VOGONS


Voodoo 2, no image with Glide games

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First post, by eeJay

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Hi guys,
I bought a Diamond Voodoo 2 - 8 MB from Ebay. The seller claimed that it was tested and that it works. But when I tried it, there is no image in Glide games. So, the card gets detected properly and there are no issues with installing the drivers. The pass-through seems to work fine with the included cable.
When I launch a Glide game (Outlaws, Rayman 2, Quake 1, Unreal, Unreal Tournament, Jedi Knight ...), there is no image. My monitor goes to standby and I can only hear the game's music. Pressing Ctrl+Esc brings me back to the primary card's 2D mode (desktop, start menu) with no issue. Also, running the Dxdiag tests on the Voodoo card produces the same result - no image, monitor standby.

I have tried:
- different platforms (Socket 7 - p1 166 MHz MMX, Slot 1 - p II 350, Slot 1 - p III 500 MHz, Pentium 4)
- different primary cards (S3 PCI 1 MB, S3 Savage 4 PCI, RIVA TNT AGP, Geforce 2 MX AGP, Matrox g200 AGP ...)
- different drivers (official ones from Diamond and FastVoodoo)
- reinstalled the OS (Windows 95 or 98 SE, depending o the platform)/restored a fresh Norton Ghost image several times
- installed DirectX 7.0a
- a different pass-through cable
- connecting the monitor's VGA cable directly into the Voodoo card after starting a Glide game

I know that my monitor is capable of running smaller resolutions, because it works just fine even with a Voodoo 1 in DOS.

I've attached a few pictures of the card. Any ideas; anything apparently wrong?

Thanks

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Reply 2 of 33, by NyLan

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Hey, when you install the Voodoo2 drivers, is it correctly recognized ? If you open the Voodoo2 panel ( in display properties ), does it work ?

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Reply 4 of 33, by NyLan

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Even in the small screen, do you see the 3dfx animation ?

Checking your pictures I'm wondering if you checked all pins of this chip. I can barely see if there's no shortcut.

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Reply 6 of 33, by NyLan

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Yes, I believe you see the new logo. Have you tried to launch the demo from the FastVoodoo driver ? "\FastVoodoo2_4.6\Tools\Demos\DEMO6030\DEMO6030.EXE"

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Proud owner of a TL866 II
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Reply 10 of 33, by kixs

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Presenecenje 😁

---

I guess it's broken somehow. I had this kind of simptom on Voodoo1 cards. V2 usually put out some error - like "Voodoo^2 card not found" when trying to run a game and drivers were succesfully installed.

Check the pins on all 3dfx chips - pins sticking together or not making contact to the pad.

Requests are also possible... /msg kixs

Reply 11 of 33, by paradigital

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It might be a trick of the light or a bad photo, but C150 on the back of the board looks like it’s blown a hole in itself!

Also, are those scratched traces near the same area on the back? Are they making good continuity or do they need some attending to with a bodge wire or two?

Reply 12 of 33, by schmatzler

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I also had this symptom on my V2 cards a while ago. In the end it turned out to be some kind of incompatibility with my motherboard or general hardware combination.

I've found two ways to get it working:
1. By using coolsmoky's drivers for the Voodoo 2. They're available here (the very last link at the end of the page):
http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/tools.htm

2. By changing the memory address range of the card manually in the device manager. I've set it to BE000000-BEFFFFFF and that made it magically create an image on the screen instead of turning it off.

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Maybe this helps.

"Windows 98's natural state is locked up"

Reply 15 of 33, by Cyrix200+

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I don't think it will help in you case since you already tried different drivers and the symptoms don't match my own experience, but try stock drivers for the card (Diamond's drivers).

FastVoodoo drivers are popular, but they overclock the card a bit (and that's not widely known).

Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

EDIT: Nevermind, I did not read your post correctly, you tried those already.

1982 to 2001

Reply 16 of 33, by NyLan

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Hey, can you double check this area ? On the picture I some some possible contacts ( 2nd picture below )

+ I do agree with paradigital, you need to check continuity for this scratch. It's easy to do with a multimeter. Just 4 tracks to check.

paradigital wrote on 2020-08-02, 19:34:

It might be a trick of the light or a bad photo, but C150 on the back of the board looks like it’s blown a hole in itself!

Also, are those scratched traces near the same area on the back? Are they making good continuity or do they need some attending to with a bodge wire or two?

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Reply 17 of 33, by eeJay

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Thanks, will check.
I just reviewed the seller's images (attached), and those potential damaged spots were already on the card (both the scratch and the backs of the RAM chips).
So it isn't transport damage.
Guess I should have been more thorough ...

Edit: he claims that he tested the card with Counter-Strike (v1.3) under Windows 2000. Is that even a Glide game? Is it possible that his primary card was doing the 3d-acceleration?

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Reply 18 of 33, by bloodem

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It seems to me like you did all the tests you could possibly do. Trust me, a good Voodoo 2 card should just work without too much hassle.
Better ask the seller for a refund. If he refuses, open a case with eBay.
I really hate these sellers that don't even bother testing the parts properly. I would never sell someone anything without actually testing that part for at least a week, in all kinds of scenarios. But then again, some just prefer to quickly "move boxes" (or in this case, retro cards).

1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k

Reply 19 of 33, by NyLan

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I used to play HL1 and CounterStrike with the OpenGL / 3dfx Mini Driver back in years.

bloodem wrote on 2020-08-03, 17:09:

I really hate these sellers that don't even bother testing the parts properly.

But sometime you can get lucky : This is how I bought my Voodoo2 12MB SLI. Without really testing them, the guy thought it was only 8MB Models so I got them for a good price.

My Intel SE440BX-2 Intel's website Mirror : Modified to include docs, refs and BIOSes.
Proud owner of a TL866 II
Personal GitHub