Installing XP (or any OS of the NT family) on a retro system like that is your first mistake of expecting a dos gaming machine from it....

Don't install XP if you want to run DOS games on there. In fact, with specs like that just don't run XP on there period. Use 98SE instead.

i use a boot floppy disk that reboots my pc into pure dos mode,and the problem remains,so its not strictly related to win xp...i had win 98 se but i also had many issues with drivers and such

What chipset does the motherboard have?

Zaxxon wrote:

so i was wondering if there's a generic cesa driver for either win xp or dos,or even better,a vesa driver made by creative.

The closest thing to a "generic vesa driver" is UniVBE (aka Scitech Display Doctor). There are some projects in the works for a "generic vesa driver" for Win9x/NT, too, but there is no reason these would help you get a DOS game like Battlespire running.

Zaxxon wrote:

i had win 98 se but i also had many issues with drivers and such

Switching to XP is not a solution – not with a Voodoo3 and a Celeron.

so with a voodoo 3 anda celeron wich os would you suggest?will swtiching back to win 98 solve the vesa issue by itself?keep in mind that the main internal hd is a puny 4gb one,and all my games reisdes on the external hd..which win98 just don't like...any windows game i triedto run from an external hd in w98,always ended up with various crashes etc.

the mobo is Azza PT-DVBX(2),btw.i'm tempted to go bacjk to 98 anywy,since the glide drivers are not recognized a they should on xp

Zaxxon wrote:

will swtiching back to win 98 solve the vesa issue by itself?

I'm not even sure what the issue is.

keep in mind that the main internal hd is a puny 4gb one,and all my games reisdes on the external hd..which win98 just don't like...

So get a bigger internal drive! They're cheap enough these days. If your external HD is just an IDE drive in an enclosure, then why not put that drive inside your computer, and get another external drive?

any windows game i triedto run from an external hd in w98,always ended up with various crashes etc.

Try the "Native USB" drivers from http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/43096-maximus … tive-usb-ver20/ .

If your external HD is just an IDE drive in an enclosure

its SATA,or i would 've done that already 😜

the vesa issue is bcasically that any dos game that requires vesa support won't run,and if they do,all i get is a garbled image of what the game's supposed to look like

the link to the page you posted before isn't hosting the file anymore...i already found some time ago,some usb drivers for w98,and it works as in recognize the devices,but w98 won't let any game installed there to run.

Zaxxon wrote:

its SATA,or i would 've done that already 😜

There are IDE-to-SATA adapters, and I understand they work reasonably well – but cheap as they are, you should still be able to find a drive larger than 4 GB for that price.

the vesa issue is bcasically that any dos game that requires vesa support won't run,and if they do,all i get is a garbled image of what the game's supposed to look like

Maybe the VESAFIX utility from VESA Fix Utility Listing (for old video cards) will work?

the link to the page you posted before isn't hosting the file anymore...i already found some time ago,some usb drivers for w98,and it works as in recognize the devices,but w98 won't let any game installed there to run.

They're not necessarily all the same, and I have the impression that those are particularly reliable. Try http://www.mdgx.com/web.htm#NUS .

Maybe the VESAFIX utility from viewtopic.php?t=15190 will work?

tried that already,none of them works...

Voodoo3 is much after the development of Scitech Display Doctor and UniVBE so don't expect support for that.

You really need a retro system to play retro games well. External drives, SATA, etc. are things these systems never had. Trying to get modern things to work with ancient hardware will always be a problem. I mean, you can't even make partitions larger than 8gb in FAT16, so I don't know how an SATA drive is helping the situation.

Get an old 8GB drive (SCSI preferably), get an adaptec SCSI controller, install DOS and start from there.

leileilol wrote:

Voodoo3 is much after the development of Scitech Display Doctor and UniVBE so don't expect support for that.

I thought that the Voodoo 3 was supposed to have a really good VESA implementation built in.

A bit of poking around suggests that Battlespire is unusual in that it requires 15bpp modes.
Re: Help with building retro PC

Have you installed the patch?
http://patches-scrolls.de/patch/542/20325

VBE15bpp from that other thread might also help.

What other games have you had problems with?

Samir wrote:

I mean, you can't even make partitions larger than 8gb in FAT16, so I don't know how an SATA drive is helping the situation.

Get an old 8GB drive (SCSI preferably), get an adaptec SCSI controller, install DOS and start from there.

Begging your pardon, sir, but the maximum FAT16 partition size is 2 GB. (Or 4 GB in some very, very obscure cases.) Also, if one is using MS-DOS mode in Windows 98, the vast majority of DOS games tend to work just fine on FAT32 drives. And whatever merits SCSI may have over IDE, I wouldn't count enhanced compatibility with older games among them.

at the moment i'm so broke that i can't even afford an ide hd(and here in Italy,even on the second hand market they cost around 20€),so before swtiching back to win98,i wanted to be absolutely sure that there's a way to run games from the external hd without windows complaining about it

Jorpho wrote:

Begging your pardon, sir, but the maximum FAT16 partition size is 2 GB. (Or 4 GB in some very, very obscure cases.) Also, if one is using MS-DOS mode in Windows 98, the vast majority of DOS games tend to work just fine on FAT32 drives. And whatever merits SCSI may have over IDE, I wouldn't count enhanced compatibility with older games among them.

Ah yes, I'm sorry abou that! You're right as it is 2GB for FAT16. I was thinking of the logical drive limit for FDISK under DOS6. 😵

I wouldn't doubt that many games work just fine with DOS mode under 98/98se is you're using FAT32, but they were never designed to do that, and that's when odd issues pop up.

As far as SCSI and IDE, SCSI was just more reliable as they were more 'business-class' drives with a higher MTBF. I still have some 2nd generation Seagate Cheetah drives that even after being off for a couple of years, worked fine and exhibited zero bit rot. Conversely, an 80gb IDE that was off for just a year failed right after I got all the data off of it. It would suck to set up everything on your system just the way you need it to have and IDE drive failure cause you to do it all over again. 🙁

Zaxxon wrote:

at the moment i'm so broke that i can't even afford an ide hd(and here in Italy,even on the second hand market they cost around 20€),so before swtiching back to win98,i wanted to be absolutely sure that there's a way to run games from the external hd without windows complaining about it

The best bet you would have then would be to use a SATA to IDE/ATA converter connected directly to the motherboard. I've used these and they seem to be completely hardware compatible, so your 98 setup should then work without issue.

yep they're about 4-5 euros so its more affordable.the thing i'm interested right now is another one though...is to make the damn glide drivers recognized by window xp..some games that are 3dfx only,like the first turok and also quake 2,recognizes the glide perfectly.other games that SUPPORTS glide like hexen 2 instead complains that it requires a 3dfx card..i spent an evening isntalling over 10 different drivers,both originals and third party ones...no avail..

Zaxxon wrote:

yep they're about 4-5 euros so its more affordable.the thing i'm interested right now is another one though...is to make the damn glide drivers recognized by window xp..some games that are 3dfx only,like the first turok and also quake 2,recognizes the glide perfectly.other games that SUPPORTS glide like hexen 2 instead complains that it requires a 3dfx card..i spent an evening isntalling over 10 different drivers,both originals and third party ones...no avail..

I never spent too much time gaming back then, and only played with video drivers a little bit, so I'm unfortunately not going to be too much help here.

But I can say that if you're trying to find drivers that would help bridge a DOS to XP gap, you're still barking up the wrong tree and need to just get 98 running instead.