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Question on Voodoo2 SLI known chipset issues?

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First post, by Malichite

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I recently picked up a pair of STB Voodoo2 12MB cards for use with my retro PIII-S 1.4Ghz ASUS TUSL2-C motherboard, but regardless what I try I am unable to get anything working in SLI mode. I have tried multiple PCI slot configurations (e.g. slot positions and removing sound and network cards) for the Voodoo2 cards and a variety of PCI/AGP cards for the main system display, but if I try to open the Display Properities 3dfx tab or run a game with the SLI cable connected in Win98SE the screen flashes black then either locks the system if it is a game or locks the display properties page trying to access the 3dfx tab. I have tried multiple clean installs of Win98SE using the drivers it came with, the latest reference driver, FastVoodoo2 4.0GE, and FastVoodoo2 4.6, but it always behaves the same when the SLI cable is attached. Both cards are shown in the system properties with no conflicts and if I run each card alone in the system they work fine.

Are there known issue with the 815 chipset that is conflicting with the SLI mode or are there special BIOS setting that I need to change in order to allow SLI to work? I know that one card is used as the Master and the other as the Slave, but I can't find any options in the System BIOS except related to the PCI IDE channels and nothing further on bus mastering. These STB cards were sold as a pair and actually are labelled [1] and [2] in silkscreen on the PCBs, so they were originally intended to be sold for SLI. The one thing that wasn't included was the SLI ribbon cable that a picked up from someone else on eBay, but looking at the cable it appears to be correct with the swapped 16-19 wires between the two end and is ~2" in length. I found another thread a long time back with a similar issue using the STB Voodoo2 cards in SLI, but I wasn't ever able to find any resolution. Any thoughts or knowledge on this would be useful. Thanks,

-Malichite

Reply 1 of 2, by FFXIhealer

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I don't know what causes the problem, but I have a Pentium II based system on a 440BX chipset motherboard with that same pair of STB 12MB Voodoo2 PCI cards in SLI. The system acts JUST like you describe for me on the FIRST BOOT, but if I tell Windows to RESTART and let it come up, it works just fine for me after that. SLI detects, display window tab will work properly, and I can run GLQuake, Quake II, Unreal, etc. all just fine. It's weird. I wonder if it has to do with the system memory. I have 2x 128MB PC-100 ECC sticks in mine with ECC support disabled in the BIOS.

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Reply 2 of 2, by meljor

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What i would do:

Check every card and see if none of the ''legs'' of all the chips touch, they bend very easily and can cause strange behaviour when shorting. A lot of these cards have lived in boxes with parts and get slightly damaged, just check. If there is a problem straighten them with a tiny needle tip.

Place the cards in the lower 2 pci slots, cleared up some issues for me on some motherboards and v2 sli so worth a try.

after a clean install try the diamond v2 driver, on some setups it made sli work where other drivers didn't. A matching set shouldn't be an issue with any driver but it is worth it to try. You can also try the driver for ''mismatched sli'' as sometimes cards are not exactly the same (slightly different layout but same brand).

Good luck!

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1

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