First post, by shamino
- Rank
- l33t
I recently purchased a Diamond 3D Monster PCI card, and I'm trying to figure out if it's working.
Sorry if this post is too long or confusing, I tried to make it as clear as I could.
Initially, I installed it in an FIC PT-2200 430HX based motherboard. Pentium 200MHz MMX, primary video card was a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (S3 Virge PCI 4MB). The Virge and the Voodoo are connected to separate monitors. I do *not* have a passthrough cable. The Virge monitor is direct, the Voodoo monitor is behind a KVM. I am certain that the correct KVM input is selected, because if it wasn't, my keyboard wouldn't work. I use the KVM with other machines also, so I know it works.
There is no sound card. That board had 128MB RAM installed.
Win98SE was installed on a single 8GB FAT32 partition.
I'm going to trim this part and just say Windows sees the card, and the 3Dfx tab in the display properties also sees it, but I can't get any output. I made a mess with installs of 3 different drivers. I think I need to reinstall if I try any further.
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I want to just get a simple test going in DOS that I can't screw up. From what I've read in some threads on this site, it sounds like the 3Dfx Tomb Raider demo is the way to go about this.
I have 2 versions of the Tomb Raider demo. One came from the Diamond Monster 3D disc from vogonsdrivers. The other was downloaded separately, I don't remember where.
The Diamond version of Tomb Raider has a TOMB.EXE with size 563,315 bytes, date Oct 23 1996
When I run this, I get this error:
ERROR: grSstQueryHardware() failed
I have a glide2x.OVL file in that folder with size 195,815 bytes, date Apr 29 1999. I don't know if it's supposed to be there, I might have put it there myself. Error is the same whether that file is present or removed from the directory.
The version I downloaded was named "TOMB3DEM" which I think is the statically linked 3dfx demo. The TOMB.EXE file has a size of 788,171 bytes, date Nov 25 1996. I have run SETUP.EXE and configured no sound.
When I run this version, the game runs on the Virge card. Is it supposed to do this? I don't get any messages, but it's not running on the Voodoo.
I tried switching the cards around so the Voodoo has been in 3 different PCI slots. It won't fit in the 4th.
I measured PSU 5v and 12v while running memtest86. Both were in spec on the meter.
I do have my doubts about all the BIOS settings on the 430HX board and any possible hardware incompatibilities that might exist.
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I have just moved the hard drive to a newer Shuttle AV18 board. This is a VIA 694T with a Tualatin based Celeron installed. I've underclocked it to 800/66. 256MB RAM installed. Primary video is now an AGP RIVA128. Again, the RIVA and Voodoo are connected to separate monitors, no passthrough between them.
The POST screen on this motherboard reads the following:
Bus No. Device No. Func No. Vendor/Device Class Device Class IRQ
0 7 1 1106 0571 0101 IDE Cntrlr 14
0 7 2 1106 3038 0C03 Serial Bus Cntrlr 5
<same line repeated but with Func No. 3>
0 7 5 1106 3058 0401 Multimedia Device 10
0 11 0 121A 0001 0400 Multimedia Device NA
1 0 0 12D2 0018 0300 Display Cntrlr 11
ACPI Controller 9
I am booting into the Windows 98 version of MSDOS by using a Win98 boot floppy.
With a "normal" BIOS configuration, both Tomb Raiders behave the same way as they did on the 430HX board.
I read another thread where somebody had similar problems which were affected by turning off his caches.
If I disable the L1 and L2 caches, TOMB3DEM "sort of" runs. The first time I tried, it got into the title screen but froze at a black screen when starting a "new game". The 2nd time I tried, it quickly did start a new game, once again it was on the primary video output and not on the Voodoo card. Exiting that game froze at a black screen again. Something is unstable with the caches turned off.
The version of Tomb Raider demo from the Diamond CD still gives the same error:
ERROR: grSstQueryHardware() failed
Can somebody point at a known good download of the statically linked 3Dfx Tomb Raider demo, just so I know I'm using a good version?
Is it normal for this version to default it's output to a non-accelerated video card, like mine is doing?
I'm now trying a DOS demo called 'NATURE' which came from falconfly.de. If I configure it to use 3DFX, the setup finished by saying "Device: VOODOO v3.0" but when I run the demo, the output is on the primary video card again, not the Voodoo.
Any other suggestions of things I should try to verify if this card works? I have no prior experience with Voodoo cards at all.
Have Voodoo cards been known to misbehave when connected through a KVM? Do they expect their attached monitor to already be awake when they start sending a signal? Do they misbehave if the passthrough isn't connected?
Do Voodoo1 cards die often? Do these symptoms fit for a bad card? Windows sees it, the Win9x driver sees it, but nothing can use it, either in DOS or Windows.
When I ran 'dxdiag' v6.1a in Win98SE, the DirectDraw test caused the Voodoo monitor to momentarily wake up and go back to sleep. There was an error message saying dxdiag had crashed. That's the most life I've gotten out of the card.