Hello everyone. Yes, I'm brand new to the forum, this being my very first post here, but I too have been lurking for years silently collecting and assembling my family of 3Dfx machines - and spending countless hours testing silly things trying to make a handful of games run better than I know how they run for sure on even the best Voodoo1 (6MB Canopus Pure 3D implied, never had the pleasure to see or use the Quantum Obsidians, and can't even imagine)

I have a number of configurations I either have tested, or are assembled, and know that, at least for me and probably everybody else that's tried, the 440BX chipset provides the fastest subsystem with optimal compatibility for the old statically linked 3Dfx titles that I simply refuse to live without: Whiplash/Fatal Racing, EF2000 V2, StarFighter3000, Battle Arena Toshinden and Tomb Raider and Mechwarrior2 31st Century Combat. I've tried the KT133 in both intel and AMD varieties, P4 845 with ISA - like MSI-6555 (but totally expected it wouldn't) - it seems to come down to the 100 Mhz FSB being the barrier beyond which one shall not cross, though I'm not about to make that a definite statement because lord knows I'll be wrong by someone's standard. Stranger still, I have four Abit BE6-II boards (all flashed to SS bios rev.) and found that P3-850/256k seems the acceptable safe limit as I tried two different P3-1K/Katmai chips (Malay and Philippines) and it shunted the V1 & V2 - swapped back and everything works. Yes, I know about Glidos - I bought it for Descent 2, but literally with the number of modern computers I own and expected to install it on, I became very irritated to the point of resolve with the license model, and now I'm a purist. It must be a hardware solution, or go fly a kite. Lately though, I am looking to set up a few VMs or DosBox setups to get most things running to take with me on my Fuji Q702 (or lighter disposable offspring that debuted late last year - like the Asus T100 I bought and sent back once I acquired the Q) The nVidia Shield peaked my interest, but the speed is not there yet, and for me it must be fluid, so I'll stick to my P3 and my CRT(s).

My latest creation is the Voodoo5 Mac PCI DVI flashed back to PC on an MSI-6555 (for the ISA for Awe64 - don't hate) - I found that when you boot up on a widescreen LCD, the resolution can't match or the refresh is too high and end up with a squished image off to the right, but with a manual DVI A/B switch I sourced from SoKo on ebay for ~$30, I can prime the machine by booting into windows attached to a 19" NEC Multisync, then toggling over to larger screens. The caveat though is that for anything that doesn't run at 1280x1024, it runs bordered. That said, this is the most ideal way I've found to run Descent 2 3Dfx (1.06b) over true digital signal to modern screens.

To the point:
So, I know now finally, at long last how to correctly initialize my Voodoo2's to run like a Voodoo 1, and the results are awesome. I may have even figured this out ten years ago, but I know for sure I figured it out again over the weekend and am now already planning changes to my Voodoo1/5 AGP hybrid on Abit BE6-II/P3 850 box I promised myself never to touch since its perfect in almost every way. Prior to this, I'd set up V1/V2 hybrids using VGA splitters paired with IO Gear 2 port KVMs for the win. I know at one point I'd swear I got Whiplash/Fatal Racing to correctly run without the magenta bug on even a Voodoo3, but I'm sure the rest of the games I tried never worked like the reliability of the Voodoo2 as the stand-in. As much as I love the voodoo2, its a tad too long to shoehorn into my Compaq DeskPro EN SFF without removing the 3.5" floppy drive. A Pure 3D II might be short enough if to fit, and trust me if I see one of these, I'm going to buy it if not for this, for the collection, but never having owned a Banshee, its the only card I think has a prayer at fitting, and supporting the ability to run the Voodoo1 static link games. I would be looking at the PCI version which can be had for about $60 on Amazon surprisingly.

So, does it work? If so, are the init commands the same? If it works, is it even noticeably faster than the Voodoo2?