Installing Descent 3 (a computer game) on a Pentium Pro 200 computer at home running Accelerated X and a Matrox Mystique.


  1. Upgraded kernel and hardware(see linuxsetup20.html).
  2. Installed Descent 3 without incident (sh setup.sh). In the introductory movie, the sound switched on and off about once/second. Pressing Esc caused it to crash instantly with the message "Failed to load library libGL.so". libGL.so was a link to /usr/lib/libMesaGL.so. However, AcceleratedX apparently does not work with Utah Mesa GL and requires the purchase of a proprietary 3D graphics driver, which costs between $29 and $149.
  3. Purchased and installed 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 PCI 16MB card, and downloaded the voodoo 3d server demo and xscv from www.xig.com.
  4. xscv gave errors:
    Invalid operands to binary
    Attempting to locate and install a precompiled module
    $REQUEST_DATA: ambiguous redirect.  
  5. 3Daccelx_3dfxVoodoo3-3000-3D-XSERVER-1.1-2.i386.rpm installed without errors.
  6. Reboot and install 3dfx card.
  7. Can't mount CD, cant exit X, shift, alt, ctrl keys don't work. Uninstall option in rpm doesn't work (just says either "is already installed" or "is not installed").
  8. Remove all libGL and libGLU as directed in manual and reinstall. Now typing startx causes system hang. Still can't mount CD.
  9. Recompiled and installed a new kernel, started X again - garbage on screen, then monitor went off. Xi Graphic's 'Xsetup -text' program is now also screwed up, all options in card database say "256k video ram".
  10. Reformatted disk and reinstalled OS without AcceleratedX.
  11. Downloaded the following from linux.3dfx.com:
    Glide_V3-DRI-3.10-6.i386.rpm
    tdfx_dri-4.0.1-1.i386.rpm
    tdfx_drm-1.0-3.src.rpm   
  12. rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps Glide_V3-DRI-3.10-6.i386.rpm
    rpm -Uvh --force --nodeps tdfx_dri-4.0.1-1.i386.rpm
    rpm --rebuild  tdfx_drm-1.0-3.src.rpm  
    The last command gave errors:
    tdfx_drv.c: In function `tdfx_version':
    tdfx_drv.c:392: warning: implicit declaration of function `copy_from_user_ret'
    tdfx_drv.c:409: warning: implicit declaration of function `copy_to_user_ret'
    tdfx_drv.c: In function `tdfx_lock':
    tdfx_drv.c:634: structure has no member named `priority'
    tdfx_drv.c:634: `DEF_PRIORITY' undeclared (first use in this function)
    tdfx_drv.c:634: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
    tdfx_drv.c:634: for each function it appears in.)
    tdfx_drv.c: In function `tdfx_unlock':
    tdfx_drv.c:690: structure has no member named `priority'
    tdfx_drv.c:690: `DEF_PRIORITY' undeclared (first use in this function)
    make: *** [tdfx_drv.o] Error 1
    Bad exit status from /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.66525 (%build) 
    Removed the link /usr/src/linux, made new link linux -> linux-2.2.16, and repeated. The rpm command worked at this point (exit 0) but did not create a new /etc/XF86Config as the README file said. X Windows was inoperable at this point, requiring a reinstall.
  13. After two weeks of trying stuff like this, I gave up and purchased Windows version of Descent. Inserted CD into a Windows computer. Clicked OK. Installation was successful. The game was not so great.

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