3D Graphics Accelerator?

[mayoteru]

Folks,

I just returned to the States, with a Toshiba Dynabook Satellite 2520 Notebook, after an extended stay in Japan. I was psyched to get into the new games in English ! Unfortunately nothing seems to work. I'm pretty sure I have a S3 Virge/MX 3D Graphics Accelerator with AMD 300 MHz k6-2 processor(whatever that means). Apparently my computer detects Direct X and Direct Draw but no AGP Texture Accelerator. When I tried to test my Direct 3D accelerator, I got the following message:

Step 5 (Get Device Caps): HRESULT= 0x8876086a

I just figured I run this by you all before the computer repair shop takes me to the cleaners.
And once(trying to run a game [Dungeon Seige]) I got this:

Create Surface- ZBuffer DirectX 0x8876017c
(3D can not be used)

Any ideas on how I can get this fixed? Also my computer is NOT connected to the internet, so I can't easily download/upgrade stuff. I'm at work now.

mayoteru

 

[Greeno]

Jesus man, that cards old, do Start-- Run and type dxdiag . Let us know what version of DirectX you're running, but from memory, I can't remember just how compatible that card really is (if at all).

I'll report back when I dig summat else out.

 

[Nodsu]

That card is pretty old and useless for modern 3D and you are not going to play any new games with that CPU either. You should install the latest drivers for your vid card (if you can find any) and upgrade to at least DX8. And then play games with release year 2000 and less (Dungeon Siege fits in there nicely). You may get newer things to run but your gaming experience will suffer greatly.

 

[mayoteru]

Driver?

Heya,

Thanx for the replies! To give some more info...I have updated to Direct X 8.1 I think. As for having an old card, can I replace my card?Myself? Or do I have to go to a shop?

Others have said maybe I should go to the manufacturer to find a new driver for my video card. Is that Toshiba or S3?

What about the speed of the processor? Can that also be updated? I thought about trying to buy a new hard drive and using all the available space on my internal to hold something faster, but I was told I might lose the Japanese character ability if I do that. I do have a product recovery disk. Maybe that'll hold it?

I'm at my wits end.

mayoteru

 

[Nodsu]

Before doing any hardware upgrades you have to check from Toshiba if and how far you can upgrade something.

The japanese language depends on the OS you use so if you are not reinstalling Windows nothing bad will happen.

You can't add an extra hard drive inside your laptop, you can replace your existing one with a bigger drive. As for external drives, your machine probably doesn't have any fast ports like Firewire or SCSI so it will be rather slow.