mystique and retro PC

[ION84]

Hi there! I am an old matrox user and right now I am trying to build a matrox mystique 220 4MB Pentium1 system with windows 98 but I am having trouble getting d3d to work. I remember having the exact same configuration some years ago and it worked perfectly.


Dxdiag keeps failing d3d

Which version of d3d should I use? Any bios options maybe? I also have an ethernet pci card and maybe it has something to do as well.


Can somebody help me?

[schmosef]

DX5 or maybe 6 is probably as high as you can go.

[ION84]

Managed to find dx7a on an ftp server and now everything seems to be working ok. How about adding a voodoo 2 to the mix? Any advice on that?

[ncfoster]

I had a Voodoo2 with my Mystique, so it certainly is a doable combo. What info are you looking for?

Nathan

[Mcollector]

Hi there! I am an old matrox user and right now I am trying to build a matrox mystique 220 4MB Pentium1 system with windows 98 but I am having trouble getting d3d to work. I remember having the exact same configuration some years ago and it worked perfectly.

Dxdiag keeps failing d3d

Which version of d3d should I use? Any bios options maybe? I also have an ethernet pci card and maybe it has something to do as well.

Can somebody help me?

You didn't mention what version of DirectX you were trying, but since you mention W98, I'm assuming (if memory serves) it is the stock DX6 (W98) or DX 6.1 (W98SE) that comes built into W98. DirectX was fairly buggy until DX7 (not to say DX7 didn't have issues, but earlier versions were much worse). I had problems w/ Photoshop 4.0 or 6.0 (forgot which, think it was 6.0) in W98SE until I updated the system to DX7a (no other changes). Then all went well.

The Mystique 220 dates from ~1995 or maybe 1996 (at the latest), so it is a very old card. Back then, there were a number of proprietary 3D formats. The 3D engine of the original Mystique drivers required games to be written specifically for it. Not many were. Early DX versions sucked. Early versions of DX had DirectDraw and D3D separate; later versions put them together, but Micro$ux didn't get it about right until DX7. You didn't see true, full h/w support for DX7 in video cards until late 1999 or early 2000, but DX7 has worked just great on every older thing I've tried it on, including an ancient Matrox Ultima. (3D just isn't very fast on old cards. In fact, molasses probably runs faster in January at the North Pole.)

I recommend using DX7a that you downloaded, but you can put DX9c on your system if you want (w/ a caveat; see below). The Mystique 220 probably supports, at best, either DX3 or DX5 in h/w, but it will work up through DX7.x via s/w emulation in the drivers. If you load DX9c on your system, DX9 dxdiag will probably pass the DirectDraw diags and the DX7 I/F 3D diags, but will fail both the DX8 and DX9 I/F 3D diags. This is no big deal, because your card won't work w/ DX8 and DX9 apps or games anyway (and if the drivers had s/w emulation for DX8/9, waiting for molasses at the N. Pole in January would be a more productive use of your time).

*HOWEVER*, DX8 and DX9 do break some older applications (actually just a few years old), so I would recommend that you use DX7 as a minimum, but probably DX7.1 as a maximum on an older system if you want to use some older apps.

I use DX7a you mentioned in a later post on all older systems. It cured some problems I had in W98SE. DX7a is also a good choice for W95 (btw, DX8.0a is the highest DX you can use in W95, but I recommend you stick w/ DX7.x for W95; DX9c will work in W98SE). For really old cards/systems/software, DX7.x is probably the best choice.

(The specific s/w that DX8/9 breaks is the video editing s/w in some older Pinnacle Video tuner/editing/capture cards, like the Studio PCTV Pro & their v. 4.x s/w. Pinnacle has no fix for v. 4.0, but Pinnacle wanted to SELL you v. 5.0 CD at 2/3 of the price you paid for the card plus broken s/w. They did this to me 5 months after I bought the original card. Pinnacle blows chunks. Buy Haupaugge instead.)

Unfortunately, once you install a later version of DX, you can't go back to an earlier version w/o wiping and reloading the C: drive w/ all your OS and app s/w. There are some DX removal tools on the web, but nothing Micro$ux sanctioned. I don't know how well they work. So if you try DX9c (I don't recommend DX 8.x at all; DX 8.x has a security flaw, and it's slower than DX9), and you want to go back to DX7 later, it's wipe and reload time.

I recommend you use the DX7a you managed to get hold of. It's a pretty good DX for older systems. I use it on older systems and have not had any problems. Later versions of DX will work and are probably faster (DX9c seems fastest), but you won't get ANY of the fancy DX8 or DX9 features to work w/ the Mystique, and DX8 and DX9 could break some older s/w, so why bother? Go w/ DX7a.

As to a voodoo2 w/ the Mystique 220, it should work fine, and will certainly give you much better 3D performance in Glide games (and probably better in OpenGL and DX games, too). The usual thing was to use a Millennium II for 2D work and a Voodoo2 for 3D play. (I have not personally tried either w/ a Voodoo2, but from what I've read, it shold be fine. I actually have all 3 cards, just never tried them together.)

[High_Jumbllama]

DX9 could cause problems as some older games have issues detecting 8 and above. Of course you will be playing older games on this machine anyway. Stick with the latest version of 7 to be safe or you will need a DirectX uninstaller. I remember there was a utility called 3dcc that could switch DirectX from the primary video card to a 3DFX card or an M3D and back again. Look for that in case you have any issues with any games.

[ION84]

Thank you all for your help! I have already tried some things but I didn't manage to make the mystique+voodoo2 combo to work perfectly. I have successfully played d3d with mystique, d3d with voodoo 2, msi with mystique and glide with voodoo 2 but I haven't found a way to choose what I want in every case. For example nfs3 has a 3dsetup which lets you choose accelerator and mystique although unplayable, is selectable. I selected it and got in to the game but the menus where white (missing unsupported textures I guess). Then exited the game and choose voodoo2 from nfs3 3dsetup and all was perfect running with voodoo2. The same thing could not be done with fifa soccer 3dsetup which just kept crashing the computer every time I ran it. My only option was running the game without going to 3dsetup and the result was software rendering.


I believe that the problem is a conflict between the d3d support of the cards conflicting and causing crashes needing hard reboot and the use of 3dcc helped in some cases but not always.



Anyway, I will come back with further specific details as I have removed the voodoo 2 from the mystique 220 4MB machine and put it on a mystique 2MB pc so I will continue my experiments there. I also plan to buy rainbow runner cards to play with those as well! They are so chep now on matrox online shop

On the mystique 220 pc I put my old m3d instead because from what I can remember, coexistence of those two cards was much much easier



Oh and...



HAPPY NEW YEAR!

[dZeus]

try 3DCC from this page to select which accelerator to use in games which don't allow you to chose a Direct3D device.

edit: I see it already was recommended and been tried