...mhm, seems as if no one has a Parhelia.

I don't have one either, but I had the same idea (and thereby the same questions).

Here are some points on that:

As far as I see, new Parhelia AGP models are designed for the 8x Slot (1,5V & 0,8V) , they won't fit into older motherboards and so maybe you will find yourself without an ISA-Slot after all.

Used Parhelias (with 128MB video ram and 4x AGP?) might be available at ebay, but as it seems still expensive, so even a Voodoo5 (if you do not allready have one) will be sometimes cheaper.

At the moment I use a Matrox 450 DVI Low Profile in my legacy machine together with a Samsung 203B LCD. So far I have no problems with vga and SVGA (VESA) modes, but I encountered a rather uncommon behavior in plain dos using the DVI connector instead of the analog one: despite filling out the whole screen, the card tries to keep the aspect ratio of the dos vga mode, and you get a very sharp but somehow stretched picture (with black horizontal bars).

Hope that helps you a little, at least until there is a post of a proud Parhelia owner 😉

if you need vesa use univbe for it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniVBE

It may also display garbage in modeX games and have incomplete CGA/EGA emulation, like the Millennium and the G series cards.

Silent Loon wrote:

As far as I see, new Parhelia AGP models are designed for the 8x Slot (1,5V & 0,8V) , they won't fit into older motherboards and so maybe you will find yourself without an ISA-Slot after all.

Ahem.

😉

Silent Loon wrote:

Used Parhelias (with 128MB video ram and 4x AGP?) might be available at ebay, but as it seems still expensive, so even a Voodoo5 (if you do not allready have one) will be sometimes cheaper.

Yup. And I wonder why Parhelia is still expensive despite being outdated and not very fast (although the 16xEAA is compelling).

However, some old DOS GLide games just won't run with Voodoo5, so I plan to install Voodoo1 or Voodoo2; can they co-exist with my Voodoo5? I've never tried such thing, but I doubt they can, so non-Voodoo video card seems to be the way to go.

Silent Loon wrote:

I encountered a rather uncommon behavior in plain dos using the DVI connector instead of the analog one: despite filling out the whole screen, the card tries to keep the aspect ratio of the dos vga mode, and you get a very sharp but somehow stretched picture (with black horizontal bars).

Hold on, so if you're running games with 320x200 resolution while using DVI port, the aspect ratio is displayed in 1.2:1 instead of 4:3? And while using VGA port, it is displayed in 4:3 despite you're using LCD?

I use a LCD with 4:3 ratio (1400x1050). Usually dos modes fill the screen (while connected with to the analog vga interface) , but when I connected the G450 with the DVI interface of the screen, the card / or the display tries to keep the arihtmetical aspect ratio of the dos mode (320x200 ~ 8:5) by displaying black bars at the top and the bottom. I did no indeep analysis of that, but until now I oberserved this with no other card (well, the majority of them was connected to the analog input).

Using a voodoo 1 and a voodoo5 in one system is possible, as long as you can manage to use the voodoo 1 only for glide games, and furthermore only for those early ones that do not recognize the voodoo5 as voodoo card at all (and vice versa). I.e. Mechwarrior 2 3dfx uses a very old glide api, that the voodoo5 very likely does not know - and vice versa.
I had this configuration for a short while, and "not so old" direct3d games were no problem, they just ignored the voodoo1. Dos games with 3dfx support should generally discover the voodoo1 as their card. With windows, tools like "3d control" will be useful. Problems will only occur when a game discovers two gilde(or open GL) compatible cards - and does not know which one to use.

If you have both cards available, I would just give it a try. Could be difficult sometimes, but not impossible.

Silent Loon wrote:

Using a voodoo 1 and a voodoo5 in one system is possible, as long as you can manage to use the voodoo 1 only for glide games, and furthermore only for those early ones that do not recognize the voodoo5 as voodoo card at all (and vice versa).

Problem is, my plan is making the old GLide games recognizing the Voodoo5 through environment variables (like Dracman's Tomb Raider 1 on Voodoo5), while games that are totally "hopeless" will be handled by Voodoo1 or Voodoo2. So it's gonna be two systems: one is Voodoo5 PCI and GeForce 4600 Ti, while the other is Parhelia with Voodoo1.

Silent Loon wrote:

Problems will only occur when a game discovers two gilde(or open GL) compatible cards - and does not know which one to use.

I see. What happens then? Does the game just hang?

Or is it possible for the game to use both Voodoos simultaneously? Supposed you have Voodoo5 and Voodoo2, and you use a KVM switch to select between two Voodoos (instead of passing the Voodoo5's VGA output through Voodoo2), then you can really test whether the old GLide game actually use two Voodoos simultaneously, by switching back and forth between V2 and V5.

Interesting, actually.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I see. What happens then? Does the game just hang?

Some games simply won't start. And you will not know why, because you have two voodoos installed, which could cause the trouble (but do not have to). I.e when it came to Mechwarrior 2 3dfx (I had a Voodoo1 & 2 in one system) I only stumbled over the "solution" by chance. The screen turned black regularly after choosing a training mission. Finally I pressed ctrl+alt+del. Suddenly the game worked - I don't know why.
So having two 3dfx cards in one system halves your chance to find out why a game doesn't start, and you have to do a lot of investigation, reinstalling the game, drivers, patches, shifting between various glide versions, writing batch files a.s.o.. Furthermore, if you ask somebody he will tell you: that's just because you have a Voodoo Graphics and a Voodoo 5 plugged in. 😖

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Supposed you have Voodoo5 and Voodoo2, and you use a KVM switch to select between two Voodoos (instead of passing the Voodoo5's VGA output through Voodoo2), then you can really test whether the old GLide game actually use two Voodoos simultaneously, by switching back and forth between V2 and V5.

This sounds adventurous to me... But again - if you have the hardware, just try it!

I see. Are there many GLide games that won't work, simply because of using two different Voodoo cards on the same system? Or maybe such games are just few?

Mhm... that's a very specific question. I have no list or something like that.
Maybe you will find some answers here:

http://www.falconfly.de/

Also visit the forum, they gave me some useful hints with this Archimedean Dynasty problem I had.

My experience so far w. voodoo 1 & voodoo 2 in one system:

Mechwarrior 2 3dfx - worked
Archimedian Dynasty (dos) - worked
I-War 3dfx / I-War Defiance - worked
Unreal - worked
Decent 3dfx (inofficial) - worked somehow, but I don't remember how
Decent 2 3dfx - worked somehow, but I remember having problems all the time
Turok - worked
GTA 1 3dfx - never worked

For all those games I used the drivers and utilities that came with the miro hiscore. They allow you to choose between the voodoo1 and voodoo2 card.
But they are just directX5 or 6, I guess.
For direct3d games I used the primary 3d device, which was first a Millenium II, then a Riva 128, after that a G200; S3 Savage 4 Pro, Diamond Viper 770 Ultra (TNT2) and finally the G450 DVI. The voodoos could be disabled with the miro tool as well as with 3dControl, which was an utility designed for the PowerVR cards. I had heavy problems with the TNT2 card, being finally unable to play any direct3d game at all. So I kicked it out. But that didn't mean that the voodoos were to blame.

As you may expect I also tested the combination Voodoo 1 & Voodoo 5 AGP. It worked partly. Especially old games that allow high resolutions (i.E. Jedi Knight Dark Forces II) really look fantastic with the 4x AA of the V5.
But from the old glide games mentioned above, I only got Unreal and I-War working without problems, and finally I gave it up with the other ones. Still this does not mean that it was an absolute no-go.

Generally I would suggest that there a less problems with the V1 & V5 combination (than with V2 & V5), but the V1 sometimes produced distortions on my LCD display , which I do not have now, with the G450 and a pair of V2 (SLI).
By the way - there are drivers that allow you to enable "experimental" AA with the Voodoo2 (I have not fully tested this):

http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/news/3dfx/fastvoodoo2_4.6/

Sorry for the late reply, but my stomach ulcer has been killing me (gotta' stop drinking, really 🙁 ).

Silent Loon wrote:

Decent 2 3dfx - worked somehow, but I remember having problems all the time

I see. But the problem gone once you plugged out either Voodoo, right?

Silent Loon wrote:

For all those games I used the drivers and utilities that came with the miro hiscore. They allow you to choose between the voodoo1 and voodoo2 card.
But they are just directX5 or 6, I guess.

I see. I wish there's such "voodoo switcher" that works for GLide mode, especially in DOS.

Silent Loon wrote:

As you may expect I also tested the combination Voodoo 1 & Voodoo 5 AGP. It worked partly. Especially old games that allow high resolutions (i.E. Jedi Knight Dark Forces II) really look fantastic with the 4x AA of the V5.
But from the old glide games mentioned above, I only got Unreal and I-War working without problems, and finally I gave it up with the other ones.

I see. What happened when you plugged the Voodoo1 out? Did they work when Voodoo5 is the only voodoo card being used?

Silent Loon wrote:

By the way - there are drivers that allow you to enable "experimental" AA with the Voodoo2 (I have not fully tested this):

http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/news/3dfx/fastvoodoo2_4.6/

Sounds interesting. 😀 In theory, multi-chips Voodoo (like Voodoo2 SLI) should be able to do AA. Anyone remember Quantum3D Mercury?

EDIT: by the way, back to Parhelia issue; am I correct if assuming that built-in support for various VESA modes is not really important because we can use SciTech UNIVBE?

yes univibe replces the graphics cards vesa bios with its own
i cant see it having specific support for the parhelia but i dont think that will be a problem

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Silent Loon wrote:

Decent 2 3dfx - worked somehow, but I remember having problems all the time

I see. But the problem gone once you plugged out either Voodoo, right?

Sorry, but I can't remember this. 😒

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

Silent Loon wrote:

For all those games I used the drivers and utilities that came with the miro hiscore. They allow you to choose between the voodoo1 and voodoo2 card.
But they are just directX5 or 6, I guess.

I see. I wish there's such "voodoo switcher" that works for GLide mode, especially in DOS.

Well, those miro utilities work also for glide, even when there is (one?) a non-miro card, but not in dos of course.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

I see. What happened when you plugged the Voodoo1 out? Did they work when Voodoo5 is the only voodoo card being used?

I didn't test it.