Updates,

Thought some of the stuttering may be disk related so ran an old version of ATTO Disk benchmark to see if the SD Adaptor may be not doing its job and it seems to scale from 10 MB/sec for the "in the KB's" size file transfers to about 25MB/s for the max size 8MB transfer which considering the IDE controller on this motherboard is ATA ULTRA 33 these results seem in keeping with expectations ?

Ran Quake 2 timedemo for demo1.dm2 and got 25FPS at 640x480 ?

And now for some reason even though nothing has changed I cant seem to run UT99 for more then 5 mins with out a hard lock ?

Try installing the VIA 4in1 version 4.43 chipset drivers instead. First completely uninstall the 5.24a drivers.

I recall a thread on Vogons a while back where someone tested the different versions on the different VIA chipsets and some did show better performance than others.

Also, since you're running Windows ME, make sure that System Restore is disabled - I would recommend you go with Windows 98SE instead.

jesolo wrote on 2020-05-16, 11:59:

Try installing the VIA 4in1 version 4.43 chipset drivers instead. First completely uninstall the 5.24a drivers.

I recall a thread on Vogons a while back where someone tested the different versions on the different VIA chipsets and some did show better performance than others.

Also, since you're running Windows ME, make sure that System Restore is disabled - I would recommend you go with Windows 98SE instead.

I may want to try the stock drivers for the Voodoo to it seems so how would I uninstall the existing Amigamerlin drivers and the VIA drivers completely exactly ?

Can not do 98SE for USB reasons .. see my thread on these very forums about that.

To uninstall the VIA 4in1 drivers is easy - just go to Add/Remove Programs under Control Panel. Then, do a complete reboot and install the Via 4in1 4.43 drivers.
To be honest, I've never tried the Amigamerlin drivers - my understanding is that these are installed via the Device Manager? If so, just go to the Device Manager and manually uninstall the driver from there. Then, just run the Voodoo3 installation and install the stock drivers.

To enable USB support under Windows 98SE you can try:

• The "Maximus Decim Native USB Drivers ver.3.3" for Win98SE (the file name is called NUSB33e) - I've had mixed results with this one - or,
• you can extract the USBStack.exe drivers from the lastest unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack 3.x installation package and just run that - I've found that this one works with practically all of my USB flash drives and portable USB drives (provided it's been formatted with FAT16 or FAT32). Other USB devices should also work, but I've never tried to install that many USB devices with my Windows 98SE installations.

I've attached the USBStack drivers from the version 3.34 Windows 98SE Unofficial Service Pack.
If you want to extract these yourself, you don't have to install the entire Service Pack. Just use 7-zip (or something similar) to extract the USBStack drivers. You'll find it within the SP3.CAB file.
I wish to point out that the USBStack drivers are not installed by default even if you install the Unofficial Service Pack. You have to run this manually.

What I would recommend, if you do use Windows 98SE, is to install the Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack 2.1a (just the Main Updates). This mostly includes all the official patches released by Microsoft in one package.

jesolo wrote on 2020-05-16, 12:57:

To uninstall the VIA 4in1 drivers is easy - just go to Add/Remove Programs under Control Panel. Then, do a complete reboot and […]
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To uninstall the VIA 4in1 drivers is easy - just go to Add/Remove Programs under Control Panel. Then, do a complete reboot and install the Via 4in1 4.43 drivers.
To be honest, I've never tried the Amigamerlin drivers - my understanding is that these are installed via the Device Manager? If so, just go to the Device Manager and manually uninstall the driver from there. Then, just run the Voodoo3 installation and install the stock drivers.

To enable USB support under Windows 98SE you can try:

• The "Maximus Decim Native USB Drivers ver.3.3" for Win98SE (the file name is called NUSB33e) - I've had mixed results with this one - or,
• you can extract the USBStack.exe drivers from the lastest unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack 3.x installation package and just run that - I've found that this one works with practically all of my USB flash drives and portable USB drives (provided it's been formatted with FAT16 or FAT32). Other USB devices should also work, but I've never tried to install that many USB devices with my Windows 98SE installations.

I've attached the USBStack drivers from the version 3.34 Windows 98SE Unofficial Service Pack.
If you want to extract these yourself, you don't have to install the entire Service Pack. Just use 7-zip (or something similar) to extract the USBStack drivers. You'll find it within the SP3.CAB file.
I wish to point out that the USBStack drivers are not installed by default even if you install the Unofficial Service Pack. You have to run this manually.

What I would recommend, if you do use Windows 98SE, is to install the Unofficial Windows 98SE Service Pack 2.1a (just the Main Updates). This mostly includes all the official patches released by Microsoft in one package.

Seems I made a mistake and I do indeed have the 4.43 drivers installed after all.

I have tried everything and anything to get USB working how I want it on 98SE/ME over the corse of the last 4 days (See: Windows 98SE and USB, a tale of woe..) and as of right now I have things working with ME on the USB side how I want them so I will stick with ME unless it becomes VERY clear that ME is at fault for any other problems I may have..

I did a thing and managed to get 98SE running with USB.... but earlier in the day on ME and now in 98SE UT99 hard locks after a few mins of bot match play, this only has happened today ? With all the issues I have had up until this point the stability of the system under stress has never been an issue so why now .. I have not changed a thing hardware or bios wise ?