Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: sigtau on May 15, 2011, 09:59:33 am
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Just recently, I got my hands on an older Windows 98 computer, with some spare hardware parts such as a SoundBlaster Live! card, and an ethernet card, all contained in a machine with a Pentium MMX (233MHz) processor, a 40GB hard drive, and 64MB of RAM (unfortunately the case contains SIMM-style RAM sticks, so I may not be able to go higher than 96MB anytime soon--also not sure of the maximum amount of RAM that a SIMM motherboard can support). With all of this, I am setting out to do something I've wanted to do for many years--create the ultimate Windows 98 gaming machine.
Unfortunately, the case form factor doesn't permit AGP style graphics cards, so it isn't really the 'ultimate' machine, it's just what I want to use as a substitute for emulation of these old systems. I suppose I could always hunt for a PCI graphics card, however.
The purpose of this topic is to ask you guys what old Win9x games you think I should get for this machine. Also bearing in mind that Windows 98 has excellent compatibility with DOS games (allowing for the authentic experience, given that it has the DOS kernel at its core), I can take those into account as well.
The list as it stands now:
- SimCity 2000 Special Edition
- SimCity 3000 Unlimited
- RollerCoaster Tycoon (+ Expansion Packs)
- Transport Tycoon Deluxe
- Raptor: Call of the Shadows
- DOOM 1 and 2
- Descent 1, 2, and 3
- Descent: FreeSpace and FreeSpace 2
- The Best of Entertainment pack (Chip's Challenge, SkiFree, etc.)
I'll also have the Windows 98 Plus pack and the Second Edition update, which both contain themes and additional utilities in case I need them.
And yes, I'll be getting a flight stick.
Any other games you guys might recommend?
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Consider adding Stargunner, Death Rally, Terminal Velocity, Carmageddon, Sango Fighter, Duke Nukum v2.0, Duke Nukem II, Duke Nukem 3D, Shadow Warrior and Balls of Steel to the list.
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Geoff Crammonds Grand Prix 2, Soulreaver, AoE 1 (and maybe 2), MW2 + MW2 Mercs, Crimson Skies.
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Worms 2(!), Fish fillets, GTA 2, Wolfenstein 3-D
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BioMenace and Liero, maybe. :nervous:
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If you can be bothered with memory management, One Must Fall (it requires XMS rather than ems), also X-Wing/TIE/X-wing vs TIE, Wing Commander, X-Com 1 (also TFTD if you find the first one easy) Dune, Dune 2 (very different games)
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I had kept a machine like this around for many years but it eventually fell into disuse as Dosbox matured. Dosbox on a modern PC will actually run DOS games better and more accurately today, and runs Windows 3.1 games as well. For a long time I still kept mine around for Descent 2, but now we have D2X-XL and DXX-Rebirth for that. The only things it's good for now are early Windows 95 games that use D3D (Glide can usually be made to work on modern PCs with wrappers).
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Tyrian 2000. Do NOT forget Tyrian 2000.
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Ctrl-F
MW3
No results
WTF, guys? MW3 was best mechwarrior and it has all kinds of trouble on modern OSes. Definitely get MW3 man.
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redsniper beat me to it.
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can't have Raptor and not Tyrian 2000good spot Androgeos Exeunt
the control scheme is much easier on MW3 but I actually prefer 4 :nervous:
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add tachyon the fringe!
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Magic Carpet
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Comanche Gold
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my rig from '99 was better. 500mhz, 128 megs ram and a voodoo3. i miss that box, it just ran so many games and it ran them well.
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Off hand the only games i can remember that run under 9x but not xp are janes iaf + usaf
oh and iwar doesnt have the shift-Q ctd
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Comanche Gold
Never played that one, but Comanche: Maximum Overkill is easy enough to find. VoxelSpace FTW!
In general, searching about Abandonia is a good idea if you're looking for DOS games, but you're more than sharp enough to figure anything out from here. Yep. Just recall that the 90's were the age of the popular flight sim, where each (good) sim was aimed at realism, and simmers/gamers liked it, and strived for it in fact. In that regard, see if you can find A-10 Cuba! for Windows. It's not as good as the Mac version, but it still packs a pretty realistic flight model, a great damage model for your aircraft, and the most authentic simulation of the A-10A's armament control system I've ever seen in a flight sim. TFX is pretty old, but is very neat for its age. If it had better resolution settings, it would be much, much cooler. The developer who made it went on to make the Eurofighter 2000 sims, and I've only ever heard good things about those.
Don't forget about X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and the rest of that lot, either. :D
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MechWarrior 3 is a must, since it absolutely will not run playably on modern hardware. That's about all I have that absolutely needs a Win98/DX6/super-old-hardware environment to run.
If you're just looking for throwbacks to the era, then don't miss out on the Infinity Engine RPGs - Baldur's Gate, Planescape - Torment, and Baldur's Gate II. (Icewind Dale is a bit of the redheaded stepchild of the group, being that it's much too combat heavy.) Breaking away from the D&D license, there's Arcanum, which is positively amazing. Oh, and we mustn't forget the proper entries in the Fallout series, which is to say Fallout 1 and Fallout 2. The early C&C games are probably worth revisiting, though Red Alert 2 and Renegade might be pushing a 233MHz system's limits a little hard.
Actually, nearly all of the titles I've listed might push your particular legacy box a little hard. That's kind of a tricky era for which to target hardware, though. If you get a 400-500MHz box with a Voodoo3/GeForce 1-era video card, the older, framerate-dependent games, like the early Descent games, will run much too quickly. If you get a 200-250MHz with an earlier (or no) 3D accelerator, then you're right on the threshold for dropping below the minimum requirements for the games released around 1999/2000.
Either way, though, I wish you luck and joy in your adventures in legacy gaming!
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Mechwarrior 3 is mandatory. Can't have Mechwarrior 3 without Pirates Moon either. Get ready to rage though.
Terminal Velocity and the Wing Commanders as well. And the first System Shock.
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Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try as many of these as I can.
It's likely that I'll have to do some crazy things with the partitioning (since the BIOS refuses to recognize the 40GB drive, resulting in me falling back on the only smaller drive I had--2.5GB) if I upgrade again.
Also, Windows 98SE Setup refuses to believe its own CD-ROM is in the drive while formatting C:, so I've been forced to format to DOS and install Windows 3.1 as a stepping stone to assist in the installation (and believe it or not, I legitimately own all of this software). Currently in the installation process now, which seems to be proceeding as it should.
Once I get past the OS setup, the new GPU comes in the mail. Since I needed a low power usage and low profile dedicated GPU that would work well with Windows 98, I chose a GeForce 2 MX 400, which should arrive in the mail along with the Sidewinder Pro I also ordered for Descent and the like.
Now, with all this in mind, I will have to ration out games that I want (the above games already get a reserved spot, regardless) and among the ones you guys have picked I'll have to filter through and see exactly what I want, because of limited drive space. More on this later, I'll be making a list of games to try and narrow it down from there.
With that said, any further suggestions?
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Your CD-Drive comment reminded me of Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger, since (on a 56x drive) the installer will claim that your cd-rom is spinning faster than is physically possible.
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Oh wow...I think our family's 11-year-old Dell has that exact same GeForce card in it. :D There's a 95/98-era game called Glover that I picked up at a used book/CD sale that I can't get to run properly on this machine, even using a Glide wrapper; maybe I should see what it does on that old box.
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Interesting, Moongoose. I would have invested in an ATI Rage instead, but the power requirements were just far too steep for the ****ty-ass 100W power power supply. Now, you might be thinking that I can simply upgrade the PSU, but that's not the case--the power supply is completely proprietary-shaped, and essentially cannot be replaced. Googling about shows that the GeForce 2 MX cards use around 4W-5W while delivering decent old-card performance, so I figured that would be a far better choice that sucking the life out of the entire power supply (and crippling the entire system).
Anyone here still use a Sidewinder?
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I'm all about the Sidewinder 3D Pro, at least for Descent purposes. (I usually use my Cyborg Evo for FS.) A member of the Descent community came up with a custom-made gameport-to-USB adapter for it a few years back, so I've been able to keep it going strong on modern hardware. It's probably the best-feeling stick I've ever used, in terms of its motion and throw.
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It's likely that I'll have to do some crazy things with the partitioning (since the BIOS refuses to recognize the 40GB drive, resulting in me falling back on the only smaller drive I had--2.5GB) if I upgrade again.
OK, what's the model number? I've been there done that and I have h4x. ;)
EDIT: I mean of the motherboard (OEM computer model number eg pavilion dv14nx will do if you can't get that)
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I'm all about the Sidewinder 3D Pro, at least for Descent purposes. (I usually use my Cyborg Evo for FS.) A member of the Descent community came up with a custom-made gameport-to-USB adapter for it a few years back, so I've been able to keep it going strong on modern hardware. It's probably the best-feeling stick I've ever used, in terms of its motion and throw.
joysticks kinda took an evolutionary step backward after the sidewinder series of sticks. modern joysticks may have more buttons and axes, but in terms of sensor resolution things have diminished quite abit. for example you see 10 bit resolution touted like an amazing new feature these days, but there was a point back in the '90s where it was stock on most moderately priced joysticks.
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Wondrous news!
The good: This is now a Windows 95 gaming computer, because 98 was just too damn unstable on the machine for some reason. Lucky for me, this doesn't rule out any of my baseline games (the list I had in the first post), and may affect only a handful of the ones suggested here.
The bad: I can't find sound card drivers for this. I might need to purchase a new sound card, and I have decided to wait for the video card to arrive in the mail before I do any further toying with expansion slots. Hopefully it'll be easier if I do buy a new sound card, because I'll know exactly what I'm getting (and if I shop effectively, maybe even a driver disk to save me some time). The current card was a Creative CT4790 (which is of the Sound Blaster series, but I don't know if it was Live, Live Pro, 16, or AWE-32, and googling tells me absolutely nothing).
The ugly: PCI bus error on POST, starting with the second Windows 95 bootup since this project started. I don't know why it started, but since I'll be removing pretty much everything from the expansion slots when the graphics card gets here, it should be a problem that should be of little importance.
The extra: I don't have to buy speakers, I just dug up an old pair in the pantry (of all places to find some).
The postmortem: Don't ever, ever, ever expect a project involving archaic, old hardware to take you a week to complete. This will likely span into next week for me due to school, but since this is something I can literally feel my way through on the as-I-go basis (considering the first computers I ever repaired were of the Windows 9x/Intel Celeron/Pentium MMX/2/3 generation), it might be easily completed even sooner than that.
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Could be a regular Sound Blaster. My old PC had a sound card that did not fall into any of the specific Sound Blaster categories.
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it is a regular pci soundblaster
my vote for win95 would be a live or a vortex 2 card (a3d 2.0 rocks)
ps: if you need drivers for that pci card go to vogons (Very Old Games On New Machines)
http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewforum.php?f=9
ask for swayee he will sort you out with them
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Been playing Sonalysts Fleet Command a lot since I got the old computer working. 'Tis fun :D
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<snip>
You did use '98 Second Edition, right? Gold (non-SE) Win '98 had issues. SE was rock-solid, and the reason that people remember '98 as a good thing. Sorta like XP... pre-service pack 1 it had issues too.
And, about what I said earlier... usually I can patch the BIOS of computers of that era to support large hard disks and better CPUs and newer memory... however I don't think the memory tech will help you, you said it was FPM or EDO, right? (72-pin SIMMs, before SDRAM)
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*Stumbles into thread*
*Sees the following words: Magic Carpet, Death Rally, Terminal Velocity, Descent, One Must Fall, A-10 Cuba! (the only game which I couldn't do A SINGLE SENSIBLE THING apart from dropping random bombs on AUTO PILOT and missing the target 100% of the time :nervous: :lol:), Shadow Warrior, Doom, Duke Nukem, Grand Prix 2, Sidewinder 3D Pro*
Oh, those days...
That said, does Interstate '76 even work on Win 98/98SE? Don't remember at all but I think there were one or two games I played a long time ago that worked on '95, but I don't remember them working on '98...
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You could use partitioning and the PLoP (http://plop.at) boot loader to multi-boot 95 and 98 SE I think...
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it is a regular pci soundblaster
my vote for win95 would be a live or a vortex 2 card (a3d 2.0 rocks)
ps: if you need drivers for that pci card go to vogons (Very Old Games On New Machines)
Well, reading the name of that site that you wrote there ("...on new machines") is sort of a turnoff here, because I need Windows 95 on a Pentium MMX to recognize the card as a Sound Blaster. Unfortunately, installing the stock SB driver that comes with Win95 (using OSR2 here, by the way) actually crippled the entire OS for some reason because I had to delete some of the conflicting hardware entries (leading to a pleasant "Operating System not found" error on startup, which isn't terrible because I know how to fix it).
I might resort to reinstalling the OS with all of the expansion cards removed, and I'll insert them one at a time and install them one at a time as I need them.
You did use '98 Second Edition, right? Gold (non-SE) Win '98 had issues. SE was rock-solid, and the reason that people remember '98 as a good thing. Sorta like XP... pre-service pack 1 it had issues too.
And, about what I said earlier... usually I can patch the BIOS of computers of that era to support large hard disks and better CPUs and newer memory... however I don't think the memory tech will help you, you said it was FPM or EDO, right? (72-pin SIMMs, before SDRAM)
Yeah, SIMMs. Old mainboard is old. And yes, I did use Second Edition. It just doesn't like the older hardware for some reason.
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Freelancer? :nervous:
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Freelancer? :nervous:
NO.
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A-10 Cuba! (the only game which I couldn't do A SINGLE SENSIBLE THING apart from dropping random bombs on AUTO PILOT and missing the target 100% of the time :nervous: :lol:)
Don't worry, originally I couldn't even fly the plane using the mouse, and that lasted for a long time (I can now, though) and just blew up random stuff. That was the demo, I never got the full version, maybe I should do that some time.
I second (third, fourth?) the suggestion to try Grand Prix 2. That's still a favourite game of mine, and there's still a decent community if you want to download addons and stuff.
Also, may I suggest some of the old Need For Speed games? I'm thinking Need For Speed II (SE), but The Need For Speed (the first one) is not too bad either. I wish my old desktop still worked then I could still play Need For Speed II.
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Freelancer? :nervous:
Not with a 233MHz CPU.
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Just looked through my back catalogue of games and come up with:
Ground Control 1 should just run on a 233
Rainbow 6, I have 3 but the first possibly second might run
Theme Hospital
Total Annihilation
Wipeout 1/2097(XL)
Mega Race
Unreal Tournament ("only" requires a 200mhz :D )
Problem is most of the games of this kind of era I have are still at my parents so I cant just flick through them
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@ sigtau
dont let the name of the site put you off it also supports Very Old Games on Old Machines (has a big retro pc section)
and swayee posted an archive of every soundblaster driver ever released if he doesnt have the correct driver for you no one does
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Just looked through my back catalogue of games and come up with:
Ground Control 1 should just run on a 233
Heh, I'm playing through that right now. The best part is that it's now freeware (provided you have a GameSpy account to get the CD key, anyway).
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These should keep you going for a few years
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/1995/
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/1996/
http://www.mobygames.com/browse/games/1997/
ps: that pc would really benefit from a voodoo card
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I don't know about you guys, but BIOS inconsistencies with Windows 95's configurations that can't be easily fixed are ****ing irritating, especially when they involve multiple reinstallations due to the same damned thing. This is what I'm talking about, in case you don't know. (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=32853&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32853&objectID=lpv19209) Windows 95 doesn't prompt me for new drivers on reboot, or at least it didn't the first time.
Slowly but surely losing my patience, so I'm going to try one more time before I start doing something drastic.
Also, the new GPU broke soft reboots. I can still hard-reboot and get the same result, however.
EDIT: Also, Windows 95 is an OS that requires Windows 3.1 to be installed, and is not on its own bootable disc. This means every time I **** up badly enough, I have to reinstall DOS 6, followed by Windows 3.1, followed by Windows 95. Life sucks.
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windows 95 Does not require windows 3.1 in any way
it comes with a bootable floppy
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/138349
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Windows upgrade versions especially from the 9x era have a reputation for being horribly unstable, get a full version and do a clean install scratch
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a full version of win95 should be available for buttons now days
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Do not EVER forget Mechwarrior.
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Castles 2: Siege and Conquest
System Shock 1 and 2
WingCommander 1-5
Independence War 1
Mechwarrior 4
why the hell installing FS2 when it is so much prettier with SCP?
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You can run SS2 on XP, with enhanced textures and the like.
Just sayin'.
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I don't know about you guys, but BIOS inconsistencies with Windows 95's configurations that can't be easily fixed are ****ing irritating, especially when they involve multiple reinstallations due to the same damned thing. This is what I'm talking about, in case you don't know. (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=32853&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32853&objectID=lpv19209) Windows 95 doesn't prompt me for new drivers on reboot, or at least it didn't the first time.
Slowly but surely losing my patience, so I'm going to try one more time before I start doing something drastic.
Also, the new GPU broke soft reboots. I can still hard-reboot and get the same result, however.
EDIT: Also, Windows 95 is an OS that requires Windows 3.1 to be installed, and is not on its own bootable disc. This means every time I **** up badly enough, I have to reinstall DOS 6, followed by Windows 3.1, followed by Windows 95. Life sucks.
Wait a minute, didn't this machine originally have Windows 98? Also what version of 95 are you using?
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I don't know about you guys, but BIOS inconsistencies with Windows 95's configurations that can't be easily fixed are ****ing irritating, especially when they involve multiple reinstallations due to the same damned thing. This is what I'm talking about, in case you don't know. (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/Document.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&taskId=110&prodSeriesId=32853&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32853&objectID=lpv19209) Windows 95 doesn't prompt me for new drivers on reboot, or at least it didn't the first time.
Slowly but surely losing my patience, so I'm going to try one more time before I start doing something drastic.
Also, the new GPU broke soft reboots. I can still hard-reboot and get the same result, however.
EDIT: Also, Windows 95 is an OS that requires Windows 3.1 to be installed, and is not on its own bootable disc. This means every time I **** up badly enough, I have to reinstall DOS 6, followed by Windows 3.1, followed by Windows 95. Life sucks.
Wait a minute, didn't this machine originally have Windows 98? Also what version of 95 are you using?
from the edit it dont matter that much cause it's an upgrade version (Win 3.1x -> 95) which is more problematic than a normal build ayway
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You can run SS2 on XP, with enhanced textures and the like.
Just sayin'.
Most of the games people are talking about here will work perfectly fine on a modern PC. They can certainly be played on an old system, but there would be nothing to gain from it (in fact, a modern system will let you use high resolutions and AA levels that were not possible back then).
The handful of games that actually require this kind of machine are mostly from that 1996-98 period when 3D hardware was just starting to become mainstream. The only ones I have encountered are Nuclear Strike and to some extent Red Alert 1. Some games have bugs that can be worked around, especially if you have both an Nvidia and AMD card available. Both companies' drivers have issues in different old games, but you can cover most bases by having access to both.
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Wait a minute, didn't this machine originally have Windows 98? Also what version of 95 are you using?
Actually, the retail box came with Windows 95, but someone did the upgrade at some point to Windows 98 (and such installation had a very half-assed partitioning job done on it, giving me only 200MB of space compared to the 2.515GB the drive has overall). I find the driver setup to be much more of a breeze on Windows 95, however, in addition to the fact that Windows 95 doesn't break like a ***** when you uninstall Internet Explorer (Try uninstalling it in Windows 98, and tell me how it works out for you).
Returning to the issues currently at hand, here's my situation with this computer:
1. The PCI error is gone, it was due to a faulty driver in Windows 95's handling of IDE.
2. I currently have my graphics card (GeForce2 MX 400 PCI 32MB) in this machine. The drivers installed without a hitch, however whenever I try to boot into normal Windows, I either get stuck on a black screen after the Windows logo, or the system resets itself. I read somewhere that there's possibly a jumper or switch on the mainboard that will permit the BIOS to give all graphical jurisdiction to the graphics card (and the BIOS settings only have options in the Video category for using EGA/CGA vs. VGA). POST routine tells me that video BIOS shadowing is enabled. Booting into safe mode yields the fallback VGA driver, at a 16 color 640x480 resolution.
Does anyone know what I can do to fix this? I'm not at the machine at the moment so I can't look for the jumper or switch on the mainboard (if one even exists).
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windows 9x safe mode only loads the basic video driver which is a VGA standard.
what happens when you just run normal mode with just the basic driver?
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What.is.your.mobo.model.number!
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It starts up fine without a hitch if I use the fallback standard VGA driver.
I don't know the mobo model number. It's a proprietary by HP and has no clear markings as to which of the numbers glued to it could be the actual model number.
If it helps, the computer itself is an HP Vectra VL400 with a Pentium MMX 233MHz.
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That helps. Also, CPU-Z is your friend. (Sometimes it can cut through the OEM BS and give you the actual model #)
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Just tried reinstalling drivers using the latest ones from NVidia. No luck.
Any other ideas as to what it could be?
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geforce 2mx 400 win 95 drivers
http://www.nvidia.co.uk/object/win9x_81.98_uk.html
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I installed using those drivers, still a black screen or auto-reset on startup.
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HP's driver site for your model computer, all supported OSes (choose which) (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/DriverDownload.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=21228&taskId=135&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32853&lang=en&cc=us)
Now get the latest BIOS (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=21228&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32853&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=54#120) or, if you have a hard time with that, here's a direct link to the page pointing to the right file (http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32853&prodNameId=21228&swEnvOID=54&swLang=13&mode=2&taskId=135&swItem=vc4856en)
Do a FULL FORMAT (not quick format, no /q switch if using command prompt) of a floppy and BE SURE there are NO bad sectors. Once you've found a good floppy, put this update on it and boot from it.
Hopefully this will cure your problem. ;)
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how about these drivers
http://www.bravofiles.com/download/Creative-GeForce2-MX200_2fMX400-LKuhVus9fV.html
ps: do you have the motherboard drivers installed ?
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Oh, and any "assign IRQ to VGA" option in the BIOS should be enabled.
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Ugh crap, I got the model number wrong--good thing I checked before I ran the flash program.
As it turns out, the VL5 Series 5 is my computer's model number. The front of the computer has no visual indication as to what the model number of the machine was, but the backplate of the case did. Browsing the site shows me that this is the driver page:
http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=17113&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32844&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=19#220
Unfortunately,
[Ctrl + F] "BIOS" [Enter]
gives me no results on that page.
Any more ideas? I don't think it's safe to flash my BIOS with the wrong software.
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no its not
according to the manual your pc has an onboard s3 gfx chip (or a matrox millenium)
have you tried the s3 chip ? is it disabled in the bios ?
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Change the O/S to "Cross operating system (BIOS, Firmware, Diagnostics, etc.)" in the HP selector. ;)
EDIT: Which would bring you here: http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareIndex.jsp?lang=en&cc=us&prodNameId=17113&prodTypeId=12454&prodSeriesId=32844&swLang=13&taskId=135&swEnvOID=54
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Is this a SLOT1 processor in the machine? If so, I might be willing to donate an old PIII (533mhz/450mhz) I have lying around. I may have some old DDR (100/133) sticks lying around too if you're interested.
Just thought I'd offer, they're only taking up space for me.
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I have concluded that the hardware at hand is just too old for this card, and after testing in a known good machine, the card is still functional (but the hardware just fails at using it). At this point, getting a new motherboard and a good processor for it is an option, but I'm thinking that just buying a new machine with the best of the 'old' hardware in it would be better.
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You did try the latest BIOS for that machine already? (I re-linked to it above when you provided the correct model number.)
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Yeah, successfully flashed the BIOS, no luck. Pretty sure it's just too old.
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does you mboard have built in graphics ?
you never replied ?
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It does have onboard graphics, but with vram of about 1MB.
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what the ****
I don't understand it
after last night's storm (I had to unplug the power for an extended period of time)... the graphics card and its drivers suddenly work fine
the computer works :eek2:
next device to tackle: Sound Blaster card
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"...the only thing that can generate that much power is a bolt of lightning!"
"...what did you say?"
"A bolt of lightning! And you never know where or when one is going to strike!"
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probably an issue with the fact that the mobo is early ATX and the prolonged period without power to the power supply (thus the rest of the computer) allowed something to reset to factory.
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Call your computer Frankenstein, why don't you. ;)
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when you were getting no picture did you try plugging in to the onboard graphics ?
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No, I didn't, and now that it's working with 3D, sound, and networking, I doubt I need to worry again in the future.
Though, Davros, I have heard that some computers require that both VGA ports be occupied if one is to use the PCI expansion slots as a means of graphics, so you are on to something.
In semi-related news, Descent 3 runs better in OpenGL mode than in Direct3D 7 mode. Going to try FS1 tomorrow.
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How about zeckensack's Glide Wrapper mode? xD
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It wouldn't load the Glide wrapper for some reason. Not complaining, since it runs at a full 60 FPS on a Pentium MMX in OpenGL mode.
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Which version do you have? Latest is 0.84c. Sometimes you have to play with the settings too.