VOGONS

Trouble with 3dfx Voodoo 2 Patch for Descent II

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First post, by mothergoose729

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Hello all, I am trying to get some DOS glide games going and I am having a little trouble.

I installed descent II from CD rom, played the game just fine on the 1.0 patch, and then I set about getting voodoo support working on my SLI Creative 6670 matched voodoo 2 setup (12mb).

I updated the game to patch 1.2, and then tried the unofficial patch from Vertz thread, and as well as the official patch with a batch file as well. The unofficial patch just hangs in pure DOS. If I run the game in a DOS window I can hear the opening intro but I can't see any graphics coming out of the master voodoo 2. The official patch with a batch file throws a bunch of errors and crashes.

Voodoo 2 DOS Glide compatibility matrix

Everything appears to be working in windows. The 3dfx control panel shows that SLI is detected and when I run quake II at 1024x768 in a timedemo I get 71 fps, which seems about right. I have my nvidia FX card and my master voodoo 2 card hooked up to a simple VGA switch so I can tell what stuff is outputting where.

I am using the official voodoo 2 drivers version 30202 from phil's website.

https://www.philscomputerlab.com/drivers-for-voodoo-2.html

Windows 98 SE
Intel 440BX GA 6XBC
Via Nehemiah
512mb SDRAM
Nvidia Quadro FX 1000
2 x Voodoo 2 12mb SLI (Creative 6670 matched pair)
Some sound cards

config.sys and autoexec attached.

Reply 1 of 4, by mothergoose729

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I tried Screamer 2 and I am getting a "3DFX hardware not found" error. I think something about my setup isn't right.

Reply 3 of 4, by mothergoose729

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Thank you! As it turns our the dos 3dfx driver is very speed sensitive... I don't think the 133mhz bus speed is that important, but the overall CPU speed seems to be. I can get Screamer 2 and Descent II working reliably now!

For anyone else coming in behind me, screamer 2 won't load reliably at anything faster than about a pentium II at 300mhz (700mhz with a 100mhz FSB for my CPU). Descent II with the unofficial patch needs something even slower... about a pentium II @ 200mhz (400mhz with 100mhz FSB for my CPU).

For the record both run fine at much higher speeds in software mode, so I guess the 3dfx mode is just more sensitive. No worries, they feel plenty smooth.

One last question... are there any environment variables I can set to control the gamma? I prefer to tone down the over bright 3dfx look 😁.

Reply 4 of 4, by vetz

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Good to know. I think the speed sensitivity varies abit from system to system. It's been a while since I tested those games on my slot 1 system, but I can't remember needing to go that slow as you mention. The Voodoo2 compatibility list were tested on a Socket 7 system.

mothergoose729 wrote on 2021-05-11, 21:07:

One last question... are there any environment variables I can set to control the gamma? I prefer to tone down the over bright 3dfx look 😁.

Phil has his own page on this subject: https://www.philscomputerlab.com/gamma-settings.html

3D Accelerated Games List (Proprietary APIs - No 3DFX/Direct3D)
3D Acceleration Comparison Episodes

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