Miscellaneous FAQ

Miscellaneous
Frequently Asked Questions
updated Sept 15, 1997

Contents: General; Reference Board Capabilities; Platform: x86; Platform: DEC Alpha; OS: Windows NT; OS: Windows 95; OS: MacOS; OS: DOS; Application & Demo Tips

General

The hardware and drivers I purchased which uses 3Dlabs technology does not behave the same way as 3Dlabs' reference hardware and drivers..

Reference Board Capabilities

RacerTX, 1280 & 1600 true color display support issues: Support in 3Dlabs' Windows 95 reference driver to allow modes with >4Mb of Framebuffer on a TX has not been folded in yet. Regarding RacerTX reference board designs, it is highly likely boards with S/N not matching 9521XXXX are missing the required mods necessary for these high resoution deep color display modes.

Platforms: x86

AGP system refuses to enable Direct3D HAL with Permedia 2 AGP card installed. System otherwise accelerates GDI 2D and OpenGL 3D fine.: This comes about by incorrect BIOS settings. The BIOS has an 'aperture' size for the AGP memory and this must be set to greater than 4MB for the HAL to be created correctly. If the AGP heap cannot be created, then DirectDraw disables the HAL.
Some systems based on Intel 440FX motherboard with embedded NIC and Adaptec UW SCSI controllers: VGA only output.: Enable USE BIOS PCI addresses setting in the GLINT control panel, reboot.
Compaq BIOS: In some machines a Permedia Delta card won't boot and/or is override by an embedded video controller.: For 3Dlabs reference Permedia Delta card, consider changing dip switch #3 to PCI 2.0 compatibility setting. This switch makes certain Permedia boards report that they are an 'early VGA' device instead of a 'XVGA' device.
DELL Optiplex machines: while booting the message "Plug and Play Configuration error" is displayed.

Platforms: DEC Alpha

Why does a Permedia board hang a DEC Alpha on bootup, while the same drivers boot flawless when a GLiNT board is installed?: Check that dip switch #3 on the board (for 3Dlabs' Permedia + Delta reference board) is set for PCI 2.0 compatibility.

OS: Windows NT

Problems installing new NT 4.0 drivers. While logged on as administrator, after installation (copying the files) a permission error message is displayed and the routine breaks up.

This message is being called by an error in the installation. This may be caused by a conflict with previously installed drivers. One suggestion is to delete the GLINT entries in the registry and then reboot. The GLINT entries are held in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\glint. You can use regedt32 to delete these entries.

Used a Win95 install disk for NT (by accident). Now sporadic "Incorrect Driver ..." messages occur.

Reinstall proper NT drivers.

Systems with greater than 4 GBytes hard disks' won't accomodate NT 4.0 installation.

Here is a work around proceedure:

Use DOS FDISK to wipe the hard disk. Then install a DOS bootable partition 2 MBytes or smaller in size. Reboot.
Now use FDISK to creat extended partitions in the remaining space. Reboot.
Now use FDISK to delete the extended partitions. Reboot.
Now use NT 4.0 installation floppies to install NT into the unclaimed remaining space on the hard disk.

OS: Windows 95

3Dlabs drivers installed and Direct3D applications are accelerated. However OpenGL is only running the Microsoft software OpenGL.: Some versions of 3Dlabs' Windows 95 OpenGL drivers require MSVCRT.DLL to be in \WINDOW\SYSTEM .
How do I uninstall 3Dlabs' Windows 95 drivers?

OS: MacOS

With a Permedia Delta based card and 3Dlabs' Permedia 1.0.0 reference drivers, the card is not recognized?: TI and IBM both manufacture Permedia chips for 3Dlabs. Only IBM Permedia chips are recognized at this time by these drivers.

OS: DOS

I have a Permedia board from one of your customers and I was wondering when there might be VESA 2.0 drivers for the Permedia chipsets?: Please contact 3Dlabs' customers directly for additional information on drivers that support their cards. For 3Dlabs' internal reference design, a SciTech driver can enable VESA modes

Application & Demo Tips

3D GLQuake: beta drivers, command line options, and optimum settings.

For best results running GLQuake, use 3Dlabs' beta release NT/OpenGL drivers. These drivers can be downloaded from the Drivers section at http://www.3dlabs.com/drivers.

For maximising the framerate of glQuake demos on Windows NT 4.0 using driver release 29r20RC3 on a Permedia accelerator, there are some settings that need to changed from their default values.

Display applet settings in 3Dlabs tab under boot options:
Size of DMA buffers (KB) 64
Sub-buffers 8

Registry variables:
OpenGL.MaxTextureSize:REG_DWORD: 7
(This variable will not have been created by the default installation so needs to be added by hand. It defines the maximum resolution of texture that is handled by the OpenGL system. See the release notes for full details.)

Boot into the following display setting:
640x480@65k colors 60 or 75 Hz refresh

Finally, run glQuake with the following command line options:
glQuake -lm_4 -r_flashblend 0 -window -width 512
Graphics Performance Characterization Group (GPC)'s OpenGL Performance Characterization Project Group (OPC)'s Viewperf Benchmark: Performance Tips download the latest version from ftp://ftp.specbench.org/dist/gpc/opc latest submissions: OPC Viewperf (GPC's OPC Project) more info: http://www.specbench.org/gpc)
3D Studio MAX: Is there a way to display a frames/second counter during preview modes?: Enable frame counter in the 3DSMAX.INI file. Courtesy of Gary Yost and James Carrington.
Microsoft's DirectX/3D SDK: After custom installing, the demo apps won't run?: Add a registry entry D3D Path using REGEDIT.
WipeOut: Won't run, any particular Direct 3D tweaks to enable it?: See the above OS: Windows 95 info on Direct3DHAL.Linear registery entry value.