ATI Radeon Win 3.x compatible driver

[Ambassador]

Ok, for fun, I've installed Windows 3.11 for Workgroups on my second hardrive. I'm currently adding the update, but I have run into a snag: I have an ATi Radeon 7000 Pro graphics card. The problem is, I can only run WfW 3.11 in VGA mode; when I try to run it in higher mode like Super VGA 256 colours 800/600, it screws up. So my question, is there an ATi driver for 3.11 compatible with a 7000 Pro and can allow me to go higher than just VGA?

[georg]

See thread at www.computing.net/windows31/wwwboard/forum/11765.html

Date: September 10, 2005, OS: WFW 3.11

"...running dos 6.22/windows 3.11 on 1 half and windows 98se on the other

...can NOT find a driver...I am on..VGA...with 16 Colors. I just want to

get 256 Colors...640x480 or 800x600...ATI Radeon 7000 PCI Video Card."

Response #23 www.michaelv.org/computers/guides/win31.php#svga

Driver download at www.michaelv.org/computers/guides/svga256.drv

The link is still good. Driver file size is 117,440 bytes

Poster says you can get SVGA modes (256 colors). No word if it worked.

[Ambassador]

No word if it worked.

Well I guess I'll find that out eh?

[TravisO]

If you want to play with Win 3.11, I highly suggest you just do it via Virtual PC, as it will provide compatibility for ALL your hardware, that what I do.

BTW if you look around hard enough you can find IE5 and WMP6 for Win 3.11, along with TCP/IP drivers, although surfing the net is painfully slow.

[Eck]

Yeah man, virtualization is the way to go for something that old. But, even better, run Win 3.1 in Dosbox!

I've used Windows For Workgroups 3.11 in a regular modern day computer. It was slightly older than my current system and I was using a Radeon 7500 at the time. It was the good old Abit KT7A with a T-Bird 1.2 processor. Gosh, that was a nice machine!

Anyway, although I had internet using it that way (cool browsing around with the old Netscape), I didn't stay on for long. I didn't want to be hit with a nasty from that environment. Another reason for that experiment being short lived was that crappy display resolution you're talking about. ATI just never bothered (and who could blame them) with 3.1 drivers for the Radeon. Well, I also ran into the problem that my SBLive MS-DOS driver that worked fine in Dos would choke Windows 3.1 so it wouldn't start with the driver active. So running Windows with a crappy display and no sound wasn't worth my time.

However, in Dosbox it runs great! There's no internet like you can setup in VMWare but it'll run your Win3.1 games better with full sound (with the Creative SB 16 Driver) and pretty video! You do need the CVS version of Dosbox with the patch for the TSENG driver installed to get the better resolutions. And you need to get the SB 16 driver as the plain SoundBlaster driver included in Windows 3.1 just doesn't cut it.

You can learn all you need to do this and get links to the drivers by browsing around in the vogons.zetafleet.com dosbox forum. Heck, I had the 16 bit QuickTime and Real Player working too. The "Where In the World Is Carmen Sandiego" up to date version has a Windows 3.1 installer in it and the game played just as well as it does on modern Windows. If you tried Dosbox for dos games in the past and had problems, the latest version is very much improved. If you have a computer of let's say a 5 year old vintage then a lot of problems have been solved with speed and stuff. If you're running a really old circa 1999 computer then you will have problems. Dosbox does need a speedy processor for really late Dos era games. But the older less video intensive games will play fine even on that older computer.

[Ambassador]

Ok, the driver didn't work. Any other ideaS?

[Eck]

Didn't fall in love with my Dosbox idea, eh? Got to tell you it works great.

Anyway, I remember there being ATI Win 3.1 releases for the Rage Pro series of cards. That's about the best ATI card you'll get for a native Win 3.1 install with real drivers. And those cards didn't have the greatest reputation but they were widespread due to a lot of OEM use. I think CompUSA still sells them today using their own brand. The last driver set is probably included on the CompUSA cd, but who knows whether that includes the Windows 3.1 driver. I think ATI has those on their driver download pages though. ATI even offered their DVD player software back then that worked fine with them. I have no idea whether that would work on the CompUSA branded cards and I don't think anything before Windows 98 supported DVD playback.

In Dosbox you can get 1024x768 SuperVGA resolution in Windows 3.1 with the Tseng Video driver and a couple of the private CVS Dosbox builds that include support for it. Like I said if you visit that vogons forum you'll find all you need. That way you don't need to change your videocard. Dosbox doesn't care what you have since it simulates its own card, S3 by default. But it can be configured for the Tseng card to get higher than 800x600 that is the max on Win 3.1 with the S3 driver. If you don't need the 1024x768 then even the official Dosbox release will be fine. Then you'd just need the S3 Win 3.1 driver and the SB16 driver. Just as a caveat you can't use Win 3.1 Protected Mode or get internet access with Dosbox. But W32s does work anyway (somehow) and so some of those games that required it also work. W32s doesn't completely work all the time but its enough for some programs. You can ignore the advice to change the dosbox.cfg to EMS=FALSE as that no longer interferes with Win 3.1 in the latest Dosbox.

[Ambassador]

Didn't fall in love with my Dosbox idea, eh? Got to tell you it works great.

Anyway, I remember there being ATI Win 3.1 releases for the Rage Pro series of cards. That's about the best ATI card you'll get for a native Win 3.1 install with real drivers. And those cards didn't have the greatest reputation but they were widespread due to a lot of OEM use. I think CompUSA still sells them today using their own brand. The last driver set is probably included on the CompUSA cd, but who knows whether that includes the Windows 3.1 driver. I think ATI has those on their driver download pages though. ATI even offered their DVD player software back then that worked fine with them. I have no idea whether that would work on the CompUSA branded cards and I don't think anything before Windows 98 supported DVD playback.

In Dosbox you can get 1024x768 SuperVGA resolution in Windows 3.1 with the Tseng Video driver and a couple of the private CVS Dosbox builds that include support for it. Like I said if you visit that vogons forum you'll find all you need. That way you don't need to change your videocard. Dosbox doesn't care what you have since it simulates its own card, S3 by default. But it can be configured for the Tseng card to get higher than 800x600 that is the max on Win 3.1 with the S3 driver. If you don't need the 1024x768 then even the official Dosbox release will be fine. Then you'd just need the S3 Win 3.1 driver and the SB16 driver. Just as a caveat you can't use Win 3.1 Protected Mode or get internet access with Dosbox. But W32s does work anyway (somehow) and so some of those games that required it also work. W32s doesn't completely work all the time but its enough for some programs. You can ignore the advice to change the dosbox.cfg to EMS=FALSE as that no longer interferes with Win 3.1 in the latest Dosbox.

Do you know where I can find the driver?

And as for the Dosbox idea, I will try it. What is the optimum mode for best performance when doing this?

[Eck]

Yeah! The drivers and most of the Win 3.1 stuff you'll need have been prepackaged and there's a thread on those vogons.zetafleet.com forums that has all the links in one thread. The most recent ones were where I found the links all in one place in someones post.

Somewhere, I've got the printed out guides I made from some of the threads and guides on that forum. No, I'm not about to sort through all my stuff looking for it. You'll need to do what everybody else does and browse around there and print out, download, what you need. There is a forum for guides, and also several threads regarding Windows 3.1, all within the Dosbox area of the vogons forums.

I would grab 'em and post instructions here as I'm, heh, not a bad guy, but it's quite lengthy and the work has already been done for me on those forums. So if you'd like to learn the info go ahead and check it out.

Mode? Well, 3.1 analyzes the system during its installation and automatically selects the optimum mode. That is NOT, unfortunately, 386 Enhanced mode.

Oh, if you mean the mode for Dosbox then the latest version is set to auto. That will choose dynamic mode if the system and/or particular program it's going to run can use that. It does a pretty good job of auto detection but you can of course change dosbox.cfg or dosbox's autoexec to start whatever you want. Read the latest readme and also the new Dosbox downloadable HTML FAQ for more tips.

[Ambassador]

cool, I'll try dosbox/

Is there a direct link to the ATI Rage drivers, other than a forum?

[Eck]

All I know about ATI Rage is about a year ago I noticed I could find them at ati.com.

You won't need those if you're going to use Dosbox. You'll want the Tseng 4000 drivers. Hey, just read up over there on Vogons and you'll see. You change dosbox.cfg to use the Tseng instead of S3, then you install Win 3.1 but with the SVGA3 driver, and then you extract the Tseng's to a folder in your Win 3.1 C: drive and in Win 3.1 you exit to dos and run Setup, switching the video driver to the Tseng by browsing to it.

I think I remember that doing that during initial setup doesn't go well, nor does going right from the VGA driver to the Tseng. You install the Microsoft SVGA 3 one first (whether you do it during the install or after doesn't matter), then you change it to the Tseng one. Goes more smoothly that way.

Another good thing about the latest Dosbox is you no longer have to apply the work around for the SB16 driver install. The Creative installer no longer chokes so the added patch isn't needed.

Of course if you haven't seen the Win 3.1 guide on Dosbox yet you don't know what I'm talking about. But you will if you pursue this.

Go ahead! I had fun with some of that stuff. You actually get the old Creative software suite with a cd player, wave player, midi player, etc. I had to go into Windows Driver setup to install the CD stuff which apparently isn't installed by default, but then that worked too.

Kind of useless fun, but interesting if you want to relive old stuff or see what it was like.

Edited April 23, 2007 by Eck