flash 3gfx video card for B&W

[racepres]

Anyone have any experience with the 3dfx [voodoo video card] flashed for mac.

I want to put one into a B&W.

I found alot of info w/ Google, but not yet a download for the flash itself.

I seem to recall that it must be done w/ a windoze machine, but heck, that could have been some other project altogether.

Finally.... Is it Worth it??

I'm running 10.4.11 and 10.3.9, and 9.2.2. Yes three different drives.. 2 SCSI and 1 IDE.

Any experience in this is Appreciated.

RP

 

[quinterro]

Which 3dfx card, the Voodoo 1/2 or the Voodoo 3/4/5?

If it is the Voodoo 1/2, you can just use Mac drivers for them with no flashing. If one of the others http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ has some info about them under their Video section. Scroll waaaaay down.

The Voodoo 3 reminds me of the only instance I have seen a flaming video card - literally. It was a Voodoo 3 2000 AGP or PCI card (I forget which) mounted in an IBM Aptiva mini-tower. Without the cover on I hooked everything up and turned it on. I saw a light at the bottom of the machine and didn't recall seeing an LED down there. Looking at it I saw a flame coming out of the video card.

 

[beachycove]

A few thoughts:

As far as I know the Voodoo cards do not work in OSX.

I have a Voodoo 5 made for Mac in an 8600/300 604e, but am thinking of moving it into another machine. The bus speed is definitely a limiting factor, as the graphics are not all that good in this machine. I would imagine that even a beige G3 would be significantly better, due to the faster bus and faster PCI slots. Presumably a B&W would be a notch better still.

Flashing of the Voodoo 3 can certainly be done in a PCI Mac in OS9 (I have done it, as I recall in a 7500).The flashed card is still in a pile somewhere around here. It was very easy to flash, and I seem to recall that it worked well enough. The utility that's still "out there" worked a treat, along with the drivers.

 

[racepres]

Holy Smokes Batman!!!

I don't want any fires in my B&W!!

I will have to see what # the card is... it is pci of course.

But!

Won't work with OSX!!!! Well that tears it.

I'm over it now!! It is not that the standard [ATI if I recall] card is not functional. I just wanted to give the old girl a little upgrade. Already has XLR8 450 zif, 1g ram, and the scsi interface is pretty peppy, once it gets "wound up"! But, that mm may mm may mm maybe all folks!!

Thanks

RP

 

[Byrd]

If you're using OS 9, a Voodoo 3 PCI is great for games. It does get hot, so I used to use a couple of large heatsinks on mine (front and back), with a slow fan nearby.

But as you've discovered, it's useless in OS X

JB

 

[racepres]

Thanks for that.

If the "big deal" is Gaming, I guess I don't feel shortchanged using the stock card.

as I don't do much w/ games anyway.

That and I use OSX more and more, so I'm kinda stuck anyhow!! eh!

Thanks again

RP

 

[Unknown_K]

3DFX was best on a PC with glide, if you are going to play games on a mac you are probably better off with an ATI 7000 which is better supported (and can also be used in OSX ona dual purpose machine).

 

[protocol7]

I have two old Voodoo's: a 4MB V1 and a 12MB V2. Can't remember which one I got running in my G4 at one time but the 800x600 max resolution killed it for me. I tested it with Tomb Raider II and it looked better on the stock Rage 128 as it could run at higher resolutions. I remember being blown away when I got that 4Mb Voodoo card brand new. Quake II looked awesome.

 

[jruschme]

Back in the day, I flashed a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI with the last available firmware (b13?). ISTR it running quite well under the Classic Mac OS with the Voodoo 4/5 drivers. As others have said, though, no X support.

I think I still have the card around here somewhere if someone wants it cheap.

John

 

[Gorgonops]

The first AGP video card I ever owned was a Voodoo3 3000... which of course wasn't actually a "real" AGP card, really just a PCI card with an AGP bridge chip. The Voodoo3 was a funny animal,. For running GLIDE (or the subset of OpenGL that mapped directly to glide) it was fast by pre-GeForce/Radeon standards but there was a lot about its internal architecture that was weird and brain-damaged, such as the 3D renderer *only* working in 16bit mode and being limited to relatively tiny texturemaps. (Oddly enough its 2D accelerator was *very* fast and worked fine with a 32 bit framebuffer.) Assuming your B&W came with the standard ATI Rage 128 it is by most measures at least a comparable card to a Voodoo3, even if you limit the comparison to things the Voodoo3 does well. It's hard to find period benchmarks anymore but they usually show the Voodoo3 being about 20-30% faster than a Rage 128 at 16 bit color depth. However the 128's hidden talent is it hardly slows down at all going to 32 bit color which a Voodoo3 cannot do *at all*.

(I'm harping on the Voodoo3 because I think it's pretty unlikely we're talking about a Voodoo5 here. They're not *incredibly* rare but they are scarce. The Voodoo5 is roughly on the same level as the original Radeon card but has completely miserable driver support... and has the additional limitation that it won't perform much better than a Voodoo3 unless the game in question works well with SLI, which was needed to spread the load over its multiple graphics processors.)

 

[H3NRY]

One of the B&Ws I rescued had a top line (originally $1500) Voodoo card in it, and it was about on par with a Rage 128 in OS 9. No drivers for OS X. A sad disappointment.

My B&W video card of choice is a GeForce 5200 flashed for Mac. It drives my (VGA 15-pin D-sub) B&W Apple 15" Studio LCD very nicely with hardware acceleration in OS X, unaccelerated on OS 9. The ROMs I found do not support DVI, so the DVI connector is non-functional.

I bought and flashed a PCI GF6200 card, but plugging it into the B&W destroyed it. Even though it was keyed for both 3.3V and 5V, it apparently was 3.3V only. The B&W PCI slots are 5 Volts.

 

[racepres]

My B&W video card of choice is a GeForce 5200 flashed for Mac

Could I trouble you for a Pic of said card? I'm just that type person... gotta see one to recognize one!

BTW I googled the thing... but, It certainly can't look like All of Those!!!

My guess is this one

Heck in all the crap around here... I may have one!

Thanks

RP