Agent of the BSoD wrote on 2020-12-01, 03:30:

How does one use renutil? I can't find any documentation on it and simply running it changes nothing. It looks like you can pass […]
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How does one use renutil? I can't find any documentation on it and simply running it changes nothing. It looks like you can pass through some input but I can't tell what I should be doing, and there seems to be no built in help. If anything, I've had it drop performance of applications by half or more instead of speeding them up. I am using a V1000.

All it outputs is:

Function Passed
Current Monitor setting = 0
Function Passed
Current VGA type setting = 1

I used trial and error to figure it out. It expects two parameters: Monitor and VGA setting, example: "renutil 0 1". I don't know what the monitor setting does, I left it at "0". The VGA setting can be set to 0, 1 or 2. "1" is the default mode, "0" is slower than default, and "2" means VGA 320x200 will be remapped to the fast VESA mode, this is what you want.

Comparison between modes:

0:
chris's 3d benchmark: 9.6 fps
pc player: 8.0

1:
chris's 3d benchmark: 26.5 fps
pc player: 14.6
quake: 13.7

2:
chris's 3d benchmark: 56 fps
pc player: 19 fps
quake: 16.7 fps

The mode 2 results are probably CPU limited since I'm on a Pentium 66. On a fast system the difference could be even bigger.

Doom was interesting, it runs at 11 FPS in mode 1, and in mode 2 it becomes fast (36 fps), but the screen will be split into many small "screens"of Doom. And when you quit the game, the DOS prompt becomes messed up, with a dark brown font that is almost unreadable. You have to reboot or start another graphics application to return to normal.

I then tried some Doom source ports for DOS:

FastDoom: Runs at a quite playable 16 fps in mode 1, mode 2 is also glitched
FastDoom 13h: 34 fps in mode 1, 54 fps in mode 2
FastDoom VBR: 54 fps, runs in mode 2 by default so renutil is not needed
DosDoom: Interesting, this one works with mode 2. I cannot benchmark it because the timedemo always freezes, but I'd say it's around 15 fps in mode 1 and 25 fps in mode 2.
Boom: This is a strange one - the timedemo yields 23 fps in mode 1 and 33 fps in mode 2, but this has to be an error. From what one can see on screen, it runs just as bad as vanilla doom, probably 10 fps. Also the colors are off, it's way too bright.

For FastDoom you want to avoid mode Y executable (fdoom.exe). Try modes 13h or any of the VESA modes (mode VBR or mode VBD). Those are much faster compared to the original Mode Y:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6unNuPympE4

EDIT: with FastDoom is better not use renutil, it's basically not required

Interesting, I had only tried it with the main executable (fdoom.exe) and had no idea what the others do. I will definitely try that. Edit: Wow, the 13h and VBR versions indeed run a lot better, thank you for the tip. This is by far the best way to play Doom on this card!

Is Rebel Moon supposed to work on a generic Verite V1000 card? When I start the game, it prints out some initialization messages, but then proceeds to a black screen, tried both DOS and Windows 95. The last message it shows is something about "QueryScreen" before it goes black.

To those who got it working, are you using a CRT or LCD monitor? I remember having problems with my LCD, it got detected as "Unknown Screen" in Windows 95 and only worked in 16 colors mode unless I manually installed it as "Plug and Play monitor", that did not happen with any previous graphics cards. So maybe the game is trying to figure out which screen modes are supported, and this is where it stops working.

I actually did figure out how to run that executable in the time between that post and now. I found an informative article on Google Groups. Apparently there was a text file along with it but somehow it got lost to time. Luckily for us, someone copied it here.
Rendition RENUTIL - What do the numbers mean??

I do use "renutil 0 2" when I run it as I found that to work optimally, as you already discovered. The monitor value really doesn't change much as far as I could tell. It does do something different at the higher values (like the first half of the values do one thing and the other, bigger half, do something else) but that's it, unless I'm really not seeing something. My OSSC doesn't notice the difference except at that halfway point.

I'll also post the contents here for posterity.

So a bit of a correction for my above post. I took the time to measure every combination of values for renutil (96 benchmarks) to see what differences there are. This was done on my V1000 (Canopus Total3D, VBIOS 1.02.74). The PC is a Pentium MMX 233 MHz, FIC PA-2013, 64 MB SDRAM, running under pure DOS from Win95B. Benchmark was done with 3DBench2, and refresh rates were measured with the screen on the OSSC.

The results are pretty underwhelming. Every monitor value with 0 for the VGA mode results in 31.57 kHz horizontal, 70.33 Hz vertical, and 16.3 - 16.4 fps. These refresh rates are repeated with VGA mode at 1, but at 30.2 - 30.3 fps. VGA mode 2 with monitor values from 0 to 3 results in 31.46 kHz horizontal, 59.94 Hz vertical, and 149.6 fps. Monitor values from 4 to 31 get the same fps, but the refreshes change to 43.20 - 43.26 kHz horizontal and 84.87 - 85.00 Hz vertical.

So really, the only important values for speeding up mode 13h is "renutil 0 2" or "renutil 4 2". The latter may be desirable to reduce flicker on a CRT due to the higher vertical refresh. Anything beyond that does nothing.

Hello , anyone with Rendition Verite v1000 can help on testing this app Re: RReady (Rendition Verite wrapper) Test Build (Alpha 1)
this is from rendition verite wrapper developer for adding dos games support. all windows games already supported.

NostalgicAslinger wrote on 2023-04-12, 14:33:

Has anyone tested if the Rebel Moon V1000 version works on a V2100/2200?

Does this utility helps? https://www.vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fil … 0&menustate=1,0

I found this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKgkqOhvWYY

Min 33:06: Rebel Moon on a Rendition V2x00, and yes, the solution is this utility:
http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=160&menustate=0

Looks much nicer than the newer Rebel Moon Rising, which only starts with MMX CPUs and only supports Software Rendering.