Kahenraz wrote on 2025-01-06, 19:08:
On a similar note, there are also boards with onboard Aureal Vortexes. They're pretty rare as well.
Holy cow... I've never heard of such a thing. TheRetroWeb lists three motherboards that have integrated AU8830A2 Vortex 2 sound chips... amazing!
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/?itemsPe … Ids%5B0%5D=3627
Also, when I googled it I actually stumbled across this picture:
Which seems to be on the brink of disappearing from the internet, since it was just archived by Google and no longer exists at the archive link provided:
https://falconfly.vogonswiki.com/cgi-bin/yabb … um=1384801839/6
Maaan... does anyone here know the person posting in that thread that obtained this board? It is apparently referred to as a "3dfx Brazos" motherboard. Supposedly a prototype of some sort that 3dfx put out with a Voodoo 3 and a Vortex2 on board.
Would love to see all this rare 3dfx gear that he's referring to in that thread. It's a shame that the images weren't also archived.
Gotta say... we are so spoiled these days having forums that allow image uploads directly. Back in the day most did not do this, so all of the images that are linked to are basically gone from the discussions even when they are archived. Very sad to find all the broken links in these discussions 10-20 years later. I hope VOGONS has a good and thorough backup\archive so we never lose all of the knowledge and images gathered here.
EDIT: I found the exact same picture on this page: http://www.rashly3dfx.com/products/brazos.html
Apparently the picture was from a MaximumPC magazine back in June of 2002, and the board was said to have been the property of Falcon Northwest. I'd imagine that the guy in the falconfly thread above probably purchased it either from FN directly or from whoever they sold their 3dfx stuff to.
EDIT2: Blehg... this happens way too often when I go to archive.org. Someone apparently did a backup of most of the Maximum PC pdf archives, but they uploaded the June 2000 issue in place of June 2002, so that one issue with the picture (and hopefully some kind of explanation) of that 3dfx motherboard has not been archived online. If anyone has the means of properly archiving and uploading magazines, I believe a copy is available on a certain auction site right now. It'd do me no good to get it since I don't have any experience archiving magazines and I'm sure it wouldn't turn out well.