everything post 300mhz is too fast for i76

leileilol wrote:

everything post 300mhz is too fast for i76

Does slowdown like WinThrottle help?

..."System Shock 1 (yes, the CD version has 1024x768 resolution),"

The TTLG website has a patch for SYSTEM SHOCK to run at 1024x768 at 256 colors, but I am fairly certain that SYSTEM SHOCK vF1.6C never shipped with anything but 640x480 as the highest supported resolution.

Is your version of SYSTEM SHOCK a different release?

dvwjr

dvwjr wrote:

The TTLG website has a patch for SYSTEM SHOCK to run at 1024x768 at 256 colors, but I am fairly certain that SYSTEM SHOCK vF1.6C never shipped with anything but 640x480 as the highest supported resolution.

Are you sure? I've seen 1024x768 SS shots from back in March 1995.

My CD version has only 320x200 and 640x480.

leileilol wrote:

Are you sure? I've seen 1024x768 SS shots from back in March 1995.

There was support for VESA mode 105h (1024 x 768 x 256 colors) in the SYSTEM SHOCK source code, however the available 80486 and Pentium processors in the era of the SYSTEM SHOCK release months (Sept/Dec 1994) would have made it run like a slide show. 🤣 Therefore, that 1024x768 resolution was disabled by Looking Glass for version vF1.6C, though the text strings still exist. The last Beta never saw the 1024x768 resolution, however some publicity shots at 1024x768 were released.

This is what the enhanced PC CD-ROM version vF1.6C SYSTEM SHOCK looked like in late 1994, on a 80486 DOS-based PC workstation with 4MB RAM at the initial default VGA mode 13h (320x200 x256 colors) resolution:

Perhaps a bit heavily pixelated...
VGA mode 13h

System Shock
Medical Level
320x200 <-Click to enlarge

This is what the vX2.7N version of SYSTEM SHOCK looks like in late 2007, a 3.2GHz Pentium IV (640) WinXP based workstation with more than enough RAM for the NTVDM, using the VESA mode 107h (1280x1024 x256 colors) resolution:

Not so pixelated...
VESA mode 107h

System Shock
Medical Level
1280x1024 <-Click to enlarge

Of course, to get to these previously unsupported resolutions my sources tell me that the code needed a bit of 'modification'... 😁

VESA mode 105h

System Shock
Medical Level
1024x768 Video Menu <-Click to enlarge

dvwjr

dvwjr, I could get SS to run at 800x600 and 1024x768, using the patches I found on the TTLG forum, but I couldn't get 1280x1024 to work at all. Did they update the patches or something?

dvwjr wrote:

The TTLG website has a patch for SYSTEM SHOCK to run at 1024x768 at 256 colors, but I am fairly certain that SYSTEM SHOCK vF1.6C […]
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..."System Shock 1 (yes, the CD version has 1024x768 resolution),"

The TTLG website has a patch for SYSTEM SHOCK to run at 1024x768 at 256 colors, but I am fairly certain that SYSTEM SHOCK vF1.6C never shipped with anything but 640x480 as the highest supported resolution.

Is your version of SYSTEM SHOCK a different release?

dvwjr

Er, I'm not sure what version it is; it's just the CD version of System Shock and I can choose 1024x768. However, it runs like slideshow on P100.

Back to the topic; is 1.7GHz Northwood (albeit Celeron) too fast for an all-in-one retro rig? How about "speed-sensitive" games like Interstate 76? Can slowdown utilities like MoSlo or WinThrottle alleviate the problem?

Or should I better build my system based on 440BX motherboard instead of SY-845PE ISA?

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Back to the topic; is 1.7GHz Northwood (albeit Celeron) too fast for an all-in-one retro rig? How about "speed-sensitive" games like Interstate 76? Can slowdown utilities like MoSlo or WinThrottle alleviate the problem?

Or should I better build my system based on 440BX motherboard instead of SY-845PE ISA?

Since you quoted my article at the beginning of your topic, I would strongly urge sticking to the glorious BX. It should be able to run non TnL required games well. My alternative setup is a TNT2 Ultra with dual Voodoo 2 12MB SLI.

Great Hierophant wrote:

dvwjr, I could get SS to run at 800x600 and 1024x768, using the patches I found on the TTLG forum, but I couldn't get 1280x1024 to work at all. Did they update the patches or something?

The 1280x1024 screen-shots from SYSTEM SHOCK are not from a the hacked TTLG executable. From what I am told, by default the engine is not set up to handle 1280x1024 (or higher) resolutions, the in-game geometry goes out of whack. So no matter what video resolution above 1024x768 the TTLG author (ToxicFrog) hacks in - it won't work properly by default. It can, however be fixed. There is another very quiet team working on fixes and enhacements.

Here is some of their visible work:

VESA mode 105h:

System Shock
Main Menu
1024x768 <-Click to enlarge

System Shock
Options Menu
1024x768 <-Click to enlarge

KAN wrote:

Er, I'm not sure what version it is; it's just the CD version of System Shock and I can choose 1024x768. However, it runs like slideshow on P100.

If you are running SYSTEM SHOCK with 1024x768 as a displayed resolution selection then you must have patched your copy of vF1.6C with the TTLG patches. If you have time, you might wish to use the undocumented in-game SYSTEM SHOCK keystroke combination of "ALT-F7" which will display the version number of the copy of SYSTEM SHOCK currently executing. This will help track down if you have an unpatched version of SYSTEM SHOCK which natively supports 1024x768. That would be a big find...

As to your Retro-PC, I would second Great Hierophant's suggestion of an Intel 440BX based motherboard. I assembled a PC for an elementary school aged nephew based on AOpen AX6BC motherboard, which has an AGP slot, 5 PCI slots and two ISA 16-bit slots. One of the PCI slots shares with one of the ISA slots, only one usable at a time. The sound card is an AWE64 Gold. The CPU is an Intel 1.4GHz Tualatin (Celeron) hosted with a PowerLeap PL-iP3/T Slot-1 adapter (FSB=100MHz). With 768MB of RAM and Windows 98SE, it makes a fine current use PC which can also play most older DOS games in the Win98 hosted DOS 7.1 or directly in DOS 7.1 or with Dosbox v0.72 for very speed sensitive games.

Best of luck,

dvwjr

There is another very quiet team working on fixes and enhacements.

Keep us informed old boy, I would love to play SS again on at a native 1280x1024 resolution. It is not surprising that support for that resolution would not be built in, way too CPU intensive for the time. Also it is not a 4:3 ratio.

The CPU is an Intel 1.4GHz Tualatin (Celeron) hosted with a PowerLeap PL-iP3/T Slot-1 adapter (FSB=100MHz). With 768MB of RAM and Windows 98SE, it makes a fine current use PC which can also play most older DOS games in the Win98 hosted DOS 7.1 or directly in DOS 7.1 or with Dosbox v0.72 for very speed sensitive games.

Very interesting, I was unaware whether the Tulatins would work at all on a BX board. What kind of performance can they give in DOSBox?

Great Hierophant wrote:

Very interesting, I was unaware whether the Tulatins would work at all on a BX board. What kind of performance can they give in DOSBox?

I did some comparisons to other PCs running Dosbox with some DOS CPU measurement utilities and also Windows CPU measurement tools. The average results were that an Intel 1.4 GHz Tulatin (Celeron) CPU has about 60-65% of the speed of an Intel Pentium 4 2.4 GHz (Northwood) CPU.

The PowerLeap PL-iP3/T Slot-1 adapter makes the integration of the 1.4 GHz Tulatin CPU a no-brainer, it has all the CPU hardware support that the AOpen based 440BX motherboard lacks - it just works. There are a few jumpers (FSB and Voltage) and it comes with good instructions. I did have to change the AOpen default Slot 1 SEPP retainers for the URM (Universal Retention Mechanism) sold by PowerLeap so it took a little more efforrt than just dropping it in, but no big deal. You can still find the PowerLeap PL-iP3/T on eBay, it is the only Slot-1 adapter version that PowerLeap made that is worth purchasing.

dvwjr

I have a Upgradeware Slot-T adapter for using a P-IIIS server Tualatin on a 440BX-based Abit BF6. Works great. I also have the Powerleap adapter and it works too. The Powerleap adapter is a lot different though in that it has the voltage regulation onboard, meaning you can't change CPU voltage in BIOS.

What is gained by increasing the resolution in System Shock? The overlay is only improved in the text from 320x200. The text looks better in 320x400 and even better in 640x400. It does not look any better in 640x480, the overlay itself tends to look worse. The pixels are no longer the same shape at that resolution. The cyberspace areas gain noting, and the textures are too low resolution to gain anything as well. The only advantage to playing SS at a resolution greater than 640x400 is because your LCD has a native resolution of X*Y

Great Hierophant wrote:

The overlay is only improved in the text from 320x200. The text looks better in 320x400 and even better in 640x400. It does not look any better in 640x480, the overlay itself tends to look worse. The pixels are no longer the same shape at that resolution.

Well, one could always just keep the default 320x200 resolution to keep that September 1994 VGA only feel, I suppose... 🤣

I asked and got the following information:

The SYSTEM SHOCK code has the following font information:

1;  Font information built into GAMESCR.RES
2;   0x730 -  8x12x1bpp for 640x400 and 640x480
3;   0x731 - 12x23x1bpp for 1024x768 and 1280x1024
4;   0x732 - 34x32x8bpp for in-game numpads (RED)
5;   0x733 - 51x62x8bpp for in-game use     (RED)
6;   0x734 -  4x12x1bpp for 320x200 and 320x400
7;   0x735 - 12x16x1bpp for unused (possible 800x600)

So the fonts are scaled for various resolutions, so I think that the 1024x768 resolution could be useful given that it already has a dedicated, as yet unused font. The game code is self-scaling based on the default 320x200 (256 colors) resolution. Textures are 64x64 pixels on 128x128 tiles for RAM limited PCs (<=4.5MB), with 128x128 pixel textures on 128x128 tiles for the enhanced CD-ROM version vF1.6C with 8MB of RAM.

The 'overlay' defaults to 320x200 resolution on the enhanced PC CD-ROM version vF1.6C, it is a 640x480 on the Mac version. 🙄

We shall see...

dvwjr