I remember bringing home my brand new Voodoo3 3000 and launching Quake II in Glide mode after having played it in software for months. Closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had.
I'm sorry the TV board got broken. It was working, to answer that question. As for the VooDoo2, I found it some years ago with a friend at a goodwill in Madison Wisconsin. I was never able to figure out how to make it work, and to be honest I didn't mess with it much.
I remember playing the Need for Speed demo with glide support and it was amazing. Loved it. Graphically for the time amazing. Worth the price of the card alone, well along with glquake.
NFS I didnt came with 3D support, but there was NFS II SE which took advantage of 3DFx Glide and that was just overwhelming. But that version ran under Win9x.
The driver CD I found on Internet Archive for the 3D Blaster Voodoo2 has a glide2x.ovl file right in the root directory, not in an installer archive. The IA item ID is 3DBlasterVoodoo2CD-ROM
Please don't butcher the voodoo card for the connector.. the original bridge cables can't be *that* hard to get hold of. Or use a regular VGA extension cord, those also work. The Banshee was quite unimpressive back then.. I know several of my friends trading them in for a separate Voodoo2 12MB and a 2D card. S3 Trio64+ were the cheap PCI options, or Intel i740 if you had AGP (and the 3D part of those intel GPUs was *awful* compared to the Voodoo2, but they were dirt cheap so they sufficed for the 2D job).
I remember a friend who got a Voodoo 2 in '98 and I was somewhat jealous, but by the time the Voodoo 2 came out it was a given that you were at least running Windows 95 and if you ran DOS games you were launching them from Windows, or restarting in DOS mode, but either way the DOS drivers were installed and configured through a Windows program. That being said, I remember him also complaining about DOS compatibility issues with his card even then.
IIRC, the guy who made the Book 8088 ripped off the BIOS from "Sergey's XT" project. Now I have a home-built "Xi 8088" industrial PC card from Sergey, and I know that if I'd also built it on HIS backplane instead of a generic one, there's an included POST display - so I think HIS XT BIOS does give POST data, but on a nonstandard port. And that wide connector on the side of the Book 8088 is supposed to be direct access to the ISA bus, so in theory it should possible to create a POST card for this laptop.
I remember spending $750 for two Voodoo II along with an AGP 2D card, back in the day. I couldn't believe spending that much, but it sure played nice. Die by the Sword was a game that was amazing on those cards. I was running Windows 95 or 98 on that box. I think I might still have it in storage somewhere.
The minipro does test SRAM, but you had 27c256 typed in the search box. Oddly the minipro software in my experience doesn't clear the search if you switch chip types, thus it had nothing to show you. If you clear the search box, the software should then list out the SRAM it does support to test.
I had the PowerVR card and loved it. For the price, it was actually pretty good. The Nvidia Riva TNT/TNT2 were giving 3DFX a serious run for their money at the time of the Voodoo 2.
The first 3dFX card that had both 2D and 3D was the Voodoo Rush card, based on the Voodoo I chipset. It was crap. The Banshee was based on the Voodoo II and was much better, however it did have some problems running games designed for Voodoo I cards (it ran Voodoo II games usually without issue).
I had a Voodoo2 card called a Monster2, the way to make these work is you need an external pass-through cable. The signal from your 2D card goes into the Voodoo2 card, then you connect your monitor to the Voodoo2 card's output header. Somehow the signals get combined inside the Voodoo2 card's circuitry. It's Voodoo, after all. ;)
I _still_ have my old machine - it did some other things then did another thing then was in a closet for ages until I put it back together during the plague - and I _still_ have my Voodoo Banshee :D But it was _also_ this era (and the XBOX) that got me _out_ of PC gaming because I couldn't afford those new cards every bloody year, and I was console-only for a long time.
Grand Theft Auto's one of them pure nostalgia games for me, never got to play it on any 3DFX cards, but played it so often on my Olivetti P75 system back in the day, and then come august 2013, I found a boxed copy of the game in amongst a pile of rubbish left outside the back of this house (from which I picked many other things too), and I had a different but same-spec Olivetti P75 system already, I was so happy for that find for reliving the experiences!!! :D
I used to have a Commodore monitor for my C64 Slim, and, as is often the case for my stuff, the screws were out. Don't remember why, nothing in there that I could have fixed.. maybe a switch? Anyway, In a bit of a rush, I grabbed it off the floor and picked it up. Snapped the circuit board right in half. Down the middle. I splinted it with something and managed, at like 18, to BODGE EVERYTHING BACK INTO OPERATION. Felt good! Worked perfect!
I didn't even know you could use 3dfx cards in DOS. Grabbed a copy of GTA dos and stuck my Ensoniq 3d Banshee in a machine. Was able to extract the OVL file from the reference installer with WINRAR on my win10 desktop and spent an a bit playing in 3dfx goodness! After a reboot to fix the sound driver, black screen!
You might have had the 3Dfx Voodoo Rush card. As I recall, it was a 2D & 3D card that worked in Windows, and supported most GLide games. I remember wanting to get one, but reading reviews that it performed terribly compared to even a Voodoo 1 card. My first "3D" card was a Matrox Mystique. I think I had one 3D game that supported it, the version of Mechwarrior 2 that came with the card. I wanted to get a Voodoo 2, but they were insanely expensive the entire time they were on retail shelves. I ended up buying an Nvidia RIVA 128 instead, which I think supported Direct3D out of the box, and then as the drivers matured, gained OpenGL support. I never ended up owning a 3Dfx card, as the Voodoo 3 was slower and more expensive than Nvidia's Riva TNT cards. And I don't think I ever saw a Voodoo 4 or 5 in the wild.
I had a voodoo banshee. I loved it, but I never once tried to use it for dos games. My computer was running XP at the time and DOS wasn't exactly an option if you're running XP. For windows games it was a great card. I loved it a lot.
I could be wrong, but I think the 2d card still generated the video sync for the 3D card so you still need the pass through. It’s been 20+ years since I had a voodoo 2 card so I can’t remember fully.
Yes that is right the 2d was passed through the cable and the voodoo added the 3d information and joined the two. The pass through must be used to get a display
i was curious about this so i tested my v1 system without the passthrough. at least with tomb raider dos it works fine without the passthrough, but the fmv clips are played on the 2d card so the screen goes black while in them. but with the 3d sections it works just fine on it's own
Oh, that cute little thing. If I recall correctly the Chinese man who designed, made, and sold those is a low spec/old computer hobby enthusiast. He just used what parts he could easily get ahold of to make them, which is why it's all common off the shelf components. From what I can recall from various youtube videos he's a great seller, very willing to respond to questions as best as he can. (His English is pretty bad.)
@@scottlarson1548 guess the cold arctic air was also really dry. We've had colder-than-usual weather in Scotland too (and I guess in England, Wales, and Ireland) but because it's the Gulf Stream cooled down by the weather in America, it's pretty wet air so we've had a hell of a lot of rain and wind.
@@kaitlyn__L What happens here is that cold air from the high desert in the east gets pulled into the area when a warm front is coming in. This places cold air just along the surface so the rain quickly turns into ice instead of snow.
Maverick, the service station that rebranded that candy, is a core memory for me. Going down to visit my dad in Boise and float the river.... everyone had 64 to 100oz refillable Maverick mugs.
I still have my 2 diamond 12mb voodoo 2 cards all boxed up in my spare room. I'll get them in an old pc one of these days. They were £260 each back then.
I still have my two 3DFx Voodoo 2 cards + cable somewhere in my appartment. Those cards were amazing back in the days and I've never had the heart to get rid of them.
Yeah, Voodoo cards are always a bit of fun, owning a Voodo 1, 2 and multiple version of the 3, it is a bit of a job to keep them all working as expected
if you rebuild the white KV9 TV you could also put on the pc board the missing parts to activate the video and audio output , 2 surface mount transistors, Q406 Q407 a few resistors and capacitorsand 2 diodes if I remember correctly I've done that to several KV9 to use them on movie sets as portable video source / camera transmitter receiver
You may be able to pull the glide file from the Win95 install. It will definitely take some digging to find where it's stored but I feel it's worth a shot.
I've learnt my lesson the day I took a shortcut to buy that PowerVR card against a 3DFX as it was not available in the store I went the day when my dad finally gave me the green light for a 3DFX. This is where I realized how crappy this PowerVR chipset was and its lack of games support. I heard that it was bottlenecked by the CPU and that you needed a fast CPU, like a Pentium MMX 200 or so, to get it to perform decently. My friend, in the meantime, with his Pentium 90 and his 3DFX was crunching it... I've learnt that day that patience will pay off.
@AdriansDigitalBasement][ Adrian, you regularly mention your heat/AC noise, but we have never heard it. It's noise that just doesn't come through. My family and I have never been able to work out that extra noise. Really don't think you should worry about it. Just a friendly heads up on that..
I didn't get into PC gaming until Windows 95 (was an avid Amiga user until Commodore imploded) so I missed out on DOS gaming for the most part aside from a PC at my father's office with Hercules GFX. I purchased my first 3dfx card (Voodoo3 3000) during the era of Windows 98 due to the N64 emulator that took everyone by surprise, UltraHLE. The emulator was created to use a 3dfx card, but for saps like me who had only basic 3D gfx (I believe I had S3 Virge) some people wrote Glide wrappers. After a miserable experience trying to use them, I finally coughed up the money for the Voodoo3 card. I vaguely remember some issues surrounding the various Glide files, especially in later years trying to piece together Voodoo3 drivers from newer cards after support for the card was dropped. It was nothing though like the issues Adrian described with getting his Banshee and the Voodoo2 card working in DOS.
Hi Adrian. Back in the day I had a system with the famous Celeron 300A@450MHz, with two Voodoo2 12MB in SLI. This was a very well performing system at the time, compared to the cost. I did most of my gaming in windows at the time, so unfortunately I can not comment on the DOS issues you have. Back in the day, I probably would have known, but that's many years ago. What I can comment on, is the Voodoo Banshee. I did not have one, but a good friend of mine did. I remember he had much more issues than I had with my Voodoo2's. So I would recommend the Voodoo2 over the Banshee. And keep a lookout for one more with the same amount of memory. They came with 8 and 12 MB.
I hung onto 3dfx till the very end only to watch it fail just like Commodore not all that long before. As far as the candy, Maverick is a a chain of gas stations out west. And now in the midwest hopefully as they bought out Kum N Go. Home of the Bahama mama hotdogs. My dad's favorite.
the voodoo passthrough cable is a standard VGA Extension Cable. Its just what, 10cm or so instead of 1m... So I wouldn't replace it, just make some VGA Extensions...
It's not quite a VGA extension. Extensions have female nuts but the passthrough cable has male threads. You can use an extension if you remove the nuts but nothing will stop the cable from falling out. Guess how I know.
@@eDoc2020 You are correct. I was more speaking from an Electrical point, as I used the Voodoo Loopthrough Cables as Extensions... Though with that Knowledge, it should be easy for Adrian to make his own cable!
I can't be the only one who has noticed that you have a Blue Ring on your left hand ring finger! I know it's none of our business, but, are contratulations in order? If they are... Contratulations Adrian 🙂
Yeah the Rush was not good, I know because I have one here lol. The 2D on that thing is trash and the 3D part is slower than a Vodoo 1. If you see one for sale, don't buy it unless you're collecting.
You may have already realized this, but a female VGA connector will have a footprint that's a mirror image of the male one. I think it actually won't fit in the board, but if it does, the pins will be swapped around
1997 or 1998 I bought a Diamond 3DFX accompanying the good old ATI Mach 64. Got it working in DOS (and Windows 95) and also in Linux. Unfortunately memory is foggy, but I seem to remember it worked without hitch. Assumption: I installed all under Windows, so as side effect it also worked when I booted the machine into plain MS-DOS.
Hello Adrian, I bought a 3DFX-Card 2 for 650,00 DM (Deutsche/German Marks), two weeks later it costs in the same Shop 400 DM less!!! But I could play the game "Hexen II" on a "Windows NT 4.0" System with DirectX 3.0 AND 3dfx-Support!
One of the other ways to determine if a chip has been rebadged, especially if it hasn't been blacktopped (painted, as you put it) is to get a pair of digital or dial calipers and measure the thickness of the chip. DIP-40 chips should be between 0.14 and 0.16 inches thick. In order to completely remove the original laser or machine engraving, they have to sand down the top of the chip, and often this reduces the thickness a noticeable amount. This isn't foolproof because some laser etchings (especially on modern chips) are not very deep and even after sanding can still remain in the valid range. However, if you have a decent sample of legitimate chips of a particular type, you'll find that the thickness is usually very consistent, even across different years and batches, unless the chip is made in multiple different plants. When that happens, often you'll find distinct bins or groups of thicknesses that are very consistent.
Yeah, the 8284 is the clock chip. I remember, because I was trying to breadboard a prototype computer with a Z80 and that chip, when my oscilloscope let the magic smoke out! 😔 How rude! 🤣😆😂
of note, thanks to the proximity of your mic to your voice, the noise of your HVAC system is not much of a concern. However, I do appreciate your concern over audio quality. IMO Audio is 90% of the content in a video....
Hehe, shoutout for PowerVR!! It was my first cheapie 3D accellerator too, as I couldn't afford a 3DFX, but aside from some cool demos and a couple of games it wasn't very useful. My first real 3D card was an Nvidia RIVA TNT, first use of the 'detenator' drivers before the GEforce. Also, can't believe how expensive those book8088s are! You can buy a functional modern book PC for the $300 people are asking for! I figured this to be a sub $100 novelty thing. Anyone know how much they were new?
If my memory serves me correctly the banshee doesn't support native DOS 3D. I had a creative model and there was library in their installer that allowed DOS 3D games to run in Windows. I think this was custom, it may be included in some driver packs. Also GTA with glide is DOS only and would need to be run in windows to work on the banshee. I have a voodoo 3 system that I just checked and the amigamerlin drivers include the glide2x.ovl and works with GTAFX in Windows.
I recently assembled a retro computer and I wanted to install a voodoo card. I had a Banche and the same as your Voodoo 2, Creative labs. But I didn't have a small cable. So I tried Banche. I didn't manage to get a picture, I changed the motherboard. And it works. I get the picture but I didn't try it with the games because I wanted it on another board. I got small cables for Voodoo 2 and managed to install Voodoo 2 but it only works in Win 98SE. but it works for a while then the picture freezes. My friend brought his exact same one and his works great. Then I saw mine heats up a lot when I added coolers to the processors and mine works. A lot of trouble at the end.
I had the exact same 3dfx voodoo 2 card from Creative Labs back in then and was also my first 3D Accelerator card. The card was an absolute joy to play on in 3D games, though I didn't play much of the DOS 3DFX Games. My card now although still gets detected in my old pc, shows a garbled screen with artifacts when initialized. Suspect it is the graphics memory or one of the TMU chips. Adrian can use the dos utilities detect & mojo to check if there is something physically wrong with the card.
I wish I could get my hands on a Compaq 386 laptop or a Toshiba dos capable laptop. I had both stolen out of my car in a parking garage. I planned on using them to teach my daughter about DOS and let her enjoy some games.
I remember having an integrated Geofence 440MX on my HP desktop around 2002-2003. I had to buy a dedicated graphics card because it wouldn't run Deus Ex: Invisible War There was a time in the early 2000 where Pixel and Vertex Shaders kept changing and it seemed like every new game required a newer version of the shaders that my graphics card didn't support. That was a confusing time. I'm glad that now everything just runs but you may have to turn off some features to get acceptable performance.
Wow. I remember proudly walking out of whatever mall chain store it was back in 98 or so with a new voodoo2. Was the box purple? I need to look for that box in the other room, where I may have it. If I've got the box, then the board is in one of my old machines in there too. Treasure hunt tomorrow.
Dos games were often awkward to get working what with EMM386 and himem.sys, sound cards added to the complexity then 3D cards took things to a whole new level of awkwardness.
I believe a good way to get that file is to use a W95 emulator on a modern computer, use the installer you have, then retrieve the ovl from the emulator's disk image. I did something similar to get some files generated from an old piece of software that installed well but didn't want to run on anything other than 4:3 screens (it needed high resolution graphics, but whatever the check they made it do, it fails with non 4:3 aspect ratios).
They just released v2 of the Book 8088, and this time with a VGA graphics. For less than $200, seems like an interesting thing, as the chips are vintage harvested chips on a new pcb and in a new case.
@@initial_kdIn the 90s, when I was in high school and in college, I bought old computers at university surplus auction, and then spent bunch of time testing various parts to make them run again. My bedroom, and the family house garage looked like Adrian's basement. :) Didn't make much profit doing it, but it was a bunch of fun, and learned a bunch about the systems of the 80s. Usually bid under twenty on lots of several computers, or monitors. Managed to get most of the back into running order. Sold about three quarters of them for $100 to $150 as basic computing machines. For years afterwards I would see them show up in computer shops that sold used computers with my handwritten label listing the configuration still on the case, which was somewhat neat. Kept some nice exemplars of IBMs, as well as early Compaq luggables, and more neat stuff for myself.. Lugged it all from apartment to apartment. Had to gradually give it up each time I moved, especially once it was to a different city. Maybe should have put it in storage, as some of those things are now collectors pieces, but alas I didn't. Wish I had one of those green and/or amber monitors to occasionally scratch that retro itch. And there are some 8088 era games that do look much better on EGA or VGA rather than CGA. Back in the 80s the family computer was speccy at first, and later clone XT with multi graphic board that did MDA, CGA, and Hercules, and it was always a treat when the game had high res Hercules mode, which looked great on our amber monitor.
@@aaaalex1994 my guess is it's to do with the socket footprint while retaining the modularity, since that mini 386 handheld one was much more heavily integrated. That said, I would think some potential customers would prefer an integrated, less-upgradable, 386 in a laptop form factor.
That's why I prefer to use nGlide with a dx9 compatible card. I recently bought a cheap Voodoo 5500 and sold it for a profit. A Riva TNT2 or FX5500 performs best with Win98 games.
My first ever GPU with 3D support was a integrated SIS 530 in a computer i assembled with a socket 7 and a K6-2 450mhz. I was young and i had no much idea of anything lol. Before that i only had 2D cards. I dont remember using it much, games did ran on it but it was crap. Then i brought a Savage4 GPU... but since the board did not have a AGP slot, i had a buy a PCI gpu, so i got the Diamond Sthealth 3 S530 (Savage 4)... god i had no idea of anything, looking back this was a good system to put a Voodoo2 as i already had the igp to do the 2D. And yeah, a lot of the game sof that time used 3dfx so yeah. I think that system carried me over 4 years until Neverwinter Nights came out, and it ran but super slow and i went to build a new pc.
IIRC you could have your dev tools running on the 2D card on one monitor with your 3D app on the Voodoo on a second monitor. Just ignore the pass through cable, it's only needed by people with one monitor but you have loads.
I had that PDM cracked version back in the day and it ran ok on voodoo1, the V2 might require the proper retail CD files and patching to get going. Try removing the GUS and test with SB to start with.
I try to repair a Benschee Card with a riped of VGA Port. So far the Card only Outputs Green color. So I guess the red and blue contacts are still broken. So far I could not find out the related contacts on the board to try do but some bodge wires there...
IIRC, Dos games running on win9* need to have the Dos driver installed. This means having the glide2.ovl driver file in the same directory as the .exe of the game. The Banshee use the same TMU as the Voodoo2, so you may need to use a batch file as for the Voodoo2 running Voodoo 1 games. For example : set SST_FT_CLK_DEL=0x4 set SST_TF0_CLK_DEL=0x6 set SST_TF1_CLK_DEL=0x6 set SST_VIN_CLKDEL=0x1 set SST_VOUT_CLKDEL=0x0 set SST_TMUMEM_SIZE=2 I don't remember all parameters, they need to be verified.
3dfx cards were awesome. you just need the right drivers for your model. they work best on DOS/win9x. some games that worked great were Tomb Raider, Quake 2, Need for Speed 2, 3, 4 and 5, I played lots of things with a monster (voodoo 1 4mb) and then I got a voodoo 3 and it was amazing, the games looked great and ran very smooth. I think your better option is to get a voodoo 3, run it in 98SE. maybe your problem is the ovl and dll files are not in the right path?. maybe even the DOS games are looking for the glide files in c:\windows.
I have a windows 98 PII machine rocking a pair of voodoo 2 cards. When I load games, I load them from Windows. Don't think these things are designed to run in DOS without a lot of extra configuration work.
CT6670 is a Voodoo2 1000 12MB. If you decide you want to get rid of this let me know, I've been looking for a second card that matches the one I currently have for SLI. Thanks for the great videos!
That Book 8088 is cute, lol. Seeing the 82C84 clock chip brought back memories of student days: In one subject we each built an 8088 system (no VDU) using wire-wrapping on protoboard and by the end our systems had to talk to each other via RS-232. Even in the middle of the 1990s, the TTL 8284 was very hard to source - only one distributor here had stock at the time, rofl!
With regards to your voodoo card it would probably work best if you just do a fresh install of Win 98 or 95, whichever and have the appropriate drivers on diskette and install the drivers with the windows installation setup routine. Also recommend to install your operating systems on separate partitions and use some sort of boot manager so you aren't hamstrung by only having a single OS on your test rig...
![Adrian's Digital Basement ][](http://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_k7CrQRe71qN6c0Ua7A1P_I8KkxjqLa70u0zYeCvdvnKw=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)
I remember bringing home my brand new Voodoo3 3000 and launching Quake II in Glide mode after having played it in software for months. Closest thing to a religious experience I've ever had.
I'm sorry the TV board got broken. It was working, to answer that question. As for the VooDoo2, I found it some years ago with a friend at a goodwill in Madison Wisconsin. I was never able to figure out how to make it work, and to be honest I didn't mess with it much.
Even if you didn't experience what a DOS 3DFx Glide game was like, at least you now experienced how it was to try to get them to run properly!
I remember playing the Need for Speed demo with glide support and it was amazing. Loved it. Graphically for the time amazing. Worth the price of the card alone, well along with glquake.
NFS I didnt came with 3D support, but there was NFS II SE which took advantage of 3DFx Glide and that was just overwhelming. But that version ran under Win9x.
To get comfortable 3Dfx gaming you need a Voodoo Graphics based card. Otherwise be prepared for hacks, tweaks and patches.
@@borodaevkirill7371 My mistake, still it was pretty amazing. In my defence it was over 25 years ago now.
autoexec wowes I do not miss. lol.
The driver CD I found on Internet Archive for the 3D Blaster Voodoo2 has a glide2x.ovl file right in the root directory, not in an installer archive. The IA item ID is 3DBlasterVoodoo2CD-ROM
Please don't butcher the voodoo card for the connector.. the original bridge cables can't be *that* hard to get hold of. Or use a regular VGA extension cord, those also work.
The Banshee was quite unimpressive back then.. I know several of my friends trading them in for a separate Voodoo2 12MB and a 2D card. S3 Trio64+ were the cheap PCI options, or Intel i740 if you had AGP (and the 3D part of those intel GPUs was *awful* compared to the Voodoo2, but they were dirt cheap so they sufficed for the 2D job).
I just ordered a cable for my voodoo2 off ebay for $7.
The bridge cables can be found a dime a dozen.
I remember a friend who got a Voodoo 2 in '98 and I was somewhat jealous, but by the time the Voodoo 2 came out it was a given that you were at least running Windows 95 and if you ran DOS games you were launching them from Windows, or restarting in DOS mode, but either way the DOS drivers were installed and configured through a Windows program. That being said, I remember him also complaining about DOS compatibility issues with his card even then.
IIRC, the guy who made the Book 8088 ripped off the BIOS from "Sergey's XT" project. Now I have a home-built "Xi 8088" industrial PC card from Sergey, and I know that if I'd also built it on HIS backplane instead of a generic one, there's an included POST display - so I think HIS XT BIOS does give POST data, but on a nonstandard port. And that wide connector on the side of the Book 8088 is supposed to be direct access to the ISA bus, so in theory it should possible to create a POST card for this laptop.
Looks at a battery icon. Sees tube of toothpaste. Damn I love ADB videos!
To be fair, it is a really long battery!
@@artofnoise5013
Must be high capacity.
@@artofnoise5013 Much battery, better compute!
Thank you for the metric conversions! Canada still loves you.
Germany as well :)
I remember spending $750 for two Voodoo II along with an AGP 2D card, back in the day. I couldn't believe spending that much, but it sure played nice. Die by the Sword was a game that was amazing on those cards. I was running Windows 95 or 98 on that box. I think I might still have it in storage somewhere.
The minipro does test SRAM, but you had 27c256 typed in the search box. Oddly the minipro software in my experience doesn't clear the search if you switch chip types, thus it had nothing to show you. If you clear the search box, the software should then list out the SRAM it does support to test.
I had the PowerVR card and loved it. For the price, it was actually pretty good.
The Nvidia Riva TNT/TNT2 were giving 3DFX a serious run for their money at the time of the Voodoo 2.
The first 3dFX card that had both 2D and 3D was the Voodoo Rush card, based on the Voodoo I chipset. It was crap. The Banshee was based on the Voodoo II and was much better, however it did have some problems running games designed for Voodoo I cards (it ran Voodoo II games usually without issue).
I had a Voodoo2 card called a Monster2, the way to make these work is you need an external pass-through cable. The signal from your 2D card goes into the Voodoo2 card, then you connect your monitor to the Voodoo2 card's output header. Somehow the signals get combined inside the Voodoo2 card's circuitry. It's Voodoo, after all. ;)
I actually just sold my old STB Voodoo 2 and its pass-thru cable. It’s nuts how much some of those old cards sell for.
I _still_ have my old machine - it did some other things then did another thing then was in a closet for ages until I put it back together during the plague - and I _still_ have my Voodoo Banshee :D But it was _also_ this era (and the XBOX) that got me _out_ of PC gaming because I couldn't afford those new cards every bloody year, and I was console-only for a long time.
Bits und Bolts is your man. He specialises in 3dfx cards
This video pretty much sums up retro computing quite well. Sometimes, nothing works. :)
Grand Theft Auto's one of them pure nostalgia games for me, never got to play it on any 3DFX cards, but played it so often on my Olivetti P75 system back in the day, and then come august 2013, I found a boxed copy of the game in amongst a pile of rubbish left outside the back of this house (from which I picked many other things too), and I had a different but same-spec Olivetti P75 system already, I was so happy for that find for reliving the experiences!!! :D
I used to have a Commodore monitor for my C64 Slim, and, as is often the case for my stuff, the screws were out. Don't remember why, nothing in there that I could have fixed.. maybe a switch? Anyway, In a bit of a rush, I grabbed it off the floor and picked it up. Snapped the circuit board right in half. Down the middle. I splinted it with something and managed, at like 18, to BODGE EVERYTHING BACK INTO OPERATION. Felt good! Worked perfect!
I didn't even know you could use 3dfx cards in DOS. Grabbed a copy of GTA dos and stuck my Ensoniq 3d Banshee in a machine. Was able to extract the OVL file from the reference installer with WINRAR on my win10 desktop and spent an a bit playing in 3dfx goodness! After a reboot to fix the sound driver, black screen!
Follow up to this, removing EMM386 from the bootup fixed the black screen.
Adrian: This is a super mini mail call video.
Me: Looks at the timeline, this is a 45 minutes video.
Me: ....
This is why I love Adrian videos ;)
Doesn't "(Super) mini mail call" just refers to the number of items Adrian unboxes in a video?
@@TheAnkMan whatever it refers to, I just thought it was funny. I love long videos
You might have had the 3Dfx Voodoo Rush card. As I recall, it was a 2D & 3D card that worked in Windows, and supported most GLide games. I remember wanting to get one, but reading reviews that it performed terribly compared to even a Voodoo 1 card.
My first "3D" card was a Matrox Mystique. I think I had one 3D game that supported it, the version of Mechwarrior 2 that came with the card. I wanted to get a Voodoo 2, but they were insanely expensive the entire time they were on retail shelves. I ended up buying an Nvidia RIVA 128 instead, which I think supported Direct3D out of the box, and then as the drivers matured, gained OpenGL support. I never ended up owning a 3Dfx card, as the Voodoo 3 was slower and more expensive than Nvidia's Riva TNT cards. And I don't think I ever saw a Voodoo 4 or 5 in the wild.
I had a voodoo banshee. I loved it, but I never once tried to use it for dos games. My computer was running XP at the time and DOS wasn't exactly an option if you're running XP. For windows games it was a great card. I loved it a lot.
I could be wrong, but I think the 2d card still generated the video sync for the 3D card so you still need the pass through. It’s been 20+ years since I had a voodoo 2 card so I can’t remember fully.
Yes that is right the 2d was passed through the cable and the voodoo added the 3d information and joined the two. The pass through must be used to get a display
i was curious about this so i tested my v1 system without the passthrough. at least with tomb raider dos it works fine without the passthrough, but the fmv clips are played on the 2d card so the screen goes black while in them. but with the 3d sections it works just fine on it's own
I had 2 Voodoo 2 cards in SLI mode... that was badass
Oh, that cute little thing. If I recall correctly the Chinese man who designed, made, and sold those is a low spec/old computer hobby enthusiast. He just used what parts he could easily get ahold of to make them, which is why it's all common off the shelf components. From what I can recall from various youtube videos he's a great seller, very willing to respond to questions as best as he can. (His English is pretty bad.)
Keep warm. -8 Celsius is really very cold, must be lot of snow outside.
We didn't have snow here. We had ice, between and inch and two inches. Then we had freezing rain for a couple of days.
@@scottlarson1548 guess the cold arctic air was also really dry.
We've had colder-than-usual weather in Scotland too (and I guess in England, Wales, and Ireland) but because it's the Gulf Stream cooled down by the weather in America, it's pretty wet air so we've had a hell of a lot of rain and wind.
@@kaitlyn__L What happens here is that cold air from the high desert in the east gets pulled into the area when a warm front is coming in. This places cold air just along the surface so the rain quickly turns into ice instead of snow.
Maverick, the service station that rebranded that candy, is a core memory for me. Going down to visit my dad in Boise and float the river.... everyone had 64 to 100oz refillable Maverick mugs.
I am a big fan of Maverik. I go there several times a day.
I still have my 2 diamond 12mb voodoo 2 cards all boxed up in my spare room. I'll get them in an old pc one of these days. They were £260 each back then.
I still have my two 3DFx Voodoo 2 cards + cable somewhere in my appartment. Those cards were amazing back in the days and I've never had the heart to get rid of them.
*pulls one chip sitting on desk collecting dusk, cleans another chip with acetone* "idk why this one is so much shinier"
On the Book 8088, try changing the video output port using the keyboard. lots of portables let you change from internal to external.
This one does not have a place to plug in an external display.
@@EzraPedersen Well, it does have that external ISA bus...
Yeah, Voodoo cards are always a bit of fun, owning a Voodo 1, 2 and multiple version of the 3, it is a bit of a job to keep them all working as expected
if you rebuild the white KV9 TV you could also put on the pc board the missing parts to activate the video and audio output , 2 surface mount transistors, Q406 Q407 a few resistors and capacitorsand 2 diodes if I remember correctly I've done that to several KV9 to use them on movie sets as portable video source / camera transmitter receiver
You may be able to pull the glide file from the Win95 install. It will definitely take some digging to find where it's stored but I feel it's worth a shot.
Not unusual for DOS. The first level of any game was getting the bloody thing to work! 🤣🤣
MiniPro actually does test SRAM chips, but you may need to add a prefix to the model name, like W24C256. Used to test cache chips this way.
I've learnt my lesson the day I took a shortcut to buy that PowerVR card against a 3DFX as it was not available in the store I went the day when my dad finally gave me the green light for a 3DFX.
This is where I realized how crappy this PowerVR chipset was and its lack of games support. I heard that it was bottlenecked by the CPU and that you needed a fast CPU, like a Pentium MMX 200 or so, to get it to perform decently.
My friend, in the meantime, with his Pentium 90 and his 3DFX was crunching it...
I've learnt that day that patience will pay off.
@AdriansDigitalBasement][
Adrian, you regularly mention your heat/AC noise, but we have never heard it. It's noise that just doesn't come through. My family and I have never been able to work out that extra noise. Really don't think you should worry about it. Just a friendly heads up on that..
Heh yeah it seems the noise reduction and processing in post seem to minimize it quite a bit.
I can hear it a little in the low-end but it's not disruptive in the slightest. I definitely agree it's probably not worth bringing up :)
I didn't get into PC gaming until Windows 95 (was an avid Amiga user until Commodore imploded) so I missed out on DOS gaming for the most part aside from a PC at my father's office with Hercules GFX. I purchased my first 3dfx card (Voodoo3 3000) during the era of Windows 98 due to the N64 emulator that took everyone by surprise, UltraHLE. The emulator was created to use a 3dfx card, but for saps like me who had only basic 3D gfx (I believe I had S3 Virge) some people wrote Glide wrappers. After a miserable experience trying to use them, I finally coughed up the money for the Voodoo3 card. I vaguely remember some issues surrounding the various Glide files, especially in later years trying to piece together Voodoo3 drivers from newer cards after support for the card was dropped. It was nothing though like the issues Adrian described with getting his Banshee and the Voodoo2 card working in DOS.
Hi Adrian. Back in the day I had a system with the famous Celeron 300A@450MHz, with two Voodoo2 12MB in SLI. This was a very well performing system at the time, compared to the cost. I did most of my gaming in windows at the time, so unfortunately I can not comment on the DOS issues you have. Back in the day, I probably would have known, but that's many years ago. What I can comment on, is the Voodoo Banshee. I did not have one, but a good friend of mine did. I remember he had much more issues than I had with my Voodoo2's. So I would recommend the Voodoo2 over the Banshee. And keep a lookout for one more with the same amount of memory. They came with 8 and 12 MB.
I hung onto 3dfx till the very end only to watch it fail just like Commodore not all that long before. As far as the candy, Maverick is a a chain of gas stations out west. And now in the midwest hopefully as they bought out Kum N Go. Home of the Bahama mama hotdogs. My dad's favorite.
the voodoo passthrough cable is a standard VGA Extension Cable.
Its just what, 10cm or so instead of 1m...
So I wouldn't replace it, just make some VGA Extensions...
Exactly.
..or use 2 monitors simultaneously ... there are quite a few in his basement 🫢
It's not quite a VGA extension. Extensions have female nuts but the passthrough cable has male threads. You can use an extension if you remove the nuts but nothing will stop the cable from falling out. Guess how I know.
@@eDoc2020 You are correct.
I was more speaking from an Electrical point, as I used the Voodoo Loopthrough Cables as Extensions...
Though with that Knowledge, it should be easy for Adrian to make his own cable!
I can't be the only one who has noticed that you have a Blue Ring on your left hand ring finger! I know it's none of our business, but, are contratulations in order? If they are... Contratulations Adrian 🙂
banshee was the 2 attempts, the first was voodoo rush
Yup! I have one of each of those cards.. And they really are gimped in both 2D and 3D lol not very compatible or stable either.
The Voodoo Rush was 3DFx's first attempt at a 2D+3D card. It didn't work too well. The Banshee came later and it actually worked better.
Yeah the Rush was not good, I know because I have one here lol. The 2D on that thing is trash and the 3D part is slower than a Vodoo 1. If you see one for sale, don't buy it unless you're collecting.
You may have already realized this, but a female VGA connector will have a footprint that's a mirror image of the male one. I think it actually won't fit in the board, but if it does, the pins will be swapped around
39:20 I remember the days when I had to optimise memory with QEMM to get some DOS games to run - crazy but very exciting times 😊
1997 or 1998 I bought a Diamond 3DFX accompanying the good old ATI Mach 64. Got it working in DOS (and Windows 95) and also in Linux. Unfortunately memory is foggy, but I seem to remember it worked without hitch.
Assumption: I installed all under Windows, so as side effect it also worked when I booted the machine into plain MS-DOS.
Hello Adrian, I bought a 3DFX-Card 2 for 650,00 DM (Deutsche/German Marks), two weeks later it costs in the same Shop 400 DM less!!! But I could play the game "Hexen II" on a "Windows NT 4.0" System with DirectX 3.0 AND 3dfx-Support!
One of the other ways to determine if a chip has been rebadged, especially if it hasn't been blacktopped (painted, as you put it) is to get a pair of digital or dial calipers and measure the thickness of the chip. DIP-40 chips should be between 0.14 and 0.16 inches thick. In order to completely remove the original laser or machine engraving, they have to sand down the top of the chip, and often this reduces the thickness a noticeable amount. This isn't foolproof because some laser etchings (especially on modern chips) are not very deep and even after sanding can still remain in the valid range. However, if you have a decent sample of legitimate chips of a particular type, you'll find that the thickness is usually very consistent, even across different years and batches, unless the chip is made in multiple different plants. When that happens, often you'll find distinct bins or groups of thicknesses that are very consistent.
Looking forward for the repair video
Yeah, the 8284 is the clock chip. I remember, because I was trying to breadboard a prototype computer with a Z80 and that chip, when my oscilloscope let the magic smoke out! 😔 How rude! 🤣😆😂
Just like some days in the office. How did I get NOTHING done today?!?!? LOL!
BTW, it's amazing that we got anything to work before the internet.
Even though nothing was working by the end, I really enjoyed the “conversation”
Hey, I have this exact same Voodoo2! Creative 3D Blaster 12 MB! Nice!
Are VGA extension cables so rare or expensive there? That is the easiest way to connect a 2D card and a voodoo IMHO.
I was just thinking that the VGA extension cable is a viable option as the passthrough cable was just a short extension cable Good call
of note, thanks to the proximity of your mic to your voice, the noise of your HVAC system is not much of a concern. However, I do appreciate your concern over audio quality. IMO Audio is 90% of the content in a video....
My very first 3D card was a Diamond Monster 3D in like 1995 or so which I used until I replaced it with a Riva TNT2.
Hehe, shoutout for PowerVR!! It was my first cheapie 3D accellerator too, as I couldn't afford a 3DFX, but aside from some cool demos and a couple of games it wasn't very useful. My first real 3D card was an Nvidia RIVA TNT, first use of the 'detenator' drivers before the GEforce.
Also, can't believe how expensive those book8088s are! You can buy a functional modern book PC for the $300 people are asking for! I figured this to be a sub $100 novelty thing. Anyone know how much they were new?
I bought it for about $170 New.
@@EzraPedersen That's alot more reasonable then people are asking for now, lol. Thank you!
That same time frame had the ATI Rage cards kicking about. The Rage cards tended to have an "all in wonder" version with tuner etc on
I've got the Book 8088, and I live it no just wish the screen was better.
There are 'cabextract' and 'msiextract' on the linux side, on the assumption the driver installer embeds one of those.
And if the install file ends in a _, for example maybe glide2.ov_, then the DOS expand command will uncompress it.
If my memory serves me correctly the banshee doesn't support native DOS 3D. I had a creative model and there was library in their installer that allowed DOS 3D games to run in Windows. I think this was custom, it may be included in some driver packs. Also GTA with glide is DOS only and would need to be run in windows to work on the banshee. I have a voodoo 3 system that I just checked and the amigamerlin drivers include the glide2x.ovl and works with GTAFX in Windows.
Played some more GTA and remembered that the non 3D windows version set (F11 key) to 32bit 1024x768 resolution is way better.
I recently assembled a retro computer and I wanted to install a voodoo card. I had a Banche and the same as your Voodoo 2, Creative labs. But I didn't have a small cable. So I tried Banche. I didn't manage to get a picture, I changed the motherboard. And it works. I get the picture but I didn't try it with the games because I wanted it on another board. I got small cables for Voodoo 2 and managed to install Voodoo 2 but it only works in Win 98SE. but it works for a while then the picture freezes. My friend brought his exact same one and his works great. Then I saw mine heats up a lot when I added coolers to the processors and mine works. A lot of trouble at the end.
I had the exact same 3dfx voodoo 2 card from Creative Labs back in then and was also my first 3D Accelerator card. The card was an absolute joy to play on in 3D games, though I didn't play much of the DOS 3DFX Games. My card now although still gets detected in my old pc, shows a garbled screen with artifacts when initialized. Suspect it is the graphics memory or one of the TMU chips. Adrian can use the dos utilities detect & mojo to check if there is something physically wrong with the card.
Wow I haven't seen the OG GTA in forever. Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
On the voodoo card check solder joint on the big chip they often desolder !
I wish I could get my hands on a Compaq 386 laptop or a Toshiba dos capable laptop. I had both stolen out of my car in a parking garage. I planned on using them to teach my daughter about DOS and let her enjoy some games.
Well I still have my voodoo 2 and the original media installer. I will give it a try and let you know.
I wanted one of those Voodoo 2 cards SO BADLY back in the day to improve my Counterstrike experience...it was never to be, sadly 😥
I remember having an integrated Geofence 440MX on my HP desktop around 2002-2003. I had to buy a dedicated graphics card because it wouldn't run Deus Ex: Invisible War
There was a time in the early 2000 where Pixel and Vertex Shaders kept changing and it seemed like every new game required a newer version of the shaders that my graphics card didn't support. That was a confusing time. I'm glad that now everything just runs but you may have to turn off some features to get acceptable performance.
Wow. I remember proudly walking out of whatever mall chain store it was back in 98 or so with a new voodoo2. Was the box purple? I need to look for that box in the other room, where I may have it. If I've got the box, then the board is in one of my old machines in there too. Treasure hunt tomorrow.
If it almost never gets below -10°C you can use a standard AC to heat and cool your house and power it with solar and wind.
Dos games were often awkward to get working what with EMM386 and himem.sys, sound cards added to the complexity then 3D cards took things to a whole new level of awkwardness.
I believe a good way to get that file is to use a W95 emulator on a modern computer, use the installer you have, then retrieve the ovl from the emulator's disk image. I did something similar to get some files generated from an old piece of software that installed well but didn't want to run on anything other than 4:3 screens (it needed high resolution graphics, but whatever the check they made it do, it fails with non 4:3 aspect ratios).
I'm pretty confident that you need a Win95 installed, then you can run ot in the dos mode and it should be fine
if super mini mail calls takes 45min to over an hour I'm wondering how long a normal mail call takes.. 🙂
They just released v2 of the Book 8088, and this time with a VGA graphics. For less than $200, seems like an interesting thing, as the chips are vintage harvested chips on a new pcb and in a new case.
Really wish there was a 286 or a 386 on that form factor instead of an 8088 or a V20...
VGA is overkill for an 8088 unfortunately.
@@initial_kdIn the 90s, when I was in high school and in college, I bought old computers at university surplus auction, and then spent bunch of time testing various parts to make them run again. My bedroom, and the family house garage looked like Adrian's basement. :) Didn't make much profit doing it, but it was a bunch of fun, and learned a bunch about the systems of the 80s. Usually bid under twenty on lots of several computers, or monitors. Managed to get most of the back into running order. Sold about three quarters of them for $100 to $150 as basic computing machines. For years afterwards I would see them show up in computer shops that sold used computers with my handwritten label listing the configuration still on the case, which was somewhat neat. Kept some nice exemplars of IBMs, as well as early Compaq luggables, and more neat stuff for myself.. Lugged it all from apartment to apartment. Had to gradually give it up each time I moved, especially once it was to a different city. Maybe should have put it in storage, as some of those things are now collectors pieces, but alas I didn't. Wish I had one of those green and/or amber monitors to occasionally scratch that retro itch. And there are some 8088 era games that do look much better on EGA or VGA rather than CGA. Back in the 80s the family computer was speccy at first, and later clone XT with multi graphic board that did MDA, CGA, and Hercules, and it was always a treat when the game had high res Hercules mode, which looked great on our amber monitor.
Another nice thing they added to the new model is a serial port, so you can now plug in a mouse.
@@aaaalex1994 my guess is it's to do with the socket footprint while retaining the modularity, since that mini 386 handheld one was much more heavily integrated. That said, I would think some potential customers would prefer an integrated, less-upgradable, 386 in a laptop form factor.
You can buy a gender changer instead of replacing the card connector.
The Power VR 3DX was an amazing bit of tech. It's in all modern mobile phones
That's why I prefer to use nGlide with a dx9 compatible card. I recently bought a cheap Voodoo 5500 and sold it for a profit. A Riva TNT2 or FX5500 performs best with Win98 games.
My first ever GPU with 3D support was a integrated SIS 530 in a computer i assembled with a socket 7 and a K6-2 450mhz. I was young and i had no much idea of anything lol. Before that i only had 2D cards.
I dont remember using it much, games did ran on it but it was crap. Then i brought a Savage4 GPU... but since the board did not have a AGP slot, i had a buy a PCI gpu, so i got the Diamond Sthealth 3 S530 (Savage 4)... god i had no idea of anything, looking back this was a good system to put a Voodoo2 as i already had the igp to do the 2D. And yeah, a lot of the game sof that time used 3dfx so yeah.
I think that system carried me over 4 years until Neverwinter Nights came out, and it ran but super slow and i went to build a new pc.
I did that sort of thing the hard way by manually copying the firmware into the DOS directory and using a default config.
The bundled PSU says 170V~240V, i wonder why they even bother with the American plug, should have had the Euro plug so you can tell right away.
IIRC you could have your dev tools running on the 2D card on one monitor with your 3D app on the Voodoo on a second monitor. Just ignore the pass through cable, it's only needed by people with one monitor but you have loads.
I had that PDM cracked version back in the day and it ran ok on voodoo1, the V2 might require the proper retail CD files and patching to get going. Try removing the GUS and test with SB to start with.
i had a banshee card, it was a pos. broke a lot of games that worked on my voodooo1. but by the voodoo3 they had most of those problems solved.
1:07 - A very clever and delicious hack, I might add!
I try to repair a Benschee Card with a riped of VGA Port. So far the Card only Outputs Green color. So I guess the red and blue contacts are still broken. So far I could not find out the related contacts on the board to try do but some bodge wires there...
IIRC, Dos games running on win9* need to have the Dos driver installed.
This means having the glide2.ovl driver file in the same directory as the .exe of the game.
The Banshee use the same TMU as the Voodoo2, so you may need to use a batch file as for the Voodoo2 running Voodoo 1 games.
For example :
set SST_FT_CLK_DEL=0x4
set SST_TF0_CLK_DEL=0x6
set SST_TF1_CLK_DEL=0x6
set SST_VIN_CLKDEL=0x1
set SST_VOUT_CLKDEL=0x0
set SST_TMUMEM_SIZE=2
I don't remember all parameters, they need to be verified.
3dfx cards were awesome. you just need the right drivers for your model. they work best on DOS/win9x.
some games that worked great were Tomb Raider, Quake 2, Need for Speed 2, 3, 4 and 5, I played lots of things with a monster (voodoo 1 4mb) and then I got a voodoo 3 and it was amazing, the games looked great and ran very smooth.
I think your better option is to get a voodoo 3, run it in 98SE.
maybe your problem is the ovl and dll files are not in the right path?. maybe even the DOS games are looking for the glide files in c:\windows.
I have a windows 98 PII machine rocking a pair of voodoo 2 cards. When I load games, I load them from Windows. Don't think these things are designed to run in DOS without a lot of extra configuration work.
i wish i didn't throw my voodoo2 out, back in the 10's :/
I wish I bought another one or two back at that time because now they are mega expensive...
CT6670 is a Voodoo2 1000 12MB. If you decide you want to get rid of this let me know, I've been looking for a second card that matches the one I currently have for SLI. Thanks for the great videos!
That Book 8088 is cute, lol. Seeing the 82C84 clock chip brought back memories of student days: In one subject we each built an 8088 system (no VDU) using wire-wrapping on protoboard and by the end our systems had to talk to each other via RS-232. Even in the middle of the 1990s, the TTL 8284 was very hard to source - only one distributor here had stock at the time, rofl!
With regards to your voodoo card it would probably work best if you just do a fresh install of Win 98 or 95, whichever and have the appropriate drivers on diskette and install the drivers with the windows installation setup routine. Also recommend to install your operating systems on separate partitions and use some sort of boot manager so you aren't hamstrung by only having a single OS on your test rig...
3dfx voodoo rush voodoo 1 voodoo 2 banshee and voodoo 3 in that order.
You always can use generic VGA KVM switch instead of soldering passthru cable or soldering another jack to the card. They're dirt cheap )