VOGONS


First post, by Geon106

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Hello all,

I have two machines I want to capture their display via DVI for recording game footage. However I cannot get the display cloned from their VGA out and DVI out.

PC1 (some DOS but mainly late 90s early 00s 3D gaming) has an AGP NVIDIA MX440 with VGA and DVI, this has an image to both displays during POST but in Windows the best I can get is Extend desktop. Whenever I try and Clone the image with NVIEW, the PC hard locks. Reinstalling Windows is the only way to recover without the machine then locking as soon as the NVIDIA driver loads. I have tried different versions of the driver from 40.72 WHQL all the way up to v71.84. I also tried direct from NVIDIA which I believe was version 77.xx. Is there any way to make this work? It is weird it often works during POST so I just need to set the card to remain in that state.

PC2(primarily want excellent DOS compatibility) has a PCI Radeon 7000 with VGA and DVI. This machine does not display anything on the second display at all until I press Extend in Windows. I have installed ATi drivers and I can enable both displays but even in the ATi driver properties I can only extend to both displays, not clone or duplicate. I installed Hydravision but this seems to just want to make more desktops on the same display which is not what I am after.

I have ordered 2x NVIDIA FX5200 cards (AGP and PCI) as I am sure I read somewhere on these forums from Philscomputerlabs that they are easier to work with for this purpose.

I would just record from the VGA out but my Elgato HD Capture does not like any signal unless it is 720p/1080p at either 24, 50 or 60Hz. Anything else and it throws a major wobbler. I have a VGA to HDMI upscaler but the quality is terrible.

Any help would be most appreciated.

1993:A500
1997:Apricot MS540|P/166|16M|Rage3D 2M
2000:PB 9533|P3/533|128M|Voodoo3 2000 16M
'04:P4/3G|1GB|NVIDIA 5700 256M
'07:AMDX2/3.2Ghz|4GB|8800 GTX
'11:i5 2500k|16G|AMD 7950
'16:i5 6600k|16G|NVIDIA 1080|SB AE-5
'21:5900X|32GB|6800XT|SB AE-5

Reply 1 of 5, by CHiLL72

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The Matrox G400/G450/G550 cards spring to mind. How about something like this: https://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/l … /g_series/g550/

Waveblaster MIDI boards: https://waveblaster.nl - online now!

Reply 2 of 5, by Geon106

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CHiLL72 wrote on 2020-03-27, 08:06:

The Matrox G400/G450/G550 cards spring to mind. How about something like this: https://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/l … /g_series/g550/

Thank you, seen one on eBay for £11.50 so purchased it. How does 3D performance for late 90s, 2000/01 games compare to similar NVIDIA cards at the time? From what I can see (and seems quite controversial), is it is similar to the TNT2 Ultra?

1993:A500
1997:Apricot MS540|P/166|16M|Rage3D 2M
2000:PB 9533|P3/533|128M|Voodoo3 2000 16M
'04:P4/3G|1GB|NVIDIA 5700 256M
'07:AMDX2/3.2Ghz|4GB|8800 GTX
'11:i5 2500k|16G|AMD 7950
'16:i5 6600k|16G|NVIDIA 1080|SB AE-5
'21:5900X|32GB|6800XT|SB AE-5

Reply 3 of 5, by chinny22

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Hmm any reason your trying to play dos games from within windows?
I know my Nvidia 6800 and spits out the same image on both connections exactly like your seeing with your MX440. If you boot into pure dos you bypass the drivers all together and keep this default behavior.

I'm not sure how ATI's behave witout drivers installed.

For even the most demanding dos games the Matrox will be fine, Windows somewhere around the TNT2 is pretty good call

Reply 4 of 5, by Geon106

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chinny22 wrote on 2020-03-27, 10:47:
Hmm any reason your trying to play dos games from within windows? I know my Nvidia 6800 and spits out the same image on both con […]
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Hmm any reason your trying to play dos games from within windows?
I know my Nvidia 6800 and spits out the same image on both connections exactly like your seeing with your MX440. If you boot into pure dos you bypass the drivers all together and keep this default behavior.

I'm not sure how ATI's behave witout drivers installed.

For even the most demanding dos games the Matrox will be fine, Windows somewhere around the TNT2 is pretty good call

Most DOS games will be played from outside the Windows environment on both PCs.

I have found a solution however.

So spent all of today fixing problem after problem. Trying to work out why the machine was freezing it turns out was due to the Aureal Vortex 2. As soon as I removed the soundcard the issue went away and so put in a SB16 ISA card. Another issue emerged where the machine lost the hard drive but moving to the secondary IDE resolved this. Then the PSU stopped working so swapped that over for a new Corsair one I had sat in a box.

Anyways, during this I then decided to go a different route. Instead of both VGA and DVI, I used just a DVI to HDMI cable to another upscale I have which was being used for my Amiga A1200 (it upscale from SCART or HDMI to HDMI out and seems happy even with random resolutions like 320x240), this scales the resolution up to 720p which my Elgato Game Capture HD accepts and sends the signal to my capture PC via USB then from its HDMI out I use a HDMI to VGA dongle to my monitor. Image quality is a bit washed out but overall far better than S-Video and not any noticable lag.

Sorry I know a long response but in case anyone with a similar issue finds themselves here from Google it will help them out.

For PC2 I should just need to move the DVI cable from PC1. In theory , not tested it yet.

Thanks for your help 😀

1993:A500
1997:Apricot MS540|P/166|16M|Rage3D 2M
2000:PB 9533|P3/533|128M|Voodoo3 2000 16M
'04:P4/3G|1GB|NVIDIA 5700 256M
'07:AMDX2/3.2Ghz|4GB|8800 GTX
'11:i5 2500k|16G|AMD 7950
'16:i5 6600k|16G|NVIDIA 1080|SB AE-5
'21:5900X|32GB|6800XT|SB AE-5

Reply 5 of 5, by Geon106

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I have made a quick YouTube video with the results and what I used if anyone stumbles across this thread from Google and wants to look:

https://youtu.be/eFloN9Ftew0

1993:A500
1997:Apricot MS540|P/166|16M|Rage3D 2M
2000:PB 9533|P3/533|128M|Voodoo3 2000 16M
'04:P4/3G|1GB|NVIDIA 5700 256M
'07:AMDX2/3.2Ghz|4GB|8800 GTX
'11:i5 2500k|16G|AMD 7950
'16:i5 6600k|16G|NVIDIA 1080|SB AE-5
'21:5900X|32GB|6800XT|SB AE-5