I noticed that my PCI V3 3000 has space on the board for 6 SGRAM modules, but only 4 are populated.
I also notice that it is possible to edit and flash the BIOS of voodoo cards.
Is it possible to, say, cannibalize a non-working voodoo card for its 4 or 8MB memory modules, transplant them to the Voodoo 3, and thereby get a working Voodoo 3 with, say, 24MB of SGRam, or 32, or 48?
Those empty pads are for low capacity modules and the memory controller in the V3 series can only handle a maximum of just 16mb. V1 and V2 have their own limits in different ways while the VSA can take a max of 64mb each.
On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.
This question comes up a lot. Every hardware forum that I have been a member of has had it come up at least once going as far back as I can remember. People see the empty pads on certain V3 board designs and automatically assume they are upgradeable to more than 16mb but as was said, the memory controller can't handle more than 16mb. One person did find out through experimentation that Voodoo 4 and 5 boards could be upgraded,though. He upgraded a Voodoo 4 to 64mb and a Voodoo 5 to 128mb. He was running a profitable little side business upgrading cards for other people until his parts sources ran dry. One of his upgraded V4's turned up on ebay last year but sold for way more than I could have afforded.
