VOGONS


Voodoo2, black screen

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First post, by johey

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I have a Win98 machine installed with a Voodoo2. The system finds the card and all looks good from a software perspective, but when opening a program that tells the card to switch to Voodoo2, the screen goes black. No 3dfx logo is shown.

The motherboard is a socket 370 Abit AB-ZM6 with 128 MB RAM and Celeron 400. The main graphics board is a Geforce 4MX AGP (also tried other cards with the same result). I have removed all other cards to isolate the problem. Turned off all unnecessary things in BIOS, including serial and parallel ports. No relevant conflicts reported in Win98.

I had this card working recently, with another motherboard which unfortunately died. Hopefully the Voodoo2 was not fried in tandem, but it is of course a sad possibility. I have not reinstalled Windows since then, but just replaced the motherboard. I have installed drivers for the Intel chipset on the new motherboard.

I was an Amiga guy back in the days, so I never fought in the IRQ warz. Looking for good troubleshooting tips to get me up to speed with this pc thang.

Reply 1 of 4, by Shadzilla

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You could try different versions of the glide2x.ovl file, I sometimes have to go through a few before I find one that works for the card and game I'm trying.

Reply 2 of 4, by johey

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I will try that. However, as this was previously working with the installed driver, I am a little unsure of the effect. But hey, it's something to try anyway.

Reply 3 of 4, by Shagittarius

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I know this sounds obvious and stupid but check the connection of the passthrough cable from your voodoo 2 to your main card. Make sure things are in the right places and firmly connected. Its always good to recheck the basics.

Reply 4 of 4, by johey

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Yes, indeed. Also, do the less obvious in terms of checking each pin of the 3dfx chips. Some of them might get loose. That is exactly what happened in this case. After soldering them back, the card is working. Yeeey! 😁