A Bug I found in Rebirth 0.58.1 & 3dfx History xD

[(LoD)Tylosaurus]

Nah it's not that actually, the PCI-ework was needed to solve the follwoing issue:

PCI Rework Background
Background- The V5-6000 has a fundamental flaw in the board design; When the PCB was laid out, the internal routing for the PCI bus traces were run against the VSA-100 2.9 V core voltage plane. The PCI bus refers to the internal network that the VSA-100 chips and HiNT chip passes data back and forth. The PCI traces do not have reliable signal return, it is like transmitting signal on a single wire without a ground reference. The most noted issue was board instability when running in anti-aliasing modes, the noise on the bus would cause crashes and lockups. One attempted fix was to lower the VSA-100 speeds from 183 mhz to 166 mhz, unfortunately this still did not address the issue and the problem remained . The "PCI rework" as it is known is a fix by ex-3dfx engineer Hank Semenec to bring stability to the V6K so it can function in all modes. The rework applies to PCB versions 210-0391-001-A and 210-0391-001-A3, it also might work on other revisions but has not been tested. The fix was not suitable for production use as it disables a circuit that compensates for process shift in the VSA-100 silicon from production lot to production lot. It changes the PCI clock alignment with respect to control and data signals from the HiNT bridge to VSA-100's, it gives more setup time for the signals. The actual hardware changes involve adding 4.7k resistors at locations RR540, R589, R717, R714 and changing the 22ohm resistors to 0 ohm resistors at the following locations – R734, R743, R735, R745. Hank indicated it took him about 60 hours of time over a 3 month period to come up with the fix and walks a fine line between working and not. Hank indicated another shift in the PCI clock as small as 1 nano-second would render the board non-functional.

Hank Semenec applied the PCI-Rework on the first Voodoo5 6000 in 2002, He was one of the chief Engineers that worked on the Voodoo5 6000 Program, he also lead the 3dfx Daytona program.
The VSA-101 was nicknamed 3dfx Daytona this was a VSA-100 @ .18 Micron over 0.25 micron and it had 64Bit & 128Bit DDR SDRAM support.
This resulted far greater speeds with much lower power draw.
a Voodo4-2 4200 AGP/PCI DDR has been running stable @ 250Mhz Core/mem without the need of a heatsink! the ram would run 500Mhz DDR..
There was a Voodoo5 6000 AGP with 128Bit DDR planned, but then with 4x 64MB 128Bit DDR, the clockspeeds would of been Core/mem 250Mhz, many things were planned but never achieved.

The complexity of the Voodoo5 6000 wasn't much of a big deal, okay the card needed to be big, but it were things like Motherboard compability, the PCI- to PCI Bridge chips thatwere Intel based were hideous, even Intel baed motherboard gave major issues with these.
The HiNT HB1 SE-66 was used for later Voodoo5 600 models this solved many things the Intel chips gave, but still the motherboard compability issues remains certain cards could not function with FSAA and others had other oddissues.
The PCI-Rework solved 90% of all the issues, Hank Semenc worked on the Voodoo5 6000 tiil he found a solution and his PCI-Rework as the fix to many nightmares, if this fix was found during the time 3dfx was around the Voodoo5 6000 would of seen daylight.

Want to read alot about the Voodoo5 6000 and the different revisions give this a read:
https://descendentstudios.com/community ... s/?p=34719

Found my topic @ DU, might be easier for your guys to read as beinga member there as well, I was asked to make one there Void Stalker loved it hehe

Here the Voodoo5 6000 in my test system back in the day when I had it:


Sys Specs:

AMD AthlonXP 2700+ Thoroughbred-B @ 2167Mhz
3x 512MB PC-2700 CL2 @ DDR-333Mhz
EPoX EP-8K3A+ Ver 1.1 With VIA Apollo KT333 Chipset
3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP 128MB Rev.A 3700
Intel Pro 100S Server Ethernet Adapter
ASUS 5 Port USB 2.0 PCI Card
Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live! 5.1
EIZO FlexScan T662-T 20"CRT 1600 x 1200 x32 @ 85 Herz
Enermax Modu 520+ 525Watt PSU
AddTronics 6896A Entry Level Server Tower

Windows 2000 Professional USA + Service Pack 4
AmigaMerlin 3.1 R11

Drivers:


FSAA Settings:


The Voodoo5 6000 could handle Super Sampled Rotated Grid FSAA x2, x4 & x8

[organic io (formerly goldie)]

Man, as much as I loved 3dfx back in the day, from reading your report it sounds like they just couldn't get it together as far as design problems. I wonder what the world would be like if they had stayed around though and remained a 3rd competitor in the graphics card market. Nowadays you only have two choices: ATI and nvidia. And personally I've had some really crap cards from ATI that had various problems, so I'll only ever go with nvidia now.

[(LoD)Tylosaurus]

Don't forget Matrox too they made some brillaint concepts as well like their Matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB DDR I haveone of these in my first 2CPU build :



2x Intel Pentium!!!/EB 1Ghz Coppermine, 2x 256KB L2
ABiT VP6 Raid Ver 1.0
4x 512MB PC-133 ECC Reg CL2.5 HP / Micron Crucial
Matrox Parhelia AGP 256MB 256Bit DDR Rev.A 0105 @ AGP x4
3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI 64MB 256Bit SDR Rev.A1 2900 [in practical 2x 32MB 128Bit SDR]
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy2 Platinum eX
Intel Pro/1000 MT Fast Ethernet Adapter
ASUS NEC 5 ported USB 2.0 PCI 32 bit card
1x Seagate Barracuda V 10+ 80 GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA 133 HDD @ Ultra ATA 100
1x NEC DVD-RW ND 1300A Ultra ATA 100
Addtronics 7896A Server Tower
Antec True Power 550P EPS 12V + 2.3V 550Wat PSU + External Molex
Samsung SyncMaster 943
Compaq S710 17" CRT

Windows XP Professional USA + Service Pack 3
Matrox Parhelia Power Desk Drivers September 2003
SFFT Alpha 41 Modified by ps47 for 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 PCI





We had all these to choose from:

3dfx
Matrox
S3 (Sight-Speed-Sound)
XGI
SiS
Number Nine
BitBoys
Trident
Intel
ATi
nVidia
PowerVR
SGI
3D Labs
Cirus Logic

Probably a lot more too, point being most of us here, or at the 3dfx communities or the Retro games & Hardware communites we all come from a time where you really had choice over numerous brandsand alot of good ones too, and now not much remains.. Rather a disappointment.

All we can do is revive these memories be using retro builds and this is how I have maintained these memories, just by using the hardware from back then, today.

And btw the Matrox Parhelia had the same ingame performance a the Voodo5 6000 with the latest SFFT Drivers, which is pretty awesome, since the 6000 is rom Week 37 Year 2000, the one I had, as where the Parhelia is from 2002 or later, a Parhelia performs like a GF3 Ti500 in some cases it was faster than the Ti4200.

Atm I use the AMD Radeon R9 290X this is the ebst GPU I ever worked with it beats a GTX 970 evena 980 when using 4K Reso's even it's like a year older, I have had a more nasty experience with NVIDIA over ATI their drivers are trashy imo, but there yougo a very reversed experience over yours rofl.

My best GeForce Cards ever were the EVGA GeForce GTX 295 Red Editions, I Still have these 2 of 500 made in the world as Jacob Fremean PM'ed me in person about.
Jacob Freeman is EVGA's RP Manager

Here they lay to rest


That stands in my living room, they all work as well

[organic io (formerly goldie)]

Wow, you are quite the connoisseur. Very impressive collection. I'm afraid my collection of $1 store USB cables or drumsticks can't really compare....

[(LoD)Tylosaurus]

hah xD well it took me years to gain all of that but it was well worth it and very educate

It's funny though how people complain about drivers of production cards I tried themmyself andf theyare peanuts when comparing on getting certain Engineering Samples up and running xDDD
As Descent collecting goes Iam sure you seen this as well:
https://descendentstudios.com/community ... s-intro-8/

It's the largest Descent/Freespace game collection in the world my goal was to collect the most omplete archive and share that with the community
Been collecting all that since October 24, 1994, my latest addition is a Mint in Box Spacetec IMC Space Orb 360


Box rear:


Space Orb Drivers, Software and Manual top:


Major thanks go to PyroJocky for linking me this from ebay.it (Italy) I bought it immedietly after the moment he linked me it

[roncli]

Oh god, don't show Mark that, he might try to buy that off you. He might even start playing Wyndham again.

[Mark392]

Thanks, Ron. But I already have three mint condition fully boxed spaceorb 360's. As well as a mint condition Spaceball Avenger (predisessor to the Orb). Stop saying that word. I WILL FONG YOU!

[(LoD)Tylosaurus]