DXInfo was the tool used in earlier versions.

what i was thinking of here was likely dxtool. easier to read than dxinfo IMO and comes with dx5 at least, it is really another version of the setup tool in dx3.0a. notably, it allows to turn off d3d and directdraw acceleration (d3d only in the 3.0a version). but, these tools did not allow yet to force a directdraw refresh rate, like dxdiag would later do.

There is a DirectX control panel that could be manually installed in Win9x. Just copied into the Windows control panels directory. I think it appeared with DirectX 5, but it may have been DirectX 3.

that file mentions directmusic so it must be from dx6.1 or 6.1a, file date fits as well. it does run even on a dx3 install but some of the tabs were blank, audio in my case. interestingly, it has options not only to force directdraw refresh but also to show FPS. however none of that actually worked for me.

i updated that dx3 to dx5, incidentally this resulted in a garbled screen in fallout even though that game ran with the 1996 driver and dx3 before. it worked after updating the driver so a new directx version can require new drivers even for older dx versions. anyway, the aforementioned options still don't work, might need a dx6 or 6.1 install.

there is also an older version of that directx.cpl dated aug 26 1998, it can be obtained from the german dx5.2 package from the falconfly archive (international release seems to be hard to find and did any game even require that specific version?). the control panel is still in english though. it differs from the 1999 one in not mentioning directmusic and lacking the refresh override tab.