VOGONS

Voodoo 3 Instability (Solved)

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First post, by Kordanor

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Edit: Before you read: It WAS total coincidence resulting into only sometimes overheating CPU.

I just stumbled over a problem and maybe you got an idea here.

The Voodoo 3 generally has a problem with 640x400. This leads to bad colors whenever you don't use a CRT (like a TFT screen, even an old one, or a capture card).
I had solved this by Rob Mullers Unirefresh. I simply set the refresh rate of that resolution to 75Hz. And after that it works fine.
I even showed the solution in this video (timestamp): https://youtu.be/L2qqSGOsBhw?t=987

Now during the last months using this I did a Let's Play of Realms of the Haunting in 640x400. And that worked perfectly fine as well.

Yesterday I wanted to test whether I can get the 15 Bit color Depth issue of the german Economy Game "Die Fugger 2" fixed by using the tool vbe15bpp, which is actually created by Rob Muller as well.

I tried it before the install, and it did not help (game wont install high color mode with that fix) and I also tried it after I installed it with my S3, and still get the same broken picture.
Ok, no big deal.

Today I wanted to continue my Let's Play of Realms of the Haunting and...get artifacts and crashes.
And after the game crashed, the PC also wont reboot. Reset doesnt help. Powering off and on also doesnt help unless you give it 30 Seconds or so in between.

Then I tried again but without the unirefresh fix for 640x400. And that runs fine. Well, on a CRT, any recording has broken colors without that fix. But it neither has artifacts, nor does it crash.
I tried with the fix again, and crash.
Without the fix, works again.
I then also booted into Windows. First worked fine. Then "fatal exception 0E has occured at 0167:BFF9DFFF. PC doesnt boot unless powered down, and powered up again.

So...what happened? I dont quite get it. Maybe something of that vbe15bpp screwed the firmware? Or maybe a it overstrained some capacitor? Or maybe its a total coincidence? I have no clue. But for now that Voodoo 3 3500 seems to be toast.

The artifacts look like this:

The attachment Artifacts.PNG is no longer available

The crash looks like this:
DOS (Realms of the Haunting):

The attachment DOS Crash.PNG is no longer available

Windows:

The attachment Windows Crash.PNG is no longer available
Last edited by Kordanor on 2026-01-16, 21:01. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 2, by Kordanor

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1. Checked if it sits firmly
2. Did a firmware flash

But the issue persist. DOS issues show up after a few minutes, with glitches, artifacts and reboot issues. Windows now crashes pretty much right away.
So at that point I dont know what else there is to do. Besides of getting a new Voodoo 3.

Reply 2 of 2, by Kordanor

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Update: Tried to play with the S3 Trio64 in the meanwhile (still got some recordings to do), but got the same issue.
So, it doesnt seem to be related to the voodoo 3. Which makes the use of vbe15bpp seem even more like a coincidence. Maybe the board broke...or some RAM.

Edit: Culprit found: It was a cable which found it's way into the CPU fan (It's a horizontal desk PC, gravity did its best, it didnt even rattle). In combination with a lot of coincidences which did their best to "mask" the issue. Like windows preferably crashing when open the graphics setting.
The relatively massive heatsink I got did quite a job I'd say to actually make it run as well as it did. ^^

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