VOGONS


First post, by TelamonLivesOn

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Hello all,

Over the past several months, I have learned about the Rendition Verite cards and how they were one of the early 3D accelerators for PCs. As such, these cards ran in MS-DOS and initially only supported their proprietary API. In particular, the Rendition Verite supported a proprietary API known as Speedy3D for MS-DOS, which was later ported and renamed to RRedline for Windows-based systems. While I was able to source the RRedline SDK through hours of scouring old archives, I was unable to find any archive, or even mention of where to find the Speedy3D SDK. I am in need of this SDK, as I am creating an engine that can utilize this old hardware to its fullest. If any of you have a copy of this SDK or know where to find it, please let me know! Thanks!

Reply 1 of 12, by Stiletto

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I'm looking for this too, and I've been looking a lot longer than you... probably nine years, off and on.

My only thought at this juncture is to contact known users of Speedy3D, from companies and their former employees to hobbyists, and prevail upon their generosity should they have it in their collection.

Fabien Sanglard, who has a great website (https://fabiensanglard.net/ ) about Doom and Quake and a bunch of other things, told me that he feels Speedy3D to be API compatible to RRedline, so as you say, ported. This could help you write code to use Speedy3D, if only you had the libraries... so not all that useful info.

Not sure why the Rendition RRedline SDK was so hard for you to find, we've a copy (sourced from Rendition's website back in the day) over at VOGONSDrivers - for close to a decade:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid= … &menustate=17,1

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Stiletto

Reply 2 of 12, by TelamonLivesOn

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Stiletto wrote on 2021-05-14, 20:59:
I'm looking for this too, and I've been looking a lot longer than you... probably nine years, off and on. […]
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I'm looking for this too, and I've been looking a lot longer than you... probably nine years, off and on.

My only thought at this juncture is to contact known users of Speedy3D, from companies and their former employees to hobbyists, and prevail upon their generosity should they have it in their collection.

Fabien Sanglard, who has a great website (https://fabiensanglard.net/ ) about Doom and Quake and a bunch of other things, told me that he feels Speedy3D to be API compatible to RRedline, so as you say, ported. This could help you write code to use Speedy3D, if only you had the libraries... so not all that useful info.

Not sure why the Rendition RRedline SDK was so hard for you to find, we've a copy (sourced from Rendition's website back in the day) over at VOGONSDrivers - for close to a decade:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid= … &menustate=17,1

I guess if it cannot be found, disassembling vquake (since it wasn't open-sourced), and comparing it to regular Quake and RRedline would be the best way to reverse-engineer the sdk.

Edit: Also looking at the patch programs and other simple games that used Speedy3D might help with discovering the low-level details of the card.

Reply 3 of 12, by TelamonLivesOn

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That actually brings up an idea: has anyone contacted the original Rendition Verite team to ask if they have any source code?

Edit: From what I've read, Rendition was bought out by Micron in 1998. I doubt Micron still has the files though. However, it may also be possible to reach out and get the VQuake source code from Id Software, if they still have it.

Reply 4 of 12, by rasz_pl

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I have a feeling vquake is a special case, and instead of Speedy3D they went down to writing custom firmware just for that one game, or at least modifying it. Quake was super important for them.

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Reply 5 of 12, by cyclone3d

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Stiletto wrote on 2021-05-14, 20:59:
I'm looking for this too, and I've been looking a lot longer than you... probably nine years, off and on. […]
Show full quote

I'm looking for this too, and I've been looking a lot longer than you... probably nine years, off and on.

My only thought at this juncture is to contact known users of Speedy3D, from companies and their former employees to hobbyists, and prevail upon their generosity should they have it in their collection.

Fabien Sanglard, who has a great website (https://fabiensanglard.net/ ) about Doom and Quake and a bunch of other things, told me that he feels Speedy3D to be API compatible to RRedline, so as you say, ported. This could help you write code to use Speedy3D, if only you had the libraries... so not all that useful info.

Not sure why the Rendition RRedline SDK was so hard for you to find, we've a copy (sourced from Rendition's website back in the day) over at VOGONSDrivers - for close to a decade:
http://www.vogonsdrivers.com/index.php?catid= … &menustate=17,1

There are only the drivers that came with the SDK there. Says so right in the file description.

Edit: I just uploaded the complete SDK package to vogonsdrivers.

Last edited by cyclone3d on 2021-06-01, 18:32. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 6 of 12, by cyclone3d

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For those interested, here are the web page archives for the various files. I don't see any mention of Speedy3D

http://web.archive.org/web/19981202065910/htt … heRRedline.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19970605062153/htt … 0/prodtech.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19970605062209/htt … m/download.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20040118224016/htt … /developer.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19990116222806/htt … 0/download.html

Yamaha modified setupds and drivers
Yamaha XG repository
YMF7x4 Guide
Aopen AW744L II SB-LINK

Reply 7 of 12, by TelamonLivesOn

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cyclone3d wrote on 2021-06-01, 17:13:
For those interested, here are the web page archives for the various files. I don't see any mention of Speedy3D […]
Show full quote

For those interested, here are the web page archives for the various files. I don't see any mention of Speedy3D

http://web.archive.org/web/19981202065910/htt … heRRedline.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19970605062153/htt … 0/prodtech.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19970605062209/htt … m/download.html
http://web.archive.org/web/20040118224016/htt … /developer.html
http://web.archive.org/web/19990116222806/htt … 0/download.html

Thanks for those! I was never able to find any reference of the SDK on there either. I'm wondering if it could be found on some BBS. Otherwise, it was likely distributed under an NDA, considering that there is no mention of it other than from interviews and sparse bits of info.

Reply 8 of 12, by TelamonLivesOn

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rasz_pl wrote on 2021-06-01, 09:25:

I have a feeling vquake is a special case, and instead of Speedy3D they went down to writing custom firmware just for that one game, or at least modifying it. Quake was super important for them.

That would make a lot of sense, considering Carmack expressed having been really frustrated with programming for the Verite. That's why they never had any official support for other proprietary APIs in their future games from that point forward. Unfortunately, OpenGL was never meant for games, and Direct3D was only for Windows, and buggy at times. It would be lovely if there was a Glide port of Quake, but oh well.

Reply 9 of 12, by TelamonLivesOn

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If I could at least find low-level details about the hardware, I would be fine with writing my own custom driver, since my current project is very "Not Invented Here" themed.

Edit: That's why I was inquiring about the SDK in the first place: since I have a project that would utilize it.

Reply 10 of 12, by TelamonLivesOn

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I just found out that http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/component … on-verite-v2100 has a datasheet for the card, which includes register names and functions, along with other programming information. I will probably just write custom code for this and not use any driver for DOS. I will, however, use it for Windows.

Reply 12 of 12, by TelamonLivesOn

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vetz wrote on 2021-06-08, 15:24:

TelamonLivesOn: Looking forward to see the end result of your project, I hope you'll keep us updated 😀

I won't be finishing anytime soon. It will likely take me years. But for reference, this is a cross-platform game engine designed to be able to run on any vintage or modern system. I've already managed to program a bunch of the sound code, and video code, but I need to program some 3D code right now.

Edit: I wanted it to support some obscure APIs, but it looks like I may just need to write direct code for some of it.