AGP cards are mapped in by the BIOS. The OS has no concept of an AGP card. Although the driver might as far as 3D goes. But for 2D and VGA...you could use it with DOS. I have used a variety of AGP cards with DOS.

No AGP feature will work (the Millenium has none, afaik, anyway), so Windows will just see it as a standard VGA card.

Atom Ant wrote:

-Matrox Millenium 4MB AGP (yes I'd like to use the AGP version, if the motherboard has that slot)

As squiggly and derSammler said, there's noo need to worry about AGP. 😀
If I'm not mistaken, AGP is basically a super set of PCI (among other things AGP has GART, a higher bus speed, etc).
An AGP graphics card will appear as a normal PCI device to AGP-unaware OSes.
Even older systems, such as DOS/Win3.1, without any knowledge about PCI, will still see it as a generic VGA device.
On such old OSes, the PCI-/AGP-specific parts (addresses, INTs, etc) are handled by the vendor drivers (if installed).

Atom Ant wrote:

However my concern is that I read somewhere AGP support is only from Windows 95 Service Pack 2.
If so is there any trick or mod to make work with Windows 3.1?

You're lucky I've seen Matrox drivers for Windows 3.1. 😀
One of them is a graphics driver for Millennium/Mystique, maybe it works.
http://win31.de/edrivers.htm

I use an AGP Trio3D/2x with 3.11 like others said it works fine. If your card also has 3x drivers then even better - you won't be stuck with the generic vga driver.

On the topic of 3.1 drivers, you might get lucky and can use Super VGA or XGA modes.

Cool system specs.

We are currently in the process of building something similar 😉

Looking at the specs: is there a reason why you don't install Win95? With a 233-MMX and Voodoo1, you can play lots of games from up to 1997/8 without problems. But not when using Win3.1. The hardware is a bit wasted for that, especially the 6MB Voodoo1, which not a single 3dfx-ready DOS game can make use of (they are designed for 4 MB). Not that there are that many DOS games with 3dfx support at all, anyway. Same goes for MMX, which neither DOS nor Win3.1 can use. Such a system screams for games like pod, NFS2SE, and the like.

Thanks for the lots of reply and really good to know the AGP card will work, hopefully with a hihger resolution, once the proper driver is installed. The Win31.de seems also an useful website.

DerSammler:
It is also my concern how well can i utilize my Canopus Voodoo 1 6MB with Win 3.1? And NFS II SE is on my list to play. Loosing MMX also not good, i did not think for that. However for Windows 95 I plan to build an another computer with Voodoo2 SLI and Pentium II overdrive 333MHz.

To be honest, using a P5A with a Pentium MMX seems like a bit of a waste. The P5A is one of the highly prized Super Socket 7 ATX boards. Whereas most Socket 7 boards will be capable of working with a Pentium MMX and their 66MHz FSB, most cannot make full use of a K6-2+ or K6-3+ and their 100MHz FSB.

Additionally, as mentioned above, a Pentium MMX tends to be more at home on a Windows 95 or 98 system.

In effect, you're using an OS from 1992 on a CPU from 1996, on a motherboard from 1998. This is certainly your choice, but it may introduce some compatibility issues.

derSammler wrote:

Looking at the specs: is there a reason why you don't install Win95? With a 233-MMX and Voodoo1, you can play lots of games from up to 1997/8 without problems. But not when using Win3.1. The hardware is a bit wasted for that, especially the 6MB Voodoo1, which not a single 3dfx-ready DOS game can make use of (they are designed for 4 MB). Not that there are that many DOS games with 3dfx support at all, anyway. Same goes for MMX, which neither DOS nor Win3.1 can use. Such a system screams for games like pod, NFS2SE, and the like.

But I already have a Celeron-433 for Windows 95, so replacing Windows 3.11 with 95 on my Pentium-233 build will result in having two Windows 95 rigs and zero Windows 3.1x rigs. Should I just order a Pentium non-MMX 200 MHz CPU and get it over with?

[realizes that the P1 rig is dual-booting with Windows NT which supports programs that benefit from MMX CPUs] Yeah, I'm not so sure, I guess I should've thought twice before posting. 😦

Atom Ant wrote:

DerSammler:
It is also my concern how well can i utilize my Canopus Voodoo 1 6MB with Win 3.1? And NFS II SE is on my list to play. Loosing MMX also not good, i did not think for that. However for Windows 95 I plan to build an another computer with Voodoo2 SLI and Pentium II overdrive 333MHz.

If you insist on running both Windows 3.1x and 95 on one system, what's stopping you from dual-booting? There are some DOS games that support the Voodoo but nothing for Windows 3.x, so it's not a total waste for DOS, I believe the Windows 95 boot loader allows you to dual-boot with a previous version of DOS so if you have MS-DOS 6.22 w/ Windows 3.1x on one partition and 95 on another, you have the option of dual-booting so you'll have an excellent system for covering two generations of Windows games.

There is no 3dfx game for Windows 3.1 at all? Would not be possible to add the directx 5 into windows 3.1 and run the NFS 2?

I am thinking now also to drop the mmx option and just buy a regualar pentium 200mhz. My other system which is pentium 2 overdrive that knows the mmx anyway. However i think i would stay with Asus P5A, it helps to bring the best out of Pentium 200mhz.

There is no 3dfx game for Windows 3.1 at all? Would not be possible to add the directx 5 into windows 3.1 and run the NFS 2?

No, DirectX is Win95 and up only. Win3.x had GDI and WinG (predecessor of DirectX) only. Also, Windows 3.1 can not execute 32-bit programs anyway, unless you install Win32s - but even that won't allow you to run Win95 games.

I see ,thanks for the reply. I need to rethink now lots of things, because basically Windows 3.1 cannot run any more games than DOS.