First post, by retro_rob
Morning all, great forum!
Hoping you can help. I've recent built a nice little retro rig for some old school gaming. I've got a Dell Optiplex GX1 (P3, 450mhz, 256Mb of ram) paired with a 3DfX Voodoo 3 2000 (PCI) and SB 16 (ISA) and an MT-32 waiting in the wings.
Primary purpose for the build was as a Win 98 machine, which went smooth as butter.
XP has been a different story; I encountered an issue during install that I've never seen on a dozen-plus XP builds with various lappies/desktops down the years.
Simply, Windows XP hates my Voodoo!
On a clean install, I boot from XP cd, Windows XP setup loading screen displays fine, but when the screen refreshes for the actual setup the display is hopelessly corrupted. Not blue screen of death or anything; the screen is simply utterly garbled; like the card has corrupted. I can't make out a single thing.
I removed the Voodoo and temporarily reverted back to the on-board Rage Pro graphics which displayed setup just fine and allowed me to complete the XP installation. It was a long shot but I then popped the Voodoo back in and rebooted. Bios screen fine, Windows XP loading screen fine... desktop a garbled mess. Doh.
Voodoo card itself is absolutely fine IMO; proof being that five mins later I switched HDs back to my Win 98SE build and was happily playing Quake for 30 mins with no issues (artefacting etc.)
It wouldn't be the end of the world if I can't sort this - I built this machine for 2D LucasArts/Sierra adventures mostly and I can always play 3D games in Win 98 - but I have to say in terms of ease of use Win XP - with its compatibility with all my GOG games and ScummVM - is defo less of a ballache than 98.
So ideally it'd be great to sort this - also I can't help feeling my pride is hurt that I can't sort 😁
Any ideas please crew?? TIA!