First - you are probably aware that a Savage card is not a very good choice for Direct3D, and I'm not even talking about speed. Drivers have been known to be flaky/unstable. The cards are most useful for S3 MeTaL, ie. Unreal Engine games.
Regarding the DirectX trouble: I found http://scalibq.wordpress.com/2012/12/07/direc … -compatibility/ to be an interesting read, especially the sentence "The Device Driver Interface (DDI) version can be seen with the dxdiag tool which is included with DirectX.". It is very likely that the Trio driver implements an older version of DDI as the Savage driver. On second thought the Trio does not have any 3D capabilities so maybe it doesn't need to implement DDI at all.
And of course AGP might be an issue with the Savage but not with the (PCI-) Trio, although you are probably using a BX chipset which should be fine.

I suppose you already have a procedure to downgrade the DirectX installation, as I'm not assuming you are doing a complete reinstall of the OS every time.

Hi, yes I'm aware that there are better options available but I chose the Savage 4 Xtreme for its great (from what I've read here at Vogons) Dos compatibility. My Pentium II 333Mhz is also too slow for later 3D games so I wasn't planning on playing them anyway. The Savage 4 is easily fast enough for earlier 3D games.

Regarding upgrading and downgrading DirectX, I use a program called DirectX Buster which works beautifully.

I'll have a read of the link you provided. Thanks for the reply.

Can you try a non-Creative sound card?

Which PCI slots are you using for cards and which IRQs are used for what? Essentially I suggest removing cards and testing the Live in different slots.

I've come across bizarre DirectX problems on 9x too. I prefer to stick with DX7.0a. DirectX Buster is extremely useful indeed.

I can recommend using a Vortex 2 instead of the Live!

It has DOS drivers and even supports a wavetable header. Works great with late DOS games. And you get A3D support as well 😀

@ Swaaye and Mau1Wurf1977, I currently do not have any PCI based sound cards besides various Live's and Audigy's. I used to own a few Diamond MX300 which utilise the Vortex 2 chipset but I've since sold them on eBay. Should've kept one for testing purposes.

Savage 4 Xtreme occupy's AGP Slot - IRQ 11
Voodoo 1 occupy's PCI Slot 1 - IRQ??
SB Live occupy's PCI Slot 3 - IRQ 10
SB 16 occupy's ISA Slot 2 - IRQ 5

There are 3 PCI Slots in total. I understand that the bottom PCI slot normally shares it's resources with the top ISA slot but the top ISA slot is not occupied. Only the bottom ISA slot is occupied with a SB16 CT1740 and a DB50XG. I'm also unable to swap the Voodoo 1 with the SB Live as the Voodoo cable will not reach the Savage 4.

Oh, and here's the thread that inspired me to use the Savage 4 Xtreme. Really a big fan of Gona's dos compatibility testing.

Gona's PCI and AGP video card DOS compatibility chart

And a photo of the current setup:

I've had a lot of stability issues with my Savage4 on Pentium II also (with similar optimism about DOS but being able to run all APIs natively supported in UnrealEngine1 alongside Voodoo2 and PCX2), I attributed the problems to AGP voltage and removed the card. Is it actually something else?

leileilol wrote:

I've had a lot of stability issues with my Savage4 on Pentium II also (with similar optimism about DOS but being able to run all APIs natively supported in UnrealEngine1 alongside Voodoo2 and PCX2), I attributed the problems to AGP voltage and removed the card. Is it actually something else?

Never really thought about AGP voltage playing a part in its stability. Didn't think it would matter to be honest. The VIA chipset wouldn't have anything to do with it would it?

VIA could be part of the problem. Are you running 4-in-1 drivers? What mobo is it?

swaaye wrote:

VIA could be part of the problem. Are you running 4-in-1 drivers? What mobo is it?

Not 100% sure of the model chipset as I'm not with the PC at present. Will have to have a look over the weekend and then report back here. Regarding the 4in1 drivers, I haven't installed them so I should try that. I've read that version 4.35 should work best but again, I need to check what chipset I have first.

EDIT: Will have to get back to you with the motherboard brand/model as well sorry.

Ok, just checked the board.

It's an EPOX P2-100B motherboard using a VIA VT82C601 northbridge and VIA VT82C586B southbridge. It has a VIA Apollo Pro AGPset.

User manual can be found here:

http://www.motherboards.org/files/manuals/94/100b.pdf

Regarding DirectX 6.1a which is included with the Windows 98SE installation. I've looked everywhere to try find a separate download for this version but can't find it anywhere. I read that I can use the DX6.1 download and then download a file called DPLAY61A.EXE to update DX6.1 to 6.1a but I can't find this file either.

Does anyone have the DPLAY61A.EXE available or can 6.1a be installed from the Windows 98SE disc without reinstalling windows?

I have a feeling DX6.1a may work and fix my issues.

borgie83 wrote:

It's an EPOX P2-100B motherboard using a VIA VT82C601 northbridge and VIA VT82C586B southbridge. It has a VIA Apollo Pro AGPset.

Mistype it is VT82C691 & VT82C586B, the very first VIA chipset for Slot 1.

Eeek. I would avoid using that AGP slot for anything other than a Voodoo.

I also once ran into a Slot 1 Apollo Pro board with such a bad BIOS that Live! simply didn't function until I installed George Breese's PCI Latency patch. It would only produce distorted audio. The PCI bus was programmed incorrectly by the BIOS. The patch got the Live working pretty well IIRC. It was about 15 years ago....

I have a Savage 4 PCI running under 9x and DX 7, not had any particular problems with it.

swaaye wrote:

Eeek. I would avoid using that AGP slot for anything other than a Voodoo.

I also once ran into a Slot 1 Apollo Pro board with such a bad BIOS that Live! simply didn't function until I installed George Breese's PCI Latency patch. It would only produce distorted audio. The PCI bus was programmed incorrectly by the BIOS. The patch got the Live working pretty well IIRC. It was about 15 years ago....

Well I have used a TNT2 M64, 128Pro and now this Savage 4 Xtreme in this AGP slot and until the Savage 4, never had an issue. The only difference being that with the other 2 graphics cards, I was running the default Windows 98 SE DirectX 6.1a whereas the Savage 4 was only installed "after" I had started playing around with different DirectX versions. This is why I want to revert back to DX 6.1a but again I can't find the drivers anywhere.

I'm also not too concerned about the SB Live as sound is only affected by different versions of DirectX and otherwise runs perfectly so at least I know (in my situation) that it's not a hardware issue.

Just wish I never updated DirectX if everything was running fine. As they say, if it's not broke, don't fix it!

borgie83 wrote:

Regarding DirectX 6.1a which is included with the Windows 98SE installation. I've looked everywhere to try find a separate download for this version but can't find it anywhere. I read that I can use the DX6.1 download and then download a file called DPLAY61A.EXE to update DX6.1 to 6.1a but I can't find this file either.

Does anyone have the DPLAY61A.EXE available or can 6.1a be installed from the Windows 98SE disc without reinstalling windows?

Anybody?

EDIT: Hmmm, just found a site which states that the DPLAY61A.EXE file is on the Windows 98 SE disc: \i386\DPLAY61A.EXE.
Then states to copy the file over to: C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\DPLAY61A.EXE.

Will check it out and report back 😀

To be honest the DirectX version should not cause any issues like you describe. In the end it is the actual DirectX graphics drivers that matter.

These are the DirectX downloads I use(d) for Windows 98SE projects: http://www.philscomputerlab.com/directx.html

Never had any issue but then I never played with a Savage 4. Although I might have one.

Yes I got a Savage4 in my box of tricks 😀

What driver did you use / download link? What games did you test?

Might be time to re-install W98? And take an image before you load any drivers.

Haven't tested any games in Windows as yet but I have attempted to use 3D Mark 99,00 and 01 with no luck. All versions crash unfortunately.

Here are the drivers Phil:

Ok I will test it. DLed a few other drivers of the net.

So is this a DX5 or DX6 card? Just try 3DMark? Can it do OpenGL?

Cool! Its a DX 6.1 card which supports OpenGL.