I'm sure these projects are helping with the global supply of Voodoo5 cards.

Not sure I understand your comment.

GemCookie wrote on 2024-11-17, 08:37:

I'm sure these projects are helping with the global supply of Voodoo5 cards.

These aren't from existing Voodoo 5 boards but unused VSA100 chips purchased as new. So actually this is adding to the supply of Voodoo cards 😀

Congratulations, this is very cool project. 😀
Great engineering effort to put so many components on such a small PCB. Regulat V5 is at least 4 times bigger 😀
Definitely looking forward to see the assembled boards.

GemCookie wrote on 2024-11-17, 08:37:

I'm sure these projects are helping with the global supply of Voodoo5 cards.

These are being made from unused chips, no voodoo 5's have been harmed.

Got the PCBs a while ago:

It will probably take a while until I assemble them though.

So.. I stayed up late last night. I had the parts to assemble only 1 PCB:

The card plugged into a PC:

The card just worked, just had to hack the firmware a bit.

Next I'll install it into a laptop.

Installed it into a Dell Precision, only overclocked the VSAs to 183Mhz, as I can't push it more until I have a proper cooling system.

Amazing work! And great score too.
I like how the available PCB space is used right to the edge. Especially one of the VSAs 😀 Not a single milimeter of extra space. 😀

Voodoo 5 6000 next please 😀

@havli
Thanks!
I had to use all the space, the VSAs are quite big 😀

@mwdmeyer
That might be possible for laptops with dual MXM slots (some Alienware, Clevo/Eurocom models) by basically splitting the 6000 in two, and with a high speed custom flat flex between them.
If I ever get a 6000, and then make a 6000 with working digital video output, I might make such a monstrosity.

sdz wrote on 2024-12-06, 16:07:

@havli Thanks! I had to use all the space, the VSAs are quite big :) […]
Show full quote

@havli
Thanks!
I had to use all the space, the VSAs are quite big 😀

@mwdmeyer
That might be possible for laptops with dual MXM slots (some Alienware, Clevo/Eurocom models) by basically splitting the 6000 in two, and with a high speed custom flat flex between them.
If I ever get a 6000, and then make a 6000 with working digital video output, I might make such a monstrosity.

So something I happened to notice, though it wouldn't help in the laptop case, is that, when purchasing a 'new' card for my laptop the R9 M290X had a crossfire cable connector. The purpose of the VSA-100 was literally for that same concept and naturally that begs to wonder. It might be possible to use 2 of those cards in conjunction with the MXM and the PCIe for the wireless. I found an adapter that would allow it to do that.

I'm curious @SDZ if you're going to release the M5800 board. I've actually got 2 of the VSA-100 chips that I've been meaning to build into something and a cnc machine that I can custom build a heat sync for. I would love it if you could help with that. [*]

wlp_sidewinder wrote on Today, 02:06:

sdz wrote on 2024-12-06, 16:07:

@havli Thanks! I had to use all the space, the VSAs are quite big :) […]
Show full quote

@havli
Thanks!
I had to use all the space, the VSAs are quite big 😀

@mwdmeyer
That might be possible for laptops with dual MXM slots (some Alienware, Clevo/Eurocom models) by basically splitting the 6000 in two, and with a high speed custom flat flex between them.
If I ever get a 6000, and then make a 6000 with working digital video output, I might make such a monstrosity.

So something I happened to notice, though it wouldn't help in the laptop case, is that, when purchasing a 'new' card for my laptop the R9 M290X had a crossfire cable connector. The purpose of the VSA-100 was literally for that same concept and naturally that begs to wonder. It might be possible to use 2 of those cards in conjunction with the MXM and the PCIe for the wireless. I found an adapter that would allow it to do that.

I'm curious @SDZ if you're going to release the M5800 board. I've actually got 2 of the VSA-100 chips that I've been meaning to build into something and a cnc machine that I can custom build a heat sync for. I would love it if you could help with that. [*]

On a regular 6000, all the VSA-100 sit on the same PCI bus. Not sure if something like two 5500 cards (each connected to a separate PCI bus) with an SLI connector can be made. What should work is a full "master" MXM card (that has the PCIe to PCI bridge IC on it) , and a slave card (without the bridge), with an SLI connector that passes the SLI/AA signals as well as the whole PCI bus.

Digital video output on a 4x VSA card is also way more complicated. On a dual VSA setup, the master VSA generates the digital video output. On a 4x VSA setup, each VSA generates only a "band" of the final image (height is variable).
All the video outputs need to be fed into an FPGA, which needs to have external RAM to gather all the data from the VSAs, sync it and stitch it together, and pipe out the data as TMDS (this is the TL;DR version, it's quite a bit more involved than that).

I'm considering making two videocards for the Dell XPS M1730.
-one with 4x VSA-100
-one with 2x VSA-100 and an 8800M GTX, with the ability to switch between them without rebooting the system.

As for the MXM M5800 files, I will release them at some point. While the card appears to work fine, I haven't tested it nearly enough to be comfortable publishing the files (also, made only 2 cards). There's also some firmware work that needs to be done (I haven't touched the M5800 since my last post here). I have published the files for the Voodoo4 M4800 MXM card though: Voodoo4 M4800