I was following some guy on Twitter who was repairing v5 6000s, by replacing some so called Hint chip. It looked like hairy stuff. But such is the passion for 3dfx.

Interesting concept of the pass-thru VGA. But personally I would prefer AGP 1.5V compatible V5 with standard VGA + DVI and perhaps 2x 64 MB RAM. 😁

More compact Voodoo 5 with DVI would be much better. Then again, it's not like we would see it at reasonable quantity or price any time soon.

Yeah, most likely this project will end up like every other modern Voodoo remake - few prototypes, some photos and thats it.

Looks nice, but it will be more expensive than "a real card", if it will be available. 2 VSA-100 chips, fast SDRAM memory, PCB, various components, etc. Sure, if it will be "mass produced" it won't be expensive, but are there enough VSA-100 chips available for that? And is there enough demand? Sure, almost any video card collector will want one, but how many are in the world?

I can't speak for the other components, but VSA-100 chips can be sourced - I even found a seller in TX who had trays of these. Out of curiosity, I even purchased a tray of 24, intending to send them out to interested people. I don't know if they're legit - they look extremely real to me, materials look correct and they have markings and date codes that make sense - but maybe something like this could be a good project to contribute them to.

Sure, there are real VSA-100 chips, but how many? I'm not an expert in stuff like this, but I'm pretty sure that the cost to make such a card is huge, unless you can make a lot of cards. A lot of cards means at least 10.000. Are there 20.000 VSA-100 chips available? (2 for each card). Maybe. Are there 10.000 customers for such cards? I highly doubt it, but I might be wrong. It depends on the final price, I guess. If you can make a lot of cards and you can sell the card with 100$, even 200$, then there *might* be enough buyers.

The problem is that there's no real way to know until you make the card. Or you can try kickstarter. We'll see...

EDIT:

derSammler wrote on 2020-06-09, 14:30:

I don't think a collector would care about a replica card. Replica cards are more for people who want to actually use it and/or not willing to pay the high prices for the real thing.
[/quote

Well, if the price is ok I would buy at least one. But I'm curious about the price... I bought V5 5500 cards in the past with 20$-30$, some (boxed and/or PCI) with more, some (bulk, AGP) with less. Now the asking price is hundreds of dollars. A bit too much. And, somehow, I doubt that a clone will be cheaper. Unless, as I said, you can make a lot of them.

RaverX wrote on 2020-06-09, 14:37:

Well, if the price is ok I would buy at least one. But I'm curious about the price... I bought V5 5500 cards in the past with 20$-30$, some (boxed and/or PCI) with more, some (bulk, AGP) with less. Now the asking price is hundreds of dollars. A bit too much. And, somehow, I doubt that a clone will be cheaper. Unless, as I said, you can make a lot of them.

It couldn't be mass produced. It would have to be a short run hobbyist project. And those are generally not cheap. But given the current market rate of V5 5500s now - which has only gone up in the last couple years - I would be shocked if the cost of components + PCB approached anywhere near $250-300 USD per card even for a smaller run. (I'm also no expert; please correct me if I'm wrong.) It absolutely does take initial investment to get the parts though.

For reference, my cost of obtaining a 24 unit tray of VSA-100s came out to about $15/unit. I don't imagine it will stay that way all the time, but these things aren't exactly flying off the shelves.

And I would happily trade my V5 5500s for a new board design and let the collectors collect.

The Chips he used on the Bus Interface look same like on Radeon 7000 PCI which in Fact is a AGP Card with some Converters on it.

Also a new Card with 1 VSA and less cost would suffice, i rather would prefer Digital Output, instead of SLI.

1 VSA should be enough for all Glide Titles 😀

the fact those chips are BGA makes the prospect of a DIY kit pretty much a non-starter

I agree with matze79, a V4 4500 (single chip) would make more sense. Cheaper, easier to source the components and it should do the job just fine IMO.

I'm interested in how he did the design, did he has a reference design or spec for the VSA-100? There is no spec to found in internet.
Or did he completeley reengeneerd the layout and estimae the functions of the pins.
I would be very interested in the schematics of the design, maybe its possible to add some DVI or HDMI via some small FPGA or something

For adding DVI to a VSA card, there is no need for an FPGA. A TMDS encoder, such as TFP410, will do the trick. It might not be register compatible with the SiI164 used on the original DVI V4/V5 cards, but that can be easily fixed.
The databook for the VSA100 is available online, it contains most of the info needed to make a new card.

Thank you @sdz for the keyword databook, now i found very fast. Never heard this word. I just looked for datasheed, reference designe and so on... (i don't want to make a new card, just interested)