Yep. With a low to mid 486 the videos lag but the game is totally playable. I had a 486SX33 when that game got out. Thank god i got a pirated version that did not have the videos. They are really not that essential. It is not like it is CnC.

Cyberdyne wrote on 2025-01-15, 21:34:

Yep. With a low to mid 486 the videos lag but the game is totally playable. I had a 486SX33 when that game got out. Thank god i got a pirated version that did not have the videos. They are really not that essential. It is not like it is CnC.

I'm not talking about the videos, those are actually fine, but rather the gameplay itself

Cyberdyne wrote on 2025-01-15, 21:34:

Yep. With a low to mid 486 the videos lag but the game is totally playable. I had a 486SX33 when that game got out.

I was playing it on Cx486SLC2-50 (16 bit external bus, essentially a glorified 386sx) and 4MB ram. The dos4gw stub had to be replaced with pmode/w, and warcraft is launched under OS/2 for virtual memory. It was playable 😀

I've played it many years on my dx2/66 with onboard 2MB ATI Mach 64 VLB and 8MB or greater RAM

The demo battle that plays if the title screen is left active would do as you say. Play for a second, pause for a second, the continue like normal but just that first time (as if it was still loading in the background)
but I don't remember it happing during actual gameplay, Is it during the campaign or skirmish mode? maybe it happens with higher number of units on the map?

I also have always played with a no-cd crack, maybe the CD drive is causing the issue?

the game runs well on basically the same hardware in this video, better than i would have expected for an SVGA title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9mgKH0giTU

did you check if smartdrive has any effect? one difference is the chipset - look into whether sis 496/497 is said to perform better than your UMC chipset and check memory/cache timings. regarding the VGA: the TGUI9400CXi is apparently the low-end model but should support interleaving with 2 megabytes in theory, which the card in the video has, though no performance difference was found here: Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations (though, i have to wonder if that could be down to a badly configured VBIOS...)

auron wrote on 2025-01-16, 06:11:

the game runs well on basically the same hardware in this video, better than i would have expected for an SVGA title: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9mgKH0giTU

did you check if smartdrive has any effect? one difference is the chipset - look into whether sis 496/497 is said to perform better than your UMC chipset and check memory/cache timings. regarding the VGA: the TGUI9400CXi is apparently the low-end model but should support interleaving with 2 megabytes in theory, which the card in the video has, though no performance difference was found here: Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations (though, i have to wonder if that could be down to a badly configured VBIOS...)

Now that you mention it I had a think about that UMC card performances, and tried cabling everything to the Prime 2C, no difference. No difference if I use MIDI or CD audio. I've also tried to tweak jumpers on my Trident, but apparently with no results.

One other thing to point out is right now the mobo has VLB jumpers set to >= 33MHz and 0 Wait State, and that's the only way to make both the VLB cards to work.

I will try XVESA benchmark as soon as I get the chance anyway...

chinny22 wrote on 2025-01-16, 05:29:

I've played it many years on my dx2/66 with onboard 2MB ATI Mach 64 VLB and 8MB or greater RAM […]
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I've played it many years on my dx2/66 with onboard 2MB ATI Mach 64 VLB and 8MB or greater RAM

The demo battle that plays if the title screen is left active would do as you say. Play for a second, pause for a second, the continue like normal but just that first time (as if it was still loading in the background)
but I don't remember it happing during actual gameplay, Is it during the campaign or skirmish mode? maybe it happens with higher number of units on the map?

I also have always played with a no-cd crack, maybe the CD drive is causing the issue?

I'll check with the demo battle, but the issue is happening from the very first mission where there are really no units, and the map is literally just a square, so it doesn't seem to me a "rendering" problem. But who knows.

fix_metal wrote on 2025-01-16, 07:22:

Now that you mention it I had a think about that UMC card performances, and tried cabling everything to the Prime 2C, no difference. No difference if I use MIDI or CD audio. I've also tried to tweak jumpers on my Trident, but apparently with no results.

i was talking about the motherboard chipset, which according to your link is a UMC UM8498/8496. by the way, the board in the video is also kitted out with 1 MB L2 cache, which should also make a bit of a difference.

you could comment to the guy who made that video and ask him to run some benchmark, then compare results.

Is it possible to try a different storage device? When the game is freezing, is the HDD LED fully on?

Are you playing the campaign or custom maps? Campaign should be fine on a DX2, but custom maps with tons of units running around could bring faster machines to their knees. The worst was when an AI player would get their peasants into a 'traffic jam' trying to get into their gold mine...

I'll try to reply everyone in a single post, so:

1. Smartdrive: I have to check, maybe I've disabled it along the way, can't recall
2. About the SIS vs UMC chipset: well, I can check, but that would mean finding another 486 motherboard if that's the culprit
3. I'm playing plain campaign maps, single player
4. I would have a different HDD available, but I would need to get it out of another PC, copy DOS there, etc. I'll check about the I/O Wait (led status), thanks for the idea

Hopefully I've replied everyone. Thanks for the brainstorming, I'll update with new findings 😀

I'm playing right now the game, and it now works flawlessly. I've just REM'd smartdrive and it's working properly now. It was loaded in upper memory (LH) with some switches, which have been tweaked by memmaker. Here's the exact loading string:

LH /L:0;2,45456 /S C:\DOS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X 2048 128

?!?!

what happens when you load smartdrive low? it's an extender game so that line is pointless in this case anyway.

auron wrote on 2025-01-17, 19:33:

what happens when you load smartdrive low? it's an extender game so that line is pointless in this case anyway.

Same behaviour. Seems the only way is not loading it entirely. I just wonder why though.

I'd generally not have smartdrv loaded by default, unless you have a proven case where it would actually help.

Some related discussion:
Wing Commander 3 on 486 DX2 66 problem
Re: Dos 6 conventional memory tricks

There may be ways to tweak smartdrv or not load smartdrv for your cdrom, if caching that is the problem. And ways to tweak mscdex. Are you using the cdrom for the game? I guess it can be the hard disk or cdrom interacting with smartdrv that is the issue, but since there is music in the game that could be playing while this is happening, I am thinking cdrom.

the3dfxdude wrote on 2025-01-17, 23:50:

I'd generally not have smartdrv loaded by default, unless you have a proven case where it would actually help. […]
Show full quote

I'd generally not have smartdrv loaded by default, unless you have a proven case where it would actually help.

Some related discussion:
Wing Commander 3 on 486 DX2 66 problem
Re: Dos 6 conventional memory tricks

There may be ways to tweak smartdrv or not load smartdrv for your cdrom, if caching that is the problem. And ways to tweak mscdex. Are you using the cdrom for the game? I guess it can be the hard disk or cdrom interacting with smartdrv that is the issue, but since there is music in the game that could be playing while this is happening, I am thinking cdrom.

I'll have a look at that post, thanks. When I installed my setup smartdrv got configured automatically, and I never had a thought about it.
Cd playback was my first concern, but even with midi audio and no music playback the game turned out to be lagging. I guess I'll just leave it commented out.