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Voodoo 2 freezing in games

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First post, by deleted_nk

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I've just put together another Win98 gaming rig for a mate of mine to use whenever he feels like having a go at a few classic games (NFS 2, UT99, HL1 etc), using a Athlon XP 2000+ , GA-7S748 mobo along with a Geforce2 GTS and a Voodoo2 to make it all happen. We wanted to use a Voodoo2 to run games in Glide, however whenever we start a game in Glide, it runs anywhere from 3 to 15 seconds before it simply freezes the system. We tried playing NFS 2 and 3, UT 99 and Mechwarrior Mercenaries to the same effect. Often it freezes on the 3dfx logo, not even making it into the game. All of these games run perfectly fine in D3D mode on the GF2, no freezing occurs when this is the case.

We've tried both the normal 3DFX drivers patched to support the Athlon processor and the Fastvoodoo 4.6 drivers to no avail. The original 3DFX drivers simply make the card unusable due to the incompatibilities with the Athlon CPU. I did install a bigger PSU into it to solve random reboots that were caused by a lack of amps on the 5v rail, as well as drop the RAM down from 1GB to 512MB and removed PATCHMEM from the system.

Any ideas on why this is happening? Could it possibly be a dead Voodoo or an incompatible motherboard?

Reply 3 of 10, by Errius

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Rank l33t
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l33t

Yes, overheating. Either downclock it or point a fan at it.

V2 temperature increases with CPU speed. This wasn't a problem in 1998, when most people had 100-200 MHz CPUs, but it becomes a problem when you start putting V2s in early 2000s rigs with GHz speed processors.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 4 of 10, by deleted_nk

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kolderman wrote on 2020-01-01, 05:04:

How do glide games look before it crahses if it passes the logo? Tried different pci slots for the v2?

I've moved it as far as the passthrough cable will reach, so all 5 PCI slots that I have. The games look perfectly normal before they crash, no strange artifacts or anything that could suggest anything failing

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2020-01-01, 05:08:

The card is overheating and/or requires downclocking.

I've got a fan sitting next to it, which keeps the temps down to around 35-40c, tested via a heatgun pointing at the various chips and components on the board. I've also tried underclocking it to no avail either.

Updated the BIOS to the latest revision (F9), pulled out everything except for the GF2 (AGP card) and the Voodoo along with completely clearing the CMOS twice. I even underclocked the CPU to 100Mhz FSB and the memory to 266Mhz (usually 400) to try and rule out issues with the CPU

Reply 6 of 10, by deleted_nk

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kolderman wrote on 2020-01-01, 06:44:

Next thing try the v2 in aa different PC, s370/p3 if possible. Start ruling things out.

That's the next logical step on what I've been doing so far. I've installed the card into my slot 1 P2-300 machine and it started right up, worked in glide with no freezing whatsoever. That's where the goodness stopped however. I installed this card into my personal socket A 2400+ machine (on an MSI KM2M VIA based board) that previously had a different Voodoo2 in there (an 8MB card instead of this 12MB card), and things got finicky again.

This time however, it didn't show up at all. Device manager couldn't see it under the multimedia devices tab, nor did a 'multimedia video device' appear in the BIOS' listing. I tried it again in the Gigabyte board (the first board that sparked all the issues), it thankfully showed up there but now when I run a glide game, the 3DFX logo doesn't even appear. Just a black screen, which after a few seconds reboots the machine.

I did some more testing with my last Socket A board, an ECS K7S5A with a Duron 1200, and the voodoo worked perfectly there, abet with the patched drivers to run on a fast machine. While not much slower than the 2000+ (1680mhz vs 1200), I'm starting to think this card really doesn't like the faster processors that the other two boards have.

Reply 9 of 10, by deleted_nk

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derSammler wrote on 2020-01-01, 09:01:

Check the 3dfx chips on the card for bent pins.

I've heard of this happening to some of the cards that were poorly stored. The pins are very fine, but with my magnifying glass I use to help me solder small components (original xbox boards mainly), I was able to verify that all three of the main 3dfx chips were all OK

rmay635703 wrote on 2020-01-01, 17:13:

As dumb as this may sound check the edge connector for coorsion/wear/etc and clean

I’ve encountered a few dirty cards that came from very questionable storage

That'll be next on my to-check list. The card did look OK at a glance when I installed it, nothing that stood out to me personally.
If you guys would like to take a closer look, I've taken the best images I can with my phone and made an album on imgur: https://imgur.com/a/ajbmv07

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