If you haven't tried already, you might put your desktop in 640x480 mode (256 colors), and see if that makes a difference.

If you look at the old 3D Realms support page, it appears that you need a "VESA VBE compliant software driver," and they recommend SciTech's Display Doctor/UniVBE if you are having issues with SVGA modes (see the video support suggestions at the bottom of the page):

https://web.archive.org/web/20030812033816/ht … html#othervideo

The external links on this wiki may be helpful if you do decide to get Display Doctor and the necessary registration codes. SciTech made Display Doctor freeware before they were acquired.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UniVBE

buckeye wrote:

Same thing happens after trying to get into MS-Dos shell mode - screen goes black. I can probably go into real DOS mode but wanted to play the game in a window first.

Very likely a screen sync problem. Try a different monitor or check what monitor driver was installed by Windows. It may try to set refresh rates that your monitor can't sync with.

Thanks to you both for responding, this issue is driving me nuts!

akula65: Not familiar with Display Doctor, will look into it.

derSammler: My monitor is just a regular 24" flatscreen that I use in 4:3 mode when retro gaming, will check the drivers but I think it's whatever windows spit out during installing the OS.

Upon reading up on this thru the different forums it seems the geforce 2-3 cards can have vesa related problems. That being said I have a Diamond Viper 770 Ultra on hand, perhaps it would be more compatible "vesa" wise?

Neither DOS nor the installer of Duke 3D runs in VESA mode.

Ok an update of sorts:

Got the ms-dos shell window to come back up by switching to Nvidia drivers 29.42 (from 23.11) & was able install Duke. However the game still won't run correctly as the screen goes black/monitor power light turns yellow but I still hear the audio from the game - weird.

Tried using Display Doctor but apparently it's a learning curve at least for me. Ended up getting disk errors prompting scandisk to look over clusters & etc., upon one bootup I had to re-install the GF3 drivers.

Ended up downloading Phil's easy dos PIF stuff to aid in booting into dos-mode. Duke will run, but now must navigate thru getting the sound items fixed properly for Dos since using a PCI Aureal Vortex2.

Maybe I'm better served by trying DosBox on my XP rig?

Did you even try my suggestions? It's 100% certain now that your display can't sync to the refresh rate that the graphics card produces. Maybe Windows fails to correctly detect your monitor (no DDC support, bad cable, etc.) or you have some tweaking tool installed that overwrites the default refresh rates. Anyway, that's where you need to search for the cause.

derSammler,

Thanks for responding. I checked the refresh rate and it was set for optimal so i set it for 60hz which is standard for flat screens? Anyways it made no difference so I checked into the monitor drivers and windows sees it as being a "generic" plug-n-play digital (not analog) monitor. Is there some obscure setting for the monitor in windows that I'm not aware of?

Note: the main card is the GF3 which connects to DVI port of monitor while the voodoo2's are connected to the VGA port, maybe this is a factor I don't know.

Perhaps there are some settings on the monitor itself I can try? All I know is I have it set for 4/3 ratio instead of full screen.I re-installed the monitor driver but no change there either. Don't have a spare screen so I have to make do with this one.

Another update: Ditched the DVI connection to the GF3 and used VGA and Duke works in dos window no problem. Still not a solution for me since I need the VGA connections for my Voodoo2's, so if anyone has got this to work with a DVI connection please let me know what you're setup is, thanks.

Note! I do have a "passover" VGA cable for V2/GF3 but it must be poor quality for it causes "vertical lines overlay" which I mentioned in another forum, so went with the DVI for the GF3 and all is fine.