I need help: Voodoo 3 Era Build

[MotoRacer]

Maybe I've just gotten used to modern day computers... maybe this thing is just batty. Either way I need some help. Running Win 98 SE

 

Asus CUSL2-M

While on the surface it appears the drivers for my CUSL2-M are working, there's a couple major issues.

1. No sound. And I mean NO sound. Not even any volume slider control. No headphone sound. Nada.

2. Seems to be missing a driver for the built in ethernet jack. Not the biggest issue, as I don't plan on taking it online, but confusing none the less.

 

Sound Blaster LIVE! CT4620

1. This is where the real problems start to come in. I have the original driver CD, which is great. And it comes with a bunch of bloat ware, all sound related. All that installs fine. Except for one... the Sound Blaster Live Experience. Sometimes when it gets to the end it doesn't recognize there's a new card, and just asks to restart. Sometimes it freezes during the install. And once, I got it to actually recognize new hardware was there, yet no SB Live driver seems to work with the hardware, and thus.... as before... no sound. No sound at all.

 

Voodoo 3

1. I have the original install disc. However, I had more up to date drivers on a burned CD. The retail disc gives me Voodoo 3 Tools. When the app is opened, all three sections of the app are checked, insinuating they're working I suppose. However, if I try to use the drivers on the retail disc, on restart I get a black screen.

2. Once in safe mode, and once drivers are replaced with the latest ones for the card, on restart I can see again. Wonderful.

3. But here's the problem. I can't seem to get any Glide supported game so far to recognize the damned thing. Take Need For Speed II. It'll go into software mode every time. Moto Racer errors out on me before even starting, complaining about some Direct Draw thing not being found, despite Direct X being on the system and the direct x application verifying everything is working just fine.

 

Everything else seems to be functional. I can view Win 98 SE in all sorts of color ranges, showing it's utilizing the graphics card (before installing the card's drivers, everything was in 16 colors). Otherwise, I'm lost. Games run without Glide support, some games don't even run at all, there's a severe lack of ANY sound or sound options (as if it's been ripped from the system), or any driver for my ethernet jack.

 

I figured with the original discs I'd be golden. Boy was I wrong. Any help?

[MotoRacer]

Well, I've yet to try it out (I'll do this tonight), but I found some odd drivers for audio and ethernet for my motherboard on the net. We'll see if that fixes any issue.

 

I've also found another set of drivers for SB Live, though I'm not sure if those will worth, either. Again, we'll see.

 

Still no idea how to get the VooDoo 3 (which is fully recognized by the computer, with no driver issues at all) to be recognized by games...

[carlsson]

I still get chivers along my spine every time I read or write about SB Live! so I don't know which set of drivers will be best suited for your board and will make it work fully. There is a reason why it commonly is known as SB Dead! or perhaps SB Crash!

 

I've had slightly more luck with newer Audigy cards, but it seems those EMU10K and later based sound cards were pushed on price to a point where you'd be lucky if you got them to work. It's a shame since Creative used to be a solid consumer brand of sound cards and the technology itself appears good for its time.

 

Good luck with your drivers!

[Sinphaltimus]

Make sure you don't have any hardware conflicts in the bios. Check all your IRQs and set them manually. May need to look up the best IRQ per HW device.

[carlsson]

Same about DMA and memory blocks IIRC. While this generation of PC hardware should be rather plug and play capable, sometimes manual assistance on those matters helped a lot.

 

I used to juggle network cards a lot during the Pentium 1 but also Pentium 2 era, between various computers at the student union but also the students' own computers. To them it didn't matter exactly which NIC you had installed, as long as it was able to reach the Internet at a reasonable speed up to 10 Mbps. Thus we had one or two brands our computer club was reselling, plus a bunch of spare ones of various brands, both ISA and PCI that could be swapped in whenever the default brand didn't work well on a particular motherboard. It was experience building.

[Flojomojo]

I think you're nuts for willingly wading into shitty Windows computerland from 20 years ago, but I second the DMA and IRQ settings. Device Manager is your best friend for this old stuff.

 

Also think about disabling the onboard sound from the motherboard in the system BIOS so Windows doesn't have to guess whether to use the ASUS or the SBL audio device.

 

I had a Voodoo 3 card in days past, but can't recall if it's one of those that need a little extra power from the motherboard to work, or perhaps drive the fan? Some of these had little pigtails that would hook into a power supply. In short, make sure you have the complete package and have installed it correctly. Better make sure your card and board are compatible, too.

 

Some of those old games have a setup program you need to run before playing the game, with choices between DX or Glide graphics. I can't tell if you've used that or not. Sometimes there's even a whole other executable on the disc. I seem to remember NFSII having different versions, some of which were packed in with video cards. Look for software patches in case that's the issue. All original media is nice, but the CD stuff was generally never the final version.

 

Lastly, you're smart not to take this online, it's very insecure and I hope you don't fix your ethernet port anytime soon.

[MotoRacer]

Forgive me for sounding like an idiot, but how do I check DMA and IRQ settings? If you guys mean seeing what's working or not in Device Manager, that's what I'm doing atm.

 

Honestly? I'm getting a bit po'ed with 98 SE, and I'm curious if maybe I'd be better off with Windows 2000. I've seen many on the net claim better performance and better driver support, so if anyone could chime in on that, I'm all ears. I have multiple hdds, so I could always load Windows 2000 on one and just... see what happens I suppose.

 

I still can't get audio to work, even onboard audio. I tried turning it off in bios per someone's suggestion, but that isn't helping the Sound Blaster work any better than it is.

 

Voodoo is still fully recognized, yet somehow not working in glide in games, and Moto Racer is still flashing Direct Draw errors and not enabling a boot despite DX being up to date and verified working by the PC.

 

Is this just win 98 being win98, or will I run into these same issues in 2000? I had an NT laptop back in college, and I don't remember having ANY driver issues I wasn't able to easily work around and fix.

[carlsson]

In the device manager, you should be able to sort devices by resource and see if you have any conflicts or even devices sharing resources without conflicts. Some cards could be configured with special tools, older cards may have jumpers but not so much in the PCI generation. Sometimes you can disable Plug & Play in BIOS and allocate IRQ, DMA, I/O etc per slot, but perhaps that was more common with brand computers like IBM than a more allround Asus board.

 

I also believe Windows 2000 may work better than 98SE in this case. In particular the Live! WDM drivers seemed more reliable in 2000 and XP than the VxD drivers were in 98SE. In theory you should be able to use WDM drivers in 98SE too but it was a generation shift in driver technology. It is definitely worth a try, if you have access to the WDM drivers required to theoretically get the system running.

[Keatah]

I had similar problems till I toggled ACPI and PnP. What a mess those days were!

 

For the voodoo you'll want to be sure the DLLs are in the right folders. And you may need to enable/disable IRQ/DMA for the AGP slot. Be sure you have the right AGP chipset drivers too.

[MotoRacer]

One thing I'm noticing, actually, is there's a distinct difference between the Asus mobo's 98/2000 drivers and the XP drivers. Mainly that the XP's driver is an all-in-one driver/bios. One and done. Where as the audio, ethernet, etc is broken up into separate drivers with 98/2000. I'm thinking XP might be the best option as it's impossible (so far as I can assertain) to load those other individual drivers to the mobo, when it's already supposedly a-ok and ready to go with no conflicts in device manager.

 

Ok, bear with me, so would a Voodoo 3 be enabled or disabled (IRQ/DMA)? What's the best way to configure that for the card? It's showing up properly in Device Manager, with no driver conflicts, so I'm assuming I have the right AGP driver for it.

 

Lastly, is there something I'd have to do for the SoundBlaster Live! card in the PCI slot?

 

 

Regardless, it sounds like Xp might be a wise move for both audio and graphics issues for me. I'm not sure how my dad set up the Win 98 computer we had back in the day. What a ****ing nightmare...

 

PS: Thanks for all the help, and sorry if I'm a bit slow figuring all this out. I've figured out so much, but feel like I'm still so far away. As a predominately console gamer (and more recently PC gamer), I'm not used to operating systems that can't nearly auto-find the proper drivers. And you'd think the ones that came on the disc would freakin work.... I mean it came with the hardware, what the heck? Haha

Edited February 17, 2017 by MotoRacer

[+Gemintronic]

I'd do a Google search on "Driver Packs for Windows 98se"

 

Maybe you can find some drivers and install them via the Device Manager instead of the bloatware installers.

[carlsson]

Sometimes the various cards were shipped with installers and more software than just the drivers. I don't know the exact cards specifically, but there might be a configuration/setup program somewhere in there.

 

The reason why there are fewer drivers in the XP folders may be because the operating system comes with more drivers default installed, so the hardware doesn't need to add their own drivers. There also is the time lapse factor between when respective OS was released, so certain hardware components which were bleeding new in the 98SE time frame, were common or borderline legacy by the time of XP. Often driver packs were updated several times, adding both new features to old drivers and brand new drivers to the most recent operating systems.

 

Driver packs might be a good idea, but I'm afraid most sites offering driver downloads have been infested with viruses for the past decade or so, so beware what you're downloading, whether those are ZIP or EXE files. Of course a fully trained antivirus and anti spyware software should be able to search through those files and find any known nasties.

[Flojomojo]

This is all good advice .... plus remember that some of this hardware had the shelf life of dairy products, so you want to try to match your software and hardware and not try to use things from 10 years apart. Not every Win9x thing got a good Win2K driver. This is one reason I hated Sony hardware from that period.

 

You can set interrupts and stuff from the BIOS as well as from Windows, so long as you remember what you're doing. Defaults really should work for the commodity stuff you've described.

 

Getting away from all this shit is the reason for progress in Windows.

 

Also, old stuff is old. There's a distinct possibility a component is faulty after all this time, and you're not exactly still in the warranty period. Are you married to that particular sound card? It's not the only game in town.

 

Remind us why you're doing this to yourself? Nostalgia for 800x600 resolution Glide graphics? Wanting to relive your youth? General masochism?

[carlsson]

Also, check if the games you want to play will run in both Windows 98XE, Windows 2000 and possibly Windows XP. Usually you'll have a compatibility issue there as well, in particular if the games try to run 16-bit code. Perhaps the choice of operating system will be more limited to the games than the drivers.

[Nebulon]

For the sound card, try moving it to a different slot (if possible). Also, for the SB Live, try to get ahold of the original drivers (as opposed to the newer ones). The original SoundBlaster Live drivers work really well under Windows 98se so -- in theory -- you should be able to get that card running. If I recall correctly, it's possible to have multiple sound cards running at the same time in Windows 98.

 

If you happen to see any exclamation marks under the Control Panel -> System -> Hardware, you can actually delete them and reboot (this'll force Windows to try and re-detect them).

 

Try different methods of installing drivers: From disk without using the Wizard, through the Wizard that (should) pop up, and through the Device Manager (in the Drivers section).

 

If you've updated DirectX, consider trying a slightly older version of DirectX.

 

As for DMA, it's usually toggled just for hard drives. If you find that you're having crazy-slow hard drive access times, try turning it on/off and compare. Should be in Device Manager, in the ATA/IDE section, and likely under a tab called [Advanced].

 

Of course, there's always the option of nuking Windows 98 and re-installing it from scratch.

[+-^CrossBow^-]

I always had a general rule of thumb that you place the sound card as far away from the graphics card as you can. I still follow this rule, however, I'm stuck with PCIE tech being what it is.

 

Anyway place the SB Live! into the very bottom PCI slot or second from the bottom. I never owned a VooDoo Glide card back in the day as I've been an nVidia fanboy since the Riva128 came out way back. But..I did use and have always used Creative Sound Cards. I still use an SB ZX+ now in fact. I do remember that there was only one set of drivers I was ever able to get working with my SB Live! on Win98 SE back then. Also if you don't have all the chipset drivers in place, then you need to get that fixed ASAP. Without that, most add in boards will fail to operate properly since Windows won't be able to know how to address them properly even with the drivers in place for the individual add ins.

[boxpressed]

I've probably put together a dozen or so 98SE Voodoo 3 systems over the past couple of years. However, I haven't worked with the 815E chipset of your CUSL2-M.

 

Here's what I would do:

 

1. Go into the system BIOS and disable everything that you don't really need for retro gaming: both serial ports, parallel port, LAN (you may need this, but I don't network my 98SE systems), onboard AC'97 audio (if you have it), ACPI.

 

2. Reinstall 98SE fresh. Just bite the bullet and do this rather than trying to tweak your setup, especially if you've loaded multiple versions of the SB Live! driver.

 

3. Load motherboard drivers. 98SE works great with 440BX chipsets out of the box, but it may need 815E drivers.

 

(4. This step is optional but recommended. Obtain a copy of disk cloning software. I prefer Ghost 2003 for my 98SE builds because it allows you to start it from Windows, and it can save the image to a CD-R. Making an image of your OS at this stage will save you tons of time.)

 

5. Go to falconfly.de and download the final version (1.07.00) drivers for Voodoo 3: http://www.falconfly.de/voodoo3.htm

 

6. Install Voodoo 3 card and run the 3dfx driver package.

 

7. I kind of hate SB Live! because it is notoriously difficult to install if you do not have the original driver CD. However, you do have it, which is great. Your model is the original retail SB Live from 1998. It should work, but you can go to vogonsdrivers.com to download other versions if it doesn't finish installing. However, you could make things worse by installing a driver meant for one of the infinite varieties of this card. See step 4 above--you may have to reimage after every attempt because you don't want to load driver upon driver. If you have to, you can get by with the onboard AC'97 audio, if it is present.

 

If all else fails, post over at vogons.org. Someone there should be able to get you up and running.

 

EDIT: Also, the "Multimedia" tab in the Control Panel has a tick box for the volume icon. This is also the place to indicate which device outputs sound and what kind of MIDI device you'll be using. The SB Live! has a decent but not great General Midi for DOS games. It sounds like your sound problems are bigger than this, however.

[crtfreak]

Have you checked to make sure the glide and glide 2x dll are installed?

 

Some early glide games will only work with a Voodoo1 unless you install a patch. And some glide 2x games wont work with a glide 1 game. Its the nature of the beast back in the mid 90's

 

Also a common solution is to copy the glide dlls directly to the root folder of the game you are installing. Some of the older games will require it there.

 

I've not used a Soundblaster in years. I strictly use Auro 3d in my windows 98se machine. I have an old soundblaster 16 I use in a Dos only 486.

[MotoRacer]

Have you checked to make sure the glide and glide 2x dll are installed?

 

Some early glide games will only work with a Voodoo1 unless you install a patch. And some glide 2x games wont work with a glide 1 game. Its the nature of the beast back in the mid 90's

 

Also a common solution is to copy the glide dlls directly to the root folder of the game you are installing. Some of the older games will require it there.

 

I've not used a Soundblaster in years. I strictly use Auro 3d in my windows 98se machine. I have an old soundblaster 16 I use in a Dos only 486.

 

Thanks for all the help so far. I'm waiting on my XP disc to come in, so I'll let you know if that fixes anything (I'll install XP on a separate HDD so I can easily revert to 98SE if need be).

 

I installed the proper driver for the card, that much I know. I just looked in the folder I have, I I'm seeing .dll files for Glide 2X and Glide 3X, with an .ovl file for Glide 2X as well. So, I have to drag these .dll files into the root folder of the game for it to load? I guess I can try this once it's set up again. So basically, if the game isn't loading properly, put these in every time?

 

And yeah, based on what I'm seeing SoundBlaster seems like it was a pain back then. I'll try moving it one slot lower on the board. It's in the second to last slot right now. Hopefully that does something....

 

I've tried literally every driver I can find for the damned thing. It's been a huge pita.

[MotoRacer]

I've probably put together a dozen or so 98SE Voodoo 3 systems over the past couple of years. However, I haven't worked with the 815E chipset of your CUSL2-M.

 

Here's what I would do:

 

1. Go into the system BIOS and disable everything that you don't really need for retro gaming: both serial ports, parallel port, LAN (you may need this, but I don't network my 98SE systems), onboard AC'97 audio (if you have it), ACPI.

 

2. Reinstall 98SE fresh. Just bite the bullet and do this rather than trying to tweak your setup, especially if you've loaded multiple versions of the SB Live! driver.

 

3. Load motherboard drivers. 98SE works great with 440BX chipsets out of the box, but it may need 815E drivers.

 

(4. This step is optional but recommended. Obtain a copy of disk cloning software. I prefer Ghost 2003 for my 98SE builds because it allows you to start it from Windows, and it can save the image to a CD-R. Making an image of your OS at this stage will save you tons of time.)

 

5. Go to falconfly.de and download the final version (1.07.00) drivers for Voodoo 3: http://www.falconfly.de/voodoo3.htm

 

6. Install Voodoo 3 card and run the 3dfx driver package.

 

7. I kind of hate SB Live! because it is notoriously difficult to install if you do not have the original driver CD. However, you do have it, which is great. Your model is the original retail SB Live from 1998. It should work, but you can go to vogonsdrivers.com to download other versions if it doesn't finish installing. However, you could make things worse by installing a driver meant for one of the infinite varieties of this card. See step 4 above--you may have to reimage after every attempt because you don't want to load driver upon driver. If you have to, you can get by with the onboard AC'97 audio, if it is present.

 

If all else fails, post over at vogons.org. Someone there should be able to get you up and running.

 

EDIT: Also, the "Multimedia" tab in the Control Panel has a tick box for the volume icon. This is also the place to indicate which device outputs sound and what kind of MIDI device you'll be using. The SB Live! has a decent but not great General Midi for DOS games. It sounds like your sound problems are bigger than this, however.

 

Thanks for your help. That's funny, that's actually where I got my drivers from. Maybe the after mentioned dll in the root folder thing will help?

 

I really wish you guys could just magically be in the office to see this first hand, haha. Here's to hoping XP works better. If not, I'll go more in depth with you shortly. Thanks again for your help!

[Keatah]

I vaguely remember having to put a bunch of dll's in the system and system32 folders. and the windows folder. been ages and I'm not into legacy win98 atm.

Edited February 21, 2017 by Keatah

[boxpressed]

 

Thanks for your help. That's funny, that's actually where I got my drivers from. Maybe the after mentioned dll in the root folder thing will help?

 

I really wish you guys could just magically be in the office to see this first hand, haha. Here's to hoping XP works better. If not, I'll go more in depth with you shortly. Thanks again for your help!

I've never put a V3 into an XP system, but I don't see why it wouldn't work fine. To be honest, there aren't many Windows 98 games that don't run better on XP. This is using Nvidia cards like the GF2. If you don't plan on playing DOS games, XP is a good platform but is overlooked because it doesn't seem "retro." One important piece of hardware without XP drivers, however, is the Aureal Vortex 2 sound card. Some people build fast 98SE systems to use this card with games like Half-life, Deus Ex, etc. But if you ever want to play DOS games, 98SE is the way to go. The Vortex 2 even has pretty good real mode DOS compatibility, fairly rare for a PCI card (good for your motherboard with no ISA slots).

[MotoRacer]

Oh my god. I can't win.

 

Seems people are either blaming cheap Chinese produced win xp discs or the DVD drive. Ugh. I have a spare DVD drive. I'll test that first I suppose....

[MotoRacer]

This was during the xl install btw. So it refuses to install after that message.

[Asaki]

Is your 98SE a clean install, or something you already had set up? Sounds like a lot of errors for a clean install.

I kind of gave up on PCI SoundBlasters, because both of the ones I have don't have great DOS support =| But YMMV. Don't know why yours wouldn't be working without a lot more information.

I just put together a "new" Win98SE rig myself, and popped in my Voodoo 3 (PCI)...and I think it might be broken now Hopefully it's just a motherboard conflict.

Honestly? I'm getting a bit po'ed with 98 SE, and I'm curious if maybe I'd be better off with Windows 2000. I've seen many on the net claim better performance and better driver support, so if anyone could chime in on that, I'm all ears.

Ehhh, maybe? I'd definitely recommend 2000 over XP; there's a lot less hoops to jump through, and it takes a bit of work to configure XP to look/act like 2000.

But either way, you're losing DOS compatability. There are a handful of games that only support Glide in DOS mode. And there are a few Windows games that I can't get to work in XP without using Virtual PC.

Voodoo is still fully recognized, yet somehow not working in glide in games...

As everyone else said, I always put the DLLs in the folder with the game I want to run (also makes it easier to try different versions of the drivers on different games).

 

A lot of games already come with the driver DLLs, but they're for older Voodoos, so that'll cause a problem. Try deleting/renaming or overwriting them.

I've not used a Soundblaster in years. I strictly use Auro 3d in my windows 98se machine.

Did you mean Aureal 3D?
I just got one of those (Vortex 2), that's why I'm setting up Win98. The demo programs sound neat...Half-Life mostly just sounds very echo-y, and kind of muffled, and slightly buggy in places. I might not have everything set up correctly though; I know it complains about being in the wrong PCI slot, and so it won't enable DOS SoundBlaster support.

I still need to install Thief 2 (which has an awesome sound engine to begin with), but I was hoping something that uses A3D 2.0 would impress me. I'm thinking about trying to install an older version of Q3A in a few and seeing how that goes (my retail version is 1.30+, so no A3D).