So I have this nice G3 300MHZ Mac desktop now with a 5500 PCI pre-installed in it and I can't get a damn thing to run.

Quake demo- Installs and starts no problem, no video!

Quake 3 demo- Installs no problem, locks up when launched and I have to unplug the machine.

The computer also has an ATI chipset built in, is there a way to disable it? Could it's opengl extensions be fouling things up?

Hm, so you're operating the Voodoo5 as a secondary Video ?

Not sure, but Mac's (AFAIK) normally run with only one 3D Video Adapter Installed.

I have no clue as to what effect it has, when running 2 3D capable Adapters in one Mac...

Ahh something works!

Unreal Tournament loads and runs, so I think the problem is conflicting opengl devices.

So how do I make the ATI chipset go away or at least disable it's opengl extensions?

Only one monitor is hooked up, to the 5500.

That works via the "Adapterno" Setting.

Is set to -1 or 0 by default, should be set to 1 or 2 (you'll need to experiment a bit with it).

It is stored in the OpenGL portion of the UnrealTourmanent.ini (or it's Equivalent on the Mac UT)

Making some progress- Pulled the 5500 card out and and unchecked all the 3dfx extensions in the extension manager.

Now when you go to launch Quake you get a "no 3dfx driver" message.

Great, so the ATI card isn't an issue there.

So I install a boxed MacMagic 8 meg, load the drivers and we have glquake and a spiffy 28 fps. I pulled the voodoo graphics card and just installed a MP750, will let you know what turns up next.

Same problem as 5500- As soon as glquake launches the screen goes black and the game runs with no picture. Exiting the game locks the computer up and I have to pull the plug.

Looks like your System doesn't like a 2nd VGA Adapter...

wrote on 21.10.04 at 22:57:49:

Looks like your System doesn't like a 2nd VGA Adapter...

Well there are a number of people running such setups, just a matter of me doing some research and finding out what the settings/drivers needed.

Ahh progress!!

Part machine, part my fault- I pulled the 3dfx card out and nuked all the 3dfx/glide files and started from scratch.  Went to extension manager and loaded basic defaults extensions and then made a new profile from there.

Installed 5500, 3dfx drivers.

UT runs fine at this point so that tells me something is working. Installed another demo (Tomb Raider TLR) off the 3dfx demo disk under the assumption if it is on the disk provided with the 5500 it has to work and it works too under opengl. One thing I noticed about the TR demo is it seems very slow to load... So I fire up Quake 3 and wait.. and wait.... and wait... (no I'm not kidding, I actually went out to the fridge for a tasty beverage and still nothing was happening) and then *pop* Q3 was running.

This thing makes a 486 look like a speed demon! I have to see what I can do about speeding load times up a bit.

Increase your 'disk cache' setting to around 512k or so... ::)

This should speed up load times! ;D

(I'll have a look at my MAC emulator, as I can't remember WHERE the disk cache is located?) ???

Was up around 2mb, I dropped it down to 512k then back up to 2mb.

Finding out id wasn't so kind to Mac owners- Turns out the version of glmacquake I have is a bundled version that will only work with that card, hence the black screen.

The macquake version on id's FTP is non-gl only!

With some extra ram tossed in and the cache self-set to 3 mb this thing roars now!

Much better performance and loading times have been cut by better then two thirds.

Steep learning curve! Now to get that MP750 working...

wrote on 22.10.04 at 06:02:57:

With some extra ram tossed in and the cache self-set to 3 mb this thing roars now!

Well it did roar till I installed the MP750- After running the card and uninstalling the VT drivers the machine is back to very long load times! I know its extension related since it was loading very fast till I installed the VT drivers and then uninstalled them.

GLQuake is now working- Had to download a opengl package from apple (carbon) and a opengl quake exe from  http://macglquake.sourceforge.net/index.html.

So except for the long load times were not doing to bad... I'm going to continue working with the extensions till I find the right combination but if any mac users can offer a suggestion to speed things up I'm all for it =)