First post, by voodoo5_6k
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Hi there,
This is it, my retro system containing my rarest and most beloved piece of hardware... An original 3dfx Voodoo5 6000. It is a Rev. 3700A, with Full PCI Rework. Tested to be fully stable @183MHz with 8x FSAA working! Although I will never use it at that clock speed. I run it at the standard 166MHz for it to stay cooler (and last longer, preferably forever 😀). I own it for about 14 years now, but it was always safely stored because it was not until now that the possibility of operating it in a proper and compatible system arose.
Originally, I had planned to use it with my Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3,40GHz on a server board with an AGP2PCI card in a PCI-X slot (thus, running in PCI66 mode, equaling its use in native AGP). Osckhar built that adapter (thanks again!).
But the system never really worked the way I’d liked to see it. First issue were artifacts with FSAA applied and random lock-ups in 3D applications. This got sorted out by osckhar who had the card for a check-up (thanks a lot again!). I think most people that are into this topic know that he fixed many dead Voodoo5 6000 cards, and even Rampage cards. If anyone has a dead or otherwise defective Voodoo5 6000, you can contact him via eBay, he offers a repair service package there. But now, back to my problem. The probable cause were incompatibilities between mainboard, AGP2PCI and the Voodoo5 6000. It was running fine in native AGP mode on one of osckhar's systems. Another issue were drivers. Benchmarking worked, but not the games I wanted to play. So I started looking for options. I don’t really like AMD, so many possible mainboard options vanished. With an Intel CPU, I only wanted an Intel chipset, which further narrowed down the possible options. I ended up sourcing a D815EEA2 which was reported as being compatible, although the Voodoo5 6000 revision used was not really known. Since the 3700A is the most common revision I decided to go for it.
The next issue I ran into was trying to get a Pentium III-S to run in that board. I did a comparable thing for my Voodoo5 5500 AGP retro systems. But the BIOS of the D815EEA2 is pretty restrictive, refusing to even POST with an unsupported CPU. I researched a lot and finally found a piece of information suggesting that Tualatin support could be flashed into the board using the P15 BIOS. Luckily, Intel has all this old stuff still available (really a great thing). Using a Pentium III 700MHz I flashed to P15 and reseated the Tualatin, and voilà, success, the system boots, CPU and 512KB cache recognized!
Booting the system with my Voodoo5 6000 I checked the HiNT temperatures during POST and while normally running, always with one finger on the PSU main switch. But the HiNT only gets lukewarm on that board, even under 3DMark stress with 8x FSAA applied! Great!
I added the Sound Blaster, installed Windows 98 SE, the system drivers and the 3dfx reference drivers (those will be replaced after I find a driver that hopefully supports all the games I’d like to run on this system). And that’s where I am right now. The case is still a TBD item. I prefer a desktop-style mainboard mount because the add-in cards are then “standing” and not “hanging”. But all desktop cases still available today either have no top window (because I’d like to be able to see the Voodoo5 6000 at any time 😉), have ridiculous prices or sizes, or are just plain ugly (well, that’s subjective of course). Most likely I’ll build something testbench-like with an acrylic cover so that I can see the card sitting in its final place... 😀
Updates (and more pictures) will be added whenever possible...
System specifications:
- CPU: Intel Pentium III-S 1,40GHz
Cooler: Thermaltake Volcano 12 + Noctua NF-A8 FLX
Mainboard: Intel D815EEA2 (BIOS P15)
RAM: Micron 512MB PC133 CL2 (2x 256MB)
PSU: Cooler Master RS-500-AMBA-D3 Silent Pro M 500W
Case: N/A (TBD)
Add-in cards:
- AGP: 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP 128MB (Rev. 3700A, Full PCI Rework)
PCI4: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Audigy2 ZS
Drives:
- FDD: N/A
SSD: Corsair CSSD-F60GBLSB 60 GB
ODD: HP GDR-H30N
I/O Devices (via KVM):
- Display: Eizo FlexScan F520
Keyboard: Microsoft Natural Keyboard Pro
Mouse: Logitech S96
Speaker: Canton Plus Media 3
Pictures:
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