obviously a big achievement for a Cyrix!

Actually something I should have mentioned is that for me, using those performance tweaks causes corruption in the Europress Rally menu - the only game that does it of course! Actually driving is fine, but the menu uses an 8 bit 640X480 mode where as driving is a 16 bit mode.

Does it happen for you? If not then I guess it's graphics card specific, but it's happened on 2 cards I've tried. I'm trying to work out if I can still use Univbe and fix it somehow, will let you know if I do.

badmojo wrote on 2021-02-24, 06:28:

Actually something I should have mentioned is that for me, using those performance tweaks causes corruption in the Europress Rally menu - the only game that does it of course! Actually driving is fine, but the menu uses an 8 bit 640X480 mode where as driving is a 16 bit mode.

Does it happen for you? If not then I guess it's graphics card specific, but it's happened on 2 cards I've tried. I'm trying to work out if I can still use Univbe and fix it somehow, will let you know if I do.

Yes! Just remembered this was the very reason why UniVBE is not in my autoexec bat, instead I’ve got a batch file called SVGA and which loads up UniVBE and now the 6x68Opt program.

For me though, its solely UniVBE is causing the issues.

foey wrote on 2021-02-24, 07:42:

For me though, its solely UniVBE is causing the issues.

Since you're using a Virge card, try S3 VBE instead.

Regarding performance in S3D games, some of them really want 4MB of video RAM. Overclocking the card using MCLCK can provide a boost as well. Running Tomb Raider in S3D mode, my overclocked 4MB Virge DX2 delivers ~20 FPS at 640x480. You can toggle the FPS counter by pressing F2.

Fun fact, a Virge can actually accelerate games when used on less powerful hardware.

Thanks Joseph, will that a try!

Regarding the RAM, I have 4 RAM Slots on the card which are empty. I've been looking on eBay for some RAM chips, they are marked up as

1Em614163A-50

I can't find anything locally, may have to import them! There is a seller from Israel, may drop them a message.

I've been testing s3vbe20 (s3vbe318 Package) as suggested by Joseph. I cold booted, installed the TSR via...

1s3vbe20 /install

Once loaded, I loaded the 6x86Opt program, which loaded and found the Graphics Card just like UniVBE. I ran the DOS benches and scored exactly the same as my previous benches (The faster optimised set) I loaded Network Q RAC Rally Championship and loaded without any corruption and was able to play perfectly!

@Joseph_Joestar - Many thanks for the suggestion!