VOGONS


First post, by Pulseczar

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Hi,

I have recently recovered my old childhood desktop PC. It was originally a 486 IBM clone with Windows 3.1. However, it was upgraded in the late 90s. Basically everything was changed, besides the peripherals, the case and the power supply. The current specs are:

  • Shuttle (Holco) HOT-591P mobo
    AMD K6-2 400 MHz
    64MB RAM
    S3 Trio 3d/2x video card
    ALS 120 sound card
    4GB Samsung IDE HDD

The PC had Windows 98 SE installed, but I replaced that with MS-DOS 6.22 + Windows 3.11 so I could play my old childhood games, and keep it as a nostalgia item.
I have also replaced the 4GB Samsung IDE HDD with a "new" Maxtor 80GB 7200rpm IDE HDD, as the old one was dying.

After installing all drivers and games, almost everything seems to be working normally.
However, some games just run really slow and have random glitches (short black horizontal lines that flash in random parts of the screen).

Games that are working well:

  • Duck Tales
    Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
    Keen Dreams
    Kings of the Beach
    Outrun
    Prehistorik
    Prehistorik 2

Games that run really slow:

  • Indianapolis 500
    Lion King

After playing one of these games, all the other ones run really slow as well. After a reboot, all is fine again.
These games play fine under DOS too.
Also, Psycho Pinball and The Lost Vikings won't even get past the initial black screen with a cursor, and I'm not sure if it's due to the same problem.

My questions are:

  1. 1. Are there any known problems with the S3 Trio 3d/2x drivers for Windows 3.11? I am using version v2.00.02, and I tried searching for other versions but I couldn't find any.
    2. Could the 3d/2x be just failing on me? It's a 20 year old video card anyway. I'm not opposed to buying another one if it's not too expensive. I've seen some cards on eBay (for instance the ATi Rage 128) which are really cheap and apparently work well with Windows 3.11.

I realize I could just keep Windows 98 SE or just have DOS and avoid all this hassle, but I'd really like to have Windows 3.11 on it because it was its original OS and it's extremely nostalgic to me. 😢

Thank you.

Reply 1 of 4, by Jo22

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Hi, DOS games on Windows 3.1 can be troublesome since there are timing issues.
Try to create/change the PIF files for your games.
Open PIF-Editor and play with timer emulation and exlusive option.

Here are a few more threads that come to mind.

Maybe they are useful to you.

Games in pure DOS vs Win 3.1
Games in pure DOS vs Win 3.1

Best PCI VGA card for Windows 3.11 performance?

Best PCI VGA card for Windows 3.11 performance?

Emulation on MS Windows 3.1x ?
Emulation on MS Windows 3.1x ?

Uses for Each Windows
Uses for Each Windows


How to to execute 286-style Standard Mode on 386+

Re: Is there a win3x EGA driver that supports more than 640x350 resolution?

PS: You can also run Windows 3.1 on DOS 7.x and from within Windows 9x.. 😀
(So there's no need to remove Win95 or Win98SE. You can keep your old 3.1 installation in a sepparate folder and run it whenever you like.)

See Run Windows 3.x in a DOS box on Windows 9x
and http://www.mywindowspage.com/ (osr2fix.exe)

Last but not least, you can also try OS/2.
Warp 3 or Warp 4 do have quite good DOS VMs with lots of settings.
And a seamless integrated copy of Windows 3.1.

"Time, it seems, doesn't flow. For some it's fast, for some it's slow.
In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

//My video channel//

Reply 2 of 4, by oohms

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Try a PCI video card instead.. SS7 boards are notorious for being finicky with most AGP cards

DOS/w3.11/w98 | K6-III+ 400ATZ @ 550 | FIC PA2013 | 128mb SDram | Voodoo 3 3000 | Avancelogic ALS100 | Roland SC-55ST
DOS/w98/XP | Core 2 Duo E4600 | Asus P5PE-VM | 512mb DDR400 | Ti4800SE | ForteMedia FM801

Reply 3 of 4, by Pulseczar

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Jo22 wrote:
Hi, DOS games on Windows 3.1 can be troublesome since there are timing issues. Try to create/change the PIF files for your games […]
Show full quote

Hi, DOS games on Windows 3.1 can be troublesome since there are timing issues.
Try to create/change the PIF files for your games.
Open PIF-Editor and play with timer emulation and exlusive option.

Here are a few more threads that come to mind.

Maybe they are useful to you.

Thanks, that's really useful. I guess I have some sunday reading to do. 😀

oohms wrote:

Try a PCI video card instead.. SS7 boards are notorious for being finicky with most AGP cards

Thanks. I'm going to try Jo22's suggestions and if all else fails I'll look into other video cards.

Reply 4 of 4, by chinny22

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If they work fine in dos I would say nothing is wrong, especially as all that hardware is aimed at Win9x

Even back then no one ran dos games from Windows 3.11 on something like a 486 windows used up to much of the resources.
3.11 was for applications, even the game's readme file's would say don't run in windows.

As a retro machine Windows for Workgroup's can still be useful now for networking and file management.
Win95 was the first OS to truly be aimed at gaming, and even then a 486 would still be better booting into dos mode.