Riboflavin wrote:

But BACK to the 440BX motherboard... I may be a newb, but I can see when off-topicness is starting to happen. 😉

I'm happy to say I got Redguard to work tonight. Any luck with the Voodoo 3 mobo?

*sigh* Well folks my attempt at winning the ATC6254M mobo auction on eBay didn't work out!

Some german guy put an amount on it that was a bit too high for my easy-on-the-wallet retro gaming PC intentions.

I guess I'll resume the lookout for candidates towards my Win 9x retro gaming machine - hopefully any one of those highly rated 440BX mobo units with ample ISA slots (e.g. Abit BE6/BF6/BH6/BX6, Aopen 6BXC, Asus P2B/P3B, MSI MS-6163).

At least I'm now a bit better informed about various retro PC systems & components than I was 2 weeks ago!!! 😀

Disabling the L2 cache is too painful to endure, slower than playable for me actually. It's even worse when in Windows. The sound card's (in this case, an AWE64) buffers spit all over the place with a lower pitch as well.

slipkord wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Yes, Origin's games is always my biggest headache too. Even Wing Commander 2 is a PITA when being ran on Pentium 100. What is the best way to slow down Origin's games, then? Is there anything out there better than Moslo? 😢

I believe there was an old thread that Stiletto wrote on VOGONS years ago, which is nearly identical to a round-up of various slowdown utilities: (http://www.tawmis.com/collector/Utilities/Slo … nUtilities.html).

Thanks!

slipkord wrote:

Kreshna, w.r.t. Origin's Wing Commander 1 & 2 games, I've read a webpage that suggest disabling the Pentium 100's L2 cache? Apparently this guy says doing so made his P 200 behave like a 286, and this foregoes the need to use Mo'Slo.

Will Google for it.

Riboflavin wrote:

HAHAHA! How do you get Wing Commander to run correctly? Believe me... I tried EVERYTHING... including WORKING FOR ORIGIN TECH SUPPORT!

😳

Riboflavin wrote:

No... there's no freekin way to get these games to work properly on a fast machine in the real world.

Even with other slowdown utils like Bremze?

Riboflavin wrote:

I'm happy to say I got Redguard to work tonight.

Wait, with the Voodoo3? What are the environment variables?

(Did you know the Ultima Collection box set released by EA had a licensed version of Moslo on it? )

Did you also know that its version of Ultima II is broken?

The problem with the Soyo motherboard is that it is very expensive. Also, I never really had a Pentium 4 system, so the hardware is unfamiliar to me. On the other hand, a system with a 3.06GHz processor, a fast Geforce card and 1GB of RAM should be able to run any game that does not require Windows XP without slowdown.

Ultima VII and VIII doesn't scroll smoothly with DOSBox, it always pauses once every time a screen is shifted, regardless of settings or cycles. DOSBox would be perfect for the games but for this problem.

Wow! I forgot about Ultima II not working. That's a blast from the past -it was a source of much chagrin where I worked. I got an Ultima Collection box as a souvenir from my time there. Thanks for reminding me, useful if I ever reinstall it.

Man there were problems at EA tech support. Oh... here's something you might find interesting. It was either Dune 2000 or Emperor: Battle for Dune... one of those two games had a problem with Norton Antivirus. Basically if Norton was on your system, the game wouldn't run... But as phone techs we couldn't tell the customer that another company's software was at fault. Company policy.

I gave so many "hints" about what may be wrong when I got those calls. Gads. Now I'm out of the company! Ha!

Hello World! Dune problems? Uninstall Norton! WAHAHAHAHA!

But back on the subjects:

Even with other slowdown utils like Bremze?

Well, considering Bremze instantly reboots my machine when I try and run it, um... not for me 😊 .

I haven't tried all those slowdown programs on that page, however. I went through half a dozen. It was a few years ago, but I remember Turbo, Bremze, and Moslo were among them. I just remember each slowdown program (that worked) slowed down some parts and not others. It's really difficult. I wish EA paid them enough to rewrite/port the whole thing. They certainly didn't hesitate to re-release everything they could, and leave the burdens of their cheapness on the tech support department. 😠

Regarding Reguard,

Nope, it's a Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 1 I'm afraid. It's slipkord who was going to get a Voodoo3, I've got a Voodoo 2 in one machine and a original Voodoo 1 in the other.

It works nicely on both those tho. I'm (hopefully) getting a couple of Banshee cards in the mail soon, so if anyone is interested I can write about the game compatibility with it.

-Riboflavin

Riboflavin wrote:

Well, considering Bremze instantly reboots my machine when I try and run it, um... not for me 😊 .

I haven't tried all those slowdown programs on that page, however. I went through half a dozen. It was a few years ago, but I remember Turbo, Bremze, and Moslo were among them. I just remember each slowdown program (that worked) slowed down some parts and not others. It's really difficult. I wish EA paid them enough to rewrite/port the whole thing. They certainly didn't hesitate to re-release everything they could, and leave the burdens of their cheapness on the tech support department. 😠

I see.Well, at least there's Exult for U7 series. My biggest concern is actually Strike Commander though --it gave me some weird error message when I tried to play it with Thrustmaster F-16 FLCS / WCS Mark II / RCS combo; something like 'overflow' or such. Indeed I played it without slow down, but it is a Pentium 100! 😢

Riboflavin wrote:

Regarding Reguard, […]
Show full quote

Regarding Reguard,

Nope, it's a Voodoo 2 and Voodoo 1 I'm afraid. It's slipkord who was going to get a Voodoo3, I've got a Voodoo 2 in one machine and a original Voodoo 1 in the other.

It works nicely on both those tho. I'm (hopefully) getting a couple of Banshee cards in the mail soon, so if anyone is interested I can write about the game compatibility with it.

-Riboflavin

Could you post the environment variable settings on this thread? I hope the thread could be our 'official Voodoo reference / guidelines' as well. 😀

I'll chime in with my 2 cents on this topic. I just recently built two BX motherboard based PC's for my newer DOS/older Win9x games. I have a post on Vogons with my specs for those computers. The nice thing about the ASUS P2B boards is they have great support for the Slotkets or Powerleap slot converters. See here http://homepage.hispeed.ch/rscheidegger/p2b_p … pgrade_faq.html
I have two such PC's. One a 1Ghz Coppermine and one a 1.4Ghz Tualatin.

Neither of these boxes are my main rig. I have an Athlon 64 for that, which will become a Core2Duo eventually. As much as I like my games to live in the past, I do have to keep up and live with the present.

IMO, most games fall into three categories.

1) Old DOS stuff that runs best on an old PC, with an ISA/VLB video card like a Tseng ET4000, Paradise, Cirrus Logic, S3, etc. A SB16 is a must.

2) Newer era DOS games and old Win9x *only* games that don't run on 2000 or XP. Most Glide and older DirectX 3-6 games fall into here. SB16 is okay, but a SB AWE64, Aureal or some PCI card with EAX/A3D is better.

3) Anything written that works on both 9x or XP, XP only, needs 3D, DirectX 9, all new games, OpenGL, etc. Generally the fastest PC you can afford.

Unless you have the hardware laying around for #1, it doesn't make sense to build one. Of course if this is your hobby and passion, then money is no object anyway so you'll rightly ignore my post. I tend to think only #2 and #3 are necessary, since #1 games can be run in DOSBox on #3. DOSBox will only get better. I have a lot faith in the developers. They may even break into some #2 DOS games assuming your #3 is fast enough.

Knowing that, I would concentrate on building a #2 if money was a factor. If you have the time, space and money to kill, then you wouldn't need to post here and you'd have all three. eBay is your friend.

-Robert

I'll see what I can do about enviorment varible postings here when I get home tonight. Hopefully the Banshees are finally here (I had to email the seller and pester him to ship a little).

I don't think I needed to use any enviornment variables for Reguard, it was the Glide driver version that made the difference between working on the voodoo 1 and 2.

Tomb Raider, however, is a bit more complicated. I finally figured out how to use it from within a game launcher also, which was tricky if you've ever tried setting enviornment variables within batch programs, that are, in turn, inside more batch files. Anyway, I hope I can explain that, and my solution (a nifty program called STRINGS) in detail soon.

Anyone EVER get Dreams to Reailty to work with anything a Voodoo 1? I'd love to figure out how or help find a solution, if anyone's up to the challenge.

Woah! 😳 For any Soyo ISA fans out there, there seems to be way more Pentium 4 3.06gig 533fsb processors available than there was when I was looking a year and a half ago! I found a few on Froogle for 88 bucks!