That mtrrlfbe can cause issues, just be aware of that. Might be better off starting it on a "when needed" basis instead.

For example in Battle Isle 2 the graphics glitch up. Oh well learnt something new 😀

I'm not sure I can agree that CPU speed will have no effect on Voodoo 1 performance. If this graph is anything to go by, there is probably a noticeable difference in some games : http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/big-cpu-shoot,84-2.html. Granted that was using a Voodoo 2. I think its probably easier to find a 300A than a 300.

If there are games that mix the 3D accelerated graphics from the Voodoo and 2D graphics from the 2D card, then the KVM or dual monitor setup just won't work. While Matrox's compatiblility with tweaked VGA games (not just EGA) is less than ideal, I can understand the argument that the better quality RAMDAC makes up for it.

With Duke Nukem 3D, there has been a complaint about screen tearing with the Matrox, but I don't know how severe the issue is.

The great thing about the Voodoo 1 is that you don't need to fiddle with environment variables or dlls as you would on the Voodoo 2 for some DOS and early Windows Glide games, they just run with the card. Sadly, the resolution (640x480 with Z-buffering) and the performance ceiling are far more limiting than a Voodoo 2 or later.

Voodoo is a CPU scaling beast. Especially when you have 2 in SLI.

But on the classic Voodoo you are stuck to 640 x 480 resolution in most games. At least the ones I tried didn't have any option to change the resolution. This card does well on a Pentium 166 or MMX. But I do remember that many who upgraded from a Voodoo to Voodoo 2 in their Pentium machines saw little performance boost.

You know I could just stick a PIII 700 in this machine and compare, but I haven't got a decent benchmark. All the games I tried ran at, what appears to be, constant 60 fps with maybe a few hiccups here and there.

Great Hierophant wrote:

The great thing about the Voodoo 1 is that you don't need to fiddle with environment variables or dlls as you would on the Voodoo 2 for some DOS and early Windows Glide games, they just run with the card. Sadly, the resolution (640x480 with Z-buffering) and the performance ceiling are far more limiting than a Voodoo 2 or later.

True if you have a Windows installation (and the Windows drivers installed). If you are going only with DOS install there is fiddeling with Voodoo 1 as well for the .ovl driver file.
The downside with a Voodoo 1, is as you say, the limitation in resolution and performance with later Direct3D & Glide games. There are loads of games that lets you utilize 800x600 and above. A Voodoo2 SLI setup is the best imo in terms of performance and compatibility compromise. If you check out my Voodoo 2 DOS compatibility thread I've included Voodoo 2 ready patches for the required DOS games to make it a bit easier for people. For Mechwarrior 2 on the Voodoo2 see description on this video.

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

But on the classic Voodoo you are stuck to 640 x 480 resolution in most games. At least the ones I tried didn't have any option to change the resolution.

AFAIK only Mechwarrior 2 and Descent 1 allows for 800x600 on the Voodoo1

vetz wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

But on the classic Voodoo you are stuck to 640 x 480 resolution in most games. At least the ones I tried didn't have any option to change the resolution.

AFAIK only Mechwarrior 2 and Descent 1 allows for 800x600 on the Voodoo1

But that was only with cards that had a larger than 4MB framebuffer right? I.e. The Canopus Voodoo 1 that had 6MB?

I tried this method on my Pentium 133MHz build, after stuffing a 2GB compact flash card in. However, I don't know if it is limited to my system, but apparently Day of the Tentacle CD-ROM version has issues with the 'VIDE-CDD.SYS' driver. Causing the game to end up hanging while the drive keeps trying to load, and then weird audible noises produced for a few seconds and silence.

However, I grabbed my floppy I typically use for my MS-DOS only machines for CD-ROM support, and used the 'SSCDROM.SYS' (Samsung driver) off that, and that fixed the issue with Day of the Tentacle. 😀

Artex wrote:

vetz wrote:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

But on the classic Voodoo you are stuck to 640 x 480 resolution in most games. At least the ones I tried didn't have any option to change the resolution.

AFAIK only Mechwarrior 2 and Descent 1 allows for 800x600 on the Voodoo1

But that was only with cards that had a larger than 4MB framebuffer right? I.e. The Canopus Voodoo 1 that had 6MB?

Works on 4MB card. The games just don't use Z-buffer and thus free up RAM for more framebuffer usage.

I must say I really enjoyed doing this video and I think I can confidently recommend a Windows installation, even for DOS games.

ReeseRiverson wrote:

However, I grabbed my floppy I typically use for my MS-DOS only machines for CD-ROM support, and used the 'SSCDROM.SYS' (Samsung driver) off that, and that fixed the issue with Day of the Tentacle. 😀

Glad you fixed it! Games that are tricky with CD drives are Descent 2 (won't play audio CD tracks, Wing Commander III (just picky), Pinball games (they manipulate the Audio CD volume of the CD drive). And this one works with all of them. I don't have DOTT, so can't test. But why not run it from the HDD like with Fate of Atlantis?

Some more questions:

- Even without a floppy, FDD disable din BIOS, and set to none, Windows complains about "Drive A being in MS-DOS compatibility". Had the same issue with the PCI SATA controller. CF card in IDE works fine
- What are the benefits of W98? Are there games that will not run under W95? Working USB is a big plus. I find W98 feels somewhat slower / more bloated
- Had a ton of issues getting the PCI SATA controller going yesterday and ditched it, back using CF cards directly on the IDE. Anyone who runs a PCI SATA controller, did you find / load specific windows drivers?

Windows 98 SE + Lite98 free edition.

Then you can have the old fast GUI and support for new stuff such as USB storage 😀
An Internet Explorer free experience.

Cool! HAve you tried this yourself?

Do you have a safe link?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

- What are the benefits of W98? Are there games that will not run under W95? Working USB is a big plus. I find W98 feels somewhat slower / more bloated

MUCH MUCH easier to switch back and forth with older/newer drivers. In W95 you have to delete the .inf files if you want to install an older driver then the one you already have. Not very userfriendly for bench/test setups. This is the main reason I use W98 in my machines.

I have not tried it yet.
The free version removes Internet Explorer and if you want it replaces the Windows 98 GUI with the old one.
If you pay $25 you can do alot more.

http://www.litepc.com/

Skyscraper wrote:

If you pay $25 you can do alot more.
http://www.litepc.com/

Aeeem no 😀

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Some more questions: […]
Show full quote

Some more questions:

- Even without a floppy, FDD disable din BIOS, and set to none, Windows complains about "Drive A being in MS-DOS compatibility". Had the same issue with the PCI SATA controller. CF card in IDE works fine
- What are the benefits of W98? Are there games that will not run under W95? Working USB is a big plus. I find W98 feels somewhat slower / more bloated
- Had a ton of issues getting the PCI SATA controller going yesterday and ditched it, back using CF cards directly on the IDE. Anyone who runs a PCI SATA controller, did you find / load specific windows drivers?

Not sure about the floppy, but with my setup (Gigabyte GA-5AX, K6-III+ and the same PCI SATA Raid controller), I had to install the Si3112R drivers. After the install, I actually had to start/enable the card (through device manager) & reboot in order for the card to function properly. Once I did that, the previous "Drive C is Running in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode" message went away, as did another device pertaining to IRQ Holder for PCI Steering. Finally, it adds a control panel applet that shows information about the interface (SATA type, speed, etc.) Windows 98SE was MUCH snappier after installing this driver, as well as the ALi AGP Chipset drivers (version 1.82) for the GA-5AX motherboard.

Hey that's awesome. You didn't try if a SATA optical drive shows up under Windows?

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Hey that's awesome. You didn't try if a SATA optical drive shows up under Windows?

I didn't.. only because most SATA drives don't have the AUX connector for CD-Audio. I'm hooking my IDE DVD-ROM up to the motherboard directly.

I also managed to (finally) get my two sound cards working - my SB AWE64 Gold ISA PnP for wave output and an Ensoniq SoundScape S-2000 (non-PnP) ISA for it's gorgeous (can I say that?) GM output - NOT an easy task, especially when trying to configure the MS-DOS Mode Autoexec.bat. What I found was that the PCI SATA Controller was trying to grab IRQ 10 and prevented Windows from booting, so I reserved it in the BIOS and configured the Ensoniq MIDI IRQ with it. Now she's running beautifully!

Creative AWE64 Gold 16-bit Audio (SB16 Compatible)
WAV I/O: Port 220
MIDI I/O: Port 300
IRQ: 7
8-bit DMA: 1
16-bit DMA: 5

Creative AWE64 Gold Wavetable MIDI (Awe32 Compatible)
I/O: 0620-0623, 0A20-0A23, 0E20-0323

Ensoniq SoundScape
WAV I/O: 0534-0537
MIDI I/O: 0330-0337
WAV IRQ: 5
MIDI IRQ: 10 (reserved in BIOS)
DMA: 3
DMA: 0
Synth Routing: Internal
SB Emulation @ Port 220 (Disabled)

Network Card: IRQ 11
Display Adapter: IRQ 11
ACPI: IRQ 9 (Can't change on this motherboard)
SATA Controller: IRQ 14
IDE Controller: IRQ 15

Mau1wurf1977 wrote:

Hey that's awesome. You didn't try if a SATA optical drive shows up under Windows?

Here's what it looks like:

Artex wrote:

Once I did that, the previous "Drive C is Running in MS-DOS Compatibility Mode" message went away, as did another device pertaining to IRQ Holder for PCI Steering. Finally, it adds a control panel applet that shows information about the interface (SATA type, speed, etc.) Windows 98SE was MUCH snappier after installing this driver, as well as the ALi AGP Chipset drivers (version 1.82) for the GA-5AX motherboard.

Cool!

While I managed to install the driver, the "Compatibility Mode" message doesn't want to go away. But this is on a BX440 Slot 1 machine. For the moment I will just leave it.

On the Silicon Image site are a ton of downloads. Also BIOS you can flash. There is one that is called "IDE BIOS". It basically removes the RAID facility and is also meant to enable use of optical drive. However I couldn't test this because funny enough when you connect a SATA HDD and optical drive the machine simply refused to boot at all 😵