At 800x600@60 the FBI still outputs 24bpp to the RAMDAC, even in SLI, as it was expected. There also seems to be something wrong with at least 1 TMU on the master side (it's electrically identical to the right side, which works fine, so either some bad soldering or bad TMU/RAM).
At the moment the card is still running with the internal video clock as a reference, as it made no difference when locking on the external one. Maybe this is not true for SLI operation.

I also tested with 2 regular Voodoo 2 cards in SLI and the HDMI add-on card (this uses the FBI vidclk as a reference), and it works properly:

https://youtu.be/QjDx2aifx6U

And a bit of an odd thing, measured on the regular Voodoo 2 cards. When running a single card, the memory clock is set at 90MHz, when running in SLI it's lowered to 85MHz. Might be different with different drivers.

This was an absolute pain.
One important thing, as I said earlier, the RAMDAC provides a video clock, the FBI provides it back.
For non-SLI operation, the clock generated by the RAMDAC can be directly used. For SLI operation, the clock coming back from the FBI needs to be used.
Just by trying to use the external clock as a reference, everything broke, even blocks that had no connection to the changes I made.

Wasted about 10 hours fixing various things that Vivado likes to break, connecting outputs from modules to other modules that don't use those signals, or simply ignoring control signal for various clock muxes and directly connecting them to fixed states. I basically rewrote the whole thing.

Anyway, V2 4444SX with SLI, no TMUs enabled for now, 800x600.

https://youtu.be/b9WOYN-fBWI

SLI, texture mapping and HDMI pass-through.

Quake 2 demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poO2yVM8JK4

I'll add later more details about what it took to get it going.
At the moment the board has no hardware modifications, it's unchanged 😀

I guess if 3dfx had had you as their hardware engineer back in the day, Rampage wouldn't have been delayed, NVIDIA woukd have gone bankrupt, 3dfx would have taken over Intel, and we would have got neuralink like a decade ago, preventing the Covid, the war and reaching the UN goals already.

sdz wrote on 2024-02-22, 22:09:

20240223_000756.jpg […]
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20240223_000756.jpg

SLI, texture mapping and HDMI pass-through.

Quake 2 demo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poO2yVM8JK4

I'll add later more details about what it took to get it going.
At the moment the board has no hardware modifications, it's unchanged 😀

So now that it's a functioning single card, triple TMU, SLI Voodoo II do we get to start playing with the FPGA more and do some really crazy stuff? Also, were there any titles from the era that benefited from the extra TMU? I know R100 Radeons had a triple texture pipe configuration that went underutilized but that was quite a ways down the line.

Absolutely WILD! I love it. What can you achieve with the extra TMU? Will the drivers have to be modified to take advantage of it?

Impressive!

(But I still hope for future cheaper video cards with older ISA, PCI and early AGP chips period that may be "simpler" to build).

@hard1k
Thanks for the kind and funny comment 😀

@DrAnthony
The extra TMU isn't doing anything at the moment, it will need custom drivers for that.
As for the FPGA, I don't yet have enough experience to do crazy stuff with it 😀

@boggsman

Hopefully this can be achieved with the extra TMU:

http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/downloads/voodoo2-re … ence-rev116.zip

@386SX
Such cards can be done, but sourcing the ICs might be an issue.
Also making just a clone of an existing card doesn't really make sense to me, as it's likely cheaper to buy an existing one.

Edit:
As for the status of the card, I haven't done much since I last posted.
I added support for 1024x768 and everything broke. At the moment I'm generating way too many clocks and muxing them to various blocks depending on what the FBI requests. This easily causes congestion and breaks the design.
I need to fix this by dinamically reconfiguring the MMCMs, but it will take a while until I get to that.

I have finished the mechanical design however, and ordered the parts. They should arrive in a week or two.

sdz wrote on 2024-03-25, 10:04:

@hard1k Thanks for the kind and funny comment :) […]
Show full quote

@hard1k
Thanks for the kind and funny comment 😀

@DrAnthony
The extra TMU isn't doing anything at the moment, it will need custom drivers for that.
As for the FPGA, I don't yet have enough experience to do crazy stuff with it 😀

@boggsman

Hopefully this can be achieved with the extra TMU:
SST2_TM.jpg
http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/downloads/voodoo2-re … ence-rev116.zip

@386SX
Such cards can be done, but sourcing the ICs might be an issue.
Also making just a clone of an existing card doesn't really make sense to me, as it's likely cheaper to buy an existing one.

Edit:
As for the status of the card, I haven't done much since I last posted.
I added support for 1024x768 and everything broke. At the moment I'm generating way too many clocks and muxing them to various blocks depending on what the FBI requests. This easily causes congestion and breaks the design.
I need to fix this by dinamically reconfiguring the MMCMs, but it will take a while until I get to that.

I have finished the mechanical design however, and ordered the parts. They should arrive in a week or two.

Great to see an update, hopefully the next stage goes smoothly (or enlightening if bumpy).

Only just now seeing this! OMG, that's a beautiful card!

@DrAnthony I hope so too 😀

@Tevian Thanks!

The frame arrived today, aluminium, sand blasted and anodized:

Looking sharp. Are planning to apply active cooling, let alone heatsinks?

Yes, active cooling, but no heatsinks.

This is amazing! 😮

now that is a whole new dimension of hardware porn 😁 incredible!

Hi. Thank you for this amazing project! Are you going to make your V2 4444SX as a regular PCI card? Thanks.

Rabanik wrote on 2024-04-13, 08:18:

Hi. Thank you for this amazing project! Are you going to make your V2 4444SX as a regular PCI card? Thanks.

I actually started working on a PCI version yesterday. I should have finished it today, but I got a really nasty cold.

sdz wrote on 2024-04-13, 12:28:

Rabanik wrote on 2024-04-13, 08:18:

Hi. Thank you for this amazing project! Are you going to make your V2 4444SX as a regular PCI card? Thanks.

I actually started working on a PCI version yesterday. I should have finished it today, but I got a really nasty cold.

Niiice! Thank you for it. Be in shape soon again.

Thank you!

Another small updated. Finally got these assembled:

Custom flex RGB+W strips, plus the two PCBs that the fans and RGBW strips are connected to. The pogo pins make the connection between these small boards and the main PCB.