Jade Falcon thanks for standing up for me.

Jade Falcon wrote:

DOSfan1994 wrote:

Does it only work for Windows?

No, Xwindows is apart of Linux/UNIX and not Windows. I believe it's what displays the gui or something. I'm not all that up on *unix system.

Not strictly true. There are many packages which allow Windows GDI to be used as a display for X (an X server in the local lingo). For example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xming

X is similar to the very low level plumbing of Windows used for drawing primitive stuff like lines, boxes, and text onto the screen. GUIs, applications, and higher level libraries are built on top of this. What the linked driver does is provide a way for programs which can use X to draw these things to the framebuffer of a Voodoo 2 (i.e. an X server for the Voodoo 2). X also has extensions which a driver can enable (for compositing, OpenGL support, etc), but I doubt the driver supports many of those.

If someone were to Frankenstein a Windows 2D driver together for a Voodoo 2, I would expect much the same. Virtually no acceleration would be available -- the Voodoo 2 would simply paint pixels or, at best, a texture onto the screen as ordered by the driver. This means the driver would need to be fairly complex and, as a result, slow.

There is a beta driver:
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=1459

Can X work on Windows 95?

Of course. Exceed X server used to run on Win95 and NT.

Does it use Voodoo2 ? Does it work like a GDI?

leileilol wrote:

Don't feed the troll.

🤣 🤣 🤣

DOSfan1994 wrote:

Does it use Voodoo2 ? Does it work like a GDI?

No and no. You cannot use the XWindows Voodoo2 driver in a Windows based XWindows system. It only works on Linux/Unix. The only way to get some 2D support in Windows (and therefore some GDI, although GDI can be done entirely in software) is for someone to have written a native Windows driver for Voodoo2 that acts like a display driver. As far as I know no such thing exists.

Unless you modify it or if there is some hidden 2D features that we do not know about.

gdjacobs wrote:

If someone were to Frankenstein a Windows 2D driver together for a Voodoo 2, I would expect much the same. Virtually no acceleration would be available -- the Voodoo 2 would simply paint pixels or, at best, a texture onto the screen as ordered by the driver. This means the driver would need to be fairly complex and, as a result, slow.

If I recall correctly, I actually tried installing a Windows NT 4 Voodoo 2 driver on Windows 2000 and actually got 2D display with Windows GUI elements displayed properly (Windows were moveable, text typed into a command prompt displayed correctly, etc) except for a very washed-out look (wrong gamma most likely). I was running a dual input monitor (Viewsonic PT771), not the Voodoo's pass-through, and actually checked the input the monitor was set to in the monitor GUI to make sure I wasn't hallucinating .

This was a long time, so some of the details are a bit vague in my mind and my account may be missing a possibly significant detail, but I am quite certain about the result (Windows 2000 GUI on Voodoo 2).

Can it be the same for Windows 95?

DOSfan1994 wrote:

Can it be the same for Windows 95?

AFAIK, unless there are some exceptions I am not aware of, Windows NT 4 drivers cannot be used under any version of Windows 9x (95, 95 OSR2, 98, 98SE , ME) .

As for my Windows 2000 experience with the Voodoo 2 in 2D, it might have been with a beta Windows 2000 driver :

http://www.falconfly.de/info/readme-v2-win2k-10000b.txt

What are the limitations of the special Voodoo2 drivers? --------------------------------------------------------- The Voodoo2 b […]
Show full quote

What are the limitations of the special Voodoo2 drivers?
---------------------------------------------------------
The Voodoo2 board will show up in the display applet's settings pane just
like a mainstream 2d/3d board. Unlike mainstream 2d/3d boards, Voodoo2 does
not have any VGA hardware, so it cannot be used as the only display adapter
in a system. Other caveats of these drivers include:

and

4) 2D corruption on desktop. This only happens with GDI calls and it is caused by the lack of byte enabled hardware on Voodoo2. […]
Show full quote

4) 2D corruption on desktop. This only happens with GDI calls and it is
caused by the lack of byte enabled hardware on Voodoo2. Since the final
release of Windows 2000 will not support Voodoo2 as a desktop device, the
GDI driver for Beta3 has only simple 2d acceleration with all other calls
being handled by the DIB engine. When the DIB engine writes individual bytes
to the Voodoo2 frame buffer, garbage will be written into the paired byte
location.

mwdmeyer wrote:

At some point in time I was able to make Windows 2000 use the Voodoo 2 to display the desktop, some specific driver allowed this. Worked fine if I remember correctly. Not sure how 😀

That mirrors my experience. Sorry I accidentally skipped your post while initially perusing this thread.

darry wrote:

AFAIK, unless there are some exceptions I am not aware of, Windows NT 4 drivers cannot be used under any version of Windows 9x ( […]
Show full quote

DOSfan1994 wrote:

Can it be the same for Windows 95?

AFAIK, unless there are some exceptions I am not aware of, Windows NT 4 drivers cannot be used under any version of Windows 9x (95, 95 OSR2, 98, 98SE , ME) .

As for my Windows 2000 experience with the Voodoo 2 in 2D, it might have been with a beta Windows 2000 driver :

http://www.falconfly.de/info/readme-v2-win2k-10000b.txt

What are the limitations of the special Voodoo2 drivers? --------------------------------------------------------- The Voodoo2 b […]
Show full quote

What are the limitations of the special Voodoo2 drivers?
---------------------------------------------------------
The Voodoo2 board will show up in the display applet's settings pane just
like a mainstream 2d/3d board. Unlike mainstream 2d/3d boards, Voodoo2 does
not have any VGA hardware, so it cannot be used as the only display adapter
in a system. Other caveats of these drivers include:

and

4) 2D corruption on desktop. This only happens with GDI calls and it is caused by the lack of byte enabled hardware on Voodoo2. […]
Show full quote

4) 2D corruption on desktop. This only happens with GDI calls and it is
caused by the lack of byte enabled hardware on Voodoo2. Since the final
release of Windows 2000 will not support Voodoo2 as a desktop device, the
GDI driver for Beta3 has only simple 2d acceleration with all other calls
being handled by the DIB engine. When the DIB engine writes individual bytes
to the Voodoo2 frame buffer, garbage will be written into the paired byte
location.

So you are saying that Voodoo 2 can't be 2D on Windows 95?

leileilol wrote:

Don't feed the troll.

This was sage advice me thinks.

DOSfan1994 wrote:

So you are saying that Voodoo 2 can't be 2D on Windows 95?

More or less.

Not that it's impossible, but it's pointless.

Jade Falcon wrote:

DOSfan1994 wrote:

So you are saying that Voodoo 2 can't be 2D on Windows 95?

More or less.

What do you mean?

1) Nobody's written a driver
2) Although not impossible, a Voodoo 2 would be highly impractical as a 2D card

Yeah on Windows 2000 it works like a 2D card but on Windows 95 it's not.