If you install a Voodoo2 with v2-auto.inf with its drivers, it should be able to set a bunch of env vars for dos mode to run V1 games. I've never had luck with V3 running V1 dos games though

Glide wrappers won't give you the same experience of enjoying it with a filtery DAC 😀

also inb4 someone's 'dont waste time buy gog' post

leileilol wrote:

If you install a Voodoo2 with v2-auto.inf with its drivers, it should be able to set a bunch of env vars for dos mode to run V1 games. I've never had luck with V3 running V1 dos games though

Oh well if even a later Voodoo card won't even help me with earlier Voodoo stuff, I guess I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.

leileilol wrote:

Glide wrappers won't give you the same experience of enjoying it with a filtery DAC 😀

The output is noisy? I wouldn't mind missing that tbh

jarreboum wrote:

Now I'm considering getting one of those modern Zotac graphics cards (the GT610 is their current offering in PCI) and just install a glide wrapper in Win98. ?

That is an incredibly bad idea. First of all, the GT610 has no Win98 drivers - so no 3d acceleration in win98 and no glide wrapper. Second, modern video cards don't get along well with retro PCs at a hardware level - not to mention the possible compatibility issues that may arise from the PCI-E to PCI bridge.

Here's the thing - I found out the hard way that these "quick and cheap" fixes are way more trouble then they're worth. So - ditch the GT610 idea and go for a voodoo 3 AGP or a Voodoo 2 SLi kit. If your board does not have an AGP slot look for a super 7 VIA MVP3 or ALi Aladdin chipset motherboard - that or look for a set of matching Voodoo 2 cards for SLi, but that solution is quite a bit more expensive then a voodoo 3 (40-50$ for the V2 cards + 10$ for the pass trough cable and SLi cable)

If you plan on building an AMD K6-2+ / K6-3 machine, the first thing you need is a super 7 board. Using a regular socket 7 board might cause stability issues - that's presuming the board will post with the K6-3 in the first place, and supports 2 or 2.2 volts (most regular socket 7 boards do 2.8-3.5 witch is way to high).

Super 7 boards are not that rare or expensive - particularly AT form factor boards. These also come with dual AT and ATX connectors and can be installed in an ATX case as well as AT. They're usually a lot cheaper then ATX only versions witch don't really offer and advantage. On good example of such boards is the Lucky Tech P5MVP3.

Video card-wise, the Voodoo 3 is not that hard to find, or that expensive. AGP versions can be had for 15-20$ locally - PCI versions are considerably more expensive and not really worth the investment. The V5 5500 really needs at least a fast Pentium III CPU to run at full potential. On a K6 it will probably behave just like a voodoo 3.

Regarding glide wrappers:

- They usually don't do DOS games - the required glide2x.olv file is not provided with the wrapper. Some dos 3dfx games can be played under DOSBOX using a glide emulator on a modern machine - but then why bother building a 3dfx retro-rig? If you want to build a retro 3dfx machine forget wrappers and go for real hardware.
- Not all games will run on a wrapper - it's usually hit and miss. Uprising and Pandemonium won't run on the wrappers I tried so far - they want real hardware. Uprising crashes to desktop after loading a mission and Pandemonium hangs randomly.

If you want a proper wide-coverage retro rig you have to be prepared to spend some money:

AMD K6-2+ or K6-3 -> 15-20$
Super socket 7 board - 15-40$
Voodoo 3 - 20-50$ / Voodoo 2 SLi kit - 55-75$
Optional: MIDI synth for older DOS games - 100$

Or there's an alternative - you could go for a VIA C3 / Cyrix M3 socket 370 CPUs. These offer the same slow-down possibilities as a K6-3, but run on a more common socket 370 platform, but be warned newer C3 processors will require a compatible motherboard (fc-pga2 socket 370) and sorting out witch CPU runs on what board can be a pain in the ass.

P.S. - ebay prices are insane. Look for parts on local ad sites (some people give them away for free) or on other sites like amibay

jarreboum wrote:

leileilol wrote:

Glide wrappers won't give you the same experience of enjoying it with a filtery DAC 😀

The output is noisy? I wouldn't mind missing that tbh

The Voodoo uses a 16-bit frame buffer with dithering, and the DAC tries some filtering tricks to hide the dithering leading to their characteristic waxy look (and with high gamma by default on top of that making it even more obvious).. It's a huge part of the nostalgia involved with the supposed "it looks better on 3dfx" sentiment you might see around here and other places because the other 3d companies did not do this.

kanecvr wrote:

jarreboum wrote:

Now I'm considering getting one of those modern Zotac graphics cards (the GT610 is their current offering in PCI) and just install a glide wrapper in Win98. ?

That is an incredibly bad idea. First of all, the GT610 has no Win98 drivers - so no 3d acceleration in win98 and no glide wrapper. Second, modern video cards don't get along well with retro PCs at a hardware level - not to mention the possible compatibility issues that may arise from the PCI-E to PCI bridge.

Nvidia still provides the forceware 81.98 driver for win9x. I assumed those would work?
dgvoodoo seems to be the goto glide wrapper for win98, and does include glide2x.ovl.

[edit] oh and Zotac claims they have drivers for DOS as well. I don't know how compatible this sort of stuff is with win9x.
I was looking at the compatibility list of nGlide, and most of the problems seem to come from DOS/win9x games not being happy with XP, and not really a problem with the wrapper itself. I could not find a compatibility list for dgvoodoo under win9x.

jarreboum wrote:

kanecvr wrote:

jarreboum wrote:

Now I'm considering getting one of those modern Zotac graphics cards (the GT610 is their current offering in PCI) and just install a glide wrapper in Win98. ?

That is an incredibly bad idea. First of all, the GT610 has no Win98 drivers - so no 3d acceleration in win98 and no glide wrapper. Second, modern video cards don't get along well with retro PCs at a hardware level - not to mention the possible compatibility issues that may arise from the PCI-E to PCI bridge.

Nvidia still provides the forceware 81.98 driver for win9x. I assumed those would work?
dgvoodoo seems to be the goto glide wrapper for win98, and does include glide2x.ovl.

It hasn't been called Forceware over 10 years. That driver won't work for anything beyond the Geforce 7xxx series. The GT610 is only like 4 years old.

I think the K6 will struggle running nGlide well enough. I had good success with an Athlon 64 3700+, it ran Unreal at 1600 x 1200 faster than a V5, but it was just an experiment, nothing I would recommend.

A real V3, and even V2 SLI, should still be relatively easy to obtain.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

It hasn't been called Forceware over 10 years. That driver won't work for anything beyond the Geforce 7xxx series. The GT610 is only like 4 years old.

Then I'll forget about the GT610. I only used it as an example because it could still be bought new.
What about older cards though? Zotac is famous for doing PCI cards out of modern PPU and have been doing so for quite some time. They probably aren't the only ones. What card could advantageously replace a Voodoo3 through wrappers, and potentially give the old computer some more power with DirectX and OpenGL?

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

I think the K6 will struggle running nGlide well enough. I had good success with an Athlon 64 3700+, it ran Unreal at 1600 x 1200 faster than a V5, but it was just an experiment, nothing I would recommend.

A wrapper needs CPU power? I though it just forwarded the instructions to the non-3Dfx card?
nglide is only for XP and beyond, XP itself will struggle on a K6 😒

Sorry dp

You had better be quick if You want one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STB-3dfx-Voodoo2-grap … UEAAOxyYANTa430

I got one last week, brand new mint condition. You need a pass through cable though as well.

Imperious wrote:

You had better be quick if You want one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STB-3dfx-Voodoo2-grap … UEAAOxyYANTa430

I got one last week, brand new mint condition. You need a pass through cable though as well.

Ha, that's funny. There is a store in Moscow that has been selling these NOS STB cards for 490 RUB (7,7 USD) for quite a while. I've bought one last December when I started collecting old computers, and I actually got the very last one this summer for an SLI build. They told me at the store that they had these cards for years and nobody wanted them, so one of the employees basically took like "a hundred or so" cards home. Guess that's the guy selling them for 3x the price 😀

Two years ago they actually had several dozens of AWE32 CT2760 for 300RUB (less than 10 USD at the time), and now they're popping up for 10-20 times the price 😀

For a K6-3, a single Voodoo 2 will suffice. The CPU just doesn't have much horsepower.

If you focus is on Win98 gaming mostly, get a faster machine. As much as I love the K6, it's more suited for a multi-purpose machine for DOS and light Windows gaming. It will struggle with games released in or after 1999.

jheronimus wrote:

Imperious wrote:

You had better be quick if You want one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/STB-3dfx-Voodoo2-grap … UEAAOxyYANTa430

I got one last week, brand new mint condition. You need a pass through cable though as well.

Ha, that's funny. There is a store in Moscow that has been selling these NOS STB cards for 490 RUB (7,7 USD) for quite a while. I've bought one last December when I started collecting old computers, and I actually got the very last one this summer for an SLI build. They told me at the store that they had these cards for years and nobody wanted them, so one of the employees basically took like "a hundred or so" cards home. Guess that's the guy selling them for 3x the price 😀

Two years ago they actually had several dozens of AWE32 CT2760 for 300RUB (less than 10 USD at the time), and now they're popping up for 10-20 times the price 😀

Thanks for that information, very interesting. He's a smart guy. What amazes me is all the other voodoo 2's on ebay for ridiculous prices, a bit like a lot of retro hardware now unfortunately.
I think most sellers just assume everything old is worth money.

I had both:

A Voodoo and A Geforce FX 5200 in my Windows98 system.

But i removed the Voodoo Card because it Displays only 640x480 (or 800x600 depends on Game).

The Wrapper has higher Resolutions and you can force antialising.

Dos games run only with dgvoodoo.
Try version 1.50 or 1.50beta.

Tested and Works: Screamer2, Screamer Rally, Carmageddon.

On Faster systems you can run Carmageddon in full-HD with antialising.

If you play it after that experience on a real voodoo in 640x480 it looks terrible.

The only pro for a real voodoo is that it is more compatible.

Don't know about the latest version but I remember using Nglide in Windows 98 before. Never trust system requirements.

Re: Help building a DOS machine and a windows 98 machine

The last Win98 glide wrappering i've used is that ye old zeckensack wrapper which was nice for its time.

Also I prefer native 640x480 over stretched-to-hell "full HD"....... most of those dos glide games rely on a strict 640x480 frame buffer to draw the 2D in

Do you 'need' a VooDoo card to play Glide/3DFX-only accelerated games? Probably not. You can probably find wrappers/emulators/whatever to get most stuff working.
Do you 'need' a VooDoo card to experience what it was like to actually play with a real Glide/3DFX setup back in the day? Absolutely!

A wrapper will make the software run, but it will not render it in the same way as a real VooDoo card would, since both the rendering algorithms and the analog output signal will be different. Aside from that, the performance will not be comparable either.

In fact I have two computers:
- a K6-3+ 450 on a K8NF6G-VSTA. I fancy this motherboard because it's a micro-ATX that fits nicely in my case. It's the only super socket 7 micro-ATX board that I could find, and it has only PCI with one ISA. It has integrated video, and I put an old ESS Audiodrive in. Both sound and video will be upgraded as soon as I can make up my mind. I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't even test this setup yet, as the RAM and cooler I've ordered take forever to arrive.
- An AMD-64 2800+ with a 7600GT. It was my old high end gaming PC at the time, which I intend to repurpose into a late-win98, maybe early-XP machine. This one would most definitely use glide wrappers for the odd games that are 3Dfx-only and can't run on the K6.

I didn't know about the difference in rendering, thank you guys! Then I guess I have no choice but getting a real voodoo card. Pretty excited now.
My first real 3D card was a GeForce256, which I stupidly threw away years ago, and before that I had a stupid SIS card that could do almost nothing. I never got to experience 3Dfx gaming.

If price weren't an issue, which would be the best one? Is the Voodoo5 an overkill that brings nothing to the system, or is it still worth getting for the 32bit colour depth and whatever computational power it brings? Same for the Voodoo3? There are plenty of cheap Voodoo2 around and I'll probably start with that one. With all the different manufacturers, anything to look for in particular?

For Pre-V3, Diamonds are the highly regarded brand for the Voodoos (Monster3D II was one of the earliest and best Voodoo2s period), followed by Canopus and Creative. Obsidian makes specialized pimped out Voodoo hardware that are super pricey (think nvidia titans)

Voodoo5's a bit of a waste since it's like a slightly faster Voodoo3 that finally caught up with the TNT and some FXT texture compression stuff barely any game used (Fakk2 and Alice, off the top of my head), unless you really want FSAA in a glide game natively.

SIS is a decelerator. You could've been content with any 3d card you could find on the CompUSA shelf at that point in 1998