VOGONS


First post, by Menkau_ra

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I just got a Quantum3D SB100-4400! Man this is a huge card! I had to take out a speaker form my case to insert the board. So far tv outs work perfect. But vga gives no signal at all. The card is in a very good condition, so maybe my problem is not physical? Could it be just a bad bios? I've tried to google for it, but can't find it yet. How can I fix my vga?

Reply 1 of 17, by Old Thrashbarg

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Could it be just a bad bios?

This question makes me wonder: You do know that thing isn't a standalone video card, right? You need a passthrough cable hooked up to your main video card in order for it to work, and even then it doesn't get used until you run a 3D game that supports it.

Reply 2 of 17, by bushwack

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Yeah you need a dedicated 2D card first and use a pass-through cable also. Quantum was nice enough not to use a standard cable with this one either, good luck finding a cable if you didn't get one with the card.

Reply 3 of 17, by Menkau_ra

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I am actually know how Voodoo cards work:) I have most of 'em. And i have a second monitor attached for that card. I am aslo not quiet shure if it's just a 3D card. I think it could have 2D like Voodoo Rush. On V1 and V2 cards there are 2 vga ports (in and out), but this got only one, out.
Or did you mean it works like Obsidian2 (with a kind of medusa cable and different pinouts)?

Reply 4 of 17, by Old Thrashbarg

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No, it's 3D only. It's basically just two Voodoo2's in SLI, but on a single PCB and with a weird mini-DIN connector for the VGA passthrough.

And I'm not sure what you mean that you have a second monitor attached... are you trying to run it off a secondary output on your 2D card, or what?

Edit: Oh... wait... are you trying to do that weird jury-rigged setup in Win2K, using it as a secondary 2D card? That didn't really work very well to begin with, and I don't think those drivers support the Quantum3D boards due to the SLI setup.

Reply 6 of 17, by Old Thrashbarg

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I think he means he has 2 monitors: one at his 2D card and one at the Q3d one

Can you even do that, though? I never ran two monitors until well after the 3DFX era, so I never tried such a thing. But the way I've always understood it, except for those strange Win2K drivers (which won't do 3D at all), you have to have a 2D card connected to a Voodoo2 in order to get it to display on a VGA monitor.

Reply 7 of 17, by 5u3

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Old Thrashbarg wrote:

Can you even do that, though? [...] But the way I've always understood it, except for those strange Win2K drivers (which won't do 3D at all), you have to have a 2D card connected to a Voodoo2 in order to get it to display on a VGA monitor.

Just found out about this a moment ago, while fooling around on a i440BX system with a Geforce 4 MX + Voodoo2 installed.

I was running the Final Reality benchmark with only the Geforce connected to the monitor. After displaying the 2D tests at the beginning, the benchmark suddenly crashed back to the desktop.
Or did it? Apparently the benchmark uses the "Direct3D External Accelerator" (Voodoo2) instead of the "Direct3D Onboard Accelerator" (Geforce) by default.
So I removed the monitor cable from the Geforce, attached it to the Voodoo2 and voila! - perfect picture from the V2 (only while the 3D tests were running, of course).

This should answer your question... 😉

Reply 8 of 17, by Old Thrashbarg

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Huh... I never knew that. I guess it makes sense, I just never really considered the possibility.

For purposes of troubleshooting the OP's card, though, it might be a good idea to at least try it in the normal single monitor/VGA passthrough fashion. While there shouldn't be anything particularly different about it that would prevent it from working with a secondary monitor, following the more standard procedure could make troubleshooting a bit easier.

Reply 9 of 17, by swaaye

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This card is based on Voodoo Graphics, not Voodoo2. I had one of these once. They are 3D only. No dual VGA passthru connection but they do have some mysterious other plugs and TV output. I had problems with the drivers being somewhat messy for games so didn't really spend much time with the card.

Like those curious Win2k drivers, there is a Linux driver that will run a Voodoo 1 or 2 as a 2D card. Voodoo2 has some limited 2D acceleration but Voodoo1 gets dumb framebuffer treatment.
http://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.5/doc/man/man4/voodoo.4.html (some interesting info)

pic of the beast. It's about as fast as a Voodoo2. 😁

Reply 10 of 17, by Menkau_ra

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Yep, this is the card I got. The board has those ports: vga, stereo, s-video and regular video. I downloaded the original drivers for Win95. I ran a few of games to test it. They were Pod Gold and Q2. Had no problems at all.
Swaaye, did you use a separate monitor too? Is there a regular vga or it needs an adapter?
Any ideas where I can find a BIOS?:)

Reply 11 of 17, by Old Thrashbarg

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Any ideas where I can find a BIOS?

Nowhere. It doesn't have a BIOS. It was never intended to be a bootable display card.

The board has those ports: vga, stereo, s-video and regular video.

I'm not sure where you're seeing a stereo port. The mini-DIN connector next to the VGA output is the passthrough connector... the cable is a bit hard to find (to say the least), but you can make one if necessary. Here's the pinout of it:

Reply 12 of 17, by Menkau_ra

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I am quite sure that is says "stereo" on the mini-din connector. But I will check it out tonight. And is this mini-din only an "input"?
So there is no way to fix the vga? Is it possible to make a s-video to vga cable?:)

Reply 13 of 17, by Old Thrashbarg

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You're right, it does say 'Stereo'. Weird. In any case, that's the passthrough connector, regardless of how it's labelled.

No, S-Video can not be easily converted to VGA.

As far as how to fix the VGA, it hasn't even been determined yet that there's anything wrong with it. The first step would be to get/make the cable, hook up the card normally (i.e., VGA output of the 2D card run to the passthrough on the Voodoo, then a single monitor hooked to the VGA output of the Voodoo), and see what happens. It sounds like the card itself works fine, since you can get a picture from the TV-out, so I suspect the problem with the VGA output is either in the way you have it hooked up (maybe that card just doesn't allow VGA output without the passthrough... even if a regular Voodoo card will operate that way, yours is quite different from the standard design), or maybe there's some issue with the drivers.

Reply 14 of 17, by swaaye

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I think I vaguely remember trying to find a cable. I never did and instead just plugged the monitor into the card whenever I ran anything 3D.

All I can really remember is running Unreal on it. An interesting aspect to this card is that it is a 2x1 design instead of Voodoo2's 1x2. So, regardless of whether the game uses multiple texture layers, you'll get the full fillrate potential from the card. But it's still slower than Voodoo2 most of the time because of the clock rate.

They can have DBs added with two more TMUs total. I've never seen that config. One of the models has 2D too, maybe in a super Voodoo Rush style setup.

The "V" card has 2D built in and the other card has a DB header for it.

Last edited by swaaye on 2009-12-31, 06:10. Edited 5 times in total.

Reply 15 of 17, by Old Thrashbarg

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Hm, well if you had one working without the passthrough, then that's probably not the OP's issue. Do you happen to remember what drivers you were using? For purposes of narrowing things down, it might help for OP to try a version that you know to work.

@menkau_ra, just another random thought here, but have you checked to make sure it's not something simple like a bad monitor or VGA cable? And also that the monitor supports the resolution and refresh rate?

Reply 17 of 17, by Menkau_ra

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The seller told me that somebody was playing with the firmware. And I need some kind of xlinx programmer to flash it. But I need need to find the original firmware too.