Great Hierophant wrote:

Why use a MX model when you could use a Geforce 2 GTS?

Think of the GeForce 2 MX as sort of a placeholder, most of the points are still valid with other 3D cards. I listed the GF2MX because it is the card I would choose. Very easy to get one cheaply, as an entry-level mass product it doesn't have any glitches (except lower performance than high-end cards). Software and games support is excellent, because of the vast numbers of cards being sold.
One of the best features of the GeForce 2 MX chip is that it only uses 4 Watts of power, so it doesn't need active cooling and it works together with all mainboards, even those with weak AGP power supply.
Of course the card's quality depends on the manufacturer, but generally GF2MX cards are solidly built. At work we used to have a lot of GeForce 2 cards, all of the high-end models have been thrown away being defective, but I can't remember a dead GF2MX 😉

Great Hierophant wrote:

Do games use those 15bpp VESA modes the Voodoo3 does not support?

Rarely. I can't name 15bpp games right now, but I'm sure a few games used them in the early days of VESA. In most cases you can revert to 16 or 8bpp modes though. There are quite a few scene demos which need 15bpp low resolution VESA support.

Battlespire is the only game I can think of that required 15bpp. However, the first (and only) patch added 16bpp support.

I agree that Unreal is about as new as I'd like to be getting. 😀 Basically, up to the point that everybody stopped making DOS games (I wonder what the last major label DOS release was? It'd be around 1999-2000 I'd guess, if not earlier).

If I'm not gonna find an SCB-55 for less than, say £20 ($40), I'm not that interested. I understand that some of this stuff can be hard to come by, but I don't want to be forking out huge amounts to play some old games. That was part of the appeal: that I could put together a powerful old machine for a cheap price. 😀 This leaves me with a problem, however, as I now do not know what to do about DOS MIDI. Jump that bridge when I come to it, I suppose. Will SB16 cards do MIDI without the Waveblaster addon? Like FM/Adlib type music? Just then it's not the end of the world. Also I spotted a GUS card that attaches to the Waveblaster addon, not sure how that would perform.

Thanks 5u3 for the info on Voodoo3 cards, I think I'm settled on getting one of them for my machine (bidding on a Voodoo3 3500 now). Theoretically with all this kit I could play games from way before too, I imagine? Obviously when you get back to 286-type games they tend to rely too much on the processor being slow, or they run too fast, but anything that needs a 386 or higher in DOS should run, right? It's all a case of testing, of course, and I can still stick to DOSBox if they don't work properly.

You get what you pay for. If you want a strictly average classic gaming experience, stick with the FM/Adlib synthesis. Wu-Ming Shop has some decently priced waveblaster midi cards. Regular Sound Blaster 16 cards do not output midi in DOS but can output midi in Windows through FM.

5u3: Is there a progam you can use to test VESA modes? I would like to know how you found out that the Voodoo 3 is not compatible with 15-bit modes.

When I start building a retrogaming rig, if discovered I was listening opl3 music's for years without knowing better sound existed

Today i think I spend more money on old hardware than on new

Day of the Tentacle's intro crash on Voodoo4 with picture constantly shaking

Great Hierophant wrote:

5u3: Is there a progam you can use to test VESA modes? I would like to know how you found out that the Voodoo 3 is not compatible with 15-bit modes.

SciTech used to bundle a program called "VBETest" with their older releases of UniVBE. I attached it to the end of this post.

The PC Player benchmark (already uploaded to this forum, get it here) also tests available VESA modes.
Short usage description, since the documentation is only available in german:
"PCPBENCH /MODES" gives you the list of VESA modes.
"PCPBENCH xxx" runs the benchmark, where xxx is the video mode number from the list.

All of my Voodoo cards (Banshee, Voodoo3, Voodoo5) are missing the 15 bpp modes. There are TSRs that map 16 bpp modes to 15 bpp, but don't always work. Which is a pity, because the Voodoo cards are very fast in 2D 😒

Psyklax wrote:

If I'm not gonna find an SCB-55 for less than, say £20 ($40), I'm not that interested. I understand that some of this stuff can be hard to come by, but I don't want to be forking out huge amounts to play some old games. That was part of the appeal: that I could put together a powerful old machine for a cheap price.

I agree, prices for some of the old stuff are really over the top nowadays. On the other hand, they only cost half as much as back in 1992 😉

Psyklax wrote:

This leaves me with a problem, however, as I now do not know what to do about DOS MIDI. Jump that bridge when I come to it, I suppose. Will SB16 cards do MIDI without the Waveblaster addon? Like FM/Adlib type music? Just then it's not the end of the world.

General MIDI playback on an AdLib is only possible under Windows (which has a MIDI driver for FM cards included), but it doesn't matter for DOS games. Every game that supports MIDI also supports AdLib (and in some cases, the AdLib version even sounds better 🤣).

Psyklax wrote:

Also I spotted a GUS card that attaches to the Waveblaster addon, not sure how that would perform.

I'm not aware of such a GUS model. If you mean the GUS ACE, yes that one was marketed as a replacement for common wavetable daughterboards, but it still needs it's own ISA slot. I can recommend this card, it has everything you need from a GUS, minus unnecessary stuff like the gameport or recording abilities. IMO the best GUS model for retrogamers who already have a SoundBlaster card installed.

Is there a card that can pass all those VBE tests? Does such a creature exist?

Before I decided on getting a Voodoo3 3500 (I'm still looking on eBay for one, there's a few around) I bidded on, and won, a Diamond Monster3d Voodoo PCI 4MB, the first of its kind I believe. No manual, just the card, a VGA pass-thru connector and (presumably) some drivers. Am I right in thinking I get any old 2D card's VGA output to go into the 3D card and out again? If so it'd be fun to try this weekend. Anything specific I need to know, as I have no manual to refer to?

Great Hierophant wrote:

A very concise analysis. However, I would like to make a few observations:
If you are one of the lucky few to find a Quantum3D Obsidian2 X-24, you would only need one ISA slot

Nitpick: you mean PCI slot, don't you? 😉

Great Hierophant wrote:

Is there a card that can pass all those VBE tests? Does such a creature exist?

Probably not. My S3 Trio (with S3VBE loaded) comes close, but still has flickering and stuttering issues in some of the modes. And you'll have to take the results with a grain of salt, since it's only a synthetic test, real performance might be different.

On video, I recommend against a Banshee/Voodoo3 for Glide games. There are a few old Glide games that just don't work correctly on my Voodoo3. (Klingon Honor Guard and Streets of SimCity come to mind.) Get a real Voodoo or Voodoo2. Try not to get stuck with the original 8MB Voodoo 2, you want the 12 MB.

Yes, you'll still need to use the VGA-pass through cable with a Voodoo 2. There were some nifty hacks for Linux allowing things like passing the image to the primary video card, and driving the Voodoo as a primary video card, but as far as DOS gaming goes it's impossible.

Matrox Millenium (1) is a good PCI 2D card for old games. But the 2D on any modern video card (cheap GeForce) is probably more than sufficient for compatibility.

On sound, be sure to get a real ISA SoundBlaster 16 or SoundBlaster 32 AWE. The SoundBlaster AWE 64 is a SB32AWE, but it doesn't have the WaveBlaster header. The PCI "SoundBlasters" were actually designed by Ensoniq before Creative bought them out, (previously, SB16 emulation on PCI hardware hadn't been done) and use a TSR emulator.

My Yamaha DB50XG is my pride and joy. Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, in particular, really sound great with the daughterboard -- its drum samples are excellent. They don't officially advertise it, but it actually functions as a Sound Canvas clone. (It officially supports Yamaha's Roland GS clone synth.) The only game I can think of that really utilized full XG MIDI was Final Fantasy VII, though.

MT-32 music still sounds weird on a MPU-401 device like a WaveBlaster, despite a number of channel-swapping hacks, so get the real deal if you want MT-32.

I'll point out that most Aureal Vortex2 sound cards have a WaveBlaster header, and the drivers offer decent SB Pro emulation. Just in case you have a hard time getting an ISA card or something.

If you get any ISA Plug-n-Play hardware, you have to install a piece of software called an ICU (ISA Configuration Utility). I don't think you can get it from Intel's site anymore, but I'm sure someone can hook you up.

If you decide to go with true DOS over Windows 98, remember that MS-DOS 6.22 is not quite Y2K-compliant. The most recent PC-DOS, still sold by IBM, is. Still, for almost all cases (i.e. not running Ultima VII) I'd recommend using the DOS that comes with Windows 98.

Probably not. My S3 Trio (with S3VBE loaded) comes close, but still has flickering and stuttering issues in some of the modes. And you'll have to take the results with a grain of salt, since it's only a synthetic test, real performance might be different.

The Trio doesn't seem to be the fastest 2D card, however, if a mode that works on the Trio doesn't work at all on a Voodoo 5, then the Voodoo 5 would be slower than the Trio.

What are, for our purposes, the VESA modes that DOS games used? I think this will do for a list:

640x400x8
640x480x8
640x480x15
640x480x16
800x600x4
800x600x8
1024x768x4
1024x768x8

Other than the 15-bit mode, which has been dealt with above, most graphics cards support these modes in linear or banked modes OK.

On video, I recommend against a Banshee/Voodoo3 for Glide games. There are a few old Glide games that just don't work correctly on my Voodoo3. (Klingon Honor Guard and Streets of SimCity come to mind.) Get a real Voodoo or Voodoo2. Try not to get stuck with the original 8MB Voodoo 2, you want the 12 MB.

Yes, you'll still need to use the VGA-pass through cable with a Voodoo 2. There were some nifty hacks for Linux allowing things like passing the image to the primary video card, and driving the Voodoo as a primary video card, but as far as DOS gaming goes it's impossible.

Some of the older Glide games will not work with anything more advanced than a Voodoo 1. Fortunately, few people purchased the 8MB Voodoo 2s back in the day, so the 12MB version is easier to find.

If you can find one, get a Canopus Pure 3D or Pure 3D II and pair them with a Canopus Spectra 2500 (TNT) and a Canopus Spectra 5400 (TNT2), respectively. Canopus had these nifty features that allowed for less-lossy or lossless redirection of the Voodoo output to the TNT output. Good luck though.

Finally, there are fan patches that allow Ultimas VII, VII.5 & VIII to work in Windows.

Great Hierophant wrote:

What are, for our purposes, the VESA modes that DOS games used? I think this will do for a list: […]
Show full quote

What are, for our purposes, the VESA modes that DOS games used? I think this will do for a list:

640x400x8
640x480x8
640x480x15
640x480x16
800x600x4
800x600x8
1024x768x4
1024x768x8

Other than the 15-bit mode, which has been dealt with above, most graphics cards support these modes in linear or banked modes OK.

If you want to watch more recent DOS scene demos (1996 and newer), add the following modes:
320x200x15
320x200x16
320x240x15
320x240x16
512x384x15
512x384x16
... all of them with linear framebuffer (for demo programmers, it's either ModeX or LFB, anything else was considered to be 'lame' 😉). These requirements throw many cards out of the list, however, they are only valid for scene demos, not for games.

I recently won a good old Diamond Monster3d 4MB PCI card. So, all that talk about some games only working on a Voodoo1 are solved, providing I can get a workable 2D card (GeForce 256 or something I imagine). Also got a genuine SB16 ISA coming in the post from the USA, both cards cost very little so I'm quite pleased about that. As a start, I've acquired a leftover Compaq PC with some Pentium chip in it, but it's not ideal because it's about as 'compact' as it can get (hence the name I suppose). There's not much space, or slots, but it'll do until I get a more suitable PC. Will install Win98SE on it soon and have a play, see what I can come up with. Must get back onto eBay and find me one of those Voodoo3 3500s again. And a GeForce 256. Oh, the fun! 😀

I'm running out of things I need to get, other than the aforementioned video bits and a more suitable motherboard/CPU combo. Now is probably the time to get into the tough job of customising DOS to suit my needs.

Also, all this talk of 15-bit vid modes is puzzling. I didn't know such things existed. How and why does it exist instead of (or as well as) 8- and 16-bit?

15-bit are stored using 16-bit:

15-bit vid mode
5 bit red, 5 bit green, 5 bit blue, 1bit unused

16-bit vid mode
5 bit red, 6 bit green, 5 bit blue since human eyes see more green than red or blue

8-bit
a list of 256 colors

StickByDos,

>DOS can access file on DVD but you nead good driver:
>Don't use mscdex, it can't open files/directories with lowercases in their >name. Use shsucdx (it's free) or nwcdex (it come with dr-dos)
>In config.sys, I use dvs.sys (I don't remember where I downloaded it)

I never knew this and I've always just used the mscdex files. In regards to shsucdx here is a URL for it:

http://johnson.tmfc.net/dos/shsucdx.html

I also think I may have found the dvs file you mention which allows long file name access under DOS that works with shsucdx:

http://www.geocities.com/jadoxa/doslfn/

>For slot1, 440BX is the best chipset but you can't use dimm larger then >256MB (you can use 2 or 3 of them) and you need a patched bios for a >fast cpu, you can use hard disk up to 137GB if your bios support it

Now this part I was really curious about. Why go with the 440BX over say the VIA Apollo Pro 133A? Is it mainly due to the number of ISA slots or is it something else? The only reason I ask is by going with the 440BX you pretty much limit the number of CPU options and eliminate most, if not all in some cases, Coppermine-based P3's since most 440BX boards would not support a 133 FSB.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Hold on. This is interesting. I mean, why? […]
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swaaye wrote:

It can get tricky trying to get an optimal DOS and 9x box. I'd suggest not mixing PCI and ISA audio.

Hold on. This is interesting. I mean, why?

Correct me if I'm wrong, and frankly I haven't ever tried it myself, but I alwasy thought, in a DOS/Win9x dual-boot environment, PCI sound card and ISA sound card will naturally get isolated from each other. Thus, I couldn't imagine what kind of resource conflict could happen.

If I recall correctly, a PCI sound card needs a TSR driver to run in DOS. Without loading the driver, I guess the PCI sound card won't get recognized at all in DOS. Therefore, the ISA sound card will be the only one functioning in DOS, and there won't be any resource conflict, I guess.

In Win9x environment, both ISA and PCI sound card will be detected by Windows, and it could potentially lead to resource conflict. However, I think resource conflicts can be avoided (by careful assignment of IRQ, DMA, etc) and both cards can coexist together in Windows. Of course, if resource conflict is inevitable, one can always disable the ISA sound card in Windows (disable in this hardware profile).

But of course, all was just theoritical, since I haven't tried such thing myself. However, I do plan to use both ISA and PCI sound card for the dual-boot rig I'm about to build: one is an AWE64 Gold to play DOS games, another is an Aureal Vortex PCI sound card to be ran under Windows and play those A3D or EAX games.

So again, what's the worst could happen by having both PCI and ISA sound cards in your rig?

This is pretty much how I have my system setup right now except that I have both cards isolated from each other. My SB16, equipped with a SCB-55, is setup for DOS and my Aureal Vortex SQ2500 Quadzilla, equipped with a Yamaha DB50XG, is setup for Win98se. Works perfectly as long as you have them isolated from each other.

It is for this reason that a lot of people here strongly suggest getting non-PnP ISA cards so that a configuration like this is possible.

StickByDos wrote:

SB16 PCI is not compatible with SB16 ISA, it's actually based on Ensoniq AudioPCI, It need a TSR, which emulate sb16 isa with mi […]
Show full quote

SB16 PCI is not compatible with SB16 ISA, it's actually based on Ensoniq AudioPCI, It need a TSR, which emulate sb16 isa with midi, to work under dos. (its name is just for marketing purpose)

PCI cards can't really work under dos
When a dos software needs to make sound, it directly programmes the soundcard.
Most of isa soundcards emulate sb isa in hardware to get maximum compatibility under dos but data are not sent to pci cards in the same way as with isa.

ISA soundcards get data using dma: a chip on the mobo which is programmed to exchange data between memory and isa bus.
PCI soundcards gets data using bus mastering: they read directly from memory.

When you want to make sound under dos with pci card:
- The software knows how to programme your pci card directly (I only know mpxplay who do this)
- Else, you have to emulate sb isa using a tsr which intercept dma programming but it require some feature of protected mode like io permissions which are easier to use in a multitasking os than under dos.

For serious dos gamming, use an isa soundcard.

Actually, there is one PCI sound card that, at least according to the documentation and others who have tried this before, would be good for use under DOS: the Yamaha DX-XG series also listed as a YMF724, YMF740, YMF744, or YMF754. All of these have native DOS support and do NOT require drivers which you can read about here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamaha_YMF7xx

http://www.it-he.org/sound.htm

http://www.digit-life.com/articles/aopenaw754/

"The Legacy Audio unit supports different additional functions. Such as a FM synthesizer, Sound Blaster Pro compatibility, support of the MIDI port (MPU401) and joystick. All these functions are supported in a "clear DOS", according to Yamaha, theoretically without a need in any drivers."

RE: the canopus cards and their pure3dII passthrough

Are you sure the Canopus Spectra 5400 (or above) can do this? None of the reviews I've seen make mention that they can - even though most newer canopus cards have a 14 pin header on them similar to that used with the 2500.

kreats wrote:

RE: the canopus cards and their pure3dII passthrough

Are you sure the Canopus Spectra 5400 (or above) can do this? None of the reviews I've seen make mention that they can - even though most newer canopus cards have a 14 pin header on them similar to that used with the 2500.

Only the Spectra 2500 and the 5400 are equipped with the Witchdoctor tech that allows the Pure3D and Pure3DII cards to use the internal pass-thru cable. You can read about both here:

http://www.hardwarezone.com/reviews/video/spe … pectra2500.html

http://www.hardwarezone.com/reviews/video/spe … tra-5400pe.html

Sadly these cards are VERY difficult to find as are the Pure3DII's; both of which I've been searching for without success. At least I managed to get a Pure3D, MIB as well, for a decent price. Just be careful that you get the correct output cable with the card or it will not work.