Peter

As you might have read, I've got a Pyramid3D dev board, with the CD and programmer manual, as seen in the thread below.




I need help getting it to run any of the demo’s (or anything 3D for that matter),it’s probably a good idea to mention first the bench platform that I'm using, I tried to keep it 1997, since the card would have launched Q3-Q4 1997.

Pentium II 300Mhz
Soyo SY-6BA+ III
2x256mb Ram
Matrox Mystique 220 Business (for 2D passthrough)
Sound Blaster Live!

Pyramid3D TR25202 revision B.03
System Clock rate : 70Mhz (More below)
3DFX Voodoo II passthrough cable

Windows95 C installed
DirectX 7.0a
And Soundblaster and chipset drivers installed.



Below, the errata.txt, which shows what board revision it is, and the clock rate (due to a bug in the process I guess)

Quote:
Marketing Bulletin
------------------

To: Distribution

Reference No: MB97002
Date: May 28, 1997

Re: Errata List for Pyramid3D TR25202 revision B.03

1. PCI Bus Master
Status: There is a compatibility problem in the PCI bus master. Include are
the P3D API dll for "On" and "Off " bus mastering. The setup program will
install the non-dma version by default. You have to manually install the
dma version. Please read README.TXT in SDK\WIN95 for instructions.

2. Clock Rate Bug
Status: The system clock rate is at 70MHz
For your convenience, I’ve uploaded the contents of the CD, it gives one or two readme files, first one how to set up the board physically, ie. Passthrough cable setup etc. For anyone that doesn’t want to download the CD, I will list the txt’s here as well, might be easier.

CD Rom :


Readme.txt says :

Quote:
The contents of this CD are as follows:

1) Demo
a) Eagle directory
b) Torus directory
c) Warrior directory
d) Others directory
e) Setup.exe (sets up the following demos: Eagle, Torus,
Warrior, and Others)
f) Readme.txt (explains about the setup program and how
to run Eagle, Torus, Warrior and Others)

2) SDK
a) Doc directory (Programmer's Reference Manual)
b) Examples directory
c) H directory
d) MSVC directory
e) Win95 directory
f) WinNT40 directory
g) UTIL directory

3) Windrv
g) Win95 directory
h) WinNT40 directory

4) Errata.txt (an errata list describing the known bugs of the board)

5) Readme.txt (contents of the CD and who to contact for support)

6) Install.txt (on how to install our board)

For tech support please contact the following:

1)
CD Rom root Install.txt :

Quote:
The following instructions describe how to install the
Pyramid3D TR25202 board:

1) You should already have the following hardware items: the Pyramid3D
TR25202 board and the VGA pass-through cable.

2) Take the Pyramid3D board and plug it into a PCI slot on the PC
motherboard.

3) Use the pass-through cable to hook up the Pyramid3D board's VGA
pass-through connector to your VGA card's VGA output connector, making sure
to connect the other end to the Pyramid3D board's VGA connector that is
closest to the PC motherboard. Hook your monitor cable to Pyramid3D
output which is farthest away from the PC motherboard.

4) If you do not want to use the VGA pass-through cable, you must use
two CRT monitors. One monitor connects to the VGA output connector of your
VGA card and the other monitor connects to the VGA output connector of the
Pyramid3D board. For the Pyramid3D board, please make sure that you are
using the VGA connector that is farthest away from the PC motherboard.

5) Power up your system.

6) Please read the readme.txt file.

7) For support please email
Did all of that, got the output of the Matrox, into the lower input on the P3D, and the top output of the P3D to the monitor.



So, when Windows detected the new hardware, I pointed it to the windrv\Win95 folder, and it seemed to have installed it, even though it shows a yellow questionmark in the hardware list (see pics below)

http://img208.imageshack.us/my.php?image=009qj7.jpg
http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=010yu5.jpg
http://img98.imageshack.us/my.php?image=011ea4.jpg


After that, I installed the API Manually, as listed below, I tried the DMA dll’s first, but then installed the demo’s anyway, which installed the default, non DMA dlls, as listed in the readme, that is in the Demo folder :

Quote:
Pyramid3D API Installation Instructions :
-----------------------------------------

Use this installation method only if you have not
installed Pyramid3D demos.

Under Windows '95 :

Copy the files 'p3dapi.dll' and 'p3dextra.vxd' from Win95 directory to your
Windows95\system directory ( eg 'c:\windows\system' or 'c:\win95\system' ).

You will need to reboot your machine.

Under Windows 'NT :

Copy the file 'p3dapi.dll' from WinNT directory to your WindowsNT\system32
directory ( eg 'c:\windows\system32' or 'c:\winnt\system32' )

Copy the file 'p3dmem.sys' from the WinNT directory to your
WindowsNT\system32\drivers directory (eg 'c:\windows\system32\drivers' or
'c:\winnt\system32\drivers)

Install the P3D API drivers by opening a command prompt window and changing
into 'sdk\winnt' directory and type the following

regini p3dmem.ini (and press return)

You will then need to re-boot your machine.
A different txt file is under the SDK folder, which is slightly different :


Quote:
Pyramid3D API Installation Instructions:
----------------------------------------

Under Windows '95:

Without Bus Mastering:

Copy the files 'p3dapi.dll' and 'p3dextra.vxd' from a:\win95\no_dma
directory to your Windows95\system directory ( eg 'c:\windows\system'
or 'c:\win95\system' ).

With Bus Mastering:

Copy the files 'p3dapi.dll' and 'p3dextra.vxd' from a:\win95\dma
directory to your Windows95\system directory ( eg 'c:\windows\system'
or 'c:\win95\system' ).

You will need to reboot your machine.
Okay, so I did all that.

Now, when I try to run the demo’s, a dos box comes up, which gives the in demo commands, like C to change camera etc, like seen in the pic below (bit fuzzy, but I had to quickly take it before it went away) then the screen closed, and nothing else happens.

http://img352.imageshack.us/my.php?image=007ze5.jpg

The only demo, that actually gets me into the main screen, , is the ‘game’ demo (actually, before the main screen comes up, it gives you the soundblaster properties, if you want to run it 16bit or stereo or mono, etc, you know, the usual,) but it gives me an error, when trying to start the game, see the pics below.

http://img204.imageshack.us/my.php?image=001ue5.jpg http://img396.imageshack.us/my.php?image=005mt9.jpg


So that’s about it for me, the only thing I haven’t tried, is to just test the system stability without the card, which would be a smart thing to do, and which I planned to do initially, but I’m having a very hard time actually getting a proper stresstest program that installs under Win95 funnily enough, tried old versions of Prime95, which are for win95, but give me an error whilst installing.

At the moment, I’m not sure what is going wrong, or if I did anything wrong, or if it’s a driver problem, or whatever it is. Maybe I overlooked something, I’m not a 3D Professional so I can't do much about drivers, I'm more of collector of 3D hardware, but with a good understanding of how to set up a platform, hardware and software.