I tried using the Matrox g2+ (AKA g200) card instead of the Voodoo2 SLI cards, and I must say that it produced better results.

For instance, I can now play Jedi Knight at 1280x1024, and the game plays quite fast too.

Also, it's a huge improvement on playing this particular game using my Diamond Monster voodoo1 card, because I can only play this game @ 640x480, and it also produces unwanted graphical glitches such as some texture appearance problems.

I'm quite impressed with the g2+ (g200) card. ALso, I'm very sorry to say this, but I'm also a little disappointed with the Voodoo2 SLI cards. They aren't terribly fast, don't support high resolution, take up two extra PCI slots, and give off quite a bit of heat.

Best regards, Robert.

How about Red Guard? Have you managed to play the game with SLI enabled?

Davros wrote:

by g2+ you mean g200 ?
like the above poster said wasnt that fixed years ago

Apparently it was fixed, my bad. 😅

Regarding the "Red Guard" game, yes I'd love to see that game working in "SLI V2 mode". The alternative software rendering video option, using Bethesda's xngine technique, is nowhere as good as the 3dfx mode.

When I run this particular game with SLI enabled, the screen simply goes blank/black. I can get back to the windows desktop easily by pressing the "windows start key". If I disable SLI inside the "3dfx control panel", all is well again, and I can play the game using a single V2 card.

If I get this game to work in SLI mode, I'll let you know immediately.

Best regards, Robert.

retro games 100 wrote:

Regarding the "Red Guard" game, yes I'd love to see that game working in "SLI V2 mode".

I wonder if Voodoo3 fix can work on this case.

Re "Voodoo3 fix", I will try this as soon as I can, then report back with the results.

I just tried this "voodoo3 fix", and unfortunately it didn't work for me. What happened was, when the fix was applied, Redguard did not work with either SLI enabled or SLI disabled. In both cases, the game quickly "crashed-back" to the Windows desktop.

Does it work if you copy all glide*.* files to Redguard folder from latest Voodoo2 driver package?

Re: "Does it work if you copy all glide*.* files to Redguard folder from latest Voodoo2 driver package?"

I've just tried this. I tried running Redguard with SLI enabled - about 8 consecutive attempts at launching this game in fact. On one attempt, Redguard succeeded (at 800x600 resolution). All other attempts failed (using resolutions ranging from 640x480 up to 1024x768) -- Redguard just crashed-back back to the Desktop, or "froze" with a blank/black screen.

This particular test-run appears to show that Redguard is unstable with SLI enabled, even with the very latest voodoo2 or "voodoo3 fix" glide*.* driver files placed in the local Redguard folder.

Best regards, Robert.

any help

Q: When I start Red Guard in 3DFX mode, a black screen appears and the game never starts.

A:
First, make sure you have a 3DFX Voodoo I Voodoo Rush, or Voodoo 2 based video card installed in the computer. If the computer does not have a video card based on one of these three chipsets, please use the Software (Xengine) install.

If you do have a 3DFX Voodoo I, Voodoo Rush, or Voodoo II based video in the computer, then make sure the latest drivers for them are installed. You may also install the 3DFX reference drivers that are included on the Redguard Install CD-ROM using the instructions below.
- Insert the Red Guard Install CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive.
- Click Start, then Run, and type "X:Drivers", where X is the drive letter of the CD-ROM.
- Double click on the folder that matches the video card and operating system you have.
- Double click on the only file in the folder. Follow the on-screen instructions to install the driver. Restart the computer when prompted to.

Note that these drivers may be older than the drivers you have currently installed. However, these are the drivers that are known to work with Red Guard.

Hello Davros. THanks a lot for your help. Actually, the real Davros wouldn't be as helpful! 😉

I tried that advice and it definitely works for voodoo2 chipset-based cards, but unfortunately it's when you choose not to disable SLI mode that the problems begin. Unfortunately the drivers located on the Redguard install CD-ROM wasn't able to solve this specific "SLI mode problem".

Thanks anyway, best regards, Robert.

One other thing I noticed with the Matrox g2+ (g200) card was this -

I flashed its BIOS (from version 1.1 to the final version, 3.3), and I noticed that when I ran a DOS utility to detect the presence of VBE3, it said that this card had this VESA 3 standard. That is interesting, because there is a DOS utility called "gx00vbe" which is used to add VBE3 functionality to the Matrox g100/200/400 cards, but it seems this utility may not be necessary if you flash the Matrox card's BIOS to the latest final version, 3.3

Best regards, Robert.

I did some further tests with the 3dfx/voodoo "Redguard" game -

I removed the two "SLI-mode" Voodoo2 cards (and the PCI Matrox G2+ graphics card), and replaced them all with one Voodoo Banshee 16mb PCI card.

I then ran Redguard at three different resolutions (640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768) and they all worked. However, I noticed that there were two problems -

i) Quite often the text (when you interact with characters you see text at the bottom of the screen) was "messed-up" looking - you quite often couldn't read it. Also, "loading-screen progress bars" were also "messed-up" looking.

ii) I also noticed some very minor texture problems with some of the characters, particularly faces.

I did some a test with the 3dfx/voodoo "Hexen II" game, this time using a Voodoo Banshee card.

Using this command line .bat batchfile -

glh2.exe -width 1280 -height 1024 -bpp 16

You can run it @ 1280x1024, which does look better than running it @ 1024x768 using "SLI voodoo2s" (at its max resolution).

Unfortunately I don't have a voodoo3 card, otherwise I'd test this out to a] see if it works (it should do), and b] if it looks noticeably faster/smoother.

retro games 100 wrote:

Hello Davros. THanks a lot for your help. Actually, the real Davros wouldn't be as helpful! 😉

OI I am the real Davros 😠

Perhaps you should have added one of these econs too!

😈

🤣

retro games 100 wrote:

Voodoo Banshee 16mb PCI card. […]
Show full quote

Voodoo Banshee 16mb PCI card.

I then ran Redguard at three different resolutions (640x480, 800x600 and 1024x768) and they all worked. However, I noticed that there were two problems -

i) Quite often the text (when you interact with characters you see text at the bottom of the screen) was "messed-up" looking - you quite often couldn't read it. Also, "loading-screen progress bars" were also "messed-up" looking.

ii) I also noticed some very minor texture problems with some of the characters, particularly faces.

Did you use the Voodoo3 fix? Banshee and Voodoo3 are based on the same architecture (Voodoo3 is actually "Banshee 2" from technical standpoint), and the fix is supposed to alleviate the problems you described above.

I'm sorry, but on this particular occasion I did not use the "voodoo3 fix". Unfortunately a problem very quickly arose during my Banshee testing - the card appeared to be significantly faulty. For example, when the PC booted-up, soon afterwards the screen started to look very messed-up looking (weird ascii text with all strange colours all over the screen for instance), even just using the BIOS screen this strange appearance would arise. Also, I got very frequent lock-ups. So I had to remove the Banshee from my rig because it was making everything way too unstable.

I don't think it was any driver problem. I just think the card was damaged in some way - perhaps it was overheating or something?

Pity that. 🙁

Whats your BIOS? My S3 Trio64v+ does that on AMIBIOS (10/10/94 core)

On POST, my BIOS displays -

AMIBIOS American Megatrends (c) 1997, revision 3.1

(I flashed it to the final version, 3.1)