Well, I can tell you what I did to get Descent 2 3dfx working in my S370 gaming build - Asus CULS2-C board, Pentium 3 1GHz CPU, 512mb PC133 ram, Nvidia GF3 Ti200 64mb AGP video, 3dfx Voodoo2 1000 12mb SLI, Yamaha YMF724 PCI sound, Enermax 300 watt PSU, Windows 98 SE. D2_3dfx8 and latest 3dfx drivers used.

- Disable SLI. Descent 2 3dfx doesn't work with SLI enabled (that's why you keep getting a black screen).

- My copy of glide2x.ovl has a date of December ‎16, ‎1999 and is 222 KB (228,196 bytes) in size. It's usually in the C:\Windows directory, but you can also place it in the game directory and should work just fine. I also removed any copies that don't match the date and/or size to avoid conflicts with DOS Glide games.

- Booting to a DOS prompt is vastly preferable to running DOS in a window to avoid unexpected issues with Windows 98 itself. This also allows me to get 620K of conventional memory for DOS games with HIMEM.SYS/EMM386.EXE:

Still, Descent 2 3dfx doesn't care much for conventional memory - I've got it to run with as little as 530K, so your 597K should be enough.

- 60Hz refresh and fast CPUs should be fine, never had an issue with either.

- Try to keep your Autoexec.bat/Config.sys setup as simple as possible to avoid confusion, at least until you get the hang of things. I would post mine, but it's multi-boot and rather complex to look at.

Hope this helps 😀

Jayceebee64, thanks for getting back with me! Didn't think of disabling the SLI, game really doesn't need it anyways but some new discoveries:

Exchanged the 850mhz P3 for a 450mhz, and it worked, sort of. You can play the game but once you quit if you want to play it again a reboot is necessary, otherwise the same "black screen" is staring at you, weird. Again this is operating from dos in a window so a memory issue is probably the cause I'm not sure.

Playing in "pure dos mode" seems to be the way to go but my autoexec/config programming skills are nil, so if anyone can offer ideas on getting a PCI Vortex2 and a USB gamepad working in DOS I would be much obliged.

- Disable SLI. Descent 2 3dfx doesn't work with SLI enabled

Mine does?

Also, mine works in Win95, with no issues.

hasnopants wrote:

- Disable SLI. Descent 2 3dfx doesn't work with SLI enabled

Mine does?

Also, mine works in Win95, with no issues.

hasnopants, what's yer setup/hardware?

Well this machine is a:
Pentium 1 233 with MMX
256 MB of RAM
2 x Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB (Now that I think about it I might have been using original Diamond drivers when I played D2 last though, now I am on latest reference drivers (MDK2 made me 😠) so I will fire it up tonight to make sure it still works)
SB Live! 5.1 SB0060 VXD driver 4.12.01.0905
Windows 95 OSR2

Descent updated to 1.2? then I am using the official 3dfx Descent 2 executable. If I remember right you need to update Descent first before you try to use the 3dFX version?

Sorry I am at work so this is all off memory.

hasnopants wrote:

Well this machine is a: Pentium 1 233 with MMX 256 MB of RAM 2 x Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB (Now that I think about it I might ha […]
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Well this machine is a:
Pentium 1 233 with MMX
256 MB of RAM
2 x Diamond Monster 3D II 8MB (Now that I think about it I might have been using original Diamond drivers when I played D2 last though, now I am on latest reference drivers (MDK2 made me 😠) so I will fire it up tonight to make sure it still works)
SB Live! 5.1 SB0060 VXD driver 4.12.01.0905
Windows 95 OSR2

Descent updated to 1.2? then I am using the official 3dfx Descent 2 executable. If I remember right you need to update Descent first before you try to use the 3dFX version?

Sorry I am at work so this is all off memory.

Thinking about building a system with those specs. All I lack is a voodoo 1, hoping to find one that's not crazy priced.

FYI, got Dx2-Rebirth version 0.58.1 running on my XP rig, easy pleezy and it works great.