Voodoo5 5500 on the Mac

[barefeats]

I have a Voodoo5 5500 that I used on various PCI slotted Macs back in 2000 for benchmarking in our test lab.

I wonder if there are any Mac owners still using this card on a PCI Mac like the Blue'n'White or Yikes towers. And are there any OS X drivers or do you have to run OS 9?

Should I sell it or keep it in the "museum"?

[barefeats]

We, since I haven't received a response, I sold the card on eBay for $35.

I want to thank whomever runs this site for posting the drivers for Mac. I'll continue to refer my readers on BareFeats.com to this site for 3Dfx info.

[Glide]

Hi barefeats,

welcome here and thank you for posting. As you can understand, there aren't OS X drivers for Voodoo5. However, I would keep that card in the "museum" but this's only my idea. Thanks a lot for 3dfxzone.it support by BareFeats.com.

If you need, just I'm here.

Bye bye

[Nightbird]

* In the old "Accelerate Your Mac FAQ", you can find this tip :

  Q:  I have problems in OS X 10.3 with a very old graphics card (3dfx, Ixmicro card, ATI RageII/RagePro card, Formac Proformance 3, etc.)

   A:  Update: The OS X 10.3.2 update has been reported to solve the problem with some older cards based on the RageRagePro ATI chip (like the RagePro based VR model graphics card included with some student edition B&W G3s). I don't think it helps with other old cards like the pre-RageII chip based ATI models, Formac Proformance3, IXMicro cards, etc. - see below for original tip that helped some owners of these cards.

   (from the Oct. 30th, 2003 www.xlr8yourmac.com news page)

   I don't have any Macs running 10.3 with an old graphics card (3dfx, older ATI card, etc.) - but a reader sent a note with a tip for the 'rom too old' error reported previously by users of some older graphics cards. (I've had later reports this also helped with problems seen in 10.3 with an old IXMicro graphics card and a Formac Proformance III graphics card - both have no OS X drivers.)

       " Mike,
       Read this on the Apple Discussion board and tried it with a 3dfx Voodoo3 2000.

       Type this in the 10.3 Terminal:

             sudo nvram boot-args="romndrv=1"
             (enter admin password)

       This worked on my Quicksilver G4, running OS X 10.3, ATI Radeon 7500 (stock) and the 3dfx card.
       -David "

   I assume he had the problem of only 640x480/256 color mode before and asked if this resulted in more resolution/color depth options and he said yes. (*But* it won't add 3d/opengl acceleration for the 3dfx cards - there are no drivers for them in OS X.)
   He also said this is reported to help older ATI cards with the problem also (such as the RagePro/VR cards perhaps) but I don't have the Apple forum thread link to see what others reported on using it.

   If you have any problems after this tweak, you can reset the nvram to undo the mod:

   If you have any problems after this tweak, you can reset the nvram to undo the mod. Here's how to reset the NVRAM on new world ROM Macs (B&W G3 and later models)

       * boot the mac with the Command + option + O (not zero) + F keys held down to get the the console
       * Enter the following commands (press enter after each)
               reset-nvram
               set-defaults
               reset-all
       * The mac will reboot after the last command entered. This clears settings like startup disk so you need to check control panel settings, etc. (X key at boot will usually boot to the OS X system - for new world from macs, the Option key at boot will also allow selecting a bootable drive)

source

* You can check also this vanished topic using the Web Archive.org :
http://web.archive.org/web/20050207183854/http://www.machowto.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=29

* And if you're always interested to run or to emulate a 3dfx card with a Mac, you can try these files that you will find on SourceForge.Net :
GLQuake & GLHexen 2 for MacOS & MacOSX

MacGLide - 3Dfx hardware emulation

[Glide]

Nightbird, tnx a lot.