Grub3r wrote:

Hey to you all! […]
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Hey to you all!

Im playing some dos games on a p200 mmx and 96mb ram.

The OS is w95 but booting into ms dos on startup.

Sometimes the graphics slow down for a moment.

This happens in most of games.(blackthorne, normality, descent is very slow on other modes than 320x200)

Do I miss the drivers in ms dos? Do videocards have dos drivers at all?
The card in particular is a SiS 6215 which is installed witj default drivers in win95( which I dont think matters or does it as this is MS dos?)

I have couple of other card lying around, would it help to switch to another videocard?

Thanks.

Yes switching the video card would help a lot to check if it is the graphics card the one to blame.

.legaCy wrote:

Grub3r wrote:

Hey to you all! […]
Show full quote

Hey to you all!

Im playing some dos games on a p200 mmx and 96mb ram.

The OS is w95 but booting into ms dos on startup.

Sometimes the graphics slow down for a moment.

This happens in most of games.(blackthorne, normality, descent is very slow on other modes than 320x200)

Do I miss the drivers in ms dos? Do videocards have dos drivers at all?
The card in particular is a SiS 6215 which is installed witj default drivers in win95( which I dont think matters or does it as this is MS dos?)

I have couple of other card lying around, would it help to switch to another videocard?

Thanks.

Yes switching the video card would help a lot to check if it is the graphics card the one to blame.

Thanks .legaCy

Is there a need of installing ideocard drivers in DOS or MS DOS?

Yes, there is generally no such thing as a DOS graphics driver. A good card for that system might be a good PCI 2D card such as an S3 Trio64 or something, plus a Voodoo card for 3D stuff if you're so inclined.

Generally not, but it depends on the card and the game. Some obscure accelerators (eg Weitek 9000 accelerators on things like the Diamond Viper) need drivers for SVGA, some cards need Univbe VESA stuff. But take a bog-standard S3 Virge (one of the easiest chips to find) and you should be OK for just about anything with no extra messing around. Performance is also good - definitely better than that SiS chip.

Edit: if you're only doing DOS, don't bother with a Voodoo. There are very few DOS games that can use it.

Grub3r wrote:

Sometimes the graphics slow down for a moment.

What do you mean the graphics slow? Are you saying everything else like sound and music and input all run at full speed? Or does the entire game slow down? How much RAM do you have? Is your hard disk making funny noises?

Check the PCI DOS graphics cards benchmark thread in my signature. It's a breakdown of many of the most popular and fast graphics chipsets in DOS.

For dos on my experience changing hardware it don't seem to worry about the video, some games may be a little finicky with the configuration but DOS itself will not require anything special to be done.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Yes, there is generally no such thing as a DOS graphics driver. A good card for that system might be a good PCI 2D card such as an S3 Trio64 or something, plus a Voodoo card for 3D stuff if you're so inclined.

Okay, I think I got a S3 in a drawer somewhere.

.legaCy wrote:

For dos on my experience changing hardware it don't seem to worry about the video, some games may be a little finicky with the configuration but DOS itself will not require anything special to be done.

thanks for the info.

clueless1 wrote:

Check the PCI DOS graphics cards benchmark thread in my signature. It's a breakdown of many of the most popular and fast graphics chipsets in DOS.

Cool, will do.

squiggly wrote:

Grub3r wrote:

Sometimes the graphics slow down for a moment.

What do you mean the graphics slow? Are you saying everything else like sound and music and input all run at full speed? Or does the entire game slow down? How much RAM do you have? Is your hard disk making funny noises?

If I remember correctly only graphics slow down, but I have a suspicion that the harddrive may have a bad sector or two.

how do you guys test hardrdives, connect to a moder computers and run some linux distro with harddrive tools?

scandisk c: is slow but does the trick.

dionb wrote:

scandisk c: is slow but does the trick.

Ok, will try the scandisk.

You also have probably too much ram for a Pentium. Most motherboards can't cache the ram above 64MB. You should diminish the amount to 64MB (you will be CPU-limited way before 64MB of ram becomes a problem)