Hello all,

I'm having one heck of an issue with 2 sets of Voodoo2 cards in SLI; both sets are matching. I looked around the forum and I have read some rumblings about 440BX problems and Voodoo2 SLI, but it doesn't look like it is a massive epidemic. I don't recall ever having these issues when I owned 2 matching Diamond Monster 3DII 12MB cards installed in the SE440BX-2, and I remember 100% those Diamond cards worked in VIA chipsets (which I also read threads of success with VIA).

Set 1:
InnoVision Mighty 3DII 12MB (both used)

Set 2:
Guillemot Maxi Gamer 3D2 8MB (both brand spanking new)

All cards work fine (as in no problems with 3Dmark 2000 (DirectX and full battery of tests), or Turok Dinosaur Hunter (Glide test) and show up normally in Windows Device Manager, but when they are paired with their respective counterpart, SLI shows "detected," but whenever 3D is engaged, the system goes black and locks up. As can be seen in the screenshot, only 1 set of TMUs and RAM are detected. I have read there is some kind of "bug" for this reporting, but I have never experienced this bug. Besides, if it were only a cosmetic issue, the system wouldn't lock up. There is no way this should be so difficult, and most of the various tests I have tried border on ludicrous, even as much of a pain as old hardware tends to dish out.

Installed and tested within the systems:

BIOS wiped with defaults and also customized
ATI Rage XL 8MB AGP 2x (AGP tested at 66MHz and 89MHz on the BE6-II and it works great; 66MHz only available on the SE440BX-2 and it works great.)
256MB PC133 Crucial RAM CL2 (tested at CL3 also - 1 DIMM; double-sided)
Intel CPUs from PII@233MHz/66 FSB all the way to 1GHz/133 FSB (on the BE6-II; for the SE440BX, I only used a PIII 800MHz/100 FSB; Fans always used on all CPUs.)
Sound Blaster Live! PCI (SE440BX-2 only)
C-Media AV310 CMI8330A ISA (BE6-II only)
RaidMax RX-380K 380W (BE6-II only)
Corsair CX450M 450W (SE440BX-2 only)
Adaptec NEC-based USB 2.0 PCI (SE440BX-2 only)
BE6-II is open air
SE440BX-2 has good airflow by a case fan blowing directly at both Voodoo cards

I tried:
Fresh installs of Windows 98 SE
2 different motherboards: Intel SE440BX-2 and Abit BE6-II (Both running latest BIOS)
Reference drivers from 3dfx from 30101 - 30300.
DirectX 6.1
DirectX 7.0A
3 different SLI cables (2 are PCBs from Serdaco, and 1 is a brand spanking new cable from the Maxi Gamer 3D2 set; I tried reversing their direction also)
Moving the cards into every available PCI slot six ways from Sunday
Moving the passthrough cable from one card to the other (Obviously this isn't the problem, or the system wouldn't be locking up)

I'm about to test in a VIA chipset, but before I do that, I'm going to try the Fast Voodoo v4.6 drivers. I don't expect these drivers to do solve the issue, but I have to rule them out. I'll also try a different AGP card, just for funsies.

Does anyone have any other suggestions?