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Voodoo 2 SLI not detected

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First post, by Shadzilla

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Bit of a strange one this...

I have a system with a matched pair of 12MB STB Voodoo 2 cards installed in SLI (the rest of the system is Slot 1 PIII 700 on an Abit BH6, 128mb ram, Win98SE, Matrox G200 AGP). It's been built and running for a couple of years at this point and although doesn't get used that often always fires up and runs well, and has an 80mm fan blowing air across both cards. I recently received a new VGA pass through cable (for a planned Voodoo 1 build) and thought I'd better test it before it's too late to return. So I installed the cable, fired the system up, and went to test some games.

2D/Windows is all good. Direct3D games tested fine. Glide games... suddenly the colour is washed out and there are scan lines in the image, and it looks really low bit-rate (for lack of a better term). I checked the display properties and the 3Dfx tab and now it's saying SLI is not detected and isn't showing any specifics for the card(s) installed (latest official 3Dfx drivers). Swapping back to the original pass through cable makes no difference. I've been using a PCB SLI bridge but switching back to an original ribbon cable bridge makes no difference. I tested each card individually and the behaviour was exactly the same in terms of D3D and Glide, but at least with a single card the display properties panel works and shows the correct card information.

I've also been testing with Mojo both under Windows and in pure DOS. The output for both cards - when tested individually or installed together - is spot on. Apart from when I connect the SLI bridge, it still reads "SLI not detected". I've also tried the 'testsli.exe' utility which gives a similar output (and suggests swapping the cards around, which makes no difference). I've tried the 'resetsli.exe' utility as well which makes no difference before or after rebooting.

I'm not sure how relevant the Glide colour/etc issue is at this point given each card works ok in D3D, so I'm willing to stick in a pin in that for now and put it down to bad Glide version (although I'm 99% sure this system worked perfectly fine before this latest attempt). I think the bigger concern is what's going on with SLI...

I'm going to test the cards in a different system next (P200 S7) and see what happens. I'd love to hear suggestions for what else I could try. I'm not an electronics guru, I have no scope or fine soldering skills!

Thanks!

Reply 1 of 9, by revolstar

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Hmmmm, a shot in the darke here, but maybe try the FastVoodoo drivers from 3dfxzone.it, as they supposedly work even on mismatched voodoo2s in SLI?

Last edited by revolstar on 2025-09-14, 19:52. Edited 1 time in total.

Win98 rig: Athlon XP 2500+/512MB RAM/Gigabyte GA-7VT600/SB Audigy/GF FX5700/Voodoo2 12MB
WinXP rig: HP RP5800 - Pentium G850/2GB RAM/GF GT530 1GB
Amiga: A600/2MB RAM
PS3: Slim, CFW, mostly for RetroArch & PSX games
PS2: Fat, FMCB

Reply 2 of 9, by Shadzilla

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I did originally run the FastVoodoo drivers when I originally built the system but wasn't a fan of the overclock they put on the cards.

I've just tested the cards in another system (the P200 box I mentioned). Same output from mojo.exe and testsli.exe under DOS. I installed GTA (also under DOS) and copied over the 2.54 glide2x.ovl file and the game runs perfectly, no colour issues etc. It's still not detecting SLI of course but that does seem to point to a Glide issue for the colours etc on the first system (hopefully).

So the question is - what's going on with SLI?!

Reply 3 of 9, by nali

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Are you sure the SLI cable is correct, and no bad solders on the pins of the cards ?

Reply 4 of 9, by Shadzilla

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The ribbon cable worked when I first go the cards so it's correct in that sense. I swapped out to a PCB version and that was fine too. I think swapping between them rules them both out as failure points, unless the PCB decided to die and the ribbon died sat in the draw. Seems unlikely to me.

Both cards look ok to me for solder joints and the SLI connector in general, and the edge connector looks ok too? I've included photos.

Reply 5 of 9, by Shadzilla

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Reply 6 of 9, by Postman5

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There is a demo of "Donut", this application uses Glide. If you leave only one card in the computer at a time, and run "Donut" - does each card work well? The screen properties look the same?

Reply 7 of 9, by Shadzilla

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Thanks for the donut suggestion. I've given that a try which involved installing drivers for the cards in the P200 test system they're in at the moment. It had a fresh Win95 install and installing the 3.02.02 drivers immediately showed 'SLI detected'. But running mojo (Windows version) and it's now showing issues. Re-testing in pure DOS and mojo is happy (but no SLI).

The donut test runs fine with the cards in SLI (rendering in 1024x768 but the same FPS as a single card). I tested each card individually after that (they both tested exactly the same) and mojo was again confused under Windows but ok in DOS, and the donut scene was fine too.

Not sure what to make of the mojo results under Windows - driver issue?

Reply 8 of 9, by Shadzilla

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Reply 9 of 9, by Postman5

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I have never used mojo under Windows, only under DOS. So I can't say anything about the behavior of this application under Windows.
So, we have two Voodoo2 cards that work well separately. They also work fine in SLI in DirectX applications. They also work well in SLI in the Donut demo, these are the Glide instructions.
Well, you can also check the work in SLI in the game Quake2 1024x768.
Then you need to think about the results.

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