dr.zeissler wrote on 2021-07-20, 17:25:

...beside that the ITpro has some issues with quitting out of some OpenGL-games...BUT Amithlon works with the standard kernel.

Good to know.

I no longer use the ATi card in that 486, I remembered that I had a Tseng ET6000 PCI kicking around and I installed it instead.

The TNT drivers for Win311 also work with a TNT2

I tried out the Matrox G220 card today and it works great in 1600x1200. Reaching 1920x1200 with this card might be a challenge if I can't find a way to run custom resolutions.

Everything went fine except for testing five different floppy drives before I found one that worked...

Not to fancy hardware, a QDI motherboard with Intel 430VX chipset, 32mb sdram and a Pentium 120MHz. An old 1,7gb harddrive and one of my last working 3,5" floppy drives. 3com networking card to copy drivers and installation files quickly and the Matrox Mystique G220 behind it.

And it works! As expected I was only able to run 1600x1200@16bpp but the image quality seems to be really good, nothing to complain about at all on the Eizo ColorEdge CG241W.

Next test will be with the TNT card 😀

I am 100% sure that the Matrox is far better then the TNT

dr.zeissler wrote on 2021-07-27, 19:54:

I am 100% sure that the Matrox is far better then the TNT

I have the same feeling but its worth a try so everyone gets the facts.

Maybe I should do some benchmarking with different cards to make it easier for others to choose the perfect graphics card for a Windows 3.11 workstation 😀

Quick Rambling Video Card Trip Report:

NVIDIA RIVA 128 – Does not display the windows 3.1 logo upon startup. Blurry at 1600x1200 on LCD. NT 3.51 Requires patched ntkernel for AGP version to work. DOS works great. OPENSTEP VESA driver works. NVIDIA Drivers for OS/2 crashed but SciTech VESA driver works (SciTech always works)

Riva 128ZX – I have an onboard one. It’s the same as the the 128 execpt the output is a little less blurry.

Matrox G400 – Awesome 3.1 drivers and utilities. I think it was a little fuzzy at 1600x1200. Don’t remember if the windows 3.1 logo shows up. DOS support is HORRIBLE (Commander Keen, BioMenace scrolling is garbage and can’t be fixed) Jazz Jackrabbit is probably broken as well. Can’t get QNX to work with this card. OPENSTEP third-party drive exists. No patch needed for NT 3.51.

S3 Savage 4 – I’ve got a 16MB IBM Extreme AGP with a DVI output. DVI will not work at higher than 1280x1024 res. Will likely not work when hooked to a modern DVI monitor without DVI to VGA adapter. That being said this is the card I use in my main machine. Windows 3.1 logo shows up. Great DOS support. NT 3.51 doesn’t need to be patched. Works with QNX, OS/2, Kolibi OS. Try different driver versions for BeOS till one works. DOESN’T work with OPENSTEP VESA driver at all, I needed to build another machine for that one.

NVIDIA TNT2 (No WAY!) – Output isn’t blurry but the windows 3.1 drivers are trash—font spacing gets messed up in text boxes often making things difficult to read and edit.

If you really want higher than 1600x1200, I think the only option is NT3.51 and VBEMP.

Hi, is there any progress? 😀
From what I found do far, 1600x1200 with 16M colours is the maximum that 3.1 drivers had.
Perhaps because that was a practical limit for large CRTs, not sure.

But theoretically speaking, there are 1920x1440, 2048x1536 and 2560x1920 stll.
As far as common 4:3 resolutions are concerned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions

Maybe some later graphics cards from the 2000s have Windows 3.1x drivers that can do them?
ATI Radeon 7000-9000, Nvidia Geforce 2 to 4?

I'm curious. Such high resolutions would be nice for retro development.
The extra space would be cool for running Visual Basic, Delphi etc.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-04-10, 08:44:

Hi, is there any progress? :) From what I found do far, 1600x1200 with 16M colours is the maximum that 3.1 drivers had. Perhaps […]
Show full quote

Hi, is there any progress? 😀
From what I found do far, 1600x1200 with 16M colours is the maximum that 3.1 drivers had.
Perhaps because that was a practical limit for large CRTs, not sure.

But theoretically speaking, there are 1920x1440, 2048x1536 and 2560x1920 stll.
As far as common 4:3 resolutions are concerned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_common_resolutions

Maybe some later graphics cards from the 2000s have Windows 3.1x drivers that can do them?
ATI Radeon 7000-9000, Nvidia Geforce 2 to 4?

I'm curious. Such high resolutions would be nice for retro development.
The extra space would be cool for running Visual Basic, Delphi etc.

I got a Matrox Millenium (2?) that I'm using now and it works great in 1600*1200. Haven't done much in the last months due to other projects at home.

Upgraded the DOS/Windows 3.11 to a HP Vectra tower with a Pentium 200, 430HX and 64mb ram, scsi harddrive and sb64 (ct4520) + yamaha with opl3 and x2gs wavetabe.

The Rage II+ (DVD), only supported up to 4MB with 2D modes as far as I remember. With the extra 4MB module installed (for a total of 8MB), it only bought you some enhancements for the proprietary 3D acceleration. At least, I don't remember my 8MB card being to do anything better than the 4MB part on the desktop. I think those cards did support 1600x1200, but only at 256 colours and probably not at a very good refresh rate. The image was probably blurry too.

I had really good experience with the Voodoo3 3000 as a 2D card. At least it supported some pretty high resolutions in 9x/NT. I want to say 1920x1280 was the max. There was some kind of Windows 3.x driver available too. I remember it supporting widescreen modes, but I can't recall if it did 1600 and 1920 resolutions or not.

One of my roommates convinced me to upgrade my Voodoo3 3000 to a Creative Geforce2 GTS. Sure it was faster at 3D, but I found the 2D experience appalling. I think I was running 1280x1024 on a viewsonic PF790 at 85 or 100Hz. Compared to the V3, the colours were all washed out and the image was blurry. My roommate had a TNT2 on a 19" Samsung CRT of some sort, and it produced similarly bad results. He felt it was a fair tradeoff to play games faster. I reverted to the V3 so I could actually see what I was typing.

What about G200 Matrox? I am using a mystique.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-04-12, 17:59:

What about G200 Matrox? I am using a mystique.

Sounds interesting! The Win9x drivers mention 1920x1200, it seems.
Maybe the Windows 3.1x drivers are the same? 🙂

Edit: Link removed. 🙁

Jo22 wrote on 2022-04-12, 18:50:

Sounds interesting! The Win9x drivers mention 1920x1200, it seems. Maybe the Windows 3.1x drivers are the same? 🙂 […]
Show full quote

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-04-12, 17:59:

What about G200 Matrox? I am using a mystique.

Sounds interesting! The Win9x drivers mention 1920x1200, it seems.
Maybe the Windows 3.1x drivers are the same? 🙂

Edit: Link removed. 🙁

Hmm... should try to get one with pci.

I have G400 in some other computers and they happily run 1920*1200 with excelent quality over VGA in Windows 98SE and Windows 2000.

OSkar000 wrote on 2022-04-12, 19:22:

Jo22 wrote on 2022-04-12, 18:50:

Sounds interesting! The Win9x drivers mention 1920x1200, it seems. Maybe the Windows 3.1x drivers are the same? 🙂 […]
Show full quote

dr.zeissler wrote on 2022-04-12, 17:59:

What about G200 Matrox? I am using a mystique.

Sounds interesting! The Win9x drivers mention 1920x1200, it seems.
Maybe the Windows 3.1x drivers are the same? 🙂

Edit: Link removed. 🙁

Hmm... should try to get one with pci.

I have G400 in some other computers and they happily run 1920*1200 with excelent quality over VGA in Windows 98SE and Windows 2000.

Thanks! That's good to know. 🙂👍

From what I've found out online, the Matrox cards used to have a primary RAMDAC with a very high bandwidth (230MHz?) that guaranteed high picture quality.
I guess that's why they have, as a side effect, the ability to handle such high resolutions, too.

Ok, according to my calculations, 1920x1200 in 256c needs 2,2 MB of frame buffer memory.
So a card with at least 4MB of video memory should do?! 🙂

Jo22 wrote on 2022-05-06, 05:10:

Thanks! That's good to know. 🙂👍 […]
Show full quote

OSkar000 wrote on 2022-04-12, 19:22:

Jo22 wrote on 2022-04-12, 18:50:

Sounds interesting! The Win9x drivers mention 1920x1200, it seems.
Maybe the Windows 3.1x drivers are the same? 🙂

Edit: Link removed. 🙁

Hmm... should try to get one with pci.

I have G400 in some other computers and they happily run 1920*1200 with excelent quality over VGA in Windows 98SE and Windows 2000.

Thanks! That's good to know. 🙂👍

From what I've found out online, the Matrox cards used to have a primary RAMDAC with a very high bandwidth (230MHz?) that guaranteed high picture quality.
I guess that's why they have, as a side effect, the ability to handle such high resolutions, too.

Ok, according to my calculations, 1920x1200 in 256c needs 2,2 MB of frame buffer memory.
So a card with at least 4MB of video memory should do?! 🙂

The card that I have is a 4mb card so it should be enough. 1600x1200 at 16 bit color works fine too so I have a pretty good desktop experience in windows 3.11.

I think the G400 has at lest 300mhz ramdac for the primary port, the secondary is a bit slower I remember correctly.

The G200 is better than G400 in Dos/Win3x, because it's more compatible to classic games, some have direct support to g200.
FTF/LCD is centered on Lowres-VGA and VGA Textmode (good for dos), but AFAIK EGA is a bit moved to the left on TFT.

I had vintage proprietary fixed sync monochrome screens that went to strange high resolutions at minimal grayscales.

My guess is that in the Win3.x days you either got high resolution or you got color but not both,
Those who needed massive screens and resolutions likely couldn’t be bothered with color for their business apps.

This historic viewpoint didn’t really end until the early 90’s which is likely why you don’t find much in the way of high end color screens until big CRTS became consumer equipment

rmay635703 wrote on 2022-05-07, 23:45:

My guess is that in the Win3.x days you either got high resolution or you got color but not both,
Those who needed massive screens and resolutions likely couldn’t be bothered with color for their business apps.

Yes, I guess that might be true for home and office users. 🙂
I myself was used to 16c colour depth for a longer time in Windows 3.1 due to the lack of vendor drivers for the VGA.
Windows 95, later on, did run in 256c by default, due to its driver library.
All the basic Trident, OAK, Realtek, Paradise, Tseng, S3 drivers were included on Setup CD..

On the other hand, Windows 3.0 MME/3.1 really started rhe multimedia age in the early 90s (on PC).
DTP, CAD and photo editing were a thing in the 286 era, even.

I remember how my father showed me a Kodak Photo CD in 1994 or so.
We still have 90s era books about it in the book shelf.

Photo CD had pictures in a variety of resolutions going up to 1600x1200 in 16 million colours.
The professional versions for x-ray labs etc went even higher, to what we now call 4K or UHD.

And then there were MPEG applications.
CD-i, Video CD, video conferencing etc.
With Realmagic or WinTV cards, users could process NTSC/PAL/SECAM footage in the mid-90s, slightly before Win95 was omnipresent.

Edit: Technically, high resolution s and colour depths existed in the Windows 2.x days already, before VGA was common.
The IBM PGC could do 640x480 in 256c, for example.
Abd then there were graphics boards that had, say, 1024x768 256c drivers for Windows 2.x.
However, at the time, this was a niche market really. Definitely not "cannon" as far as our PC history is concerned.

Edit: Samples as a proof added.
Curiously, there also were Windows 1.x drivers, albeit in the Windows 2.x days (~'87 up)..

I think 1280x1024 at 256 or fewer colors in 1.x days is a different discussion than resolutions more than 1600 in thousands or millions of colors in the 3.x days

High resolution + High color was uncommon until the 9x days,
while millions of colors at less than 1280 was common even moderately early, even if only in a professional setting

High resolution + High color was uncommon until the 9x days [..]

...

The limitation to 256c sometimes also was due to the use of external RAM DACs.
External RAM DACs were common in the era of ISA VGA cards.
(But by 1991/92 EISA, MCA, VL-Bus and later PCI were available as an alternative to ISA, if memory serves.)
And these external RAM DACs not support more than 256c, I vaguely remember.
Didn't the Tseng ET4000 had 256c RAM DACs installed often?

PS: The book also mentions resolution of 12K lines for Photo CDs..
Of course, that wasn't consumer/end user territory.
But high res/colour images did exist in the form of TGA files in the early 90s, I vaguely remember.
Those shovel ware CDs (shareware/freeware/pd) had various images in GIF format usually (16c/256c), but sometimes had a TGA folder, as well.
These images were in 24-Bit format, I believe, which in itself wasn't state of the art any more.
Anyway, I have to double check that.