First post, by FeedingDragon
- Rank
- Oldbie
I cannot complain much, only the first card cost me anything, the next 2 were free. However, I'm starting to get rather frustrated. Built myself a new compatibility system. I call it that instead of vintage because I'm not worried about speed issues or such. All I'm looking for are ISA and Floppy drive support. I want it to be able to run DOS 6.22, Windows 3.1, and preferably dual boot with Windows 9x as well (98se is what I have.) So far, I've managed to get everything except Windows 3.1 running right. The big problem comes with graphics. I have an Asus P3V133 with 800Mhz P3, 256MB RAM, 2x Voodoo II 12MB, MPU-401AT, MT-32, SB AWE-32, all working just great. However, the AGP 2x graphics cards I've tried have all crapped out in one way or another.
First (the one I actually paid for,) was a S3 Savage 4 AGP 2x/4x 32MB card (was thinking of having an option on 3D, Voodoo II and something else.) It was one of those that had removed some of the older graphics stuff, but a download & a fairly small TSR took care of that. Only Windows 3.1 really crapped out on the drivers, and some of my DOS games wouldn't display graphics correctly. They seemed to have all the graphics showing, just squished up on the top 1/4 of the screen. Windows 3.1 with any of the S3 drivers would just reboot my system, display nothing but strips of multicolored lines, or like the DOS games just be in the top 1/4 of the screen (with objects drawn on top of each other.
Second, came an ATI Rage 128 Pro (Xpert 2000) 32MB. This one worked just fin in all things DOS, but didn't have Windows 3.1 drivers. Attempts to use generic drivers failed. Enough said really, it was just too new a card.
Lastly came a TNT2 32MB (again, free.) Just like the ATI, all things DOS worked great. But Windows 3.1 refuses to work. The TNT drivers (said they support TNT2,) do the same things that the S3 drivers did. Reboot, garbled displays, everything on the top of the screen.
One thing I find interesting, even the SVGA drivers have problems. I want more than 256 colors (have a stack of games that run best at 65k colors for some reason - primarily the early FMV games.) But was thinking that the SVGA mode would tide me over till I could get it fixed. Only they ALL stack themselves on the top 1/4 of the screen.
I'm reaching my wits end. Is this an AGP/Win3.1 issue? Is it something wrong with my MB after all? Have I just had very poor luck in my graphics cards? I'm sort of loathe to spend money on a MB or Graphics card till I figure out what exactly I'm dealing with. Anyone have any ideas? Right now I'm looking at 2 cards that I can find drivers for. A TNT (1) 16MB card and an ATI Rage Pro 8MB card. I sort of need at least 8MB (well 4.02MB - but it goes from 4 to 8,) so that my Windows 98 boot can run at LCD native resolution (1366x768x32 = 4098KB = 4.001953125MB.) If push comes to shove, I'll settle for running 1024x768, which is only 3MB (exactly.) But that still means a 4MB card at least.
Feeding Dragon