Which linux Distro for Glide?

[trigger]

Had a look at a few linux distro's for running 3dfx hardware. (voodoo2 & voodoo5 5500)

Tried aLinux and CentOS and couldn't get the Xserver to talk to Glide.

testGlide2x & testGlide3x worked fine but Xorg didn't want to co-operate.

Mainly want to run snes9x!

Anyone recommend a top Distro for 3dfx hardware? Maybe Xfree86 was better behaved? fn DRI[!]

[kayman]

You have to use old XFree86. I think you need 3.x version. 4.x and Xorg have glide only for v1&v2

[akiro]

Hi to all,
do you know how can I activate 3d acceleration for Voodoo 2 on a xubuntu 6.10 with xorg?
I have read some manual (http://ftp.x.org/pub/X11R7.0/doc/html/glide.4.html) but I'm not able to see the correct loading of the Voodoo 2 driver...

please, see the xorg log in attachment

thanx

[dborca]

Hello,

there is no "top" distro for running 3dfx hardware under linux.  With enough patience, it can be done under virtually any distro.  Bazillion of thanks to Guillem Jover, the last of the mohicans.

I still owe to 3dfxzone.it at least one release for windows and linux, but my last semester in university, the new full-time job and real life ate my whole spare time.

Alas, I failed to keep my last promise to this forum, but I will bring a release by spring 2007.

Until then, pick a distro of choice.  Then ask particular questions (along with detailed info, xorg version, logs etc), and I will try to guide you through it.

[Dr.Yak]

Thank you, dborca, for everything you've done.
Just to show you that there're still Linux fans enjoying their Voodoo 5.

Alas, I failed to keep my last promise to this forum, but I will bring a release by spring 2007.

We're ll looking forward to it.
(Could it be some Xorg-less support for SLI, a la OpenGL Embed, that could be used to run on it both Xegl/Compiz and 3D games with SLI enabled ?)

I wish you success for both job and university.

[mcmagostini]

I'm eager to see it done and I thank
daniel for every bit of work till now.

As our friend Dr.Yak i wish a truckload
of success in daniel's life.

By the way, i'm getting mad that i cant
put my 3dfx to work right under xorg 7.x
anything 3d that i run reboots X to login
screen. Xorg 6.9 used to work fine with
my v5500 pci.

Any clues gentleman?

Greetings.

[mcmagostini]

I solved my problems following this link:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xorg/+bug/68291

The problems was a broken tdfx_drv.so in new distros

Now everything is fine again even with Xorg 7.x and MesaGL 6.5x

Hope that helps someone.

Regards

[ndreadnought]

 Hi, fellows!

I have two Voodoo 3 computers, and I am interested in instaling some Linux distro on them.

First one is P3 600/66, does not go to 900/100, only 75 MHz, with VooDoo 3 TV 3500 (blueBox). I have some stronger processors in stash somewhere, but the board does not boot with Coppermine procs. I shall see to this more in few days, but this is my wife's comp and I can do it not very often, as she wants her Zuma and Lines all the time which is to say Windows.

For this one I would like to configure Linux with Wine(x?) to allow her to play her games and get rid of MS from that machine.

So, any ideas and suggestions? I am not familiar with Wine, since I am not a gamer.

Second comp is more difficult. It is MSI 6168 Voodoo 3 2000 integrated with 8 MB. I have seen a thread about almost the same model of mainboard here, from some Packard Bell model. But my one is not Packard Bell, the colours on the board sinks and connectors are not the same, and graphic memory is the same (EliteNT). At the moment I am not able to make it work with any of FCPGA adapters and procs. It boots only with Slot1 processors. I think that I don't have the proper adapter. So for the time being, I am interested in installing some simple Linux Distro on it and use it mostly to admin my domains, probably not very demanding, some blog or forum and mail server.

 Today, components for these old guys are more expensive than new models, so I will not use much memory, probably not more than 128 for each. Don't want to invest in those, since I already have P4 3GHz and Athlon 64 3000+ machines, which are cheaper to put more mem for better gain.

  Also, someone said that ASUS P2B works with almost anything. I have P2B-D (dual) and two slot1 P3 processors, one 450 MHz and the other 500 MHz. I wonder what should be smarter, to configure that as a server, and try to find a better FCPGA adapter for this integrated MSI 6168 Voodoo 3 board, or try to play more with adapters and make a pair  perhaps with two FCPGA adapters and ASUS? But I don't have a Voodoo board for that one. I would have to rely on some other older AGP card for that, or even PCI which I have a truckload of old ones.

  What I am most interested in is what to use for best result with Voodoos on Linux? At home I have Fedora 4, Mandriva 2006, Suse 9 & 10, Free BSD 5 - some basic install, only 250 MBs, Slack 9 and Debian 3 "Woody" and some Ubuntu, as well as some older distros. Net is not a problem, at least not big, I am on a cable 256 flat non-stop. Did not take much time reading the Forum, but I realise some people here wrote some nice stuff for Voodoo, on Linux as well.

[Dr.Yak]

> Voodoo3 & Linux
Work out-of-the-box with most distro up to Xorg 6.8. Though a small handful of distros don't install Glide by default (needed for 3D).
Starting from Xorg 7.2 there's a bug in the Mesa 3D driver that needs some patching (see above discussion) and you have to provide a Glide library (I don't know any distro that still provides Glide as of Xorg 7.2)
2D still works flawlessly.

Cards doesn't necessarily need to be AGP, since voodoo don't use AGP texturing. The only reason to use is that AGP bus is faster (~66Mhz depending on bus overclocking), whereas most PCI bus found in non-server motheroard only work at half that speed (32bits 33Mhz) and doesn't benefit from the PCI-X extensions (64bits, 66Mhz).

> Wine and Games
I don't exactly know, It's been a time since I last used wine to play games. (Still dual boot).
Wine coming with the majority of distros has "wineconf" tool for graphical configuration (which is basically pointing which directories should be accessible as which device/drive letters under emulated Windows).

You may also try CrossOver or Cedega, but I have even less experience with them. You can also try linux variants of the games (3D engines from ID software and Epic are available under Linux too or have been ported by the community. So all Quakes, Dooms, Wolfensteins, Unreals, and some games sharing the engines can be run without wine) (other have been ported from open-sourced projects, or re-implemented : like Descent, Freespace or Homeworld. Or even Scumm and SCI point'n'click adventure games). Also don't forget the completly new reimplementation of game concept (like FreeCiv broadly inspired by Civilisation and such. Good game and less ugly if you change the tileset). The main problem will be graphical powers : anything newer than Quake3 / Return to Castle Wolfenstein may require too much compared to what the Voodoo3 can handle. You may need to lower the quality settings.

Also, there aren't as many nice graphical utilities to tweak the settings (there's driconf from freedesktop's website, but I don't know how much it supports tdfx driver). The good news is, as Glide is shared between Windows and Linux, most of the registry keys used in Windows can be used as environment string under linux (you can use the same FX_GLIDE_* names as in the windows .INI file)


> Coppermine processors, Asus P2B-D, etc.

Important readings :
P2B CPU upgrade FAQ
440BX RAM upgrade FAQ (Note: Crucial has such 440BX compatible Ram sticks, I use them)
Tweaking a P2B with a soldering Iron

The main difference between Coppermine and previous CPU is a slightly lower voltage and additionnal pins signalling the lower voltage (older CPU select voltage using 3pins, coppermine have a fourth pin).
Tualatin do really lower voltage and use different pin-out.

All of those processors have different microcodes than the previous PIII. With PC processors, the microcode is software modified and is loaded at boot time.

The strategy :

For BIOS :
- You should upgrade you BIOS. You have luck : most motherboard manufacturer like ASUS & MSI did provide BIOSes (or Alpha version of BIOSes) compatible with latest processors from Intel.
- Machine manufacturer like HP or Dell don't do that much update, you may end up manually modifying the BIOS, if it doesn't BOOT at all.
- If it BOOTs with an older BIOS, you can still upload Intel's  latest microcode from within Linux ( /proc/microcode )

For voltage, you have three situations :
- The motherboard has a complex voltage regulator that can support the special lower voltage of coppermine (even have a Tualatin-compatible Abit Slot-1 motherboard !?!).
In this case you need just a slotcket adapter that is compatible with the processor (most are, for Coppermines. For Tualatin there are a few company that produce compatible slotkets : some models from PowerLeap and most other similar companies).

- The processor voltage cpability and the CPU voltage requirement, aren't that much apart. As an exemple : non Coppermine-compatible mother board can go as low as 1.80 and ~1GHz Coppermines require 1.75v. It's almost the same. It close enough to be compatible. But the 3-pins signaling of the motherboard can't understand the voltage request of the CPU and can't provide the adapted voltage.
Then you need some slightly more complex slotcket which can override the voltage settings and force 1.80v (something that the motherboard can produce). It works like a charm with my 1.1Ghz 1.75V coppermine and I've read that with proper cooling other models shall work too (say, a 1.65v one).

- The processor is a Tualatin which is incompatible with most 440BX motherboard. Get a slotcket with it's own Tualatin-compatible voltage regulators and pinouts. It'll provide the needed voltage by itself (I use this on another Asus P2B mother board). Note: If you use non-air-blowing-based cooling solution (like water cooling) don't forget to cool the voltage regulator too (just put some small ram-heatsink) and check for leaky caps (one blew in an older slotcket).

(A fourth solution : modify the motherboard it self as per the 3rd source).

> Dual 450Mhz & 500Mhz
As you know, SMP with processor like PIIIs require both CPU to work at the same speed.
The problem is : the multiplier is locked on them. I don't know if you can hack something to make them both run at 450Mhz (or overclock them to 500Mhz).

[Dr.Yak]

Just a quick update regarding 3dfx DRI acceleration on Linux.

The bug that caused problems has been fixed in latest version of Xorg 7.2 and Mesa 6.5.2
Be sure to upgrade your distribution (I've heard that it's available in Ubuntu Fiesty. For openSUSE 10.2, you must add the repository "xorg72" from software.opensuse.org, I don't know about the other).

Also you still have to provide your own glide3x. (Debian is the only distribution still providing it. The deb package can be imported into debian-based distro like Ubuntu. For others, either you manually extract it from debian package, or you can use an older version that you copy from an earlier version of you distro).