My guess would be the BIOS contains no code concerning the TV section of the card. Are there other difference between your model and the retail unit? Such as memory and core speed?

The Compaq model has 300mhz ramdac, 185mhz core speed, 5.5ns Ram Chips.
Would this have any issues? As I am not really used to Voodoo's at all.

I'd be happy to take a copy of the BIOS. But need instructions please.

Have you tried searching on HP?

What are the spare number of your card? Do you have the spare number of the computer it was sold on?

I have found this site, and I need to just activate google translate, as I don't speak Italian.
It doe's contain some BIOS flash tools, and they are under the V3 section.
Yet I do not know what is what, before I run the translation. 99% positive it's correct tools.

http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/voodoo3/bios/tools/

Zup wrote:

Have you tried searching on HP?

What are the spare number of your card? Do you have the spare number of the computer it was sold on?

The cards are from back then, when Compaq was compaq. I doubt they have something like this at all.
The stories are really vauge. Yet some say they came from the Presario 5000 line, other's indecate that Compaq
never ordered the cards. Just contradicting stories.

All retail 3500's are clocked at the same speed (183MHz), the question is whether a standard BIOS would brick the card or not.
I'll probably try this really soon, so stay tuned for more info on the respective thread Voodoo3, no picture issue

To be honest, by now I don't believe that those specific cards mentioned in that thread are that much incompatible with everything. They just don't work anywhere, so I doubt a flash will make any difference . I'll take the risk and do it anyway, it can't render the card more unusable that it is now 😉

konc wrote:

All retail 3500's are clocked at the same speed (183MHz), the question is whether a standard BIOS would brick the card or not.

Yes. That is what I am worried about. And why I am asking if any with a working card, would be kind to post a BIOS-Dump. 😀
The only difference is basically the lack of the tv-tuner, and perhaps a different memmoryspeed.
(I do not know if the retail are 5.5ns chips or not)

I have the Compaq V3 3500 here http://hw-museum.cz/view-vga.php?vgaID=35 I'll try to dump the BIOS for you. 😀

Also there is a possibility the BIOS chip itself may be damaged and reflashing won't help. How to kill a voodoo3 3000 agp

havli wrote:

I have the Compaq V3 3500 here http://hw-museum.cz/view-vga.php?vgaID=35 I'll try to dump the BIOS for you. 😀

Also there is a possibility the BIOS chip itself may be damaged and reflashing won't help. How to kill a voodoo3 3000 agp

Could be the BIOS chip wich are defunct, that's why I really need a dump of the BIOS.
As well as a lot of other people that are experiencing the exact same issue as I am.
If the BIOS turns out to be the defect part. How can I get a new chip?

And if I get something wrong when flashing, using the PCI + AGP card trick, can I just
flash a new firmware, or would the BIOS-Chip on the Voodoo be destroyed for good?

best way is to remove the chip and do it. Isn't the 3500 the same as 3500?

Marmes wrote:

best way is to remove the chip and do it. Isn't the 3500 the same as 3500?

If you think of the Compaq V3-3500 and the retail V3-3500.
Then I think that there might be some differences in the BIOS/Firmware.
Because I really don't know if the Compaq firmware is stripped down,
or have had some tv-tuner code-lines removed.

My thoughts on this, is that from how I understand the retail 3500-TV, the
tv-tuner can record and encode in MPEG in hardware mode.
And if this is right, then the Campaq must have had some code stripped.

Just like Apple makes their own Firmware for ATI/nVidia cards.
They do it, in order to make a better and faster installation procedure.

If the BIOS turns out to be the defect part. How can I get a new chip?

And if I get something wrong when flashing, using the PCI + AGP card trick, can I just
flash a new firmware, or would the BIOS-Chip on the Voodoo be destroyed for good?

Finding a replacement BIOS chip can be tricky. The 3dfx flash tool only supports six or so flash chip models and only these can be used (I don't have the list of compatible ones with me at the moment).
I have desoldered mine from S3 Savage4 .

If flashing fails, the chip itself should survive... only the data stored inside would be corrupted. However if BIOS chip is damaged already, then flashing most likely will not work and it is necessary to replace it. I suggest to solder socket for the new BIOS instead of solderig it directly (if all flashing atempts fail).

For the 3500TV there appear to be separate PAL/NTSC versions of the BIOS, and separate driver versions too. There may be some TV-tuner specific code in the BIOS.
The Compaq 3500 has version 2.15.05 (latest is 2.15.12), but is certainly different from the retail version since it doesn't show any text on POST. I could dump it later today if you want.

Desoldering QFN chips is a major PITA without air soldering equipment, by the way. If this does turn out to be necessary, I would suggest installing a QFN socket on the card.

havli wrote:

Finding a replacement BIOS chip can be tricky. The 3dfx flash tool only supports six or so flash chip models and only these can […]
Show full quote

If the BIOS turns out to be the defect part. How can I get a new chip?

And if I get something wrong when flashing, using the PCI + AGP card trick, can I just
flash a new firmware, or would the BIOS-Chip on the Voodoo be destroyed for good?

Finding a replacement BIOS chip can be tricky. The 3dfx flash tool only supports six or so flash chip models and only these can be used (I don't have the list of compatible ones with me at the moment).
I have desoldered mine from S3 Savage4 .

If flashing fails, the chip itself should survive... only the data stored inside would be corrupted. However if BIOS chip is damaged already, then flashing most likely will not work and it is necessary to replace it. I suggest to solder socket for the new BIOS instead of solderig it directly (if all flashing atempts fail).

Thanks... This assures me, that a bad flash is no issue at all. Can perhaps an ATI rage 128 chip be used, if the chip it self is damaged?
I have no other cards I can think of at home, other than perhaps an old CL-546X PCI (something) card.

Here is the Compaq V3 3500 TV-OUT bios. It wasn't easy to figure out how the 3dfx flasher works (when I want only dump current bios, without flashing a new one). 😊

And the list of supported flash chips:

1The 3Dfx FLASH utility will support the following flash components: AMD 29010, 
2Atmel 29010, Atmel 49F010, SST 29EE010 and SST 39SF010.

Thank you. Thanks a 100 times. Will flash on sunday.
Have my children this weekend. More important than hardware. 😀

Just for the record, for me nothing changed. After that and since all hope was lost, I also flashed with the latest standard 3500 BIOS with the same exciting results. I think I'm done with those nerve-breaking time wasters.

After all, there just can't be such an incompatibility with everything. This batch of cards seems faulty, in whole or at least most of it. On the same PC of mine 2 V3 2000 and a 3000 work flawlessy. I'll wait for your feedback on this too brostenen and if flashing doesn't work for you too then, I promise you, my cards are going to see dirty places. I just hope no retro-seeker finds them and after a while his smile wears off like mine 😀

@havli: many thanks for this and your immediate response man! I guess the dumbed BIOS is a PAL version, right? There is no SD-SG ram distinction on the 3500, just the PAL-SECAM version so pay attention on this whoever is willing to try it

There is only one Compaq Voodoo3 3500 - with 16MB SDRAM, S-Video Out (no TV-tuner), running at 184 MHz. At least I'm not familiar with other Compaq V3 3500 types.

I think PAL/NTSC doesn't really matter for normal Voodoo3 without TV-tuner.