Can you create a boot floppy and then try the Tomb Raider 3dfx demo? Or restart into MS-DOS mode.

If the card fails here then you are dealing with something more substantial than a driver issue.

ultimate386 wrote:

edit2: sorry, meant to post this in Marvin!

Perhaps a mod would be so kind as to move it for you.

Update: Disconnecting the IBM hard drive and running the CF card by itself did seem to help a little. Jetfighter 3 now runs (repeatably) for about 30 seconds before freezing. So right now I'm installing Win98SE on the IBM drive and the CF card and adapter have been removed. I have the Tomb Raider 3Dfx demo ready to go once I'm back up and running. I'm going to be pretty bummed if my Voodoo itself went bad 🙁.

edit: also updated the BIOS to 1.72. Got some nice new tweaks it setup, but otherwise it made no difference.

Tomb Raider 3Dfx demo failed in DOS mode 🙁. Will have to find another system to test the card in.

ultimate386 wrote:

Tomb Raider 3Dfx demo failed in DOS mode 🙁. Will have to find another system to test the card in.

Do try all the PCI slots.

Tried a few different combos of the two cards in the 3 PCI slots. I even tried swapping out the S3 for a trusty ATI Mach64. None of that made any difference.

Out of desperation, I tried disabling both the internal and external cache in the BIOS and, to my amazement, the Tomb Raider demo worked! I re-enabled the internal cache and it quit working again. So I again disabled the internal and re-enabled the external and it once again works! Do I have a bad CPU?

That is quite strange indeed. The game runs on very fast Pentium II or Pentium III machines so I don't think there is a speed issue or something like that.

But are there any PCI related settings in the BIOS? Options to do with delaying transactions and things like that? Because without Cache things take longer so there could be a timing issue of some sort.

Maybe this motherboard not supports PCI bus mastering at all?
Well, the obvious test is - to try this Voodoo1 in another PC.

Voodoo1 doesn't need (bus master) DMA or interrupts, it just uses memory mapped I/O.

Haven't had much time to work on the system for the past couple days, but here is how my PCI Config looks in BIOS
----------------------------------
Slot 1 Using INT#: AUTO
Slot 2 Using INT#: AUTO
Slot 3 Using INT#: AUTO

1st Available IRQ: 9
2nd Available IRQ: 10
3rd Available IRQ: 11

PCI IRQ Activated By: Edge
PCI IDE 2nd Channel: Enable
PCI IRQ Map To: PCI-AUTO
Primary IDE INT#: A
Secondary IDE INT#: B

CPU->PCI Mem Post Write Buf: Enable
CPU->PCI Memory Burst Write: Enable
PCI Master Burst Read/Write: Enable
----------------------------------

Disabling the last 3 options had no effect (system still hard locks with CPU internal cache enabled).
PCI IRQ activated by edge vs. level also had no effect.

I've now swapped the AMD 5x86 for an Intel DX4 100 (same 33MHz FSB). 3Dfx games work !! (even with all caches enabled!).

An interesting new symptom has developed though: warm reboots (even with the reset switch) will cause the system to hang at the PCI Device listing immediately after POSting. Powering completely off and then back on will let the system boot normally. I guess the Voodoo1 card just doesn't get along well with the 4DPS.

🤣 weird but glad you sorted it 😀

Maybe it's a WT vs WB cache issue?

SquallStrife wrote:

Maybe it's a WT vs WB cache issue?

I had them both set to WB (which I believe they both are?). I actually have another AMD 5x86 133 (ADW instead of ADZ) that I'm going to try... I just haven't gotten to it yet because I have my heatsink/fan attached to the ADZ with 3M thermal tape 🤣 . The Intel DX4 has its own heatsink and that sucker gets hot!

I realize this is about a month old so sorry for posting so late on the subject but in case you haven't gotten around to trying your other chip there is a 3DFX site that is worth checking out that may have some new drivers, game patches and other misc for the voodoo cards. That can be found here. http://www.falconfly.de/3dfx.htm