Can each machine run software rendered D3D? Independently of the PCX 1 being installed I mean. That would tell you if some minimal Direct Draw compliance was being met.

Did not have tested that. You mean dxdiag? does that come with DX6 ? I only installed DX1-5.

There should be some form of it from DX2 up.

I seem to remember it was somewhat different than DX6 version, maybe had to launch it from somewhere in graphics settings or control panel. I thought there was also an independent Direct Draw tester prior to DX6 dxdiag but can't match vague memory to current search clues.

I will look that up, perhaps Wb96/97 has that feature too. I am setting up a fresh install.

I recall trying out an STB Lightspeed PCI (ET4000/w32p) adapter on my Gateway 2000 P5-90 system, with Windows 95. There was always some weird freezing issue in various DirectX/DirectDraw games (Interstate '76, Worms 2, Outlaws, etc.) no matter if I used the standard Win95 drivers or otherwise. I wouldn't be surprised if the PCX1 gets confused when paired with an adapter like that.

Mind you, this was with an older revision w32p without the Linear Framebuffer (LFB) functionality. After installing a similarily aged Mach64GX, I've had no issues

It supports DX3, PowerGL, and miniGL in some games. You need to try a variety of games, some work, some don't.

Quality is first-gen Matrox 3D. Not the best. There's no mipmapping, no fogging, basic/no transparencies. Sometimes z artifacts.

The freezing issue is due to enabling 'bus mastering' for the PCX1 card. Should be disabled.

I did not have time to test both setups on software D3D. D3D was introduced in diretx3 afair, so my tests will use win95a DX3 with gfx-driver for DX3 from microsoft and after that I will checkout if installing the vendor-drivers make any difference.

matroxM3D is secondary NecPowerVR card! (PCX2) and it offers bilinear filtering if activated in the driver/supported game, I also have that card, but my tests concentrade on the first one (PCX1).

I nevery heard about disabeling of the busmastering for those cards.

MikeSG wrote on 2026-08-20, 11:30:

It supports DX3, PowerGL, and miniGL in some games. [...}

Were you responding to me, Mike? I wasn't sure at first, but now that I think about it, I was the one mentioning freezes.

I should have clarified that I was merely talking about my use eperience with the ET4000/w32p alone, not alongside a PowerVR series 1 card. I have yet to try that combination, but I'm open to the idea. I know for a fact that the very earliest revision of ATi Mach64 (109-25500-00), manufactured around spring 1994, works fine in Windows 95 and DirectX, with or without he PCX1. Matrox Millennium works too, but you need to disable Direct3D HAL when running SGL apps, or else you get graphical corruptions.

I made a short test yesterday.

- clean install win95a
- microsoft win95a driver for the ET4000w32p
- update to directx1
- update to directx2 (directX2 has the first D3D accel.)
- the dx2 install updated the et4000w32p driver
- I can test a D3D-tunnel demo from microsoft. it shows "primary gfx-card" I can choose between "ramp" or "rgb" emulation. both do work.
- pcplayer d3d also works (but slow as expected)
- I can see two drivers in directx both are tseng et4000w32p. I don't know why there are two entries.
- checkit4 crashes on detecting gfx-hardware, don't know if that is a dirrectx2 problem
- drhardware 2.0 does require dx5 for directX-testing.
- everest home does not show anything for "directx graphics". dx-sound shows the installed awe64gold
- as expected "comixzone" just hangs on shartup. that is perhaps another issue (wing32.dll) is copied in the windows-system folder. gfx "move forward" in window-mode on desktop if the mouspointer is constantly moving the window, otherwise gfx/animation is stuck.
- dr.hardware 2.0 shows that siemens installed the C-version of the ET4000w32p chip. Afaik this was a "patched" version that does not suffer from serious errors like the one before.

Now I need to check that same setup win95a directx2 with the CL5446 and if there are any differences in features or performance. after that I will put the PCX1 in both systems and test it again.

Dipshidian wrote on 2026-08-21, 07:17:

Were you responding to me, Mike? I wasn't sure at first, but now that I think about it, I was the one mentioning freezes.

I should have clarified that I was merely talking about my use eperience with the ET4000/w32p alone,[...]

Yes sorry, thought you have freezing with a PowerVR. I read it too fast.

dr.zeissler wrote on 2026-08-21, 07:45:

- clean install win95a - microsoft win95a driver for the ET4000w32p - update to directx1 - update to directx2 (directX2 has th […]
Show full quote

- clean install win95a
- microsoft win95a driver for the ET4000w32p
- update to directx1
- update to directx2 (directX2 has the first D3D accel.)
- the dx2 install updated the et4000w32p driver
- I can test a D3D-tunnel demo from microsoft. it shows "primary gfx-card" I can choose between "ramp" or "rgb" emulation. both do work.
- pcplayer d3d also works (but slow as expected)
- I can see two drivers in directx both are tseng et4000w32p. I don't know why there are two entries.
- checkit4 crashes on detecting gfx-hardware, don't know if that is a dirrectx2 problem
- drhardware 2.0 does require dx5 for directX-testing.
- everest home does not show anything for "directx graphics". dx-sound shows the installed awe64gold
- as expected "comixzone" just hangs on shartup. that is perhaps another issue (wing32.dll) is copied in the windows-system folder. gfx "move forward" in window-mode on desktop if the mouspointer is constantly moving the window, otherwise gfx/animation is stuck.
- dr.hardware 2.0 shows that siemens installed the C-version of the ET4000w32p chip. Afaik this was a "patched" version that does not suffer from serious errors like the one before.

Now I need to check that same setup win95a directx2 with the CL5446 and if there are any differences in features or performance. after that I will put the PCX1 in both systems and test it again.

I don't know which version fo the PCX1 you have, but Matrox has drivers for their M3D.
Driver 4.1.1.5., and OpenGL drivers for Quake2, Hexen. Dated 1998.
https://video.matrox.com/en/apps/drivers/grap … les/w9x_m3d.php

Other things to try.. Install Win95C (comes with Directx5). Test the built-in ET4000W32p drivers, and built-in or later OEM Matrox M3D PCX1 drivers.

I don't think that you got my point. I have the Nec PowerVR card (orange pcb) and I have the Matrox M3D (green pcb).
The Matrox has the PCX2 chip and is not part of these setups. these setups are only for the Nec PowerVR PCX1 card.
I think I have every driver that was released for the PowerVR chips. It's big archive with round about 20+ drivers and SDK stuff.
These test builds are win95a only, win95b/c are for higher-class machines with bigger hard drives or partitions (larger 2GB).

Did some additional testing on this:
- The Matrox driver does not install on the PCX1 as I expected (No Matrox board detected)
- The very latest or the later drivers do offer PVRMID5 only and the PCX1 is PVRMID4. Driver can be installed though but always tells me "pvr.sgl not found".
- Installing an older reverence-driver does work.
- Card is detected but when I start a techdemo the machine freezes. The image is drawn about 30-50 lines from the top and then the machine freezes.

It could perhaps be something with the PCI bus. I can change the latency for the PCI-Bus in the Bios-Settings but I don't have a clue in which direction to change this (higher or lower). The last thing I want to do is damage the machine or the cards. So in short, it does not work right out of the box. On the later machine (D943 mainboard with CL5446 instead of ET4000w32p in the D842) it works right out of the box for pvr-mode, but not for D3D.

Next thing to test is, if a voodoo1 does work on that D842 ET4000w32p. I am sure it does, because the card runs for itself (takes-over) while the PCX1 uses the onboard card to display the accelerated image.

Win95c isn't for higher-class machines.. Min specs are 8MB RAM, 50-200MB HDD space. Active Desktop should be turned off for performance however.

I suggest Win95c because there's greater chance of bug fixes along with built-in DX5, and updated built-in drivers.

The M3D does use the PCX1 chip. Like drivers from other vendors it's not going to auto-install, you'll need to force it or manually copy files... Or there may simply be an incompatibility with the cards.

PCI bus latency or speed doesn't damage anything. Excessive voltage or heat or improper connections can.

Does not change a thing.

MikeSG wrote on 2026-08-23, 15:03:

The M3D does use the PCX1 chip.

Nope, it doesn't. It is PCX2 with bilinear filtering.

PCX1/2 require a mainboard with working PCI busmastering (430HX has that), a primary video card with at least 2MB of RAM and some DirectDraw acceleration capabilities.
ET4000W32 might be too old to pair it with a PowerVR, but CL5446 should work with enough video RAM.

The image freezing during a 3D test might suggest a memory address conflict, or the memory address space wasn't set properly. They are set in the PCI config registers, not sure if by the PCI bus controller or drivers. It finds an address space above RAM in line with the chunk size required.

The second machine working, but not with D3D appears to me to be software related, rather than hardware.

It’s entirely possible that the ET4000/w32p is just a troublesome card/chip in general, which would make it even more troublesome when expected to communicate with a more recent thoroughbred PCI accelerator card. After all, this is what user 5u3 had to say about the w32p (back in a thread from 2007):

5u3 wrote on 2007-12-11, 12:15:

[…] when Tseng converted their highly reputed ET4000 cards to the PCI bus, they seriously dropped the ball.

ET4000 W32i PCI cards up to revision D are very buggy, revision D should be okay, but is rather hard to find, because there is no easy way to determine the revision just by looking at the chipset.

Based on my own experience with what’s definitely pre-revision-D hardware, I would say that there is merit to that statement.

My onboard ET4000w32p is version -c- according to a sisoftsandra. I also did not get that card working with the later released ET4000w32pci driver for Nextstep 3.3. The base driver for the ET4000 series cards offer 1024x768 b/w while the later PCI driver should work in full color and different resolutions, but it requires deep knowledge of registers so I ended up deleting nexstep and going for linux instead.

I will test a voodoo1 in that machine next, I think it will be working fine. We will see.

MikeSG wrote on 2026-08-23, 15:03:

I suggest Win95c because ... built-in DX5, and updated built-in drivers.

It's not built-in. There is a DX5 installer but needs to be done manually. There are no updated drivers.