Do you even have DirectX installed?

The reason Redline, Shadows and Powerslide don't work is that they use the D3D API, and something is screwy going on with your 3dfx Voodoo D3D HAL driver.

Also, Nvidia drivers are aggressive when it comes to sharing the D3D HAL so try uninstalling Nvidia drivers. I guess it's not a PowerVR/Nvidia exclusive problem after all...

System stability is really good! Windows is fine but nit updated since I've not configured my LAN yet. I know it's strange..! I'm trying to reinstall drivers

EDIT: Problem Solved! It seemed like aproblem between graphic drivers and directx. Don't know exactly what was the problem. I've reinstalled both of them and even upgraded to Directx 7.0a (before was 6.1) and everything now is working fine!

When Shadows of The Empire launched I jumoed off my seat! 😀 Thanks for your help!

I'm guessing somewhere along the line, the Nvidia driver was removed.

Hello everybody, I resumed this old thread as I'm going to ask for help. Previously: as some of you may remember I succeeded in building my dreams' retro rig which now, after months of adding and removing parts, has the following configuration:

Mobo VIA APOLLO PRO133 chipset
Pentium 3 866mhz
512 mb RAM (split in two 256mb blocks)
3dfx voodoo 5500 PCI
Geforce 256 32Mb DDR (the first GeForce)
80gb HD + 40gb HD
Creative Soundblaster Live! CT4830 (with DOS drivers that emulate Sb16)
Dual Boot between Win98 and WinXP

So far I've been using this PC for an entire year without any sort of issue. Now it has a problem I've not been able to fix yet: it reboots itself randomly, after logging into Win98. As soon as I press the enter key after the "enter password" login page in Win98 it plays windows default music theme and loads up the icons on desktop. Sometimes it stays there and allows me to load a game, sometimes it reboots after or during windows load, sometimes it reboots in the middle of a game and, in the end, sometimes it doesn't reboot at all and works good.

What could it be? I tried repairing MBR but nothing changed. And also WinXP doesn't load up anymore. Any ideas? I also tried changing RAM blocks but had no luck.

Did you try it with another PSU?

Or, the motherboard itself is dying - look for bulging capacitors....

http://www.badcaps.net/pages.php?vid=5

It seems that if I'm able to launch a game as soon as Windows loads, the PC doesn't reboot (and lets me play as much as i want). When I exit, if i leave it idle, it reboots after 5-10 minutes...

By the way I'll try with another PSU. And, in case I have to change MoBo, what model would you suggest for this configuration? I found an asus CUv4X-e near home...

Depends on form factor of your P3. If you got a Slot1, there are ASUS P2B/P2B-F/P3B-F, ABIT BE6-II, Chaintech 6BTM. If it's Socket 370, you could go for an ASUS CUBX/CUBX-L/CUBX-E.

The 440BX chipset used on all mobos mentioned is very fast and reliable. But look for latest revisions of the boards, since not all revisions support Coppermine CPUs (except for CUBX(-L,-E) boards).

The downside of 440BX is that it doesn't officially support 133 Mhz bus clock, but there's an unofficial support for it (except for early revisions of ASUS P2B). It just means that AGP port is overclocked to 89 Mhz while using 133 Mhz bus clock. Most AGP cards work this way though. Bet your Geforce will work too.

I've been trying several attempts to restore that beloved retro rig to a working point but had no luck. The PC kept rebooting over and over. So I actually dismounted most of the hardware from it and plugged on another rig I had in my house. Right now, I'm running Voodoo 5 + Windows XP inside this configuration. Please note that within this config i'm able to dual boot between Windows VISTA and Windows XP. I pretend to run 3DFX Voodoo 5 on Xp and Radeon 4850 inside Vista.

MoBo ASUS P5Q
CPU Intel Core 2 Duo E8400 (3 GHz)
3DFX Voodoo 5 PCI (disabled in Windows Vista, enabled in Windows XP)
ATI RADEON 4850 PCIexpress (disabled on XP, enabled on Windows Vista)
8 GB RAM
2X500mb SATA HDs
1x80 SATA HD
REALTEK AUDIO DRIVERS

What can I say: it seems working, almost flawlessly. Although it doesn't come no way near WINDOWS 98 games compatibility (talking about older directx games) it may represent a temporary solution.

Xp boots fine and most of the games run good. I've tried Star Wars Shadows of the Empire and it displays right, with the correct fog thing; it only plays a little bit fast but i've been able to slow it down using 3DFX tools FSAA + vsync + CPU Killer. Most of the dos games, as imagined, present issues; but since I plan to use dosbox for older dos games such as BLOOD, BIOFORGE, DUKE3D etc, it just feels ok.

Concerning drivers I've installed Amigamerlin 3.1 R11. My current Directx version is 8.1 and i do not intend to update it, for the moment. Do they provide good compatibility? Or you suggest to install other, different drivers, such as SFFT 1.9 (or else)? Please keep in mind that most of my interest goes to DX6-7-8 games. I'm talking of X-Wing 95, Dark Earth, Requiem Avenging Angels and else.

One last question: I've got another PATA 80gb hard disk to spare. Would it be nearly impossibile (or extremely diffucult) to install Windows 98 on this machine? And would it be worth the effort, or would it just be system errors, bugs, crashes and issues over and over?

Thanks everybody 😀

There are some issues with large drives / partitions. FDISK can't handle 64GB plus and some utilities like SCANDISK also have issues.

See if the HDD has a 32GB limit jumper. If it is a Seagate you can do this via software (SEATOOLS).

Hey guys, how are you? I've successfully brought to life the PC configuration described some posts ago. Right now I stick with directx 8.1 and just SERVICE PACK 1 installed. I've got a question for you, about drivers:

Based on your own experience which set of drivers guarantees the best backwards compatibility with older directx (6 and 7 I'd say)? As far as I know, choices here are between AMIGAMERLIN 3.1 R11 (installed right now, along DX 8.1 on the system) and SFFT 1.9. Am I right or missing something?

Would it be a smart move to upgrade the system to directx 9.0c and install SFFT 1.9 drivers? Would there be the possibility to lose compatibility with older directx games? And, last, should it be better in my case to stick with directx 8.1 and AM 3.1, to ensure maximum backwards compatibility?

As always, thanks in advance