Hello ps47, still going strong I see, how's life?

The Powercolor Voodoo4 AGP cards are mounted on a different PCB assembly to the standard 3dfx STB ones.  That card is 3.3v AGP v1.0 compliant like a Voodoo5.  Plugging into your universal 0.8/1.5v AGP v3.0 slot will burn out parts of the motherboard.  You can only connect such cards to a universal 1.5/3.3v AGP v2.0 slot.  This is an unkeyed slot like the one on your board, but supports 3.3v cards correctly.

Please refer to and read this before continuing: http://www.inc_exe.szm.sk/helppage/default_fix.htm#misconceptions

Notice the keying on the card edge connections.  It prevents a 1.5v card being plugged into a 3.3v slot and vice versa, but universal slots allow all of these.  The problem is that modern universal slots don't support 3.3v cards, though you can still connect them and do the damage.

I fiddled about with the 3dfx BIOS editor back in 2004 or thereabouts while I was looking into the Voodoo5 overclocking issue (where only one processor's clock is adjustable).  It's not that hard to take the bit of code that enables DVI on the MAC version and copy and paste it into vacant part of the BIOS image file in PC version BIOS image.  The string in the BIOS file simply signifies if it's present or not.  I think quite a few people have done this in the past, the problem is that there is (well there was) a general reluctance within the "3dfx community" to make such things available generally, at least unpackaged anyway.

Hi to all,

In particular:

ps47 how's it going?

amp_man it's been a long time!

Later.

Caravel

Many thanks benna.  The service, as I suspected, appears to be a program made by a script kiddy using Firedaemon, a program which allows an app to run as a win32 service.  The service was there to allow a hacker to enter but it seems that the hacker failed to pull it off successfully as the file that the service entry points to doesn't exist.  This is spread via a trojan called "Nabload.U" that users are tricked into downloading via microsoft's crappy msn messenger service.  I believe it is spread by executable file links that suddenly appear in your conversations.  It mainly effects spanish speaking msn users.  The files tend to be called something like "foto.exe" or "imagen.exe".  This triggers the download of another file called "navupdt.exe" which copies itself to the system32 folder and creates another folder called "services" containing "services.exe".  This seems to allow access to the hacker allows them to create a service on your system to allow full remote access.

This piece of malware is fairly new, late last year, as AVG didn't identify it at first and I had to update the persons AVG, which was about 3 weeks out of date, before it would identify it.

Regards


caravel

I found in a friends windows 2000 computer a highly suspicious system service.  The service has a password and nothing more description wise.  The service is called "cisideve" which appears to be italian, from a quick google search, but neither google babelfish or anything else will translate it.

Your help would be very much appreciated on this one, as I expect it is hacker/trojan activity.

Regards


Caravel

QuoteOriginally posted by r21vo

yeah, they all are not-so-new, but that doesn't stop us from making new ones
btw Caravel, what's up with voodoofiles?

Sorry for the late reply I don't check these boards much nowadays.  I finally gave up on voodoofiles, because no one would contribute to it's upkeep or show interest in maintaining it.  They would "talk the talk" but when it came to "walking the walk" they failed to deliver anything but multiple excuses.  So it's gone for good, and about time really.

LOL @ the fat heatsink.

"Wow I can oc my Voodoo5 to a ground breaking 220MHz with one of those? where can I buy one?"

You all seem to miss the point here.  The problem isn't only heat, it's mainly voltage.  You can overclock the hell out of the VSA-100 and use liquid nitrogen cooling but it will still freeze due to insufficent voltage as regards both the VPU and the SDRAM.  Around 183Mhz is the absolute max and unless you're manipulating the pllCtrl1 variable then only one VPU will be affected anyway, so you won't see any difference at all (unless you have fsaa enabled in which case the fsaa performance hit will be lessened due to the master chip's overclocked state).  Even if you do get up to 220MHz!! or something as insane as that, you won't see much of a performance difference.

The people that do this just want to be able to say "my Voodoo is faster than yours", and nothing more.  They don't see the benefit and the card won't be able to stick to that clock rate indefinitely.  They just like to know it's overclocked.

The AAVID cooling is cheap but sufficient for the Voodoo5 at 166MHz.  The problem is that the thermal transfer expoxy resin applied between the VPU top edge and the 45x45mm aluminium heatsink base was badly applied at the production stage.  It is often offcentre and running down one side of the VPU.  It also becomes brittle with age (especially if it was running overclocked for long periods) and turns brown, it is then a much less effective thermal conductor.  Which is why overheating problems occur.

The heatsink area at the rear of the VSA-100 should not be covered.  Sticking a thermal pad and heatsink on here will cause an air pocket that will trap warm air.  This is simply becasue the surface is perforated and was not designed for the application of a heatsink.  Mounting a lone fan, or nothing at all, on each of these points would be the better option.

XP runs fine on old K6-2 500MHz 256MB PC100 system.

The problem is never XP it is the people who don't understand XP or how to set it up properly.  XP is literally just a newer version of Win2k (Win2k is WinNT 5.0 and WinXP is WinNT 5.1), so those that claim 2k is better are actually ignorant of the facts.  If you run XP out of the box on a low end machine it will boot and run very slowly.  This is simply because of the networking and security services that are running by default.  Disabling most of these (as you'll find that you're not using most of them) will give you a much faster boot time and free up the cpu and memory for other apps.  I've heard some people refer to XP as a "kiddie OS".  Again this is born out of ignorance.  The cartoonish welcome screen, fast user switching and the desktop themes service can be disabled.  Which will give you an environment virtually identical to all other Windows OS's, though much more stable and with better performance and hardware support.

For streamlined high speed XP installations try: http://www.nliteos.com/nlite.html

That 32 chip spoof board image has been around for about 3 years.

QuoteOriginally posted by gdonovan

"Napalm would have been unable to compete with GeForce, so it was redesigned to support multiple chip configurations, like the Voodoo 2 had. The end-product was named VSA-100, which stood for Voodoo Scalable Architecture."

1) This is incorrect as the VSA-100 chips were designed from day one for SLI operation."

All 3dfx chips from Voodoo Graphics onward were designed for SLI, all being basically the same chip.

QuoteOriginally posted by gdonovan

2) The Voodoo 3 can be operated in multi-chip configuration as well, see AAlchemy 4116.

The Voodoo3 is in basic terms a single chip Voodoo2, again SLI is a foregone conclusion.

QuoteOriginally posted by gdonovan

3) What hurt 3dfx the most was missing the product cycles and not releasing product on time, this let ATI and Nv catch up, then pass 3dfx in performance.

No.  What hit 3dfx was the development of stopgap solutions that couldn't evolve, or hope to compete in an ever more competitive market.  No longer the undisputed king of 3d accelerated hardware, 3dfx were surpassed, by companies better able to market their products while keeping their costs down.

QuoteOriginally posted by gdonovan

"The Voodoo 5 6000 never got to the market, due to a severe bug resulting in data corruption on the AGP bus on certain boards"

No, it had a problem with signal noise on the internal PCI bus caused by a PCB design flaw.

Whatever the popularly reported excuses, the Voodoo5 6000 was unmarketable and would never have sold as a mainstream graphics card to the masses.  3dfx were finished before it could be finalised and released anyway.

QuoteOriginally posted by gdonovan

"limited to AGP 2x, which would have prevented its use on the then-new Pentium 4 motherboards"

The AGP modes has little to do with it, the 5500 and 6000 require 3.3 volts on the AGP supply and the Intel P4 chipsets only supply 1.5 volts. Intel could have choosen to design the chipset with 3.3 volts support (as AMD did up to the VIA KT-333a) but did not.

Not limited to "AGP 2x" at all.  In fact a full production card could quite feasibly have made 4x AGP and been fully AGP 2.0 compliant with the exception of DIME support, though without this what would be the point?

QuoteOriginally posted by gdonovan

"Voodoo 4 was as much of a disaster as Voodoo Rush"

The only problem with the Voodoo 4 was it was pitted against the GFMX2 which had a much better price/performance ratio. The Rush had high performance expectations (in reality it performed 10% worse then Voodoo Graphics, which was still was better then many other solutions!) and some software incompatibilities. If you read the press reviews at the time the board was mocked for it's poor "2D" performance which is rather quaint since no one cares about "2D performance" anymore.

Voodoo4 proved the VSA100 useless and uncompetitive in a single chip configuration, hardly much better than a Voodoo3 and much slower than a V3 3 3500 when rendering 16bpp.  A card with two chips should have been a bonus, instead it was a necessity for VSA100.  Voodoo Rush is a universally accepted failure, 2D performence is vitally important as is 3D.  The Rush had neither.

QuoteYou mention Rampage too as the next product, while Rampage was important the real important product was DAYTONA. Daytona fixed several problems with Napalm and was made on a smaller micron die process. 3dfx had plans for making single, double and quad chip boards using Daytona and the chip would run 143-180 mhz with ease with no active cooling required. Daytona boards have been noted being clocked as high as 260+ mhz, but that is a story for another day

Daytona is basically the DDR SDRAM supporting version of the Napalm.  I wouldn't believe the fairy stories about those high clock speeds unless I had the card here and saw it myself with my own eyes.  There are many factors to be taken into consideration, including the cooling and the exaggerative tendencies of those prepared to go to any lengths to paint this mysterious and fantastical picture of 3dfx products.

A bad one obviously...  A STOP 0xBE is usually caused by buggy or incorrect driver dll's trying to write to memory that is not allocated to them.  You'll have to use something like drivercleaner, clean off and start again following the directions posted by the users here to the letter.

You've been had.  NEVER buy anything described as "untested" as it actually mean: "not working".

You may be right about the cards condition and if so there's not much you can do.  Leave negative feedback and try relisting the card on ebay as "DEAD", because some people may want it for spares.

And yes you payed a bit too much for it mate.  I still haven't forgotten that idiot that sold me a dead Voodoo2 then tried to say it was my fault as I'd obviously "handled it too much" while I was wasting my time trying to get the card he'd fried to work.

Better luck next time.

What exactly is wrong with it?  If it has any dead chips you may as well sling it in the bin.

The VoodooFiles Forums is now back online and can be found here:

http://www.voodoofiles.org.uk/forum/index.php

All the old posts and member tables have been restored. Totalling 1227 of 3dfx and other informative topics.

It depends on the type of memory currently on your Voodoo5.  Hyundai SDRAM is worth it.  Other types are not, and expect to only go upto a maximum of about 175Mhz with non Hyundai SDRAM (waste of time).  Also the heatsinks are too small at 30*40.  Copper northbridge heatsinks with a 45*45 standard fan is your best bet.  I have a pair of 8000rpm fans that I used with a pair of copper northbridge coolers.  They provided excellent cooling but the Toshiba SDRAM held the whole card back, despite my use of RAMsinks.  The card would overclock to about 192MHz stable but with artifacts.