VOGONS


First post, by Sedrosken

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This is on Al-Jalima, my Pentium Pro machine. I've swapped from the Voodoo Banshee to a Matrox Millennium II and Voodoo2 combo, and I've started messing around with ways to improve my video performance under DOS/Win9x. FastVid completely breaks compatibility with EGA/CGA stuff no matter what I do, and MTRRLFBE does the same but in a different way that makes me think I might be able to fix it. I was wondering if that's just intrinsic to enabling Write Combining or if it's something I'm doing wrong? The solution can't just be to stop running my EGA/CGA stuff on there, this is my one DOS-capable machine (ISA sound) and probably will be for quite a while.

Nanto: H61H2-AM3, 4GB, GTS250 1GB, SB0730, 512GB SSD, XP USP4
Rithwic: EP-61BXM-A, Celeron 300A@450, 768MB, GF2MX400/V2, YMF744, 128GB SD2IDE, 98SE (Kex)
Cragstone: Alaris Cougar, 486BL2-66, 16MB, GD5428 VLB, CT2800, 16GB SD2IDE, 95CNOIE

Reply 1 of 2, by bakemono

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I would expect CGA to be fine but EGA has problems if the write combining buffer isn't flushed before different planes are selected via I/O port.

Reply 2 of 2, by Sedrosken

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Well, I settled for asking in my AUTOEXEC via CHOICE if I wanted to run MTRRLFBE or not, defaulting to yes after 5 seconds. Then I have a couple of batch files in my start menu (and PATH) to enable/disable write combining as needed. Thankfully MTRRLFBE seems to let me reverse the process without a reboot -- fastvid didn't seem to want to.

Nanto: H61H2-AM3, 4GB, GTS250 1GB, SB0730, 512GB SSD, XP USP4
Rithwic: EP-61BXM-A, Celeron 300A@450, 768MB, GF2MX400/V2, YMF744, 128GB SD2IDE, 98SE (Kex)
Cragstone: Alaris Cougar, 486BL2-66, 16MB, GD5428 VLB, CT2800, 16GB SD2IDE, 95CNOIE