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Voodoo 3 3000 LC PCI woes

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First post, by Socket3

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Hello everyone.

I'm having issues with one of my retro machines and I'm hoping one of the video card / 3dfx experts on this forum could help.
A few months ago I installed a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI I found at a recycling center into a socket 7 machine. Everything seemed fine up until today when I tried running Mechwarrior 3 on it. The configuration is:

- AMD K6-II 450 running at 400MHz (4x66, 2.3v)
- Lucky Star VP3 mainboard (VIA VT82C597 chipset, no AGP slot)
- Voodoo 3 3000 LC PCI
- 128MB of SDRAM (1 stick)
- 32GB Seagate HDD
- Guillemot Maxi Gamer sound card
- windows 98se - no unnoficial packs, stock clean win98se install
- directX 8.1

I used the same voodoo 3 driver I use on most of my rigs, version 1.07, witch worked great on other builds.

So the problem is - Glide and openGL games run perfecty, but directX games refuse to run or hang the system. I have slightly different symptoms with different drivers:

1.05 - windows 98 freezes when initialising the GUI with only the mouse cursor and background displayed
1.06 - d3d games launch and freeze a few seconds after initialising a d3d video mode. Menus work fine
1.07 - d3d games either give a "display mode not supported" or freeze then black screen after initialising a d3d mode
1.09 beta - games give the "no compatible video device found" error - or something along those lines

I tired both directX 6.1 (the one win98 comes installed with) and directX 8.1. With DX 6.1, mechwarrior 3 would throw a "display mode not supported" error with any driver (apart from 1.05 with witch windows refuses to boot). With DX8.1 I get the above mentioned errors....

The reason I'm stubernly using this motherboard with no AGP slot alltough I have MVP3 and Alladin 5 boards with AGP is because it has undocumented jumper settings I discovered here on vogons witch allow for 8 and 20MHz FSB, making it a great all-round retro PC base.

has anyone encountered this issue with DX games and a voodoo 3 PCI?

Reply 1 of 20, by TrashPanda

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Have you tried a different GPU to rule out other factors besides the Voodoo3 ?
Have you tired that Voodoo 3 on a different machine ?

Personally if I have any issues like this with 98 and I cant resolve them with reinstalling the drivers/new drivers or updating DirectX then I usually just reinstall the entire system, you could spend hours pissing around with drivers/DirectX and never truly get anywhere.

98 was a dog back in the day and is still a dog even today, so if its not the GPU or drivers then its 98 itself.

Last edited by TrashPanda on 2022-03-08, 20:34. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 2 of 20, by Socket3

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:30:

Have you tried a different GPU to rule out other factors besides the Voodoo3 ?

Personally if I have any issues like this with 98 and I cant resolve them with reinstalling the drivers/new drivers or updating DirectX then I usually just reinstall the entire system, you coudl spend hours pissing around with drivers and never truly get anywhere.

My selection of 3D Acceleration capable PCI video cards is rather limited. Before putting the V3 in it, the computer was running with a Creative PCI voodoo banshee. Glide, openGL and d3d worked fine, alltough the only d3d game I ran on the PC with the PCI banshee is Populous.

The only other PCI 3D Accelerators I have are a geforce 2 MX and a geforce FX 5500.

Reply 3 of 20, by leonardo

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Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:15:
Hello everyone. […]
Show full quote

Hello everyone.

I'm having issues with one of my retro machines and I'm hoping one of the video card / 3dfx experts on this forum could help.
A few months ago I installed a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI I found at a recycling center into a socket 7 machine. Everything seemed fine up until today when I tried running Mechwarrior 3 on it. The configuration is:

- AMD K6-II 450 running at 400MHz (4x66, 2.3v)
- Lucky Star VP3 mainboard (VIA VT82C597 chipset, no AGP slot)
- Voodoo 3 3000 LC PCI
- 128MB of SDRAM (1 stick)
- 32GB Seagate HDD
- Guillemot Maxi Gamer sound card
- windows 98se - no unnoficial packs, stock clean win98se install
- directX 8.1

I used the same voodoo 3 driver I use on most of my rigs, version 1.07, witch worked great on other builds.

So the problem is - Glide and openGL games run perfecty, but directX games refuse to run or hang the system. I have slightly different symptoms with different drivers:

1.05 - windows 98 freezes when initialising the GUI with only the mouse cursor and background displayed
1.06 - d3d games launch and freeze a few seconds after initialising a d3d video mode. Menus work fine
1.07 - d3d games either give a "display mode not supported" or freeze then black screen after initialising a d3d mode
1.09 beta - games give the "no compatible video device found" error - or something along those lines

I tired both directX 6.1 (the one win98 comes installed with) and directX 8.1. With DX 6.1, mechwarrior 3 would throw a "display mode not supported" error with any driver (apart from 1.05 with witch windows refuses to boot). With DX8.1 I get the above mentioned errors....

The reason I'm stubernly using this motherboard with no AGP slot alltough I have MVP3 and Alladin 5 boards with AGP is because it has undocumented jumper settings I discovered here on vogons witch allow for 8 and 20MHz FSB, making it a great all-round retro PC base.

has anyone encountered this issue with DX games and a voodoo 3 PCI?

How about you try DirectX 7.0a?
I'm also running a V3 PCI with the 1.07.00 driver (note that the DX8 and later drivers were all beta/unofficial hacks!).

[Install Win95 like you were born in 1985!] on systems like this or this.

Reply 4 of 20, by TrashPanda

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Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:34:
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:30:

Have you tried a different GPU to rule out other factors besides the Voodoo3 ?

Personally if I have any issues like this with 98 and I cant resolve them with reinstalling the drivers/new drivers or updating DirectX then I usually just reinstall the entire system, you coudl spend hours pissing around with drivers and never truly get anywhere.

My selection of 3D Acceleration capable PCI video cards is rather limited. Before putting the V3 in it, the computer was running with a Creative PCI voodoo banshee. Glide, openGL and d3d worked fine, alltough the only d3d game I ran on the PC with the PCI banshee is Populous.

The only other PCI 3D Accelerators I have are a geforce 2 MX and a geforce FX 5500.

Try the GF2 MX in the machine and see if the D3D errors go away, if they do then you know its something about the Voodoo3 if they dont then you know its the 98 install, doing this is about isolating where the error is coming from. Same for trying the V3 in a different machine if you have one, if it causes errors in that machine then its a good chance the V3 has issues and you can focus on that rather than spending time switching drivers .

Last edited by TrashPanda on 2022-03-08, 20:39. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 5 of 20, by TrashPanda

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leonardo wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:37:
Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:15:
Hello everyone. […]
Show full quote

Hello everyone.

I'm having issues with one of my retro machines and I'm hoping one of the video card / 3dfx experts on this forum could help.
A few months ago I installed a Voodoo 3 3000 PCI I found at a recycling center into a socket 7 machine. Everything seemed fine up until today when I tried running Mechwarrior 3 on it. The configuration is:

- AMD K6-II 450 running at 400MHz (4x66, 2.3v)
- Lucky Star VP3 mainboard (VIA VT82C597 chipset, no AGP slot)
- Voodoo 3 3000 LC PCI
- 128MB of SDRAM (1 stick)
- 32GB Seagate HDD
- Guillemot Maxi Gamer sound card
- windows 98se - no unnoficial packs, stock clean win98se install
- directX 8.1

I used the same voodoo 3 driver I use on most of my rigs, version 1.07, witch worked great on other builds.

So the problem is - Glide and openGL games run perfecty, but directX games refuse to run or hang the system. I have slightly different symptoms with different drivers:

1.05 - windows 98 freezes when initialising the GUI with only the mouse cursor and background displayed
1.06 - d3d games launch and freeze a few seconds after initialising a d3d video mode. Menus work fine
1.07 - d3d games either give a "display mode not supported" or freeze then black screen after initialising a d3d mode
1.09 beta - games give the "no compatible video device found" error - or something along those lines

I tired both directX 6.1 (the one win98 comes installed with) and directX 8.1. With DX 6.1, mechwarrior 3 would throw a "display mode not supported" error with any driver (apart from 1.05 with witch windows refuses to boot). With DX8.1 I get the above mentioned errors....

The reason I'm stubernly using this motherboard with no AGP slot alltough I have MVP3 and Alladin 5 boards with AGP is because it has undocumented jumper settings I discovered here on vogons witch allow for 8 and 20MHz FSB, making it a great all-round retro PC base.

has anyone encountered this issue with DX games and a voodoo 3 PCI?

How about you try DirectX 7.0a?
I'm also running a V3 PCI with the 1.07.00 driver (note that the DX8 and later drivers were all beta/unofficial hacks!).

Good point !

MW3 doesnt use D3D 8 but even trying to use the d3d might cause failures.

Reply 6 of 20, by Socket3

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TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:37:
Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:34:
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:30:

Have you tried a different GPU to rule out other factors besides the Voodoo3 ?

Personally if I have any issues like this with 98 and I cant resolve them with reinstalling the drivers/new drivers or updating DirectX then I usually just reinstall the entire system, you coudl spend hours pissing around with drivers and never truly get anywhere.

My selection of 3D Acceleration capable PCI video cards is rather limited. Before putting the V3 in it, the computer was running with a Creative PCI voodoo banshee. Glide, openGL and d3d worked fine, alltough the only d3d game I ran on the PC with the PCI banshee is Populous.

The only other PCI 3D Accelerators I have are a geforce 2 MX and a geforce FX 5500.

Try the GF2 MX in the machine and see if the D3D errors go away, if they do then you know its something about the Voodoo3 if they dont then you know its the 98 install, doing this is about isolating where the error is coming from. Same for trying the V3 in a different machine if you have one, if it causes errors in that machine then its a good chance the V3 has issues and you can focus on that rather than spending time switching drivers .

I don't have the Geforce 2 on hand, only the FX 5500....

Reply 7 of 20, by Meatball

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I'm tossing these ideas out here:

Have you tried DirectX 7.0a? The 1.03* - 1.07 drivers are designed with DX7 in mind (for the DirectDraw portion). Or DirectX 6.1 with the 1.03* drivers?

*There is a 1.03 driver about a week older, which is a DirectX 6 driver; another route you could try:
http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/voodoo3.htm

Is your PCI bus running at 33MHz?

What happens when you run with the system with all settings set to BIOS defaults?

Reply 8 of 20, by TrashPanda

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Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:43:
TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:37:
Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:34:

My selection of 3D Acceleration capable PCI video cards is rather limited. Before putting the V3 in it, the computer was running with a Creative PCI voodoo banshee. Glide, openGL and d3d worked fine, alltough the only d3d game I ran on the PC with the PCI banshee is Populous.

The only other PCI 3D Accelerators I have are a geforce 2 MX and a geforce FX 5500.

Try the GF2 MX in the machine and see if the D3D errors go away, if they do then you know its something about the Voodoo3 if they dont then you know its the 98 install, doing this is about isolating where the error is coming from. Same for trying the V3 in a different machine if you have one, if it causes errors in that machine then its a good chance the V3 has issues and you can focus on that rather than spending time switching drivers .

I don't have the Geforce 2 on hand, only the FX 5500....

Either Works !

That FX5500 is a great little GPU any reason you chose the V3 over that ?

Reply 9 of 20, by Socket3

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Meatball wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:44:

I'm tossing these ideas out here:

Have you tried DirectX 7.0a? The 1.03* - 1.07 drivers are designed with DX7 in mind (for the DirectDraw portion). Or DirectX 6.1 with the 1.03* drivers?

I just finished testing with DX7. Now neither d3d or openGL work. I have a hunch the V3 PCI is drawing more power then the PC can supply. I just tested the V3 in a socket A Athlon 1400 / KT133 and it works perfectly. DX8.1, driver 1.07. Tested glide and openGL with Quake 2 and D3D with 3DMark 2001. The card is fine.

Meatball wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:44:

Is your PCI bus running at 33MHz?

Yup. PCI is at 33 and FSB at 66Mhz.

Meatball wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:44:

What happens when you run with the system with all settings set to BIOS defaults?

No change...

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:48:

Either Works !

That FX5500 is a great little GPU any reason you chose the V3 over that ?

Two actually. Number one is I play some Glide games on this machine 0 namely Pandemonium 2, GLQuake, Carmageddon and Descent 1/2 with the 3dfx patches. I would use a voodoo 2 but I'm out of extras at the moment. The only one I have not in a system is a 12MB STB card and it's missing an SMD cap along with the pads it sat on, and I haven't had the time to fix it.

The second reason is I'm using the FX5500 in a Compaq Deskpro EN SFF 1.3GHz tualatin machine that onlt has two PCI slots, and doesn't like ATI or 3Dfx cards. It will only post with the Geforce 2 MX or the 5500. My Radeon 7000 PCI will not work on it, and neither will the V3 PCI or my two PCI banshees. The sistem is tiny, and together with a 17" CRT takes up very little room. I work away from home during the week, and the deskpro and afformentioned K6-2 are the only machines I can fit in the apartment...

I'll try the FX 5500 in the K6 to see if you guys suspicions are correct.

Last edited by Socket3 on 2022-03-08, 21:13. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 10 of 20, by Joseph_Joestar

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Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:54:

Two actually. Number one is I play some Glide games on this machine 0 namely Pandemonium, GLQuake, Carmageddon and Descent 1/2 with the 3dfx patches.

Pandemonium won't work on a Voodoo3. And GL Quake is not a Glide game. It can be played on any card that has OpenGL support.

I don't remember if Descent 2 works on a Voodoo3 or not. Might need a special patch.

PC#1: Pentium MMX 166 / Soyo SY-5BT / S3 Trio64V+ / Voodoo1 / YMF719 / AWE64 Gold / SC-155
PC#2: AthlonXP 2100+ / ECS K7VTA3 / Voodoo3 / Audigy2 / Vortex2
PC#3: Athlon64 3400+ / Asus K8V-MX / 5900XT / Audigy2
PC#4: i5-3570K / MSI Z77A-G43 / GTX 970 / X-Fi

Reply 11 of 20, by TrashPanda

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Hmm the fact it works in the Athlon system does mean that there is something about the Socket 7 its not liking, if the FX5500 works then you might be right about the power draw or there is something about the PCI implementation on the socket 7 board that is different.

Reply 12 of 20, by TrashPanda

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-03-08, 21:06:
Socket3 wrote on 2022-03-08, 20:54:

Two actually. Number one is I play some Glide games on this machine 0 namely Pandemonium, GLQuake, Carmageddon and Descent 1/2 with the 3dfx patches.

Pandemonium won't work on a Voodoo3. And GL Quake is not a Glide game. It can be played on any card that has OpenGL support.

I don't remember if Descent 2 works on a Voodoo3 or not. Might need a special patch.

Unreal or Unreal Tournament . .both work in native Glide and would be good as testing.

Reply 13 of 20, by Socket3

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Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-03-08, 21:06:

Pandemonium won't work on a Voodoo3.

I forgot to type the 2. I'm playing pandy 2. Alltough I read someware there's a patch for pandy 1 to make it compatible with the voodoo 2 and 3, just like the 1.04 patch for Uprising. Haven't tried it myself tough...

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-03-08, 21:06:

And GL Quake is not a Glide game. It can be played on any card that has OpenGL support.

I know. I will work on anything OGL capable as long as you delete the glide files in the quake folder. I like to play it using the glide API for no particular reason.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2022-03-08, 21:06:

I don't remember if Descent 2 works on a Voodoo3 or not. Might need a special patch.

By default D1 and D2 are software only, but there are glide, rendition and other patches for both? games. I'm using a glide patch for both games. They look great but descent 2 needs to be run on a system with a slower CPU otherwise mouse sensitivity goes nuts.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-03-08, 21:07:

Hmm the fact it works in the Athlon system does mean that there is something about the Socket 7 its not liking, if the FX5500 works then you might be right about the power draw or there is something about the PCI implementation on the socket 7 board that is different.

I'm testing that now, thanks for the suggestion!

-----------------
--UPDATE:--
-----------------

Haven't tried the FX 5500 yet, but I pulled out the PCI Banshee the PC had in it before and it seems to work fine. Tired Mechwarrior 3 and Quake 2 in both glide and ogl.... I'm trying the FX 5500 now, but first I want to backup the windows98 installation folder so I don't mess up the install too badly by clogging it with too many drivers.

Reply 14 of 20, by Pickle

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do you have other pci cards installed, maybe theres some conflict?
i had issues with my voodoo 3 in my compaq presario (i think its a pci bridge device causing issues), i ended up with a asus socket 7 for it.

Reply 15 of 20, by Socket3

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Pickle wrote on 2022-03-08, 21:34:

do you have other pci cards installed, maybe theres some conflict?
i had issues with my voodoo 3 in my compaq presario (i think its a pci bridge device causing issues), i ended up with a asus socket 7 for it.

I do - see above and below. The V3 will not work on my Compaq Deskpro EN either, and neither will a Radeon 7000 PCI - these compaq PCs only seems to like nvidia cards...

Ok, so I didn't get very far with the FX 5500..... The PC will not POST with the FX5500 unless it's in one particular slot, had to try all 4 to figure that out - unlike the other cards I tested in it witch will have the machine post regardless in witch slot they are installed in. With the 5500 installed one of the disk drives (the 32GB seagate) sometimes goes nuts at post, spining up and stopping 4-5 times before finally managing to spin up correctly. I managed to boot into windows 98 but the PC hangs at random points, sometimes before showing the desktop items, other times 2-5 minutes after loading everything - so I couldn't even install an nvidia driver.

Finally I gave up and pulled the 5500 and put in a SiS 6326 witch I had lying around. To conculde:

- The Voodoo Banshee PCI works fine
- The SiS 6326 works fine (but wow is it slow - and no openGL as far as I can tell)
- The Voodoo 3 3000 PCI causes the system to hang in anything but glide games
- The FX 5500 PCI causes major system instability, even before loading into windows 98

This leads me to conclude that either the AT PSU is on it's way out (despite it being a recapped and new old stock 250w JNC unit that has less then 50 hours of use) or the motherboard can't supply enough current for more power hungry video cards like the V3 and the FX 5500.

So I'll be sticking with the PCI Banshee for now, and replace it with the 6326 or a 4MB Virge as soon as I find time to fix my STB voodoo 2. I'll try another PSU tomorrow just to make sure, but I think the culprit is the motherboard.

Thank you everyone for your help and suggestions!

Reply 16 of 20, by weldum

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it may be the power suppy, the v3 was very power hungry at the time, several agp motherboards had problems back then. I imagine the pci version has the same problems.
the fx 5500 is a little bit on the hungry side, the hdd issue seems to be related to power
the 6326 has opengl support (in the latest beta driver). it's very slow though
which drivers have you got installed? strangely, in my ss7 build (k6-2 550, 128mb pc100, soyo 5eh5, v3 2000 agp and later a savage4) the v3 would behave very strangely almost at any game, only glide would run fine, but got replaced by the savage 4 which ran everything exactly the same, and in unreal tournament gave me 30+ fps with the metal api and everything to max at 1024x768
the v3 in glide mode barely hit 20 fps average, while in my duron machine (duron 950, 256mb ddr 266) the v3 hit almost 60fps, and the savage4 lags behind at almost 50fps

DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475

Reply 17 of 20, by TrashPanda

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weldum wrote on 2022-03-09, 00:54:
it may be the power suppy, the v3 was very power hungry at the time, several agp motherboards had problems back then. I imagine […]
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it may be the power suppy, the v3 was very power hungry at the time, several agp motherboards had problems back then. I imagine the pci version has the same problems.
the fx 5500 is a little bit on the hungry side, the hdd issue seems to be related to power
the 6326 has opengl support (in the latest beta driver). it's very slow though
which drivers have you got installed? strangely, in my ss7 build (k6-2 550, 128mb pc100, soyo 5eh5, v3 2000 agp and later a savage4) the v3 would behave very strangely almost at any game, only glide would run fine, but got replaced by the savage 4 which ran everything exactly the same, and in unreal tournament gave me 30+ fps with the metal api and everything to max at 1024x768
the v3 in glide mode barely hit 20 fps average, while in my duron machine (duron 950, 256mb ddr 266) the v3 hit almost 60fps, and the savage4 lags behind at almost 50fps

Socket 7 and Super Socket 7 had some quirks with its AGP implementation so perhaps some of that also lies in the PCI bus too, fabricators were known to take some short cuts with chipsets so I guess that is also partly to blame.

Reply 18 of 20, by weldum

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yeah, that's something to take in consideration
something neat it has the Soyo 5eh5, it allows to disable agp 2x, running it at 1x speeds, which fixes most if not all incompatibilities with agp boards
as the voodoo cards doesn't use any of the agp specific functions, it may have no difference there, they run it simply as a faster pci bus

DT: R7-5800X3D/R5-3600/R3-1200/P-G5400/FX-6100/i3-3225/P-8400/D-900/K6-2_550
LT: C-N2840/A64-TK57/N2600/N455/N270/C-ULV353/PM-1.7/P4-2.6/P133
TC: Esther-1000/Esther-400/Vortex86-366
Others: Drean C64c/Czerweny Spectrum 48k/Talent MSX DPC200/M512K/MP475

Reply 19 of 20, by xpladv570

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I would experiment with VIA 4in1 drivers and different versions and test the card on a different board for sure. Failing on Direct3D games makes me think that there is something funky going on with rest of the DirectX components... What does dxdiag say about the Voodoo? Have you tried disabling sound card drivers?

It is a long shot for sure but for weird issues it might be worth to play around with things that dont seem related to the problem.

FX5500 (supposedly) relies on a lot of AGP features even in their PCI variants, so I wouldn't rely on that card too much. The drivers for it are also very heavy for a K6 system. I wouldn't use anything above a GF2 MX with 7.76/8.05 drivers installed. Although the 2MX PCI is surprisingly hard to find. TNT2 M64/Vanta PCI is a wee bit more common, but that is of course no voodoo. 😉