Usually I use a 1/4 inch drive ratchet and a socket that fits the post and have had no issues with removing them over the years. Just got to use just enough torque to break it loose

I have a 1/4 inch ratchet, but I do not have a socket that small.

While I haven't made any progress on the GF2, I did get USB drives and my Parallel Port Iomega ZIP drive working! Just like the floppy disk, the ZIP drive and disks have been in storage for 20 years. Thankfully, no clicks of death in any of the 2 100MB and 4 250 MB disks.

enaiel wrote on 2020-06-09, 16:37:

Yeah, understood. The P3 is not the best machine for DOS.

P3 is very good for DOS except it doesn't offer multiplier and fine throttle control. But since it is not too fast, using cache and throttle is good enough. 😀

enaiel wrote on 2020-06-09, 16:37:

I had previously mentioned that my GF2, which would be more compatible than my 9600XT, had broken a screw and separated from it's bracket. I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to fix it?

I would use a small diameter drill bit to first make a small hole in the broken screw, drilling in from the back plate side. Then slowly enlarge it using larger diameter bits, until the broken screw can be taken off. Alternatively, can replace the VGA connector with one from a dead VGA card, but this requires good soldering/desoldering skill.

I will get back to that GF2 when I'm feeling a bit more brave. But first I want to spend some time "testing" games on this PC.

I have 34 games - ranging from years 1989 to 1996. Out of which, 24 worked out of the box with absolutely no problems. The games with issues are below:

• Stunts - 4D Driving - Crashes on startup.
• Test Drive III - Works with throttle 5.
• Gods - Works with throttle 3, but crashes often.
• Lemmings - Works, but screen flickers.
• 3D Cyber Puck - Works, but needs XMS.
• 3 Point Basketball - Crashes on startup.
• Allan Border’s Cricket - Works with throttle 5.
• Lotus - Works with throttle 4.
• Aladdin - Works, but needs XMS<16M, so had to use EatXMS.
• Dark Forces - Works, but crashes often.

The biggest disappointments are Gods, Lemmings and Dark Forces, since these are some of my favourite games. Not sure what more I can try at this point to get them to work.

I found some additional CDs of Win95 games that also had DOS executables, and faced a couple more issues:

• Quake - Hangs on exit.
• Jazz Jackrabbit - Got 'Runtime error 200', so ran TPPatch, also needs XMS<16M.

Since hanging on exit seemed to be related to memory management, I decided to finally try @keenmaster486's suggestion right in the fist page to use Jemm386+HimemX, and lo and behold - no more crashes while running, or screen flickering, and especially no more hanging on exit! Even though I am running on a P3, I can run all my games with no issues! All except Dark Forces. It's the one game that I really want to play, that still keeps crashing. Its still memory management related, because now it crashes with a Jemm386 error. Anyone able to run Dark Forces with EMS/XMS? Any suggestions?

Fixed the Dark Forces crashes - turns out I had to "eat" even more XMS to make free XMS<16M. Plays beautifully now.

And guess what just came in the mail:

Reminds me I also need to find another YMF724/744 for my Optiplex GX110..

My happiness was short-lived. While the genuine OPL3 FM sounds awesome, no combination of Himem+Emm386 or HimemX+Jemm386 seems to be able to get dsdma to work. If it doesn't crash outright, it makes other programs crash after running it.

Are there some magic parameters that I am missing? I have disabled pretty much everything in my BIOS. Do I need to change the PCI slot? Any suggestions welcome.

For i815 chipper, your south bridge should be ICH2, but could you confirm by looking at your motherboard or show us a picture of it? Also please show us a screenshot of setupds /s after booting up.

Also, are you using setupds1.exe from the drivers pack I shared earlier? Please also take a look at the howto.txt file inside which I wrote.

I did read your howto.txt and I am using the setupds1.exe from your driver package.

The southbridge is definitely ICH2 (82801) from the computer manual and SMB confirms it. Its not clear from the motherboard because there's a big sticker on the chip, right on the number.

The problem is DMA is set to disable when setupds executes. It should be a number. Could you list the content of ds.ini? You can also try modifying it and change firsttry=1, then run setupds1 without /s. Also try running other setupdsX : setupds2 /s etc, without dsdma loaded. The objective is to get DMA enable, otherwise running dsdma will be futile.

Don't despair as usually it needs a bit of tweaking.

The ini file is identical to the one in your package. I haven't given up yet. I just don't have much time today, I will try the other options you mentioned tomorrow.

I just checked the technical reference manual of your system again. The south bridge is 82801AA which is ICH instead of ICH2, so you'll need to use the original setupds.exe instead of setupds1.exe. If I remember correctly, it should also support DDMA so you can either run setupds (without the /s) to get into the configuration page and let it configures and modifies ds.ini, or you could modify ds.ini yourself by changing DMAMODE=1. After that everything should be working fine. If it does support DDMA you won't be needing the dsdma TSR.

If that is true, it is great news because then I can get sound even without Emm386.

I tried setting DMAMODE=1 and running setupds.exe /s, and it no longer says DMA: disabled, but I still don't get any sound.

Then I tried running just setupds. exe, and in the configuration utility all settings regarding DMA and IRQ are disabled. The tests only show FM and native PCI 16 bit sound and has disabled SB 8 bit sound.

Ok it sounds like DDMA is not working. You can change back DMAMODE=3 (or better to copy the ds.ini from the zip file if you've let setupds modify ds.ini), then run setupds /s, and load dsdma. I think it should be alright.

Btw you don't need ymfirq in autoexec.bat, as the PCI slot is already assigning irq 5.

I tried DMAMODE=3, but then setupds[1-5].exe gives DMA:disable.

Are there other DMA modes I can try?

You need to use the original setupds.exe instead of the modded ones (setupds1..5). This is because setupds checks the south bridge to determine what it needs to do. The modded ones just try to fool it by inserting the IDs of the new south bridges into the program (thus replacing the IDs of the old ones). The original setupds.exe is already supporting ICH0 and ICH, while the modded ones do not.

So...
1. Extract ds.ini from the zip file again, overwriting your current one.
2. In autoexec.bat, use setupds.exe (instead of setupdsm.exe) to initialize the card
3. Follow by dsdma.

Like this:

Adding drivers to autoexec.bat:
** Assuming the drivers are in C:\DS-XG, add the following to autoexec.bat:

1REM ** Yamaha YMF744 drivers **
2SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 T4
3CD C:\DS-XG
4C:\DS-XG\SETUPDS.EXE /S
5REM The following line is needed only when irq needs to be changed
6REM C:\DS-XG\YMFIRQ 5
7C:\DS-XG\DSDMA
8CD C:\

enaiel wrote on 2020-06-11, 03:17:

I will get back to that GF2 when I'm feeling a bit more brave. But first I want to spend some time "testing" games on this PC. […]
Show full quote

I will get back to that GF2 when I'm feeling a bit more brave. But first I want to spend some time "testing" games on this PC.

I have 34 games - ranging from years 1989 to 1996. Out of which, 24 worked out of the box with absolutely no problems. The games with issues are below:

• Stunts - 4D Driving - Crashes on startup.
• Test Drive III - Works with throttle 5.
• Gods - Works with throttle 3, but crashes often.
• Lemmings - Works, but screen flickers.
• 3D Cyber Puck - Works, but needs XMS.
• 3 Point Basketball - Crashes on startup.
• Allan Border’s Cricket - Works with throttle 5.
• Lotus - Works with throttle 4.
• Aladdin - Works, but needs XMS<16M, so had to use EatXMS.
• Dark Forces - Works, but crashes often.

The biggest disappointments are Gods, Lemmings and Dark Forces, since these are some of my favourite games. Not sure what more I can try at this point to get them to work.

Dark forces run fine on p3 cpus. Played it on my p3 550 Mhz and 1ghz.

@kalohimal

I tried it, and I get DMA:1, but every audio program crashes after running dsdma.

MKT_Gundam wrote on 2020-06-14, 16:14:

Dark forces run fine on p3 cpus. Played it on my p3 550 Mhz and 1ghz.

Indeed it has no CPU speed issues, but it doesn't like EMM386 one bit. Constantly crashes for me since I have to use EMM386 for audio.