SVGA is any VGA card that supports modes beyond standard VGA. There are tons of those. Under DOS, VESA extensions help games utilizes SVGA modes, and under Windows the display driver takes care of everything.

But I'm surprised the Riva TNT isn't supported by Univbe. Maybe use a newer Univbe version?

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-02-04, 21:26:

SVGA is any VGA card that supports modes beyond standard VGA. There are tons of those. Under DOS, VESA extensions help games utilizes SVGA modes, and under Windows the display driver takes care of everything.

But I'm surprised the Riva TNT isn't supported by Univbe. Maybe use a newer Univbe version?

Okay, thanks for clarifying. I just figured if I went for an earlier model, like the ones listed/supported, there'd be less of a problem. In theory.

It doesn't look like I have any other games that are SVGA that make use of UniVBE. Some are SVGA, but I'm guessing they're configured differently. For this particular title, it has the UniVBE driver and configuration file present on the disc, but yeah... It doesn't recognise my card. I did try different versions of UniVBE, including 5.3 and 6.-something. One still doesn't support the card, whereas the other (5.3, I think) has to have a patch installed so it supports it. But even then, I swear it's made things worse. I'll have to try again and see, but I couldn't get it to work properly.

I'm surprised that the TNT doesn't already have a VESA compatible bios.

Anyway, have a look here for some mods to get Univbe working with the TNT and later Nvidia cards:

NVPatch - making UniVBE work on NVidia cards

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-02-04, 22:12:

I'm surprised that the TNT doesn't already have a VESA compatible bios.

Anyway, have a look here for some mods to get Univbe working with the TNT and later Nvidia cards:

NVPatch - making UniVBE work on NVidia cards

Yeah, that's the patch I used, which I mentioned above. I also want to stay clear from SciTech Display Doctor. I tried that twice and it made my PC act weird. To the point it wouldn't boot. I'll certainly try playing around with it all again. One thing I did notice in that link you provided, was that the final poster mentioned it worked as expected with the Geforce 4 MX440, which I have as well. Though that was a PCI variant.

wbahnassi wrote on 2025-02-04, 21:26:

But I'm surprised the Riva TNT isn't supported by Univbe. Maybe use a newer Univbe version?

Only UniVBE 6.7 has official support for the RIVA TNT, gains from it are 15bpp and some low resolution VESA video modes. However, 6.7 is the worst version overall as the quality of the utility decreased.

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-02-04, 22:12:

I'm surprised that the TNT doesn't already have a VESA compatible bios.

nVidia cards starting from RIVA 128 comes with a good VBE 3.0 implementation but it isn't perfect in terms of compatibility. The OP was having problems with Broken Sword and other DOS games relying on SDD/UniVBE drivers.

Time for one of the most linked tables on vogons!

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

chinny22 wrote on 2025-02-04, 23:49:

Time for one of the most linked tables on vogons!

https://gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/

Ooh. Perfect. Thanks for this. That looks very detailed and in-depth.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-02-04, 22:41:

megatron-uk wrote on 2025-02-04, 22:12:

I'm surprised that the TNT doesn't already have a VESA compatible bios.

Anyway, have a look here for some mods to get Univbe working with the TNT and later Nvidia cards:

NVPatch - making UniVBE work on NVidia cards

Yeah, that's the patch I used, which I mentioned above. I also want to stay clear from SciTech Display Doctor. I tried that twice and it made my PC act weird. To the point it wouldn't boot. I'll certainly try playing around with it all again. One thing I did notice in that link you provided, was that the final poster mentioned it worked as expected with the Geforce 4 MX440, which I have as well. Though that was a PCI variant.

Yeah, I've just checked and 6.7 was the first one I tried and it wasn't recommended. And I remember that I did test it with the Geforce 4. I just can't quite recall what version I tried, but I do remember it working with it. But it looks like 6.53 and 6.7 are the only ones that work with the Riva TNT.

Yeah, I’ve re-tested it with 6.53, along with the patch. Even though it’s all set up and working, the game’s uvconfig.exe file still complains there’s no SuperVGA chip detected.

I mean, the game does work, but I’m just curious about other period accurate SVGA cards that are supported in case I buy any future games that don’t like/work with either GPU I have. So I have something to fall back onto for a specific game. 😀

But I’ll check through that list when I have a moment.

Many forget that the Scitech Display Doctor and UniVBE halted development when competent contemporary 3d-capable video cards generally arrived in early-mid 98 (the dos gaming expiration period), so a lot of that advice tends to be misguided (and some games that try to conveniently integrate univbe to run end up making more compatibility issues). SDD really shines for the earlier chips with non-VESA/exotic SVGA, Tseng cards and S3 Trio cards.

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-02-04, 20:48:

I keep trying to access the list with the command for uvconfig.exe, but everything goes by way too fast.

You mean the -f option? If so you can redirect the output to a text file and read it afterwards
uvconfig.exe -f >out.txt

konc wrote on 2025-02-05, 07:42:

DustyShinigami wrote on 2025-02-04, 20:48:

I keep trying to access the list with the command for uvconfig.exe, but everything goes by way too fast.

You mean the -f option? If so you can redirect the output to a text file and read it afterwards
uvconfig.exe -f >out.txt

That’s the one, yeah. Ahhh. Thank you so much! I’ll have to add that to my ever growing list of DOS commands learnt. 😁

leileilol wrote on 2025-02-05, 03:03:

Many forget that the Scitech Display Doctor and UniVBE halted development when competent contemporary 3d-capable video cards generally arrived in early-mid 98 (the dos gaming expiration period), so a lot of that advice tends to be misguided (and some games that try to conveniently integrate univbe to run end up making more compatibility issues). SDD really shines for the earlier chips with non-VESA/exotic SVGA, Tseng cards and S3 Trio cards.

I see. The only game it has helped so far is Discworld 2 with version 53, I think. So hopefully I won’t need to rely on it any further.