I'm not the best one to ask about what is normal, since my hardware is rather abnormal to begin with, and I don't have much experience with the Amigamerlin drivers.  Nevertheless, I think I can say that whatever error messages you are getting are not normal.  I don't get any error messages.  And lots of people seem to run v3.1 R11 and say it is a pretty solid driver set.

I don't recall if I got questions about whether to replace recent files or not.  I do think it can help sometimes to make sure that you remove all your old 3dfx drivers and their associated files before installing a new set.

I would prompt you for additional information, but I don't think I would be able to do anything with that information.  Someone who knew more about these things would probably want to know what the error messages are, and what the recent files were that you replaced.

Good luck,

Phil.

I'm trying to tweak my settings using the 3dfx Hub, which is part of 3dfx Tools, but I don't see a couple settings in there.  I wonder if I've got the 3dfx Tools installed correctly - maybe your options depend on whether you've got an AGP or a PCI Voodoo card, or which card you've got?

When I open the 3dfx Hub, I've got three tabs:
3dfx Advanced Features
3dfx Color
3dfx Anti-Aliasing

The last two tabs offer options that look the same as what I have seen elsewhere on this forum.  Under "3dfx Advanced Features", however, I see only the following options:
Special Settings
Direct3D
OpenGL/Glide

Should I also see "Global" in there? Or is this something that only appears under AGP, or has been removed somehow with Amigamerlin 3.1?

Also, under Direct3D, I don't see all the options that I see in some of the screen shots for setting up Amigamerlin 3.0, and in particular, I am missing:
2 Pixel-per-clock Rendering
Rendering Color-Depth
Scan Line-Height
Trilinear Texture Filtering

Is this normal?

My System:
ThinkPad 600X
PIII 850MHz 512MB
Windows XP SP2
SelectaDock III Docking Station
Voodoo 5 5500 64MB PCI

Phil.

Amigamerlin 3.1 R11

Installation Instructions in English for Windows XP

1) Remove any old 3DFX drivers

• uninstall any current 3dfx driver using standard uninstall process
• and/or revert back to standard VGA driver
• under XPSP2, you may not be able to revert back to previous driver, so you can just proceed with next step

2) Remove any leftover 3dfx registry folders and reboot

• run regedit
• locate HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\
• delete folder named "3dfxvs"
• reboot
• you may experience display corruption during reboot

3) Overwrite empty file "dxtn.dll" with compiled version

• the dxtn.dll file that ships with Amigamerlin 3.1 R11 is an empty placeholder file that should be replaced before installing R11
• download a compiled version of "dxtn.dll" from the link below
• overwrite the emply file "dxtn.dll" in the driver2k folder inside the Amigamerlin folder

4) Install the Amigamerlin drivers using Control Panel driver update

• you should not use the "Driver Setup.exe" installer for this release of Amigamerlin
• Control Panel -> Display -> Settings -> Advanced -> Adapter -> Properties -> Driver -> Update Driver
• If all that shows up is "VGASafe" and no driver update option appears, then go into Device Manager -> Display Adapters and select the VGA adapter, right-click, and choose "Update Driver"
• choose NOT to search for driver
• choose to select location manually
• when prompted for location point to "driver2k" folder inside Amigamerlin folder
• when asked, say to Continue Anyway even though driver is not XP certified
• reboot when told to
• an Italian set of control panel installation instructions with pictures of relevant dialog boxes is available on 3dfxzone.it

5) Install 3dfx Tools

• run setup.exe located inside Amigamerlin folder
• reboot when told to

---

Required Files

Amigamerlin 3.1 R11 Driver (includes 3dfx Tools files) - posted 2005-06-13

Compiled DXTN.DLL for Amigamerlin 3.1 R11 (from dborca) - file last updated 2005-11-02

---

[Original message accompanying post:]

Thanks to everyone for the wealth of information available on this forum and thanks especially to whoever should be credited with the ongoing development of these 3dfx drivers.

As a newbie to the 3dfxzone, I found it somewhat difficult to locate instructions for installing the latest Amigamerlin 3.1 R11 drivers.  A search on the forum led to instructions for various earlier incarnations of the  Amigamerlin drivers, but over the course of its development it appears to have had several different sets of instructions, and this led to some confusion in my small brain.

Is there a primary, flagged, or stickied location to direct newbies for instructions on installing Amigamerlin 3.1 R11?  And in particular, the instruction for cleaning out previous 3dfx registry entries?  

Maybe it is already located in a high visibility area that I just overlooked somehow.  If not, could these instructions be stickied somewhere maybe the way the SFFT driver info is stickied?

Here are the instructions I used:
[instructions moved to top of post]

Phil.

Version history:
2006-01-17: Instructions moved to top of post, revised to include instruction to overwrite dxtn.dll file.
2007-05-10: Added new observations on issues that may arise under XPSP2 install.

I ran into this error with Amigamerlin 3.1 R11 under XP, and found that the solution described worked correctly: make sure to disable any onboard video and assign the Voodoo card as your primary video card.

When installing the 3dfx Tools, I received the following error: "Error 1904. Module C:\Program Files\3dfx Interactive\3dfx Tools\Tools\AdvTweak.dll failed to register. HRESULT -2147418113. Contact your support personnel." just like the original poster.

In my case, I have a ThinkPad 600X laptop in a docking station using a Voodoo 5 5500 PCI and during the uninstall/install process of the new Amigamerlin drivers my laptop's built-in video somehow got re-enabled.  The laptop video was not functioning, mind you, it was just sitting in the Device Manager with an exclamation mark indicating that it couldn't find enough resources.  I know it had been disabled before, so I was surprised to find it with a yellow exlamation mark instead of disabled, and by disabling it manaually again, the 3dfx Tools were allowed to install correctly, as they should.

Phil.