This is fantastic. I've got a Yakumo Voodoo 1 that is nearly identical to the Maxi Gamer 3D. The memory chips, at least, appear to be in the same configuration. So, your board might just clip right onto it. I'll have to trace some other things out to figure out if I need to do anything different. Can't wait for part 2 of this video. I hope you're able to do some "real world" testing with games with built-in framerate counters like Half-Life, etc. Good luck, dude. This is awesome.
Thank you! Already started looking into behavior of the 8 MB configuration. I think I will do the full mod video first and then get into benchmarking videos. Could be quite a lot of work...
Very cool! I recently watched a video where a modder adding extra memory to an original Xbox 1.6 using the method of stacking the chips, but for the Voodoo card I like your solution much better. I would definitely be interested in a video where you talk about the problems you ran into along the way.
This is awesome work. Unfortunately my hands just aren’t steady enough for fine soldering like this anymore. I can tell you from experience some games display textures incorrectly &/or with what looks like artefacting & in honestly there aren’t many Glide games that can actually exploit the extra texture memory but it can be fun to explore what games work, what don’t & which show a tangible difference?
Absolutely! I did read about the issues with more memory on the Voodoo card. Games were written with 2+2 MB configuration and as you said, it looks like some games had issues with more memory. I'll definitely test different games and see what happens! Thanks for watching and the compliment!
I know the Skwell Magic 3D Plus picture here in your video in Min. 0:54. This is the card from the TH-cam Channel "3dfx_Aslinger". He has made a comparison video of the 4, 6 and 8MB Voodoo Graphics in Unreal. Now this video is over 4 years old, but still interesting to see. Nice to see a new video of this differences here in your channel, because 3dfx_Aslingers channel seems to be dead since a few years.
Yeah, I know that video - and I did watch it before. At that time I would never imagine that once day I will have a 6 MB card - let alone an 8 MB Voodoo 1. Well, guess what, I am working on the second memory expansion board right now! Will check Unreal as well. On a Pentium III 1GHz, I didn't notice any difference between 4 MB and 6 MB. 3dfx_Aslinger tested on a Pentium MMX 233, so maybe on slower systems the extra memory does make a difference!
@@bitsundbolts A Voodoo 1 should scale up until 350MHz Pentium II, but only more in lower resolutions and Unreal based games. A MMX CPU is a good partner for the small Voodoo. I had a Pentium 90 in 1997 with the Maxi Gamer 3D. Also for a small Pentium CPU, this was the best upgrade in all time! 20 fps was enough in the late 90s. Todays people/young kids needs useless ~200 fps...
Hehe, yeah - was a different time back then. I guess there's no way around to test this card on Pentium, Pentium II, and Pentium III (and maybe the K-III+ 600). Lot's of benchmarking ahead!
Nevermind the problems occured with your first board. Me as an electrical engineer, who teaches his software coleagues how to design pcbs, knows, the first revision of a board never works flawlessly. Is it the function or the assembly, somewhere is everytime a problem, which must be fixed, botched or something else. And if you found no fault on your first revision so long, you didn't searched well enough. 😉 It is all excercise. But this was a good job and a very clean mod also. Congrats to you. Btw. I don't know if you noticed, but your sockets have nodges to indicate pin 1. One of the sockets on the upper side is turned around.
Yeah - just a small visual glitch. Let's see, I am struggling right now with the second board. Unfortunately, the second row of memory on the voodoo card is slightly off. The addon board doesn't make proper connection and when I try to run the card with 4 MB on the FBI chip, the card doesn't seem to be detected as 3D device. I have to check if the card only works with 4 MB on the TMU, but it could also be that I made a mistake designing the PCB. I guess I need to do some further digging.
Very interesting, like! I wonder how many games run better with the 6 mb version. I remember back at the end of the 90s everyone was saying that there is no performance difference between the 4 and 6 mb versions, which I guess is true only for some games, but untrue for others.
Most of the people who may have claimed no performance benefit never owned a higher memory model and base their believe on some article. As you said, it may depend on the game. I tried Unreal and didn't notice any performance difference, but maybe Quake II or Tomb Raider will - we will find out! The great thing about this mod is that I can just unplug a few cables and switch easily between different memory configurations: 2+2, 2+4, 4+2, and 4+4 (TMU and FBI).
@@bitsundbolts well it's both performance and graphical improvements. With both 4mb on the TMU and the FBI you now can enable z-buffering on 800x600 for sure.
I had a 6mb back then and I'm not sure there was much improvement, mostly because the games would need to take advantage of it and as the majority of cards had 4mb, they typically targeted that, I did find some compatibility issues as well in comparison with a 4mb card.
This is so fantastic! My only experience with glide is with nglide and dgvoodoo wrappers. My research tells me the original voodoo and voodoo2 have some advantages that the voodoo 3,4,5 dont't have for the first glide titles.
I don't have much experience with wrappers. I think I used them once - didn't feel real :) It felt weird when you can just emulate any Voodoo card with your integrated Intel graphics unit...
@@bitsundbolts You're a whole lot better off with AMD/NVIDIA, and especially NVIDIA with nglide and dgvoodoo. I can run Turok 2 seeds of evil, and Jedi Knight Dark forces II in windows 11 with no problems. NVIDIA is needed to get vsync off in older games, you can do it with AMD with a third party utility, but eff that, and there are edge cases where you will want to be able to control it in nvidia control panel, and you won't get all the way there with AMD at the end of the day.
I upgraded from a Diamond Monster Voodoo 4mb to a Canopus Pure 3d 6mb that had the extra 2mb of texture memory. It wasn't much more expensive than the standard 4mb cards. I remember I paid $269.99 Canadian and the Diamond Monster 3d 4mb was $229.99.
Welche krasses Projekt! Absolut genial. Meine V1 damals war auch eine Maxi Gamer, die dann mein Neffe bekam. Es ist schon erstaunlich, was man mitlerweile mit selbsterstellten Boards und Komponenten alles bauen kann, was es damals nicht gab wenn der Hersteller es nicht direkt so designt hat, wie z.B. die Speichererweiterungen auf einigen Matrox und ATI Karten. Das neue Mikroskop hilft offenbar extrem, oder? Die sonst kaum sichtbaren Dinge werden dann riesig.
Vielen Dank! Ja, habe mir viel Mühe mit diesem Projekt gegeben! Ich bin froh dass soweit alles funktioniert hat! Hätte nie gedacht dass ich mal so eine Leiterplatte erstellen werde :) - und es war gar nicht so schwer! Das Mikroskop ist eine sehr große Hilfe - leider ist die Kamera nicht so gut. Irgendwann werde ich sie austauschen. Durch das Mikroskop eröffnen sich viele neue Möglichkeiten! Ich glaube nicht dass ich sonst diesen kleinen Kupferdraht an den Pin bekommen hätte!
I have recently struggled soldering to a dense chip. What has helped is not to solder straight down, but to the leg pointing up. Guiding the wire from the top. I have completed a very spicy mod job like that recently, where i soldered bodge wires to 5 subsequent legs of a tqfp100 chip. I didn't use magnet wire, since i happen to hate it with a passion, but wire wrapping wire AWG30, which is PVC sheathed, which is not ideal, but it worked out OK. Such wire you can run directly to the connector, it won't mind.
Pretty clever to use the sockets to connect to the existing chips on the card. Maybe something similar could be done to connect the wire to the 3Dfx chips.
Thank you! I've heard about decoupling capacitors, now I read about them and have a better idea what they are for. For my understanding: Those new memory chips use the power supply of the existing chips - which probably already have decoupling capacitors. I guess the existing capacitors are good enough for 4 chips, but do not provide enough capacitance to filter the power supply for double the memory chips.
Really nice job! I've just picked up a Maxi Gamer 3D and have ordered myself the PCBs. Do you have a link for where you got the SOJ sockets from? I'm really struggling to find them
Yeah, unfortunately those sockets are a bit hard to get. I got 20 pieces from ebay Germany. But there seems to be a source in USA: www.jameco.com/z/HWS8871-James-Electronics-40-Pin-SOJ-IC-Socket-Surface-Mount_2330623.html Here is another link: bg-electronics.de/shop/product_info.php/products_id/10133
increasing the fbi memory will allow you to use a resolution of 800x600 but will not add speed. it seems so to me. This is actually a nice upgrade because there are games that will run full speed at 800x600 on voodoo1. (classic tomb raiders I think)
Increasing the FBI memory will be the next project - and then the combination of both to have an 8 MB Voodoo 1. I definitely will try Tomb Raider then - would be cool to see a benefit of playable higher resolutions.
paying something like $100 more in the 90s for the difference in texture RAM for 6-7% gains in synthetic benchmarks might have been a hard sell, but this is cool.
What an excellent, well thought out mod, congrats, I'll look forward to the next video, I don't really care if it makes a huge difference, I'd do it anyway, cos it's cool. 👍 ( and yes, show us The making of.....)
That's very cool! I've got some 3dfx internal documents that claim the Voodoo 2 can also support double the memory (8mb per chip) for a total of 24mb per card. I would LOVE to have a 48MB Voodoo 2 SLI setup! Wonder if anyone has ever tried modding a Voodoo2 in this way.
That is interesting - however, since nobody ever attempted this, I wonder if it actually works. There are some crazy good modders out there. Sure someone would have picked that up. But yeah, a 24 MB card would be cool - I am just very skeptical that this will work...
Nice and clean execution! The problem I found with this and haven't seen mentioning is the driver compatibility. I used to own a miro highscore3d with 6mb and remember while having a bit extra performance on some games, other glide games didn't even boot. Tried a bunch of drivers and some worked with some games and others with the rest... But some with the original miro driver just disabling the extra memory. I remember Carmageddon was one of the problematic games... But there's not much info on the subject... Otherwise I would upgrade all voodoo cards to the full 8mb! :)
Good point. I don't think I can just disable the memory with the reference drivers, but I didn't look into this yet. The good thing is that the mod is temporary :) I can just unplug the cable.
@@bitsundbolts you know, if you made cutouts in your memory boards, you could make them castellated, and then you could put the sockets on the ram chips, adjust the board to fit, and solder through the cutouts. this would make it much easier to adjust everything. but you'd have to make sure that the through-holes used for castellation are NOT plated. and it might make soldering new memory on top a bit more difficult, unless you find chips that are narrower. which might actually not be hard.
edit: i think while it might be a little difficult to solder chips on top, soldering sockets would probably not be very difficult at all. also if you need to connect the bottom with the top anyways, maybe you could make the relevant castellations plated-through. so it works out well actually.
Thanks for the suggestion. I like thinking of improvements and to make things better. The prototype worked really well, but far from perfect. I actually have to admit that I was working on Rev. 1.1 and it's already out for manufacturing, but if this doesn't work out, I'll be glad to follow up with your approach!
Great Job!!! With old game there is not much improvment, but with newer game the improvment is a lot!!! I own a Voodoo 1 from MiRÒ with 6mb , and it can run some game that on the 4mb version are not playable, the Voodoo 1 was a real best for that time and with 6mb or 8mb can run game for the next gen of graphic card!!! I tried Monster Truck madness 2 and with the 4mb the game is to laggy with a lots of frame drops, with the 6mb is really smooth!!! Also with Unreal there is a big improvment, lot less frame drops!!!
The reason you can stack memory chips is that nearly all the lines are shared. Surely you only need connections to a single memory socket, plus the individual address lines ? In this way, any card could go to 8mb.
Yes, for the TMU, one extra pin needs to be connected to the memory chips. All other pins are shared with the chip below. Any card should be capable to support 8 MB, but you won't be able to use the type of mod I use in this video.
I knew about 6MB versions from very beginning but I didn’t learn about 8MB option until very recently, couple of weeks. Although 8MB it’s an interesting quirk I think card makers made a sensible decision of not going that way. Voodoo Graphics is too slow to run games at 800x600 anyway.
From what I've read, you are spot on. I don't expect much, if any, benefit from the 8MB card - but then this would be just to satisfy curiosity. I wonder if at that time the engineering department was still in charge. Marketing departments love larger numbers - even if it doesn't make sense...
@@bitsundbolts - late 1990s tests performed by THG show that adding an SLI connector to Voodoo Graphics cards (as in some Quantum3D examples) would be much more useful. In single texturing games the performance was close to the no-yet-revealed Voodoo2. Maybe then the 8MB option would make more sense 👍🏾
I have seen a picture with 2x Voodoo 1 in SLI. I wonder why it wasn't mainstream. The chipset clearly supported that feature, yet there weren't many companies offering the SLI option. There was even one card that combined 2x TMU + 2x FBI on one board (SLI on a single board), but I don't know if this was true, a mod, or fake.
@@bitsundbolts - I have no idea why they ditched the idea either, I mean it wouldn’t make the card more expensive than the same thing applied on a common Voodoo2 card so it was an odd place look for cost cutting. Instead, it appeared only on some of Quantum3D units and they were as non-consumer cards as they get, priced well above standard Voodoos, even those higher end ones. Put together they formed what was called a ‘DB’ card (as in Dual Board). As such ‘rendering combines’ would most likely approach the $2000 back in 1997 I’m not surprised they didn’t come up on anyone’s radar back in the day and never existed in wider audience’s mindshare. The 4-chip cards you’ve seen are indeed a thing, they’re a further development of the idea bearing the ‘SB’ moniker (as in Single Board) and are basically two Voodoo1s put together. There were also so-called Amethyst daughtercards which added a second TMU with its own memory, effectively making it a Voodoo2 running at Voodoo1 clock speed. Putting everything together, either in DB or SB configuration, you’d get a SLI Voodoo1 with up to 20 or 22 megabytes of combined RAM respectively: 2x2 MB for FBI, 4x4 MB for TMU and 2 MB for AT-25 chip providing 2D video, the same as in Voodoo Rush cards, which came on another daughterboard. My brain itches when I think of that 😅
@@bitsundbolts Quantum3D Obsidian was a Voodoo Graphics card with 2x TMU + 1x FBI, with 2MB per TMU + 4MB for FBI. It also supported SLI! And it was an early card also, from 1996. The second TMU was only supported in GLQuake at first until more games started to add multitexturing support.
Personally, I would have put the sockets over the existing chips, and then glued the new board to it. Then it would have had the spacing perfect with no stress. Alternately, some solder paste on the 4 corner pins and hot air solder through the board while it's in place.
I am somewhat surprised and disappointed that this isn't common knowledge in the retro pc community that one can do this with this era of voodoo cards including the Rush.
For a very long time, I didn't even know that 6 and 8 MB Voodoo 1 existed. Voodoo 1 was 4 MB. Then Voodoo 2 changed the game again - this time with 8 and 12 MB and SLI. It was just such a great time - who needed more ;) ?
PT3: Combine both boards into one with no need for any jumpers and 2 daughter boards to go over the TMU and FBI with connections to the relevant pins. Then you got an all in one with no microsoldering required.
Interesting, There may be some pins however that do not connect to the TMU/FBI chips (e.g. VCC, VSS). Then the board would need to connect to other sections of the board. There are 39 Pins on the memory chips that are passed through to the upper row. Maybe a device (like a frame 3D printed) that just clips around the TMU/FBI chip would help.
Did the first Voodoo not already have 6 Mb? I seem to recall mine did, and my RAGEII had 4 Mb, for a total of 10 (I know it doesn't really work that way, but 16 year old me liked saying i had 10 Mb of video RAM :D )
I just sold my Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 5 cards in their boxes like 4 years ago and wish I hadn't or at least tried to get more for them. It's so small of memory only 4mb. It would of been more interesting if you made it go to 8mb.
What was the total cost from PCBWAY? What I'm seeing looks pretty expensive at $5.00 per board and then $38 for 3 day shipping and $63.56 for 24 hour processing.
Shipping cost depends on where you live. Production of those 10 PCBs is 5 USD and took 4 days to manufacture. If you get the coupon when signing up as a new customer, you get the PCBs for "free". I selected the slowest shipping method which was 12-13 USD to UAE/Dubai (I actually paid for that at checkout) and delivery time was 11-33 business days. Full disclosure, PCBWay upgraded my delivery for free to FEDex, which would have costs 23 USD to UAE, and reimbursed the money I paid for shipping in form of coupons. Delivery took another 3 days. So, to UAE with 11-33 business days delivery, it would have cost 12-13 USD with signup-coupon, 17-18 USD without signup-coupon.
I have found 3DX1000 card out in my cupboard. It has identical footprint and color to the card presented. The imprinting on my card adds "with TV option" but I couldn't find any difference to the card presented: no extra connector or header so I really don't know what the "TV option" means. My card is from "Volcanic" and "VOLCANC" is printed on the board. I have also Volcanic manual including a CD with drivers, Voodoo Graphics user's manual and another CD labeled "Software Driver Version 1.318-98". Manufacturing date of my board is 9923 (where yours is 9744).
Id try need for speed III hot pursuit i know that can use beyond the capabilities of the voodoo 1 pretty easily, same with half-life 1, quake 2 might manage it better or at least show off it running in 800x600.
I played the demo of NFS Hot Pursuit - even skipped a day at school to play with my friends over the network :) Definitely goes on the list! Thanks for watching!
By stacking new on top of old chips, are they both working now or were the old ones disabled? If both working in parallel, how are they addressed separately?
Both rows are working. There is one additional wire routed from the TMU to Pin 14 on all 4 new memory chips. The other 39 pins are connected to the corresponding pins below.
I guess the Tmu ram layout is the same on the most common version of voodoo 1 and I mean the monster 3d by diamond. Once the mod goes public I will help the community to relocate spaces to diamonds measurements and I urge all voodoo 1 owners to do the same for all the different kinds of other companies because the mod easy fairly easy. Only one cable to one pin and voila you have 6-8mb ram. 8 mb ram was commodon back in the days, I had in my pc a monster 3d with 4mb and a diamond fire gl 1000pro with a permedia 2 at 8mb.i still have this pc which was my first pc by the way.
Yes, this crossed my mind, but you have to solder pin 14 together of all memory ICs for TMU and two memory ICs in pairs for the FBI mod. Just stacking another memory row above the existing ones is not enough. A jumper on a PCB with correct wiring makes this a lot cleaner.
You mean another socket? Hehe, I think I know where you're going. Some cards do have heatsinks on those chips, that would cause issues. You may also end up decreasing airflow around the chips heating them up further - those TMUs get hot. I think you'd like to achieve somehow better access to the pins or prevent any alterations to the card?
@@bitsundbolts oh, I didn't think about cooling! Yes, they used to make Macintosh upgrade CPU boards that would clip on to the existing CPUs. Maybe a really hard part to find though, because they probably don't use that CPU package for much anymore. But yes, ideally a clip on upgrade with no soldering required.
Yeah, would be neat to just have everything clip on. But I think you won't find a socket that you could press over the chip, it would surprise me. Also, TMU and FBI are of different size. Maybe someone could design a 3D printed device that could do it. Or wait until I learn 3D modeling and create something. But then people shouldn't complain if PCBWay is all over my video 😂
tombraider hads max 600kb of textures per level so 8mb is overkil in this game even 6mb ,this game was also for the ps1 and that thing had only 1mb video.
Good question. There are Voodoo 2 with 12 MB and 24x512KB memory chips, and there are some with 12x1MB memory chips. I have not come across a Voodoo2 with 20 MB (4 FBI, 8+8 TMUs) or 24 MB (8 FBI, 8+8 TMUs). From Voodoo3 onwards it may no longer be possible.
I am not an expert, but I assume that the Voodoo ICs do not support larger chips on their memory lines hence the second pin to address another 4 memory chips. But I could be completely wrong. Never seen an 8MB Voodoo 1 with 8x1MB chips.
I feel like this is still going over my head :) But I understand that the Voodoo chip would have to have the capability to address a larger memory space. Question is if the board has the traces in place or if the connection to the second RAS line needs to be created manually.
I do it for the love of 3Dfx, the time they changed the industry and created memories for many of us. This mod may not increase the performance by any meaningful way, but it will bring back those memories and a possibility to upgrade a drawer/closet Voodoo to 8MB.
Absolutely impressive. Kind of hard to believe this was your "first" pcb design.
much better version of this mod than just stacking ICs. well done...
I think so too! Thanks!
stacking IC is more sexy.... design new PCB is non-meaningful in this day...retro PC gamer is almost gone, due to DOS-BOX virtualization software.
stacking circuits is effective and fast way
Super clean. I had no idea the Voodoo1 had an 8MB configuration and I thought I was paying close attention back in the 90s!
This was new to me as well although I did read countless of PC magazines covering the 3Dfx Voodoo cards.
Very nice to have a more "on the shelf" option now. Great work!
Once I can verify that the board works with the FBI chip as well, I will open-source the PCB. And thanks for watching!
Subbed =D Lovely clean mod PCB!
Thank you!
Man what a clean mod! Can't wait for part 2.
This is fantastic. I've got a Yakumo Voodoo 1 that is nearly identical to the Maxi Gamer 3D. The memory chips, at least, appear to be in the same configuration. So, your board might just clip right onto it. I'll have to trace some other things out to figure out if I need to do anything different. Can't wait for part 2 of this video. I hope you're able to do some "real world" testing with games with built-in framerate counters like Half-Life, etc. Good luck, dude. This is awesome.
Thank you! Already started looking into behavior of the 8 MB configuration. I think I will do the full mod video first and then get into benchmarking videos. Could be quite a lot of work...
Very cool! I recently watched a video where a modder adding extra memory to an original Xbox 1.6 using the method of stacking the chips, but for the Voodoo card I like your solution much better. I would definitely be interested in a video where you talk about the problems you ran into along the way.
Will include it in the next video. You already seen how the mod is assembled, so, I won't talk another 15 minutes about the same thing.
This is awesome work. Unfortunately my hands just aren’t steady enough for fine soldering like this anymore. I can tell you from experience some games display textures incorrectly &/or with what looks like artefacting & in honestly there aren’t many Glide games that can actually exploit the extra texture memory but it can be fun to explore what games work, what don’t & which show a tangible difference?
Absolutely! I did read about the issues with more memory on the Voodoo card. Games were written with 2+2 MB configuration and as you said, it looks like some games had issues with more memory. I'll definitely test different games and see what happens! Thanks for watching and the compliment!
I know the Skwell Magic 3D Plus picture here in your video in Min. 0:54. This is the card from the TH-cam Channel "3dfx_Aslinger". He has made a comparison video of the 4, 6 and 8MB Voodoo Graphics in Unreal. Now this video is over 4 years old, but still interesting to see. Nice to see a new video of this differences here in your channel, because 3dfx_Aslingers channel seems to be dead since a few years.
Yeah, I know that video - and I did watch it before. At that time I would never imagine that once day I will have a 6 MB card - let alone an 8 MB Voodoo 1. Well, guess what, I am working on the second memory expansion board right now! Will check Unreal as well. On a Pentium III 1GHz, I didn't notice any difference between 4 MB and 6 MB. 3dfx_Aslinger tested on a Pentium MMX 233, so maybe on slower systems the extra memory does make a difference!
@@bitsundbolts A Voodoo 1 should scale up until 350MHz Pentium II, but only more in lower resolutions and Unreal based games. A MMX CPU is a good partner for the small Voodoo. I had a Pentium 90 in 1997 with the Maxi Gamer 3D. Also for a small Pentium CPU, this was the best upgrade in all time! 20 fps was enough in the late 90s. Todays people/young kids needs useless ~200 fps...
Hehe, yeah - was a different time back then. I guess there's no way around to test this card on Pentium, Pentium II, and Pentium III (and maybe the K-III+ 600). Lot's of benchmarking ahead!
Like! Would be nice to see some more benchmarks in games like Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Quake 1/2/3 and/or others.
Yes, absolutely! Will try to finish the mod on the FBI chip soon and get into benchmarking!
@@bitsundbolts game benchmarks would be great :)
For Quake 3 V2 is to slow unfortunately.
@@pr0fanator it depends on the resolution. In lower resolutions it certainly isn't too slow.
I'm definitely going to have to give this a try! Nice job! Can't wait for part 2!
Thank you! Part 2 is in the making - should be released in the next couple of days.
Nevermind the problems occured with your first board. Me as an electrical engineer, who teaches his software coleagues how to design pcbs, knows, the first revision of a board never works flawlessly. Is it the function or the assembly, somewhere is everytime a problem, which must be fixed, botched or something else. And if you found no fault on your first revision so long, you didn't searched well enough. 😉 It is all excercise. But this was a good job and a very clean mod also. Congrats to you.
Btw. I don't know if you noticed, but your sockets have nodges to indicate pin 1. One of the sockets on the upper side is turned around.
Oh my - I didn't notice that!!! Oh well, what to do... It's already glued on there. Software developer mind - easy hotfix not possible in that case!
@@bitsundbolts If it does the job, why fix it? Just for the next assembly to notice. 😉
Yeah - just a small visual glitch. Let's see, I am struggling right now with the second board. Unfortunately, the second row of memory on the voodoo card is slightly off. The addon board doesn't make proper connection and when I try to run the card with 4 MB on the FBI chip, the card doesn't seem to be detected as 3D device.
I have to check if the card only works with 4 MB on the TMU, but it could also be that I made a mistake designing the PCB. I guess I need to do some further digging.
@@bitsundbolts Welcome to world of hardware debugging 😄
Turns out, the card does not work with 4MB on FBI and 2MB on TMU. If FBI has 4MB, TMU requires 4MB as well. So, all good with my PCB :)
Very interesting, like! I wonder how many games run better with the 6 mb version. I remember back at the end of the 90s everyone was saying that there is no performance difference between the 4 and 6 mb versions, which I guess is true only for some games, but untrue for others.
Most of the people who may have claimed no performance benefit never owned a higher memory model and base their believe on some article. As you said, it may depend on the game. I tried Unreal and didn't notice any performance difference, but maybe Quake II or Tomb Raider will - we will find out! The great thing about this mod is that I can just unplug a few cables and switch easily between different memory configurations: 2+2, 2+4, 4+2, and 4+4 (TMU and FBI).
@@bitsundbolts well it's both performance and graphical improvements. With both 4mb on the TMU and the FBI you now can enable z-buffering on 800x600 for sure.
Hope I can get the FBI mod to work!
I had a 6mb back then and I'm not sure there was much improvement, mostly because the games would need to take advantage of it and as the majority of cards had 4mb, they typically targeted that, I did find some compatibility issues as well in comparison with a 4mb card.
This is so fantastic! My only experience with glide is with nglide and dgvoodoo wrappers. My research tells me the original voodoo and voodoo2 have some advantages that the voodoo 3,4,5 dont't have for the first glide titles.
I don't have much experience with wrappers. I think I used them once - didn't feel real :) It felt weird when you can just emulate any Voodoo card with your integrated Intel graphics unit...
@@bitsundbolts You're a whole lot better off with AMD/NVIDIA, and especially NVIDIA with nglide and dgvoodoo. I can run Turok 2 seeds of evil, and Jedi Knight Dark forces II in windows 11 with no problems. NVIDIA is needed to get vsync off in older games, you can do it with AMD with a third party utility, but eff that, and there are edge cases where you will want to be able to control it in nvidia control panel, and you won't get all the way there with AMD at the end of the day.
This is very interesting. I need to repair my Voodoo 1 cards and now I am more motivated to do this after watching this wonderful video.
Glad it was helpful to get you motivated! Thank you for watching!
0:20 This was my one too - Orchid Righteous 3D with P.O.D.
I upgraded from a Diamond Monster Voodoo 4mb to a Canopus Pure 3d 6mb that had the extra 2mb of texture memory. It wasn't much more expensive than the standard 4mb cards. I remember I paid $269.99 Canadian and the Diamond Monster 3d 4mb was $229.99.
Nice layout job, specilly for first time. This type of PCB's are often called modchips.
Welche krasses Projekt! Absolut genial. Meine V1 damals war auch eine Maxi Gamer, die dann mein Neffe bekam. Es ist schon erstaunlich, was man mitlerweile mit selbsterstellten Boards und Komponenten alles bauen kann, was es damals nicht gab wenn der Hersteller es nicht direkt so designt hat, wie z.B. die Speichererweiterungen auf einigen Matrox und ATI Karten. Das neue Mikroskop hilft offenbar extrem, oder? Die sonst kaum sichtbaren Dinge werden dann riesig.
Vielen Dank! Ja, habe mir viel Mühe mit diesem Projekt gegeben! Ich bin froh dass soweit alles funktioniert hat! Hätte nie gedacht dass ich mal so eine Leiterplatte erstellen werde :) - und es war gar nicht so schwer!
Das Mikroskop ist eine sehr große Hilfe - leider ist die Kamera nicht so gut. Irgendwann werde ich sie austauschen. Durch das Mikroskop eröffnen sich viele neue Möglichkeiten! Ich glaube nicht dass ich sonst diesen kleinen Kupferdraht an den Pin bekommen hätte!
12:18 - that is absolutely satisfying to watch :)
I have recently struggled soldering to a dense chip. What has helped is not to solder straight down, but to the leg pointing up. Guiding the wire from the top. I have completed a very spicy mod job like that recently, where i soldered bodge wires to 5 subsequent legs of a tqfp100 chip. I didn't use magnet wire, since i happen to hate it with a passion, but wire wrapping wire AWG30, which is PVC sheathed, which is not ideal, but it worked out OK. Such wire you can run directly to the connector, it won't mind.
Very evolved already. Nice. Would be very interesting too see the full video.
Working on it!
Ooh. I remember my Voodoo card. Long time ago. Such nostalgia.
Thanks for showing those SOJ40s being installed) Now I'm going to try that on my Virge Deccelerator)))
Pretty clever to use the sockets to connect to the existing chips on the card. Maybe something similar could be done to connect the wire to the 3Dfx chips.
I am already working on something like this. But it will take time l because I need to learn new things again: 3D printing
The Canopus Pure3D which was the first you were showing was actually 6 MB
that is an awesome way of piggybacking Ram chips
Nic work! - it might be worth adding some pads for decoupling caps for each additional memory chip to be safe
Thank you! I've heard about decoupling capacitors, now I read about them and have a better idea what they are for.
For my understanding: Those new memory chips use the power supply of the existing chips - which probably already have decoupling capacitors. I guess the existing capacitors are good enough for 4 chips, but do not provide enough capacitance to filter the power supply for double the memory chips.
impressive, you have done a terrific job in taking those measurements!
Thank you!
Really nice job!
I've just picked up a Maxi Gamer 3D and have ordered myself the PCBs. Do you have a link for where you got the SOJ sockets from? I'm really struggling to find them
Yeah, unfortunately those sockets are a bit hard to get. I got 20 pieces from ebay Germany. But there seems to be a source in USA: www.jameco.com/z/HWS8871-James-Electronics-40-Pin-SOJ-IC-Socket-Surface-Mount_2330623.html
Here is another link: bg-electronics.de/shop/product_info.php/products_id/10133
That's really impressive! And tempting...
Thank you 😉!
increasing the fbi memory will allow you to use a resolution of 800x600 but will not add speed. it seems so to me. This is actually a nice upgrade because there are games that will run full speed at 800x600 on voodoo1. (classic tomb raiders I think)
Increasing the FBI memory will be the next project - and then the combination of both to have an 8 MB Voodoo 1. I definitely will try Tomb Raider then - would be cool to see a benefit of playable higher resolutions.
paying something like $100 more in the 90s for the difference in texture RAM for 6-7% gains in synthetic benchmarks might have been a hard sell, but this is cool.
I paid $20 for 10 of those memory chips I am using. Yeah, $100 extra for at best 5% performance gain is a tough sell.
Congratulations!
I would like to see Nfs Porsche Challenge, but maybe there are better tech/scene demos?
I'll definitely include it. With the 8MB card it can render in 800x600. But will it be enough to render the game with high enough frames per second 🤔
What an excellent, well thought out mod, congrats, I'll look forward to the next video, I don't really care if it makes a huge difference, I'd do it anyway, cos it's cool. 👍 ( and yes, show us The making of.....)
That's very cool! I've got some 3dfx internal documents that claim the Voodoo 2 can also support double the memory (8mb per chip) for a total of 24mb per card. I would LOVE to have a 48MB Voodoo 2 SLI setup! Wonder if anyone has ever tried modding a Voodoo2 in this way.
That is interesting - however, since nobody ever attempted this, I wonder if it actually works. There are some crazy good modders out there. Sure someone would have picked that up. But yeah, a 24 MB card would be cool - I am just very skeptical that this will work...
Very clean work (after the trial and errors :) )!
Yeah, most of the mess is only visible under the microscope :)
beautiful work, i love these kinds of mods
Glad you enjoy it!
Nice and clean execution! The problem I found with this and haven't seen mentioning is the driver compatibility. I used to own a miro highscore3d with 6mb and remember while having a bit extra performance on some games, other glide games didn't even boot. Tried a bunch of drivers and some worked with some games and others with the rest... But some with the original miro driver just disabling the extra memory. I remember Carmageddon was one of the problematic games... But there's not much info on the subject... Otherwise I would upgrade all voodoo cards to the full 8mb! :)
Good point. I don't think I can just disable the memory with the reference drivers, but I didn't look into this yet. The good thing is that the mod is temporary :) I can just unplug the cable.
really impressive project 👍
Thank you!
Great artwork! You should do more videos like this you are Very good in soldering!
Thank you! I love soldering. Very satisfying when a solder joint looks perfect :)
I would definitely like to see a video where you go over the failures of what you were doing.
I addressed most of those in the latest video on my channel.
@@bitsundbolts thanks! i was about to watch it :)
@@bitsundbolts you know, if you made cutouts in your memory boards, you could make them castellated, and then you could put the sockets on the ram chips, adjust the board to fit, and solder through the cutouts. this would make it much easier to adjust everything. but you'd have to make sure that the through-holes used for castellation are NOT plated. and it might make soldering new memory on top a bit more difficult, unless you find chips that are narrower. which might actually not be hard.
edit: i think while it might be a little difficult to solder chips on top, soldering sockets would probably not be very difficult at all.
also if you need to connect the bottom with the top anyways, maybe you could make the relevant castellations plated-through. so it works out well actually.
Thanks for the suggestion. I like thinking of improvements and to make things better. The prototype worked really well, but far from perfect. I actually have to admit that I was working on Rev. 1.1 and it's already out for manufacturing, but if this doesn't work out, I'll be glad to follow up with your approach!
Great Job!!! With old game there is not much improvment, but with newer game the improvment is a lot!!! I own a Voodoo 1 from MiRÒ with 6mb , and it can run some game that on the 4mb version are not playable, the Voodoo 1 was a real best for that time and with 6mb or 8mb can run game for the next gen of graphic card!!! I tried Monster Truck madness 2 and with the 4mb the game is to laggy with a lots of frame drops, with the 6mb is really smooth!!! Also with Unreal there is a big improvment, lot less frame drops!!!
The reason you can stack memory chips is that nearly all the lines are shared. Surely you only need connections to a single memory socket, plus the individual address lines ? In this way, any card could go to 8mb.
Yes, for the TMU, one extra pin needs to be connected to the memory chips. All other pins are shared with the chip below.
Any card should be capable to support 8 MB, but you won't be able to use the type of mod I use in this video.
Very nice hack, curious what other cards besides the Voodoo this could work for!
I could imagine that many of the S3 Trio cards would allow for that too. I have one card with 4 MB EDO (8 chips). Many came with 1 or 2 MB only.
solder tack one corner and then the opposite corner to get things inline
I had every model up to the voodoo 3. Loved cards back in the day
Should have showed the other results such as fill rate/2mb/4mb/8mb/etc rendering speed. Nice mod though, will be looking forward to next videos! :)
Thanks for pointing this out. I am working on the 8 MB video right now. Afterwards I'll probably create several benchmark videos using different CPUs
Memory wasn't cheap back in the day, so that may have played a part in only 4mb cards for the most part.
That is probably the main reason to keep cost as low as possible.
This is a great mod. I wonder how accurate this "mod" can be emulated in dgvoodoo2 by creating a voodoo with 6/8mb ram?
That's a very neat solution!
I knew about 6MB versions from very beginning but I didn’t learn about 8MB option until very recently, couple of weeks.
Although 8MB it’s an interesting quirk I think card makers made a sensible decision of not going that way. Voodoo Graphics is too slow to run games at 800x600 anyway.
From what I've read, you are spot on. I don't expect much, if any, benefit from the 8MB card - but then this would be just to satisfy curiosity. I wonder if at that time the engineering department was still in charge. Marketing departments love larger numbers - even if it doesn't make sense...
@@bitsundbolts - late 1990s tests performed by THG show that adding an SLI connector to Voodoo Graphics cards (as in some Quantum3D examples) would be much more useful. In single texturing games the performance was close to the no-yet-revealed Voodoo2. Maybe then the 8MB option would make more sense 👍🏾
I have seen a picture with 2x Voodoo 1 in SLI. I wonder why it wasn't mainstream. The chipset clearly supported that feature, yet there weren't many companies offering the SLI option. There was even one card that combined 2x TMU + 2x FBI on one board (SLI on a single board), but I don't know if this was true, a mod, or fake.
@@bitsundbolts - I have no idea why they ditched the idea either, I mean it wouldn’t make the card more expensive than the same thing applied on a common Voodoo2 card so it was an odd place look for cost cutting.
Instead, it appeared only on some of Quantum3D units and they were as non-consumer cards as they get, priced well above standard Voodoos, even those higher end ones. Put together they formed what was called a ‘DB’ card (as in Dual Board). As such ‘rendering combines’ would most likely approach the $2000 back in 1997 I’m not surprised they didn’t come up on anyone’s radar back in the day and never existed in wider audience’s mindshare.
The 4-chip cards you’ve seen are indeed a thing, they’re a further development of the idea bearing the ‘SB’ moniker (as in Single Board) and are basically two Voodoo1s put together. There were also so-called Amethyst daughtercards which added a second TMU with its own memory, effectively making it a Voodoo2 running at Voodoo1 clock speed. Putting everything together, either in DB or SB configuration, you’d get a SLI Voodoo1 with up to 20 or 22 megabytes of combined RAM respectively: 2x2 MB for FBI, 4x4 MB for TMU and 2 MB for AT-25 chip providing 2D video, the same as in Voodoo Rush cards, which came on another daughterboard. My brain itches when I think of that 😅
@@bitsundbolts Quantum3D Obsidian was a Voodoo Graphics card with 2x TMU + 1x FBI, with 2MB per TMU + 4MB for FBI. It also supported SLI! And it was an early card also, from 1996. The second TMU was only supported in GLQuake at first until more games started to add multitexturing support.
Brilliant mod! 👍
Hello Mike! Nice to see you here! Watching your channel as well! And thank you!
@@bitsundbolts Thanks so much! You have some awesome videos and I'm looking forward to watching more! Subscribed 👍
Wow, another useful video, keep it up...
Is this the same guy from CNC Cafe or do they just sound identical
Personally, I would have put the sockets over the existing chips, and then glued the new board to it. Then it would have had the spacing perfect with no stress.
Alternately, some solder paste on the 4 corner pins and hot air solder through the board while it's in place.
Yes, I agree. Watch the video with Revision 1.1 where I address the points you make here.
I am somewhat surprised and disappointed that this isn't common knowledge in the retro pc community that one can do this with this era of voodoo cards including the Rush.
For a very long time, I didn't even know that 6 and 8 MB Voodoo 1 existed. Voodoo 1 was 4 MB. Then Voodoo 2 changed the game again - this time with 8 and 12 MB and SLI. It was just such a great time - who needed more ;) ?
And once again we've been PCBWayed lol...
Yeah you did!
@@bitsundbolts
Otherwise cool video and cool project ;)
Please do the "Probelms I faced" video !
I think I will integrate this part into the FBI-mod video. But I will share what I learned from this project.
@@bitsundbolts Ah okay The journey is the most loved part of videos for me the things you had to overcome to get there is always so much fun to see
Wow, great stuff!
PT3: Combine both boards into one with no need for any jumpers and 2 daughter boards to go over the TMU and FBI with connections to the relevant pins. Then you got an all in one with no microsoldering required.
Interesting, There may be some pins however that do not connect to the TMU/FBI chips (e.g. VCC, VSS). Then the board would need to connect to other sections of the board. There are 39 Pins on the memory chips that are passed through to the upper row. Maybe a device (like a frame 3D printed) that just clips around the TMU/FBI chip would help.
My Miro Highscore had 6MB stock
Did the first Voodoo not already have 6 Mb? I seem to recall mine did, and my RAGEII had 4 Mb, for a total of 10 (I know it doesn't really work that way, but 16 year old me liked saying i had 10 Mb of video RAM :D )
I just sold my Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 5 cards in their boxes like 4 years ago and wish I hadn't or at least tried to get more for them. It's so small of memory only 4mb. It would of been more interesting if you made it go to 8mb.
Already working on it. The mod also clips on the second row of memory chips. And yes, I am already testing at 8 MB.
tiny problems are the most interesting part, show us the process please
I already published the second video which upgrades the card to 8MB. In that video, I mention the issues I encountered.
I played tomb raider 4 and 5 on voodoo1 4mb and it slows down a lot with high quality textures. Please test these games!
Will put those games on the list to compare the Voodoo 1 with different memory configurations! Thanks!
Excellent video!!!
Thank you very much!
What was the total cost from PCBWAY? What I'm seeing looks pretty expensive at $5.00 per board and then $38 for 3 day shipping and $63.56 for 24 hour processing.
Shipping cost depends on where you live. Production of those 10 PCBs is 5 USD and took 4 days to manufacture. If you get the coupon when signing up as a new customer, you get the PCBs for "free". I selected the slowest shipping method which was 12-13 USD to UAE/Dubai (I actually paid for that at checkout) and delivery time was 11-33 business days. Full disclosure, PCBWay upgraded my delivery for free to FEDex, which would have costs 23 USD to UAE, and reimbursed the money I paid for shipping in form of coupons. Delivery took another 3 days. So, to UAE with 11-33 business days delivery, it would have cost 12-13 USD with signup-coupon, 17-18 USD without signup-coupon.
I have found 3DX1000 card out in my cupboard. It has identical footprint and color to the card presented. The imprinting on my card adds "with TV option" but I couldn't find any difference to the card presented: no extra connector or header so I really don't know what the "TV option" means. My card is from "Volcanic" and "VOLCANC" is printed on the board. I have also Volcanic manual including a CD with drivers, Voodoo Graphics user's manual and another CD labeled "Software Driver Version 1.318-98". Manufacturing date of my board is 9923 (where yours is 9744).
I googled the card you're describing and I found a few pictures. I think it is a clone of the Maxi Gamer3D. I also do not see any TV relates ports.
Id try need for speed III hot pursuit i know that can use beyond the capabilities of the voodoo 1 pretty easily, same with half-life 1, quake 2 might manage it better or at least show off it running in 800x600.
I played the demo of NFS Hot Pursuit - even skipped a day at school to play with my friends over the network :) Definitely goes on the list! Thanks for watching!
I don't know how you did it but every video capture segment in this video has major screen tearing, both in game and from the digital microscope.
Yes, I have noticed this myself. I found the issue to be my USB/HDMI capturing device. I need to invest in a better device.
By stacking new on top of old chips, are they both working now or were the old ones disabled? If both working in parallel, how are they addressed separately?
Both rows are working. There is one additional wire routed from the TMU to Pin 14 on all 4 new memory chips. The other 39 pins are connected to the corresponding pins below.
I've seen some vids on YT from some guys building their own voodoo prototypes and selling them... what's your oppionen on that topic?
Great for them - way over my head 🙂
I guess the Tmu ram layout is the same on the most common version of voodoo 1 and I mean the monster 3d by diamond. Once the mod goes public I will help the community to relocate spaces to diamonds measurements and I urge all voodoo 1 owners to do the same for all the different kinds of other companies because the mod easy fairly easy. Only one cable to one pin and voila you have 6-8mb ram. 8 mb ram was commodon back in the days, I had in my pc a monster 3d with 4mb and a diamond fire gl 1000pro with a permedia 2 at 8mb.i still have this pc which was my first pc by the way.
That would be a great initiative!
I confirm that 8MB mod works - in the process of releasing the PCB Gerber files.
Great Work
Thank you so much for your contribution! Really appreciate it!
Why not solder two sockets together without the PCB ?
Yes, this crossed my mind, but you have to solder pin 14 together of all memory ICs for TMU and two memory ICs in pairs for the FBI mod. Just stacking another memory row above the existing ones is not enough. A jumper on a PCB with correct wiring makes this a lot cleaner.
Are there any devices that could go over the TMU directly? Access the address and data lines and route to memory.
You mean another socket? Hehe, I think I know where you're going. Some cards do have heatsinks on those chips, that would cause issues. You may also end up decreasing airflow around the chips heating them up further - those TMUs get hot.
I think you'd like to achieve somehow better access to the pins or prevent any alterations to the card?
@@bitsundbolts oh, I didn't think about cooling! Yes, they used to make Macintosh upgrade CPU boards that would clip on to the existing CPUs. Maybe a really hard part to find though, because they probably don't use that CPU package for much anymore. But yes, ideally a clip on upgrade with no soldering required.
Yeah, would be neat to just have everything clip on. But I think you won't find a socket that you could press over the chip, it would surprise me. Also, TMU and FBI are of different size.
Maybe someone could design a 3D printed device that could do it.
Or wait until I learn 3D modeling and create something.
But then people shouldn't complain if PCBWay is all over my video 😂
Really cool.
Thank you!
Bonjour
Je recherche les pilotes pour maxi gamer 3dfx carte accélératrice.
J’en ai essayé plusieurs sans résultat.
Merci 🙏
Aren't the chips become too hot underneat? Or it isnt the case? :)
I didn't notice any significant heat generation from those memory chips. They will be fine under the upside-down sockets.
tombraider hads max 600kb of textures per level so 8mb is overkil in this game even 6mb ,this game was also for the ps1 and that thing had only 1mb video.
can this be done on a rtx4090, it doesnt have enough memory
It is more useful to upgrade the Voodoo 1 from 4 MB to 8 MB than the RTX 4090 from 24GB to 48GB (which probably can't be done) - change my mind :)
Hummm wil this work with voodoo2 and 3
Good question. There are Voodoo 2 with 12 MB and 24x512KB memory chips, and there are some with 12x1MB memory chips. I have not come across a Voodoo2 with 20 MB (4 FBI, 8+8 TMUs) or 24 MB (8 FBI, 8+8 TMUs). From Voodoo3 onwards it may no longer be possible.
Mod pains video please
Working on it. Should be going live some time next week.
why not to use 1mb memory chips instead of making second deck?
I am not an expert, but I assume that the Voodoo ICs do not support larger chips on their memory lines hence the second pin to address another 4 memory chips. But I could be completely wrong. Never seen an 8MB Voodoo 1 with 8x1MB chips.
@@bitsundbolts edo chips with 2 ras lines as on v2 cards
I feel like this is still going over my head :) But I understand that the Voodoo chip would have to have the capability to address a larger memory space. Question is if the board has the traces in place or if the connection to the second RAS line needs to be created manually.
@@bitsundbolts no secondary ras line routed on the vast majority of v1 cards. this line should be wired as you did anyway.
Interesting - will keep it in mind. If I get my hands on a Voodoo 1 that I am not emotionally attached to, I may look into this!
Lol!! Thats what I call 3d stacking... hahahaha...
Ja moin schick mal 2 rüber 😀 lg
Лайк , но проделаная робота в пустую ,2 мб прибавки не даст
I do it for the love of 3Dfx, the time they changed the industry and created memories for many of us. This mod may not increase the performance by any meaningful way, but it will bring back those memories and a possibility to upgrade a drawer/closet Voodoo to 8MB.
+1
nice
I still have a Miro HiScore. Factory 6MB Voodoo1 :)