I think that's on the cd, there's a tsdupgrade folder . Will try it. Many, many thanks to my friend who supplied a 3db pci and Stealth II S220!
Having real hardware on hand is very very useful.
Asking offnote, how convenient is it to transport such legacy hardware to Colombo? I assume they weren't distributed in the county in the 90s, at least not as much that can be preserved for future?
I think that's on the cd, there's a tsdupgrade folder . Will try it. Many, many thanks to my friend who supplied a 3db pci and Stealth II S220!
Having real hardware on hand is very very useful.
Asking offnote, how convenient is it to transport such legacy hardware to Colombo? I assume they weren't distributed in the county in the 90s, at least not as much that can be preserved for future?
They were shipped in the post. I think customs don't tax them because they have VGA connectors, so they see it as old junk. Add an HDMI or DisplayPort connector and they'll tax the excrement out of you. They do open everything though and reseal them.
Buying cheap new video cards from the US is only cheap until it gets to customs.
[EDIT] I've never had anything stolen, though with high value items, they do gear up for a bribe.[/EDIT]
[EDIT2] No Rendition boards weren't common here. The Matrox m3D and later the 8MB Voodoo2 and the 16 MB Banshee showed up towards the tail end of the 90s. The VIRGE was everywhere though. [/EDIT2]
i believe those legacy , that is rare hardware nowadays , never sold on ukraine back in 90s too.
I never saw any sign , and i hunting from 2017 and still don't have Creative3DBlaster VLB, NV1 , Paradise Tasmania 3D.
never saw 3d blaster PCI on sale and nor PowerVR any. yes rendition verite is available back in 90s but also very limited/rare.
often i found S3 Virge, ATI 3D Rage, s3 savage.
bottom line is matrox mustique , a little bit often appears than verite.
And Matrox Impression , i never saw it in sale .
Sorry for offtopic
sharangadwrote on 2024-11-09, 11:41:They were shipped in the post. I think customs don't tax them because they have VGA connectors, so they see it as old junk. Add […] Show full quote
They were shipped in the post. I think customs don't tax them because they have VGA connectors, so they see it as old junk. Add an HDMI or DisplayPort connector and they'll tax the excrement out of you. They do open everything though and reseal them.
Buying cheap new video cards from the US is only cheap until it gets to customs.
[EDIT] I've never had anything stolen, though with high value items, they do gear up for a bribe.[/EDIT]
[EDIT2] No Rendition boards weren't common here. The Matrox m3D and later the 8MB Voodoo2 and the 16 MB Banshee showed up towards the tail end of the 90s. The VIRGE was everywhere though. [/EDIT2]
Back when eBay operated in India, I saw the shipping took upto 150% extra charge. Then comes the customs, at least in the mid 2000s they charged upto 66% for then components (eg. PS2).
Place where I live, computers were largely used for office or medium scale business work, so high class graphics card weren't taken up as an option, neither were people knowledged well on their use, just that they were display components.
Back when eBay operated in India, I saw the shipping took upto 150% extra charge. Then comes the customs, at least in the mid 2000s they charged upto 66% for then components (eg. PS2).
Place where I live, computers were largely used for office or medium scale business work, so high class graphics card weren't taken up as an option, neither were people knowledged well on their use, just that they were display components.
In theory pc parts aren't or at least weren't taxed, because they were considered essential. In practice it really depends on the customs officer and over here, even back in the 90s they knew what was what. They had lists and lists of known pc parts.
After the economic meltdown they started levying large taxes on things like gpus, anything more than a basic adapter.
I don't really know how this is happening but Toshinden with RReady is reporting "3D Blaster Detected." I'll post a video early tomorrow morning or after midnight (if I'm still awake) here when the free data period kicks in. It's all front buffer rendering so full screen capture doesn't work. I captured it at 2560x1440 in a window. Here's a screenshot:
The intro vids and menu render in VESA modes. Managed to fix a few missing bits of RReady to support 8- bit mem writes to VGA RAM.
The game isn't playable and complains about a missing CD. I do have the 3D Blaster software CD (Disc 2) in drive D but it doesn't seem to detect it.
[EDIT] I think the menus at least should work on a stock V1000, even if it's not a 3d blaster pci.[/EDIT]
Weird about CD not present, at least you can use command line switch so demo will play often, or just wait for demo.
Figured out what was wrong with the missing cd. The tsdupgd patch contains the binary and cgl driver for the retail game. The cd I have is the Creative demo disc which is supposed to come with the card. It does come with a full copy of Rebel Moon. The demo disc is enough for development.
The 3d section crashes in the demo. It changes the mode to 640x480/15 and reads the pci registers for device ids, VRAM Phys Address and a few more things and then inexplicably crashes.
The 3dblaster under Win98se is unstable with Rendition or Creative drivers. The only thing that works reliably are the Win98se Microsoft supplied drivers. Unfortunately rredline doesn't work. Trying to run an rredline app produces a missing Rts.dll error. [EDIT] different errors with different games. [/EDIT]
OK. I think I've sorted out a lot of the BIOS stuff.
Now there's a lot of work ahead. Low level register writes have begun. This seems to require emulating the Rendition board. Interrupts are enabled on the Rendition board and at the moment Dosbox-Rendition doesn't support it. Well it did and I disabled it because none of the SPDY3D apps used it. It might be possible to do all this or it might in fact be easier to disassemble the CGL files and replace them with new code or even hook into Dosbox-Rendition C++ functions without pfaffing about with the CGL.
This would let us maybe someday run CGL on V2000 hardware as well. It's a lot easier dealing with x86 assembler than messing around with V1000 registers.
The initial sequence if anyone is interested is at the end of the attached file. The bit at the top is just VESA and INT 1Ah BIOS calls. It's a bit verbose, but looks like this:
I think the source code dump from the CGL thread had a CGL driver loading routine. That's my next step.
[EDIT] I managed to fix the "21st Century Digital Boy" 32 bit screen writes bug. It turned out to be a bilinear filtering issue when the front buffer's written to a little bit at a time. Tomb Raider had issues with it as well, but I had a workaround for that. But it doesn't seem to work for 32 bit. I don't think there's any need for another video.
And here's the trace in more meaningful language running on a 3D Blaster:
1OEM Name: Creative Labs 3D Blaster PCI 2Detected possible 3D Blaster PC at bus # 8310F3C7h, device number 2 3Write to port 0072 [Mode], byte 00 4Write to port 0043 [MemEndian], byte 00 5ReadByteFromPort A048 6Debug is 02 7Write to port 0048 [Debug], byte 02 8Write to port 0044 [Intr], byte 00 9Write to port 0046 [IntrEn], byte 00 10ReadByteFromPort A048 11Debug is 02 12Write to port 0060 [StateIndex], byte 80 13Write to port 0064 [StateData], byte 00 14Write to port 0065 [StateData], byte 00 15Write to port 0066 [StateData], byte FE 16Write to port 0067 [StateData], byte 76 17ReadByteFromPort A067 18DecodeIR[3] is 76 19ReadByteFromPort A066 20DecodeIR[2] is 00 21ReadByteFromPort A065 22DecodeIR[1] is 00 23ReadByteFromPort A064 24DecodeIR[0] is 00 25Write to port 0048 [Debug], byte 06 26ReadByteFromPort A067 27DecodeIR[3] is 60 28ReadByteFromPort A066 29DecodeIR[2] is 00 30ReadByteFromPort A065 31DecodeIR[1] is 09 32ReadByteFromPort A064 33DecodeIR[0] is 80 34ReadByteFromPort A048 35Debug is 02
Does anyone know what the Decode IR register is? StateIndex is set to 0x80 which is DecodeIR and then read StateData (DecodeIR now).
The Debug register, when bit 1 is set (i.e. value 2) is halted, bit 2 (value 4) is single step for a single instruction. It's 6 when both are set (bits 1 & 2).
I'm guessing it's directly writing an instruction or something. But opcode 0x76 is a load immediate 16 bit to register 00xFE (http://vogonsdrivers.com/getfile.php?fileid=324&menustate=0). If the opcode is in fact 0x76, why does DecodeIR change afterwards?
Questions, questions.
Replicating the state changes is the best bet, but without understanding what's going on, it's going to be a bit difficult.
[EDIT] Register 0xFE appears to be the program link register.
Sorry for blurting out my thoughts like this, but it does help.[/EDIT]
19 November 2024
-Frame Generation support for select 30 fps DOS apps to run at 60 fps. (interpolate=1 in Rendition.cfg)
-Windowed mode support (this will allow alternate frame generation through "Lossless Scaling" (Steam, not-supplied) when a custom resolution less than the screen is used. Knocking one pixel off the horizontal resolution (i.e. 1919x1080x60 for 1080p) will work without any scaling artifacts in Lossless Scaling.
- Restores generic VESA support for non-Rendition apps in Dosbox-Rendition, such as setup.exe in TR1, for audio config.
-Adds Rendition 32 bit mode VESA support for CGL demo “21s Century Digital Boy.” The CGL 3D sections do not work currently.
It'll be live on the Microsoft store by tomorrow.
Last edited by sharangad on 2024-11-21, 04:52. Edited 2 times in total.
@sharangad - may I just say I'm blown away by this Rendition wrapper - at last! I just tested your alpha release and my old CART Rendition fired right up in all it's primal 3D glory. One of the reasons I got into retro PCs was to run this old beauty so I know what it looks and feels like on original hardware. Now, the wrapper finally weds the advantages and convenience of modern systems as a good wrapper should- perfect - nGlide/dgV2... and Rendition.
Besides the original Rendition tracks I also tested my stable of new and upgraded ICR2 tracks and 6 of 30 loaded and ran and looked great. Not bad ...I had assumed none of it would. But it's clear that while some community created and upgraded content runs as-is, modellers still need to tweak a lot of it to run the wrapper. I see that they (and you) are discussing tech over at the ICR2.net forum - seems mip count and size are the challenge. But phew! Finally a Rendition wrapper - and smooth as silk... Cheers!
Last edited by tincup on 2024-11-26, 16:25. Edited 1 time in total.
