Hello there. It's me, Ryan. A few years ago, I had posted a topic about my old HP Pavilion 7285 (D3903A) 200mhz computer that has Windows 95. Back in late 2005, I had posted about replacing the CD-ROM drive (I had found an identical drive that was a slightly later firmware), and in 2006 I had the CMOS battery replaced. All has been well with the computer.
Now, a few days ago, I suddenly wanted to install something into a PCI slot on the computer, and this was a graphics card that was removed from the computer sometime around 2000 or 2001. (I don't remember.) The card is the Rio Diamond Monster 3D. After talking with a computer expert at my summer job, I decided to try re-installing the Monster 3D, and while taking anti-static precautions, properly inserted it into the PCI slot and after closing up the computer, used the VGA cable to patch from the video adapter to the Monster 3D, and then from the output on the graphics card to the monitor. (The Diamond Monster 3D doesn't do any 2D graphics, and needs a host 2D video adapter to work.) Now, I must say that on my first attempt, I ran into a problem when I tried to run Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II with hardware acceleration enabled. I had thought that the card may have gone bad, but it appeared that I hadn't installed the drivers correctly, even though the Monster 3D appeared on the display options in the control panel. I had installed the drivers directly from the CD, and noticed that the Monster 3D wasn't detected properly under the device manager.
Well, after uninstalling the drivers, I went ahead and installed them again. Instead of going directly to the CD, I followed the directions on the instructions we still had. Since it got installed through Add New Hardware, I noticed it was detected in the device manager. That time, when testing Jedi Knight, I noticed that the screen went black except for the crosshairs and HUD, and the graphics wouldn't appear until I fired a shot or activated the lightsaber. (I found that frustrating.)
I was set to leave it be, until I went online on our library computer (HP Pavilion a1440n), and downloaded an updated driver for the Diamond Monster 3D. After upgrading the driver and restarting the computer, I did another test on Jedi Knight. I was happy, as the graphics worked properly. After seeing that the card was working well, I went and installed Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith, glQuake, and Quake II. Even they worked good on that old computer. However, as with all of these games, under this card I cannot set the resolution to 800x600, and have to stick with 640x480. (The 800x600 resolution on the Diamond Monster 3D lacks a Z-buffer.)
What's your take on what I had decided to do?
