Voodoo Banshee resolution issue \ VOGONS

Voodoo Banshee resolution issue

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First post, by Con 2 botones

Posted on 2020-04-06, 03:58

Con 2 botones Offline

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Joined: 2019-08-26, 13:35
Location: Montevideo, Uruguay

Hello again dear Vogons members.

I´m having a weird trouble with my Voodoo Banshee. It´s an Ensoniq 9850, to be more precise.
I can´t seem to be able to switch to 800x600, I am stuck at 640x480. Whenever I try to swith to 800x600 I am forced to go 16 colors only.

I´ve seen this behaviour with either latest reference drivers as well as "Evolution 0.9" drivers.
One weird thing (and maybe here is the key of the issue), is that the reference drivers have to be forced, otherwise the card does not recognize appropiate drivers within the related folder.
I have tried with two different Windows installations, same results.

The Banshee is placed on an ECS mainboard with 44oZX chipset, PIII 450mhz CPU, 256MB RAM, Windows 98SE, DX7a.
I have tested the graphic card with various DOS games and works perfectly. Nevertheless, Unreal refuses to start in 3dfx mode, seems to be working in awful software mode.

Have you ever gone through this before?

Thank you very much in advance!

Reply 1 of 3, by darry

Posted on 2020-04-06, 05:07

darry Offline

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Are you certain this is indeed a Banshee ? If it is, maybe its EEPROM is corrupted .

Assuming you are running Windows 95 , 98 , 98SE or ME , could you run this application https://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/pci_list.html and post back a screenshot for the VGA adapter info ?

Reply 2 of 3, by havli

Posted on 2020-04-06, 20:16

havli Offline

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Do you have monitor driver installed? I recall Voodoo3 requires this... so perhaps Banshee is similar in this regard.

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Reply 3 of 3, by Con 2 botones

Posted on 2020-04-06, 23:48

Con 2 botones Offline

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Posts: 258
Joined: 2019-08-26, 13:35
Location: Montevideo, Uruguay

Hello again and thank to you both!

The monitor driver is the one Windows 98Se installs by default, no issues there.
I am certain it is a Voodoo Banshee. So does show the image captured from the application you, "darry", suggested:

I noticed the "Direct X - not initialized" message below within the application, so I went and carried out the usual "dxdiag" test. Which completed just fine.

So I decided to reinstall the motherboard chipset drivers and as weird as it may sound, I was able to change resolution and color depth properly after that. I could launch "Blood 2" too without issues.
I then decided to do a full fresh install of the OS. The reference drivers (Voodoo Banshee V1.04.00) continue to not being recognized (unless you would force them, which is not the idea). The "Evolution 0.9" drivers install fine though. Weird.
Still, I´ll take it as a "solved" for the time being.

Thank you both very much for your time!

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