Voodoo2 + USB 2.0 Card = Crash! \ VOGONS

Voodoo2 + USB 2.0 Card = Crash!

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First post, by mrfusion92

Posted on 2022-05-06, 19:14

mrfusion92 Offline

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Hi everyone, I have this computer:

MB: Abit VH6T
CPU: Celeron 1.3Ghz
RAM: 512 MB
OS: Win98SE with NUSB patch.
GPU: Nvidia FX 5200 Ultra and Diamond Monster 3D II 8Mb

I've installed a NEC USB 2.0 PCI card and now I have this issue: I can't use the Voodoo and the USB ports in the same time.

If I plug an usb device first then the voodoo card doesn't work (donut demo crashes, often the whole Windows).
Vice versa If I launch donut demo right after boot it will work, but then if I plug anything in the usb ports the PC will just hang forcing an hard reboot.

With onboard USB 1.0 ports everything works always.

I guess I do have some resources conflict? But there are no warnings in the device manager.

What i tried so far:

Change PCI slot of the USB card
Remove other PCI cards (a creative audiopci and a realtek ethernet card)
Change Voodoo drivers (right now I'm using the FastVoodoo 4.0 GE)
Reinstall fresh win98se

What else can i try? I'm currently reinstalling 98se for the third time this day in the meantime!

Reply 1 of 8, by Doornkaat

Posted on 2022-05-17, 07:19

Doornkaat Offline

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This may be an issue with the southbridge. VIA had some problems back then that were mostly worked around by driver and BIOS updates. Try the latest BIOS and see wether different chipset drivers make a difference.

Reply 2 of 8, by paradigital

Posted on 2022-05-17, 07:21

paradigital Offline

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I had no end of problems and performance impacts when using an NEC chipset USB 2.0 card with a VIA MVP3 board.

Switching out to a VIA chipset based USB 2.0 card resolved everything.

Reply 3 of 8, by mrfusion92

Posted on 2022-05-17, 10:57

mrfusion92 Offline

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Indeed I have solved with an ALI USB 2.0 card but I may still upgrade the BIOS because I still have occasional system hiccups or freezes until I remove/plug back any of the PCI cards.

Reply 4 of 8, by AlexZ

Posted on 2022-05-17, 16:07

AlexZ Offline

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USB cards require like 3 IRQs which easily leads to IRQ conflict when all devices are in use simultaneously due to PCI IRQ sharing. One way to work around it may be to free IRQs by disabling the built-in USB controller, serial, parallel ports in BIOS. Then Voodoo 2 can get assigned its own IRQ.

Pentium III 900E, ECS P6BXT-A+, 384MB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce FX 5600 128MB, Voodoo 2 12MB, 80GB HDD, Yamaha SM718 ISA, 19" AOC 9GlrA
Athlon 64 3400+, MSI K8T Neo V, 1GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT 512MB, 250GB HDD, Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS

Reply 5 of 8, by swaaye

Posted on 2022-05-17, 20:30

swaaye Offline

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It may also be Win9x causing the problems. Sometimes 2K/XP work fine on a configuration that blows up 9x. I shudder at the thought of whether it could be ACPI, PCI PNP, or VXDs causing that. I usually just disable USB 2.0 with it.

Reply 6 of 8, by ptr1ck

Posted on 2022-05-17, 22:59

ptr1ck Offline

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My USB was kind of slow and NIC was giving me fits until I installed the VIA PCI Latency Patch.

"ITXBOX" SFF-Win11
KT133A-NV28-V2 SLI-DOS/WinME

Reply 7 of 8, by Faust66

Posted on 2024-01-18, 12:22

Faust66 Offline

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Joined: 2023-03-10, 23:20
Location: Poland

I have exactly the same problem as user mrfusion92 with USB 2.0 PCI NEC card and Voodoo 2 8MB, except that I have an Intel 440BX chipset.
I would like to note that 3dfx Voodoo 2 does not use IRQs, so this is not a problem. I have disabled all unused ports in Bios (LPT, COM1 COM2) so the IRQ interrupts are free.
I have had this problem since I installed Voodoo2, i.e. for half a year. Previously, there was no such problem with Voodoo1.
So far I haven't found a solution. There appears to be some conflict between the USB 2.0 controller drivers and the Voodoo2 drivers under Win98SE. It doesn't matter what drivers I install for Voodoo2, reference or FastVoodoo or Monster3DII, the effect is always the same.

RetroPC: P3 700Mhz, Intel 440BX, 512MB RAM, GeForce4 MX440+Voodoo2 8MB, SSD 60GB, Win98SE

Reply 8 of 8, by kingcake

Posted on 2024-01-18, 18:03

kingcake Offline

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Older motherboards can be very picky about the USB controller type. Most people have the best luck with NEC based cards. But sometimes VIA et al work better. Depends on the combination of bios/mobo chipset/drivers being used.

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