Thanks to the help from the guys on this forum. I didn't have the Matrox overlay until someone here pointed it out.
Latest update is that I got the drivers for the two graphics cards installed successfully and I'm now running Windows 95 desktop at 1024 x 768 @ 32-bit smoothly with the ATI card. I can't use the Voodoo2 card unless I either switch the monitor cable or get a passthrough that will double back on the next slot, as the two cards are right next to each other. I've also upgraded the installed version of DirectX from 4 to 5 (came with the Diamond Monster CD). No games installed yet, but I'm at least getting audio from within Windows. So today is a success. Thank you very much for all the help.
Glad you got it sorted out! Sorry I wasnt any help here but I havent actually had to install 95 on a large drive yet. Stash of 8gb and smaller drives has held out so far 😊
Jorpho wrote:FYI, there is no DirectX 4. (Yes, if you look at the DirectX DLLs, they'll report a version number of 4.xx.xx, but all of them […] Show full quote
FFXIhealer wrote:
I've also upgraded the installed version of DirectX from 4 to 5 (came with the Diamond Monster CD).
Ah, my mistake. I just ran DXDIAG on my Windows 98 system and it reports 4.07.xxxx version numbers for the files. But it still updated something, so whatever. I think I'll put 3dMark 99 on there and test THAT system with the single Voodoo2 card and the 200MHz Pentium and see what the scores compare to my way more powerful Pentium III 600Mhz and dual V2s.
Question: Can I turn DMA on for the hard drive to improve performance if I'm using that drive overlay software?
About to run benchmarks on this system, so I'm having to install DirectX 6.1 just to get 3dMark99Max to work. Also installing Quake 1 to do a framerate test.
I think trying to install a version of DirectX lower than the one currently installed doesn't actually change anything, though it will definitely look like it is doing something.
DirectX 7 is installed on Windows 98 PC. This is the Windows 95 PC we're talking about now. It had DX5, now it has DX6.1.
Ran the Benchmark and I get scores:
3DMark 99 Max 3DMarks / CPU 3DMarks
Voodoo2 640x480x16: 1012/1322
Voodoo2 800x600x16: 1006/1329
This shows to me that the Voodoo2 is extremely CPU limited, as the scores don't really fluctuate based on the resolution. I doubt I'd see any framerate or benchmark increase even if I cranked the Voodoo2 up to 100Mhz. I wonder how a Voodoo1 card would have done on the same test.
NOTE: I did have to drop the Frame Buffer to Double, as 3dMark couldn't benchmark the system at Triple, and Single caused graphics artifacting during the first two 3d game demo runs. Double frame buffer smoothed that all out. I also intentionally dropped the speed of the Voodoo2 card to 90MHz to match the STB cards in my Win98 PC, even though this is an 8MB card and the STB cards are 12MB.
Just installed Quake 1 and I'm doing the benchmarks now. Demo 3 is playing as I'm typing.
Oh, and apparently I'm impatient, as I've already turned on DMA on the HDD and the CD-ROM drive and the system started fine.
Although I can't seem to play CD-Audio right now. I haven't tried an actual album from the store yet (only CD-Rs), but it still concerns me. The 4-wire audio header wire is connected properly, so I have to think it might be a driver issue.
UPDATE
Ran Quake II timedemos and got:
VOODOO2 640 x 480 x 16
Quake 2 Timedemo1: 28.3 FPS
Quake 2 Timedemo2: 25.4 FPS
But I played the first level in both Quake 1 and Quake 2 (by first level, I mean until the elevator where you hit the first Loading screen between areas). Quake 1 felt smooth as silk still. Quake 2 you could tell wasn't hitting 60 FPS, but the game itself was still playable. Very little stuttering except when the computer had to query the HDD for something. Of course, neither one had any CD-Audio and I have to troubleshoot that, but I'm sure it's minor. All game sound effects were there.
The 4-wire audio header wire is connected properly, so I have to think it might be a driver issue.
It's conceivable, but that would be a strange driver issue. My first suspect would be the mixer volume, or possibly the volume in the Sound (or was it multimedia?) control panel.
As always, the easiest way to be sure would be to use a bootable CD to run something completely independent of Windows, like maybe GeeXbox 1.2.4 from http://download.geexbox.org/releases/ . (It will of course allow you to eject the CD once it has booted.)
To compare these values with the Windows 98 system, we'll compare the 640x480 and the 800x600 one at a time.
640x480x16
Pentium 200MHz: 1012/1322
Pentium II 350MHz: 2739/3123 SLI: 2737/3129
Pentium III 600MHz: 4259/8098 SLI: 4598/8250
Ignoring the fact, for the moment, that the W98 system has 12MB Voodoo2 cards and the W95 system has only an 8MB version, the numbers here tell me that running at 640x480, the cards are so fast that they're CPU limited, even at the Pentium II level. It isn't until the Pentium III showed up that I see an increase in performance with SLI.
800x600x16
Pentium 200MHz: 1006/1329
Pentium II 350MHz: 2518/3125 SLI: 2733/3122
Pentium III 600MHz: 3071/8255 SLI: 4549/8229
Here, the increase in resolution begins to actually affect the card, even at the Pentium II level. The SLI pair increased in score over 200 points now. But it's still hampered by the slower CPU speed. We see this on the Pentium III here that has almost 1500 point increase going to SLI.
I'd bet the score increase would be awesome with a 1GHz or faster processor. No wonder Phil's Computer Lab said they scaled well. From these numbers I would have to say that the ONLY real reason to put a 2nd Voodoo2 card into a Pentium II system would be to hit that 1024x768 resolution, as you get no real performance benefit from it, in benchmarks or games.
I have fixed the CD-AUDIO playback issue. As it turns out, for the white 4-pin connection on the motherboard, I had to REVERSE the polarity of both channels. Red and White were plugged into the pins the MB expected to be GROUND, not the other way around. Now CD-AUDIO works properly. In fact, with my Altec Lansing 2.1 speaker system, AC/DC sounds pretty boss now.
I also updated the drivers with the VIBRA16 CD you guys have archived here for use. Thanks for that, by the way. I burned the CD-R on my modern PC and it read properly on the W95 system. Now we can get some Quake or Doom or whatever on. I think I should find a Duke Nukem 3D Atomik ISO to burn, because I had that CD-ROM years ago and for the life of me I can't find the damned disk or box! Maybe it's in one of my storage bins outside. I haven't checked those yet.
Ok guys, now I have a new project on this system - FIXING DOS!
So I quit Windows 95 to MS-DOS and tried Quake (Software Mode) and I get sound blaster functions from the drivers I just ran....but no Mouse support in Quake and no D:, so I get no music. So we gotta fix these two. Here's what's in my files so far:
AUTOEXEC.BAT (I ran this manually)
SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
CONFIG.SYS is empty.
Right now, I have the Win95 CD-ROM folder copied to my hard drive, as well as a full Windows 95 OSR2 install. I have a 1.44MB floppy and I have CD-Rs if I absolutely have to. No network access, no ZIP drive.
I think I should find a Duke Nukem 3D Atomik ISO to burn, because I had that CD-ROM years ago and for the life of me I can't find the damned disk or box! Maybe it's in one of my storage bins outside. I haven't checked those yet.
Now I have. Found it. Original CD and the original jewel case, including instructions manual. Sweet.
UPDATE: I also got my CD-ROM and MOUSE working in DOS mode.
This is, of course, after I found the VIDE cd-rom driver package and unpacked it to the C:\Vide directory and then also downloaded MOUSE.COM and stuck it in the C:\Windows\Command folder. Tests using this configuration allows me to select "Restart in MS-DOS mode" and I can play Duke Nukem 3D and Quake1 in DOS. I get streaming audio in Quake and the game validates properly in Duke Nukem. Both games work with the mouse too.
If you really want to fine tune DOS, I use the below as a guide.
it may need some fine tuning for your specific system, but its kind of fun squeezing every bit out of it. http://www.mdgx.com/mem7.htm
But of course the fact your up and running it the important thing!
As it turns out, himem.sys doesn't really do much on its own, and of course isn't necessary at all for Windows 95, but for DOS, it's sort-of mandatory. In fact, I'm sort-of wondering if I even need any of the sound lines in Autoexec.bat for Windows to use the sound card. Doesn't Windows 95 pretty much inject its own drivers? It uses its own memory manager, I know that for certain. And DOS games have sound when operating within Windows but not on pure DOS mode without all those lines and drivers set up...so maybe I can move all those lines to the Dosstart.bat file and have an empty Autoexec.bat file? Hmmmm...worth investigating.
In fact, I'm sort-of wondering if I even need any of the sound lines in Autoexec.bat for Windows to use the sound card.
You realize that those are environment variables that consume completely insignificant amounts of memory, right?
If saving RAM is that important to you (and past a certain point there's really not much point in worrying about it), you should probably look into different CD-ROM drivers first; some are preferred due to their lower memory consumption.
In fact, you can probably take the CD-ROM driver out of your config.sys entirely and load it in DOSSTART.BAT using a utility such as drvload, devload, ddl, or loadsys, as recently mentioned in another thread.
Since the entirety of this thread before THIS post was all open-air, blah blah. Some things have changed about it. I took the Voodoo2 card out completely and stuck that in a different, slightly more powerful system. THIS computer now has a Diamond Monster 3D 4MB PCI Voodoo1 card. Yes, I overpaid for it on Ebay.
I got my hands on a pair of Startech Gigabit PCI Ethernet controllers and swapped them into my newer systems, pulling the older 10/100 ethernet cards out. I put a 3COM EZNET 10/100 PCI card into this Windows 95 system, put a driver install package on a floppy. Went to install the drivers and when it asked for the Windows 95 CD-ROM, instead of hitting the CD eject button, my dumb-ass hit the power switch on the computer.
Needless to say, Explorer was f***ed up and refused to stop crashing. So...what's a guy to do? Yeah, you guessed it. Re-install Windows 95.
Ok, so now I have Win 95 reinstalled, the Rage IIc drivers reinstalled and configured for my TV (1024x768x32 resolutions, 60Hz). I didn't have to reinstall the Voodoo1 drivers, the tabs just appeared in the Display Properties box and the card works. Tomb Raider runs perfectly in 3dfx mode, as well as other tests. I reinstalled the proper drivers for the NIC and now I can surf the internet - BADLY. IE is so old that even VOGONS doesn't display correctly (it does on my Win98 PC with Firefox 2.0). But the good news is that I configured it correctly to talk to other computers, so now I have a platform where I can set up a native IPX network for older DOS games such as Master of Magic, DOOM, Diablo, etc. I wouldn't mind doing an old-school LAN party based on this.
Anyway, because I had to re-install Windows, I'm thinking some of my settings are messed up, as Master of Magic crashed back to DOS saying it ran out of memory. So let's start there.
SET SOUND=C:\PROGRA~1\CREATIVE\CTSND
SET MIDI=SYNTH:1 MAP:E
SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 H5 P330 T6
SET SST_SCREENREFRESH=60
SET SST_RGAMMA=1.70
SET SST_GGAMMA=1.70
SET SST_BGAMMA=1.70
1C:\>mem /c 2 3Modules using memory below 1 MB: 4 5 Name Total Conventional Upper Memory 6 -------- ---------------- ---------------- ---------------- 7 SYSTEM 33,856 (33K) 9,552 (9K) 24,304 (24K) 8 HIMEM 1,168 (1K) 1,168 (1K) 0 (0K) 9 EMM386 4,320 (4K) 4,320 (4K) 0 (0K) 10 WIN 3,792 (4K) 3,792 (4K) 0 (0K) 11 MSCDEX 28,832 (27K) 28,032 (27K) 0 (0K) 12 SETVER 832 (1K) 0 (0K) 832 (1K) 13 COMMAND 7,168 (7K) 0 (0K) 7,168 (1K) 14 VIDECDD 20,496 (20K) 0 (0K) 20,496 (20K) 15 IFSHLP 2,912 (3K) 0 (0K) 2,912 (3K) 16 MOUSE 3,320 (3K) 0 (0K) 3,328 (3K) 17 COMMAND 6,976 (7K) 0 (0K) 6,976 (7K) 18 Free 598,976 (585K) 592,784 (579K) 6,192 (6K) 19 20Memory Summary: 21 22 Type of Memory Total Used Free 23 ---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- 24 Conventional 640,000 47,216 592,784 25 Upper 72,208 66,016 6,192 26 Reserved 0 0 0 27 Extended (XMS)* 65,988,080 550,384 65,437,696 28 ---------------- ----------- ----------- ----------- 29 Total memory 66,700,288 663,616 66,036,672 30 31 Total under 1 MB 712,208 113,232 598,976 32 33 Total Expanded (EMS)* 8,765,440 (8,560K) 34 Free Expanded (EMS)* 8,388,608 (8,192K) 35 36 * EMM386 is using XMS memory to simulate EMS memory as needed. 37 Free EMS memory may change as free XMS memory changes. 38 39 Largest executable program size 592,672 (579K) 40 Largest free upper memory block 3,616 (4K) 41 MS-DOS is resident in the high memory area. 42 43C:> _
Looks like it's an issue loading the CD-ROM driver into high memory after Windows 95 shuts down. This is the result after booting fully into Windows 95 and then performing a "shut down and restart in MS-DOS mode", which runs the DOSSTART.BAT file before giving me the command prompt.
Now don't get me wrong, the CD-ROM driver is working as I can access the contents of any CD I put in the drive. For the life of me, I can't figure out WHY it's loading it into Conventional Memory. If I can get that ONE thing to load into upper memory, then I'll end up with 620,816 bytes free of Conventional Memory, and Master of Magic will work again.
Last edited by FFXIhealer on 2019-07-12, 23:20. Edited 1 time in total.
"I=range" not "-"
range range is specified in the form: mmmm-nnnn where mmmm and nnnn can be from A000h through FFFFh and are rounded down to the nearest 4-kilobyte boundary. // edit:i see most sources say not to append that h here, just 4 hex digits
Thanks for catching my typo. What does highscan do?
Also, I've taken out the 8MB EMS specification, since I just read it will dynamically allocate Expanded memory as needed out of Extended memory, and since it's very rare that I'd need to use it, that seems fine to me.
