Fresh install of Windows 98SE without that blasted unofficial service pack.

The 3dfx Voodoo 1 generally does not like cpu's above 600mhz, hence the checkerboard pattern. Lower the cpu speed if you can all the
way down to 500mhz, that worked perfectly for me.
Some people have had success with cpu's up to 1 ghz, but that probably depends on chipset, drivers, etc.

Having the same issue with my canopus pure 3D. First off with a s7 pentium 200mmx s3 virge, now a slot pentium II 333mhz no luck.
Only tried it with s3 cards though (trio64/savage 4 pro agp). Must have wiped and renistalled windows 98se about 5 times now. Tried the canopus official cd, third party and other manufacturers drivers.

Reputator wrote:

So I've tried everything I can think of. Long searches online provided no answers. […]
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So I've tried everything I can think of. Long searches online provided no answers.

I got a Typhoon 3DMax and at first I honestly thought it was broken. Checkerboard graphical errors abounded in GLQuake and 3DMark99. I've tried three different Socket A motherboards now, with either SiS or VIA chipsets, both in a case and in an open testbed, and in different PCI slots. I've tried multiple AGP cards in tandem with it, GeForce 256, Rage Fury MAXX, Radeon SDR, 9700 Pro, and Voodoo 5. I've wiped all other graphics drivers from the system, and ran Driver Cleaner Pro for each vendor.

I've tried several different drivers for the Voodoo 1, including the four built into Windows 98SE, the last release from 3dfx (v3.01), a previous release from 1998 (v.2.16), a Diamond Monster 3D driver I can't remember the version of, and the custom IceMan Win9x driver, all from Falconfly.de. I ran DCPro in between each. The card is seen and detected by PowerStrip and DXDiag just fine.

In my XP system with its unusual ULI chipset, I just slapped it in with a 9700 Pro, installed a third party XP driver, and it ran GLQuake, Quake II, and Rollcage flawlessly. No effort at all.

The only thing I haven't done is wipe my 98 system's hard drive and start with a total fresh install. Currently I'm running the Unofficial Service Pack 3.56 with DirectX9c installed.

What do I try next?

Did quake look like this?

Richie31 wrote:

Did quake look like this?

20170615_165922.jpg

No. If you click "GLQuake" in my post you can see a screenshot. It wouldn't run at all.

Reputator wrote:

Richie31 wrote:

Did quake look like this?

20170615_165922.jpg

No. If you click "GLQuake" in my post you can see a screenshot. It wouldn't run at all.

Ah yes i see now.
Well actually the picture i put up was Quake 2 but wondered if we were having the same issue. Half of people tell me its a driver issue the other a broken card.
Im as stuck as you are!

Try running it in pure DOS. Download and run TOMB3DEM. It has all the 3dfx drivers already built in.

What imperious said: Voodoo1 cards generally do NOT like fast systems/cpu's.

I have a lot of these cards and not a single one would work on my Tusl2-c board with Tualatin cpu. Run fine on slower systems. Above 450mhz cpu speed can generate problems. But there are people that have no issues on fast p3's.

So just test your card on a p1 or p2.

kixs wrote:

Try running it in pure DOS. Download and run TOMB3DEM. It has all the 3dfx drivers already built in.

This is a fantastic idea. I'll do that!

meljor wrote:

What imperious said: Voodoo1 cards generally do NOT like fast systems/cpu's.

I have a lot of these cards and not a single one would work on my Tusl2-c board with Tualatin cpu. Run fine on slower systems. Above 450mhz cpu speed can generate problems. But there are people that have no issues on fast p3's.

So just test your card on a p1 or p2.

I do not own platforms that old (I'm more a graphics card collector) however I can lower my AXP's FSB to 100MHz. According to the Vogons Wiki that's another sticking point.

The Tomb Raider demo in DOS does the same thing. Looks just like the GLQuake screenshot.

I tried lowering the FSB down to 100MHz. Didn't help. Then I lowered the clockspeed to 600MHz, which didn't work either.

On a side note, apparently my Shuttle AK35GT2/R let's me change the multi on my 1700+? Not sure how, but I confirmed it.

This Voodoo just hates my 98 machine. Meanwhile back in XP land, I tried Unreal on it yesterday and it runs like a dream.

Reputator wrote:

The Tomb Raider demo in DOS does the same thing. Looks just like the GLQuake screenshot.

I has a similar, maybe the same problem with my Voodoo2 where colors were all f'd up in certain games, Tomb Raider included. Turns out it had to do with missing environment variables that the 3Dfx drivers were expecting. Additionally, after I figured that out, I had to increase the environment variable memory space in DOS to the maximum allowed (1024, IIRC) to have the memory space required to store all the variables the 3Dfx driver was looking for.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N46ASdHar-4

Alright so I posted a haul video in which I received the Voodoo card originally, and in the second half I go over the troubles I've been having with the card. Skip to 7:43 if you only want to see that part.

This just gives more of a visualization of the issues I've dealt with.

Reputator wrote:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N46ASdHar-4

Alright so I posted a haul video in which I received the Voodoo card originally, and in the second half I go over the troubles I've been having with the card. Skip to 7:43 if you only want to see that part.

This just gives more of a visualization of the issues I've dealt with.

The L-shaped bracket was perhaps removed to make it fit into the box. I kinda dislike when people use those little filler pieces (very static!), using lots of tape (also very static, less if you use a knife and more if you pull it off) and not using an ESD bag and only bubble wrap (which is only good for the card not getting damaged by physical force).
I also don't really prefer using a blanket and not seeing any other ESD precautions. Some may see this as over-cautious, but it's really easy and can prevent a lot of diagnostical pain 🤣

Still watching the rest of the vid.

Thanks for the video. I think You should try and lower the multiplier all the way down to 5.0x as I have occasionally had the
checkerboard pattern occur at 600mhz.
Maybe there were some software fixes in Windows xp that sorted out the issue.
If there is a way to lower the ram speed, try that as well.

Imperious wrote:

Thanks for the video. I think You should try and lower the multiplier all the way down to 5.0x as I have occasionally had the ch […]
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Thanks for the video. I think You should try and lower the multiplier all the way down to 5.0x as I have occasionally had the
checkerboard pattern occur at 600mhz.
Maybe there were some software fixes in Windows xp that sorted out the issue.
If there is a way to lower the ram speed, try that as well.

Lowering clocks seem like a good idea, but I'm still wondering why that Lara Croft demo (which is mentioned to not use any drivers) also failed.
As another thing to put on the "perhaps try this"-list may be to see if it's caused by loose solder joints.

Another thing is to try it out in more rigs (and preferably including something that is more period correct).

I never seen this checkerboard pattern by myself, except for this odd artifact my Voodoo 2 had and which was due to a memory issue with my Voodoo 2 (it still worked fine except for that single blue block which had the same shape as those blocks that Voodoo 1 is displaying).

Reputator, have you done a thorough visual inspection of your card? There were several reports of people on Vogons who had issues with their Voodoos which turned out to be related to the legs sticking out of any of the chips on the PCB.

Tetrium wrote:

Lowering clocks seem like a good idea, but I'm still wondering why that Lara Croft demo (which is mentioned to not use any drive […]
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Lowering clocks seem like a good idea, but I'm still wondering why that Lara Croft demo (which is mentioned to not use any drivers) also failed.
As another thing to put on the "perhaps try this"-list may be to see if it's caused by loose solder joints.

Another thing is to try it out in more rigs (and preferably including something that is more period correct).

I never seen this checkerboard pattern by myself, except for this odd artifact my Voodoo 2 had and which was due to a memory issue with my Voodoo 2 (it still worked fine except for that single blue block which had the same shape as those blocks that Voodoo 1 is displaying).

Reputator, have you done a thorough visual inspection of your card? There were several reports of people on Vogons who had issues with their Voodoos which turned out to be related to the legs sticking out of any of the chips on the PCB.

At some point I will have an older platform to try it on, but as of now I do not.

Anyway I've looked the card over very closely and found no issues with any chip legs or solder points. It looks almost new.

But if it were a physical issue with the card itself, why would it work flawlessly in my 2005-era XP system? Nothing about it makes sense.

Has anyone else tried using a Voodoo1 in a Socket A system? Or does anyone have any free time that they can try it out?

Here You go, I made a video that shows what I'm talking about. This game, Whiplash (Fatal racing) is running in pure Dos mode.

https://youtu.be/tpoWllNVOtE

Have you ever tried TombRaider demo on the XP machine?

Imperious wrote:

Here You go, I made a video that shows what I'm talking about. This game, Whiplash (Fatal racing) is running in pure Dos mode.

https://youtu.be/tpoWllNVOtE

This seems to pretty clearly prove that CPU clockspeed is the issue. My problem almost exactly matches your results. Unfortunately my setup doesn't allow me to go as low as 500MHz, but that might be the magic number.

So more than likely this will require an entirely new system. But for now I'm pretty happy with how well it works in my XP system. Hell, maybe I can install Windows 98 on it!

Oh crap that might actually be a good idea...