Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

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Sebiohazard
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Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by Sebiohazard »

Good morning all !

I have two questions about installing Windows 98 SE with PCem...

1. I enabled the Voodoo Graphics option like this

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But in the Windows 98 display settings I can not exceed the 640x480 resolution why ?!

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2. Will it be possible in the future to emulate a Pentium III with a TNT or Geforce graphics card ? Because many Windows 98 games asking for a big configuration do not run...

Thanks best regards !
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BluesElwoo
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by BluesElwoo »

I am on a Windows 95 installation. I am having a similar problem. On the same 3dfx display properties window you are displaying here, I am able to move the slider for resolution, but I am not able to save it. Hitting apply or ok does nothing and doesn't save settings. What I am more after is changing the refresh rate. I am not able to move the refresh rate slider. I made the post about pifall the mayan adventure that is going to be a few posts below this one, and I feel like if I possibly am able to change the refresh rate to 70hz, it might be a good enough fix. If anyone knows how to make these changes, it may be a somewhat side fix to my problem in the post I created. I have a 144hz monitor, so Im sure this would help me!
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SarahWalker
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by SarahWalker »

Sebiohazard wrote: Sat 16 Nov, 2019 10:14 am 2. Will it be possible in the future to emulate a Pentium III with a TNT or Geforce graphics card ? Because many Windows 98 games asking for a big configuration do not run...
Definite no to Pentium III or GeForce, I have no intention of adding either at any point in the future. TNT is very unlikely.
But in the Windows 98 display settings I can not exceed the 640x480 resolution why ?!
Because 3DFX decided to not let you define the refresh rate of modes above 640x480 via the control panel. No idea why, I would suggest you ask them but they effectively stopped trading 19 years ago.
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Sebiohazard
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by Sebiohazard »

SarahWalker wrote: Sat 16 Nov, 2019 5:58 pm Definite no to Pentium III or GeForce, I have no intention of adding either at any point in the future. TNT is very unlikely.
Hello thanks for your answer, what solution do you propose for Windows 98 games that require a lot of resources & do not work under Windows 10 ?

Thanks best regards !
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SarahWalker
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by SarahWalker »

No idea.
Cheez
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by Cheez »

Sebiohazard wrote: Sat 16 Nov, 2019 6:40 pm
SarahWalker wrote: Sat 16 Nov, 2019 5:58 pm Definite no to Pentium III or GeForce, I have no intention of adding either at any point in the future. TNT is very unlikely.
Hello thanks for your answer, what solution do you propose for Windows 98 games that require a lot of resources & do not work under Windows 10 ?

Thanks best regards !
It doesn't work in all cases, but virtual machine software is unfortunately probably your best bet. emulation is difficult and more costly on system resources, so creating a 98/XP VM is the closest you can get, and those have their own set of problems to overcome. The unfortunate part is that those are usually technical issues and not hardware limitations.
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Sebiohazard
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by Sebiohazard »

Hello Cheez !

I have already tried to install Windows 98 with VirtualBox but the problem is still the same... there is no 3D accelerator card emulation... & Windows is slow I think the emulation is better with PCem :)

I do not know if the emulation of a map like the GeForce is complicated but I hope that in the future it will be possible...
the ideal would be the sharing of the graphic part of the host machine with the virtual machine !

I love PCem DOS games turn very well for that I say well done & congratulations for this superb emulator very well thought & easy to use !

Greetings
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leilei
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by leilei »

The thing is, 3dfx released about all their juicy tech/data sheets on closure. (forget if they had V4/V5 sheets though, that'd be their TNT equiv right there)

nVidia's still keeping that tight for the early NV series. I think they've only released docs on one of their more recent cores (for Noveau GTX/RTX support intent). Accurate TNT and Geforce emulation are very unlikely, and currently at the time of this writing, there's not enough CPU juice to emulate the Geforce at acceptable performance (if there was emulation, realistically thinking).

PowerVR's just as secret too, as much as I love their early cards. :( It's kind of a wonder that PowerVR2 emulation on Dreamcast emulators has some reality. The related Neon250 would be the TNT equivalent but had some serious driver issues. Their public data sheets seem to be white papers at best with the usual common language of architecture explanation across the whole PowerVR family (with variable superlatives depending on market/product).

There's ATI Rage 128 sheets out there though... not implying or nudging about support for this (respect hobbies and time), just tickling the possibility of existence on TNT equivalences. I'm not saying they are likely, just "possible" with the info out there.

As for Pentium III... Katmai extension requirements in video games weren't until around 2005 so there's not much 'need' for that. P3/P4 minimum specs were usually more for their performance targets, and supporting Athlon users was still important. It's probably technically more likely to hack in K7/Athlon than P3, but that'd mean more VIA...
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omarsis81
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by omarsis81 »

leilei wrote: Sun 17 Nov, 2019 1:39 am As for Pentium III... Katmai extension requirements in video games weren't until around 2005 so there's not much 'need' for that. P3/P4 minimum specs were usually more for their performance targets, and supporting Athlon users was still important. It's probably technically more likely to hack in K7/Athlon than P3, but that'd mean more VIA...
I agree with you. Voodoo 4/5 paired with an Athlon would be enough and maybe the top for PCem
I see it more likely the add for Athlon rather than PIII as Sarah made the K6 emulation already
Agorima
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by Agorima »

I think that there's no need to emulate a Pentium III or equivalent now.
A Pentium III is required for early XP-era games, and most of XP-era games still work fine today with patches.
GTA Vice City required a Pentium III 800 Mhz and 128 MB of RAM, and even then, it was barely playable on a PIII 900 Mhz.
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leilei
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by leilei »

Also for the record when I say something is possible to emulate with the information already out there for anyone willing, I don't want anyone to infer that as nudge or interpret what I said as a request. I don't like being behalfed and adding more pressure would suck out the passion of a hobby passion project.


Also techncially possible != practically possible. I doubt today's Ryzens can do an Athlon Thunderbird w/ V5...

note that there's certain emulation communities that deny the existence of non-intel x86 cpus in computer history, which leads to misinformation that pcem can't go beyond p55c and that it 'needs to emulate' p6, disregarding there being emulation of the competitors
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omarsis81
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by omarsis81 »

leilei wrote: Wed 20 Nov, 2019 12:06 am Also techncially possible != practically possible. I doubt today's Ryzens can do an Athlon Thunderbird w/ V5...

note that there's certain emulation communities that deny the existence of non-intel x86 cpus in computer history, which leads to misinformation that pcem can't go beyond p55c and that it 'needs to emulate' p6, disregarding there being emulation of the competitors
Well, no, of course today's ryzens can't emulate an Athlon with Voodoo5, what I said earlier was that, as Sarah explicitly said there would be no Pentium III I inferred that PCem might end possibly, as the highest it can emulate in an Athlon/V5, but that would be very long, if indeed happens

Speaking about the P6, is there a datasheet for the Pentium II? I couldn't it, or should we use the Pentium Pro datasheet instead if we wanted to emulate the Pentium II?

lelei, I don't like adding pressure or make requests, we both know much Sarah hates that, and this is a hobby, I just want to discuss future possibilities of PCem
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SarahWalker
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by SarahWalker »

I'm seriously thinking about how much longer I want to keep working on PCem as I currently do - it's been twelve years of public releases, taking most of my spare time for more than a decade, and I probably want to start having an actual life at some point...

I've no imminent plans to quit, so don't worry about that. But one thing I am _not_ willing to consider doing again is another CPU redesign like the one done for v15; I ended up completely burned out as a result of that, which isn't pleasant. So realistically Pentium II/P6-level performance is as fast as PCem's going to get.

Graphics cards are a slightly different matter, now that my day job no longer involves GPUs I don't feel the need to avoid anything relating to the currently active GPU manufacturers, so there may be some more activity there in the future. But GeForce level complexity is probably beyond anything I'd actually want to implement. Plus I have first hand experience that a GF256 on a Pentium II is a bit pointless.
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leilei
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by leilei »

My early GF2 experience back then had heavy CPU bottlenecking too and I ended up cranking the (Supersampled) FSAA for a lot of stuff to compensate the slowness with image quality of all the jaggy poly edges smoothed (and all the 2D artwork and some overdrawn buffer feedback artifacts that come with it, it was an impractical novelty feature at the time). Imagine having to emulate some kind of 2400x1600x32 buffer on the CPU...
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Sebiohazard
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by Sebiohazard »

Hello everyone !

I understand that graphic card emulation like GeForce has to be very complicated & thank you very much for the work already done for PCem congratulation!

Recently I installed the game Blade of Darkness under Windows 98 SE with PCem, unfortunately it does not run correctly,
it lacks power at the CPU & GPU level. The minimum recommendation for this game is:

- Pentium II 400
- 64 Mo RAM
- Compatible 3D graphics card with 8 Mo RAM


& the ideal recommendation is:

- Pentium III 500
- 128 Mo RAM
- Compatible 3D graphics card with 32 Mo RAM


I say that because this game does not work under Windows 7 or 10 unfortunately... thank you greetings !
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leilei
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by leilei »

I don't think Blade of Darkness ever supported the Voodoo2. When I did try the demo I believe it tried to use the slow D3D software rasterizer (and had more issues beyond that, I think the character bones messed up). It did do super-advanced-for-the-time renderer things like (Carmack's Reverse-ish) stencil shadows and scene reflections, so I do have doubts..
Windows9xFan
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by Windows9xFan »

Here is the Pentium III's databook.
I'm your biggest fan, Windows 9x series of operating systems!
UPerschke
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by UPerschke »

leilei wrote: Sun 24 Nov, 2019 2:11 pm I don't think Blade of Darkness ever supported the Voodoo2.
It has selectors dedicated to Glide for V1+V2, D3D for V1+V2, and D3D for V3+Banshee.
Sebiohazard wrote: Sun 24 Nov, 2019 10:42 am I say that because this game does not work under Windows 7 or 10 unfortunately... thank you greetings !
Maybe not trying hard enough ;)

Aside the game being available on GOG and re-released on Steam (for hazzle-free use) the original release does run on Win10.
Here's how I did with the help of dgVoodoo2 version 2.71.1:
  1. Install from CD/ISO to some writeable folder, do not install DirectX
  2. Install patch 1.001 (bladepatch.exe)
  3. Rename Data/video, e.g. to Data/video.org --> Otherwise crash at Play Game (MEMRESIZE_FAILED)
  4. Copy dgVoodoo2 MS/x86/*.* to Bin directory
  5. Copy dgVoodoo2 dgVoodooCpl.exe to Bin directory
  6. Start dgVoodooCpl.exe from Bin directory
  7. Goto DirectX tab
  8. Select Matrox Parhelia-512 from the Videocard list, then hit OK
  9. Start game
  10. Setup
  11. Video: D3d Permedia
  12. Configure desired resolution and depth (e.g. 1600x900 at 32 bpp)
  13. Audio: DirectSound3D Software Emulation
  14. Play game
I have a Core i5-4590S w. a GTX 750Ti and no glitches or frame drops.
dgVoodoo2 is a requirement otherwise the in-game menu does not work.

Please do not ask why this works. It works for me and I'm satisfied enough to not explore this further.
I'll be happy if you try and achive the same success.
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leilei
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by leilei »

When I last tried it on a V2 it went into seemingly a rasterizer mode. Maybe it got support added in a later patch or something, but it definitely wasn't there for the demo.

also note the post dates. Blade of Darkness DOES work on PCem v17's V3 emulation fwiw.
UPerschke
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by UPerschke »

leilei wrote: Wed 23 Feb, 2022 11:26 pm also note the post dates. Blade of Darkness DOES work on PCem v17's V3 emulation fwiw.
Yeah, noticed for both. 16 bpp V3 vs. 32 bpp dgVoodoo2 ;)
Yet PCem doesn't have to hide, of course.

At least I am dedicated enough though to try getting games playable on native prior PCem or VM, for reasons like 32 bpp and CPU bottlenecking.
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leilei
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Re: Change of resolution with Voodoo 2 card + Pentium III emulation ?!

Post by leilei »

That's a different realm of usage though. Where PCem emulates, it'd have to emulate all the behavior that comes out of using the hardware, including the Voodoo2's incapabilities. It's not an ultimate turn-of-the-millennium game fixer, but can serve to fill compatibility gaps as time goes on, as even some VMs aren't exactly futureproof for that (like Vbox dropping 3d for XP and Windows really wanting VM extensions for core security features by default). PCem's already a high bar with the involvement of roms and setting up old guest operating systems, and the CPU IPC muscle required to get anywhere near the 6th generation of CPUs (early P3 included).
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