Gotta admit, if I knew how to code vxds, I'd be tempted to try making 9x drivers for modern cards.

It's interesting what performane rating you get with MBF 2.04 running in high resolution (the demo benchmark I mean). Also from the photo you seem to be running an impressive array of beige diskette drives. 😉 Where does the floppy on the front panel plug into among all those new shiny boxes?

myne wrote on 2024-10-07, 03:12:

Gotta admit, if I knew how to code vxds, I'd be tempted to try making 9x drivers for modern cards.

May be challenging as you may not have the documentation of the modern cards.

ludicrous_peridot wrote on 2024-10-07, 17:25:

It's interesting what performane rating you get with MBF 2.04 running in high resolution (the demo benchmark I mean). Also from the photo you seem to be running an impressive array of beige diskette drives. 😉 Where does the floppy on the front panel plug into among all those new shiny boxes?

I did a check based on your suggestion.

"Timed 3836 gametics in 131 realtics = 1024.9 frames per second" according to the bench script. It was so quick that it ended before I knew it even started. 😂

I only have one 3.5" floppy drive. I used a USB adapter to convert the 34-pin floppy interface to the USB interface. Then I connect it to the motherboard’s internal USB 2.0 header. I have a photo of that in my blog post.

Nvidia cards dropped support for many modes a very long time ago. You won't be able to run any CGA/EGA game, not even VGA games like Gods. Only basic VGA. And the card doesn't give the monitor the correct aspect ratio, so on a 16:9 monitor you will get a stretched image. I would use a cheap Ati Rage 2XL as it has much better compat, and it can work via a PCIX to PCI bridge. It even has Win3.1 drivers.

wbahnassi wrote on 2024-10-08, 08:42:

Nvidia cards dropped support for many modes a very long time ago. You won't be able to run any CGA/EGA game, not even VGA games like Gods. Only basic VGA. And the card doesn't give the monitor the correct aspect ratio, so on a 16:9 monitor you will get a stretched image. I would use a cheap Ati Rage 2XL as it has much better compat, and it can work via a PCIX to PCI bridge. It even has Win3.1 drivers.

Yes you are correct. I did mention in my blog post that brief tests with other VESA modes and resolutions didn’t work so well. I will edit it to be clearer about CGA/EGA. In this example, I used a 5:4 monitor and the graphics card sized many games relatively well to match the monitor's native 5:4 resolution.

This is just for a fun experiment. I have other more period-correct vintage machines for my actual retro usage.