As in, it sits on the initial text mode window?

Had that before. Never figured out why, sometimes (most times) it did this, sometimes not. The Virge patch makes it worse but you aren't using that. I always suspected it to be something to do with memory management on certain PCs. I never had this issue in the vanilla game with older hardware, but my Duron used to do this quite often - it also, and I am sure I captured it on VHS, used to end up stuck in tunnels. By that I mean you'd hit the exit to the tunnel only for the game to lock for a moment before you found yourself flying in the opposite direction in the tunnel. The only option was to keep flying as fast as possible into the exit viewport until it let you leave or the game crashed. There are some very strange pieces of code in Terminal Velocity.

It works fine in DOS though, using a Pentium 3 1.13 GHz

Yeah, funny thing was, it always did.

This is indeed an issue tied with Frame Buffer Posted Write. On slower systems like the K6-2/3 this option hampers performance when disabled (under Windows mostly). The issue usually disappears as soon as SVGA modes are used and I've encountered it in multiple games such as Doom, Duke Nukem 3D and Terra Nova.

If there's no BIOS option for it, I'm not sure what else you could do to fix this issue 🙁.

Maybe some software like TweakBIOS would allow to tweak those options?

alexanrs wrote:

Maybe some software like TweakBIOS would allow to tweak those options?

TweakBIOS did allow me to change the options and it worked correctly. Everything is now in working order. And there was only a 1-5 FPS impact in some games, so all is well now.

Glad it works. Too bad the freeware version doesn't let you save settings and apply them automatically at startup/batch files.

Good to know, I might grab this in the future! Have fun!

alexanrs wrote:

Glad it works. Too bad the freeware version doesn't let you save settings and apply them automatically at startup/batch files.

Do you have any idea where to buy TweakBIOS at?

Still having issues here, any game at 320x200 has this issue.

Yep, I had the issue with other 320x200 games too. I recently downclocked the CPU and pulled the Voodoo3 out of my system to intentionally slow it down for older games. Currently using onboard Cirrus Logic 1MB and the issue is gone. Sorry I don't have a better answer. 🙁

It only happens in Windows and not pure DOS?

Something that did the opposite of FastVid/MTRRLFBE and disabled VGA write combining in Windows could quite possibly help.

MTRRLFBE (http://rayer.g6.cz/programm/programe.htm#MTRRLFBE) is supposed to work under Windows as well as DOS. Maybe try some of the slower modes like uncached and write-through there.

1SYNTAX:
2MTRRLFBE area mode
3
4example: MTRRLFBE LFB WC
5
6area, is the address range to apply mode change: 
7"VGA" - VGA range.
8"LFB" - Linear Frame Buffer range.
9"USER:base_address:size" - base_address is a hexa-number, size is in kB.
10
11mode choices: 
12"UC" - UnCached.
13"WP" - Write-Protected.
14"WT" - Write-Through.
15"WB" - Write-Back.
16"WC" - Write-Combining.

It happens in both.

I noticed something similar. But it is mostly my PCI based Voodoo 3 that tends to show these horizontal distortions. These factors trigger or worsen it:
- Lower resolutions like 320x200
- Lowering the clock of the Voodoo 3, through BIOS modding or the Windows tweak tool
- Lowering the system's FSB speed. (IIRC)
So, doing the opposite helps.

I have a 133 MHz bus speed and it's at stock clocks.

MrEWhite wrote:

It happens in both.

I should mention that DOS mode after loading Windows kinda still counts as Windows in this case. Guess BIOS mods are the only way to go besides that.

I'll have to get my hands on a newer 3DFX card then. Damn.

I know this is an old thread but I have been struggling with this issue as well, on my PCI Voodoo 3 3000. Horizontal lines skipping around in Duke3D vga mode, and a staticy image in vesa mode. Also, lines in Quake. The lines are fixed by using MTRRLFBE in either 'WP' or 'WT' mode. Uncached and 'WC' exhibit the issue, 'WB' crashes the game on startup.

Duke3D vesa mode is still staticky, unfortunately. Updating the BIOS as suggested in another thread did not help.

Oetker wrote on 2019-12-08, 19:46:

I know this is an old thread but I have been struggling with this issue as well, on my PCI Voodoo 3 3000. Horizontal lines skipping around in Duke3D vga mode, and a staticy image in vesa mode. Also, lines in Quake. The lines are fixed by using MTRRLFBE in either 'WP' or 'WT' mode. Uncached and 'WC' exhibit the issue, 'WB' crashes the game on startup.

Duke3D vesa mode is still staticky, unfortunately. Updating the BIOS as suggested in another thread did not help.

I was looking into another issue, came across this thread, and wanted to let you all know that the voodoo 3 bios tweak that fixes this was found earlier this year: Re: Voodoo 3 2000 Artifacts and noisy video.

wiibur wrote on 2023-08-28, 03:36:

Oetker wrote on 2019-12-08, 19:46:

I know this is an old thread but I have been struggling with this issue as well, on my PCI Voodoo 3 3000. Horizontal lines skipping around in Duke3D vga mode, and a staticy image in vesa mode. Also, lines in Quake. The lines are fixed by using MTRRLFBE in either 'WP' or 'WT' mode. Uncached and 'WC' exhibit the issue, 'WB' crashes the game on startup.

Duke3D vesa mode is still staticky, unfortunately. Updating the BIOS as suggested in another thread did not help.

I was looking into another issue, came across this thread, and wanted to let you all know that the voodoo 3 bios tweak that fixes this was found earlier this year: Re: Voodoo 3 2000 Artifacts and noisy video.

Thanks!