I recall P166MMX PC's being sold in bucket loads with S3 Virge DX cards being paired with those systems.

jesolo wrote on 2024-01-02, 19:26:

I recall P166MMX PC's being sold in bucket loads with S3 Virge DX cards being paired with those systems.

Thanks! It does seem that some form of S3 card for this project is inevitable. I probably have Virge drivers in my archive. I am probably going to use a Virge or some other S3 card for this experiment. I wish I knew what card I had in my old Pentium 1 90 (everything ran great except for SVGA modes in CyberMage, and MeatPuppet was unplayable.)

Any accelerated video card from 2MB to 4MB. This configuration was very common in 98, 99, and although there were cooler things at that time, I believe you are trying to recreate an average computer from that time. Yes, there were powerful cards up to 8MB, just like there are RTX4090 nowadays, but few could afford it, just like 26 years ago, few could afford a cool accelerator card.

S3 Trio was very common for OEM (like IBM, Packard Bell), the ATI Rage series at that time was a popular cost-benefit type. Particularly, I had a Trident 975x? (3D Imagé) at that time, with a Pentium MMX 166mhz, 32mb of ram, and Windows Mistake Edition. 3D Imagé was a good competitor for S3 Virge DX at the time, some games were 10, 15% slower on the Trident, while others (I now only remember Grim Fandango) ran much better on it.

Rikintosh wrote on 2024-01-22, 00:47:

Any accelerated video card from 2MB to 4MB. This configuration was very common in 98, 99, and although there were cooler things at that time, I believe you are trying to recreate an average computer from that time. Yes, there were powerful cards up to 8MB, just like there are RTX4090 nowadays, but few could afford it, just like 26 years ago, few could afford a cool accelerator card.

S3 Trio was very common for OEM (like IBM, Packard Bell), the ATI Rage series at that time was a popular cost-benefit type. Particularly, I had a Trident 975x? (3D Imagé) at that time, with a Pentium MMX 166mhz, 32mb of ram, and Windows Mistake Edition. 3D Imagé was a good competitor for S3 Virge DX at the time, some games were 10, 15% slower on the Trident, while others (I now only remember Grim Fandango) ran much better on it.

Thank you for your input! Because S3 cards were ubiquitous during the 90s, I will choose one of them. I have considered a Mach64 since I have a real 8mb 3d Rage/Mach64 which I have used on a real 486 (overkill, but there are Windows 3.x drivers for it, but I have a Trio64 on the way to replace it.) I may set up the virtual Pentium 166 and install all drivers and anything else I can just prior to the display driver installation and then back up the virtual hard drive, and then create two separate machines - one with an S3 of some sort, and the other with a Mach64 (I have too much time on my hands, hehehe..)

The Pentium III 550 has a Voodoo3 in it. My Gateway from 1999 (last PC I did not build or acquire 2nd hand) had a TNT2 I think, but when a Gateway was ordered, they gave you a certain number of days to play with it and swap out parts, so I exchanged it for a Voodoo3, which I used until I built an AthlonXP system with a Radeon 8500 AIW. I read many posts on Vogons which praise the Voodoo3 in DOS, so in a way, I have recreated an upgraded version of my old Gateway. Attached is a Voodoo1 (Guillemot MAXI Gamer3D,) and both the real and virtual PCs will have an AWE32 card installed. I used to have a Virge card, but I lost it, probably due to moving from one house to another. It will be fun to test and compare the two machines!

The next experiment will be to create a local retro LAN and see if I can play MP games between the physical PCs and the virtual ones..

Just be cautious with Mach64, only the pre Rage models are capable of handling 3D, most of the Mach64 line (non GX) is 2D only (usually limited to 1 or 2mb of vram)

Rikintosh wrote on 2024-01-22, 16:24:

Just be cautious with Mach64, only the pre Rage models are capable of handling 3D, most of the Mach64 line (non GX) is 2D only (usually limited to 1 or 2mb of vram)

I am using the Mach64 for 2d, only. For 3d, I am using a Voodoo1 for DOS and Windows 95. For the Windows 98 SD card, I am using the Voodoo3, keeping Voodoo1 games off of that SD card. The only reason I have this 8mb MAch64 card is because it was a good price, has Windows 3.x drivers, and TV out options (which I was experimenting with, at the time.) I remember when 3d started becoming popular, I bought some sort of Creative 3d card and 3d games ran like crap. I thought for a brief period of time that 3d was a gimmick or fad, hehehe.. It wasn't until I bought a Diamond Monster 3d back in 1997 that I saw how cool it could be. As a result, I strictly use 3dfx cards in all retro systems except for my Athlon XP system which has a Radeon x800 AIW (I had a lot of fun with that card, back in the day!)

Will 86box add support for ATI Rage cards on the next builds?

miller11568 wrote on 2024-01-25, 17:47:

Will 86box add support for ATI Rage cards on the next builds?

I'm not sure. I think that my rage card uses MAch64 for 2d as the drivers I use in WfW 3.11 create a mach64 directory when installed.