Neat. The laptop looks like a nice win98 machine with decent audio, graphics chips, and i/o. Where or how did you come by the expansion chassis?

Is there a way of displaying the VooDoo's image on the laptop screen?

Doornkaat wrote on 2023-06-20, 07:24:

Is there a way of displaying the VooDoo's image on the laptop screen?

VGA to composite/s-video converter and a PCI video capture card, it could be worth a try...
Or if the laptop supports ZV, a compatible pcmcia/cardbus capture card.

I had a similar pci to cardbus adapter once, but it was the half length single slot model, used it with a Matrox m3d.
There was no need for an external screen, it worked alright I guess but it wasn't too practical for regular use.

Doornkaat wrote on 2023-06-20, 07:24:

Is there a way of displaying the VooDoo's image on the laptop screen?

It does have a firewire port, so thats a thought and I know there are firewire capture devices. I don't think the quality would be worth it though and it might introduce lag. It would be cool if there were VMR drivers for voodoo 2s.

wiibur wrote on 2023-06-20, 05:57:

Neat. The laptop looks like a nice win98 machine with decent audio, graphics chips, and i/o. Where or how did you come by the expansion chassis?

The chassis themselfs are not all that uncommons and come in a few differnt flavors, the cardbus cards themselfs usually command more money, I wouldn't say they are unobtainum since they pop up from time to time, the asking prices are usually high. I jumped on a deal on ebay this january for 2 cardbus cards, 1 express 54 card, and 2 single card chassis the smaller ones for 200 as a bundle deal for buy it now.

The only 3d card I know that could drive to a laptop screen is a PowerVR PCX2 and that dock bottleneck is significant enough to make even 640x480 a 1fps ordeal.

I doubt it would be 1 fps bottleneck, but it would probably introduce some lag enough to effect it. The voodoo 2 on the otherhand feels perfectly playable. I should try inserting a USB controller somtime in the expansion chassis to test transfer speeds.

Warlord wrote on 2023-06-20, 15:19:

I doubt it would be 1 fps bottleneck, but it would probably introduce some lag enough to effect it. The voodoo 2 on the otherhand feels perfectly playable. I should try inserting a USB controller somtime in the expansion chassis to test transfer speeds.

Transfer speeds should be fine as the adapter is basically just a PCI expansion bus with no drivers required. It should be no different than just plugging a PCI card into a standard PCI slot.

Ya I meant to say the trace length might introduce millisecond delay that could be noticible on power VR. Maybe 1-3MS. Thats right 98se does not require any drivers for this it is basically just pcmcia to PCI with some glue logic using bridges that are already supported by the OS.

Warlord wrote on 2023-06-20, 04:34:

I was curious, and can confirm it does work. Magma PCI expansion Chassis with Voodoo 2 and CardBus adapter inserted into windows 98se vintage Laptop.

Next step add a second voodoo for SLI.

Did you have any issues with memory range? I’ve got this same expansion chassis and had no luck finding open memory in Win98. The device manager both of my Voodoo 2 cards but they both have a yellow exclamation mark next to them.

not this time, but I have with voodoo 2 cards before in a different system. just try to figure out what other hardware is using those memory addresses. system info should tell you, and you can try siv32.

I would try disabling hardware that isn't being used to free up resources. You can try uninstalling the hardware and rebooting to see if windows will assign it differnt memory and irq addresses.

Somtimes with voodoos you can manually configure the memory addresses it is trying to use in safe mode in device manager by selecting a range not in use and then rebooting. this works somtimes..