Its possible that Win 3.11 simply cannot handle 128mb of memory . .even DOS has issues with more than 64mb, if you have a 64mb stick or two 32mb sticks I would drop down to 64mb and see if the message goes away, I cant remember if there is a memory patch for 3.11.

Since win 3.11 is simply a shell running on DOS its bound by the same limitations DOS has.

You could just leave it as it is and ignore the message, but In my experience both DOS and WFW dont operate correctly with more than 64mb.

Weirdly it doesn’t do it as long as I stick to 640x480 at 256 colors.

I’ll try pulling some RAM out. If I remember right it’s two 64mb sticks, but I think there is some onboard memory that becomes active when there is less than 128mb installed, so I’m not sure I can get down to 64 without hitting up eBay.

Do you have the 3.11 drivers for your video card ?

You could try another card with more memory on it and see what that does, perhaps some of the Vram on the trio has failed and while it reports it as being there windows cant use it.

Yes, the drivers are installed.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 04:06:

Its possible that Win 3.11 simply cannot handle 128mb of memory .

No, I have an AMD Athlon with 640MB and WFW 3.11 runs OK. I noticed the WFW only seems to use about 256MB though.

red-ray wrote on 2022-04-07, 07:49:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 04:06:

Its possible that Win 3.11 simply cannot handle 128mb of memory .

No, I have an AMD Athlon with 640MB and WFW 3.11 runs OK.

As soon as the resolution issue was mentioned I thought its actually something with the GPU itself but with the right drivers it should be working fine .. perhaps the card itself has a Vram problem.

https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/084/Q84388/

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 07:52:

As soon as the resolution issue was mentioned I thought its actually something with the GPU itself but with the right drivers it should be working fine .

I would be inclined to try a different GPU, what is the most recent NVidia GPU that has WFW 3.11 drivers? I looked on the NVidia download site and I can't find any card with WFW 3.11 drivers 🙁

Today I have my nVidia NV5 [Vanta/Vanta LT] (PCI ID 10DE-002C-10DE-0072-15) in the system and am using the inbuilt SVGA driver.

red-ray wrote on 2022-04-07, 09:25:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 07:52:

As soon as the resolution issue was mentioned I thought its actually something with the GPU itself but with the right drivers it should be working fine .

I would be inclined to try a different GPU, what is the most recent NVidia GPU that has WFW 3.11 drivers? I looked on the NVidia download site and I can't find any card with WFW 3.11 drivers 🙁

Today I have my nVidia NV5 [Vanta/Vanta LT] (PCI ID 10DE-002C-10DE-0072-15) in the system and am using the inbuilt SVGA driver.

Op said its a Trio64 so by rights it should be perfectly fine for Win 3.11, I would throw a bog standard S3 Virge PCI in there and see if it did the same thing but OP has not posted again. Perhaps they sorted it out.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 09:52:

OP has not posted again. Perhaps they sorted it out.

My last post was about midnight, so I’ve been sleeping in the meantime. Catching up on this thread now.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-04-07, 08:27:

https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/084/Q84388/

This sounds like the max is 256mb including virtual. I’ll have to check to see what it assigned for virtual, but I can likely just disable that with 128mb of physical.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 07:52:

As soon as the resolution issue was mentioned I thought its actually something with the GPU itself but with the right drivers it should be working fine .. perhaps the card itself has a Vram problem.

If it’s talking about converting icons, wouldn’t that be done in system RAM, not VRAM?

red-ray wrote on 2022-04-07, 09:25:

I would be inclined to try a different GPU

Unfortunately I don’t have another PCI or ISA graphics card to throw at this, and am reluctant to just buy random hardware off eBay when this really should work.

Sunoo wrote on 2022-04-07, 10:04:

My last post was about midnight, so I’ve been sleeping in the meantime. Catching up on this thread now. […]
Show full quote

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 09:52:

OP has not posted again. Perhaps they sorted it out.

My last post was about midnight, so I’ve been sleeping in the meantime. Catching up on this thread now.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-04-07, 08:27:

https://jeffpar.github.io/kbarchive/kb/084/Q84388/

This sounds like the max is 256mb including virtual. I’ll have to check to see what it assigned for virtual, but I can likely just disable that with 128mb of physical.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-04-07, 07:52:

As soon as the resolution issue was mentioned I thought its actually something with the GPU itself but with the right drivers it should be working fine .. perhaps the card itself has a Vram problem.

If it’s talking about converting icons, wouldn’t that be done in system RAM, not VRAM?

red-ray wrote on 2022-04-07, 09:25:

I would be inclined to try a different GPU

Unfortunately I don’t have another PCI or ISA graphics card to throw at this, and am reluctant to just buy random hardware off eBay when this really should work.

Resolution size and colour limitations are linked directly to Vram, the fact it doesnt have the issue with 640x480x256 seems to suggest its having issues when its using more Vram at higher resolutions and colours, since Win3.11 relies directly on the GPU for raster operations like DOS does it could be trying to use VRam to render the icons at a higher colour setting.

It could be either the driver is conflicting with something, the Vram is defective or possibly its trying to also use system memory in a similar manner AGP cards would when the GPU runs out of Vram and its having issues when doing so.

Its been a long time since I last used Win3.11 but you could try a different driver, since its a Trio there should be a number of different versions you could try to see if its a driver issue.

Sunoo wrote on 2022-04-07, 10:04:

This sounds like the max is 256mb including virtual. I’ll have to check to see what it assigned for virtual, but I can likely just disable that with 128mb of physical.

Again the physical memory size is not an issue, my WFW 3.11 system has 640MB physical and 256MB of virtual.

I just tried an S3 Trio64V2/DX on WFW 3.11 and it "just worked", given they cost 11.99 or 19.95 for a 2MB one getting one seems a sensible way forward.

I have attached a screen shot from 2003 so you can see what the system is and what the S3 should be good for on WFW once you get the WFW S3 drivers

Okay, not sure what I changed, I looked at virtual memory, but don’t think I changed any settings. However, now it works in every resolution and every color depth with the exception of 16.7M colors (which I wouldn’t use anyways). So I guess I’m good?

Thanks for the help troubleshooting.

Windows 3 just barfs when converting a lot of icons, I seem to recall from way back, not sure if it's an under 1MB consumption issue than can be aided by Fix1MB / 1MBFort / syshook.drv

I just tried syshook.drv and it started complaining that I didn't have enough memory to launch any programs at that point, so I removed it.

Hi. Things that come to mind:
How does the UMA look? Are on-board devices using it (USB, ethernet etc)?
Is the 15-16MB area free or occupied ("memory hole" enabled?)
Is "shadow memory" enabled (in CMOS Setup) for all regions?

Is EMM386 running? If so, MemMaker can solve conflicts and make extra memory available to Windows.

That VBE20 TSR could be used to enable certain features (linear framebuffer).

Edit: The newer Himem.sys from DOS 7 could be used, but there are differences.

What order does Windows 3.11 use memory?

Edit: EMM386 from DOS 7 may also work, but its switches are not fully compatible with MemMaker.

Hi again! Just wanted to let you know that you didn't anything wrong likely.

DOSBox uses Trio32/64 as a reference, Connectix/Microsoft Virtual PC the Trio64V+.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Trio

Both cards can do high resolutions/colour depths just fine.
The most recent screenshot I had taken was done in 1600x1200@256c with an emulated S3 Trio32/64 via DOSBox (machine=svga_s3):
Re: Emulation on MS Windows 3.1x ?

That beibg said.. Please note that there are different drivers for different S3 cards.

The Trio64v+ might be compatible with some drivers written for older S3 chips,
but certain compatibility issues might occur.

This reminds me of the emulated Trio in DOSBox, by the way.
If memory serves, back in the 2000s, when DOSBox was young (v0.63 and before),
we didn't use the standard Trio32/64 driver yet, but a slightly older version.

Edit: I've searched by personal archive for useful things. Hope it helps.
If you like to try them, please make a backup of your Windows installation first.

I’m not sure how to check some of those offhand.

I have 608K of conventional memory free. Not sure how to check 15-16mb. Shadow memory is enabled.

EMM386 is running, but memmaker said it couldn’t do any better than was already done.

Not sure what “that VBE20 TSR” is, but I’m willing to give it a try I guess?

I don’t have a 64V, it’s 86C764-P. The driver I’m running is s3trio.drv, looks like version 1.3B8?

Also, not sure if it matters, but I still can’t get Windows (or DOS, I guess) to acknowledge more than 64mb of physical RAM. The about box seems to include virtual memory in the number.