Bericht Umbau V5500PCI auf V5500MAC

  • News!

    I forced disable VSYNC in the driver options. With VSYNC disabled, the donut demo renders glitchless! So the problem seems to be connected to vsync.

    Unreal is clean (besides some expected tearing because of disabled vysnc). Only chasm is still unplayable, but it seems a little less distorted than with vsync activated. Looks like some synchronizing signal is not connected somehow, and disabeling vsync is a workaround in some cases. I measured the VSYNC-Pin on the IC, it is clearly connected to its trace and it is not shorted to neighbouring pins. So that's not the issue.

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Physikant (7. Januar 2022 um 21:44)

  • News!

    I forced disable VSYNC in the driver options. With VSYNC disabled, the donut demo renders glitchless! So the problem seems to be connected to vsync.

    Unreal is clean (besides some expected tearing because of disabled vysnc). Only chasm is still unplayable, but it seems a little less distorted than with vsync activated. Looks like some synchronizing signal is not connected somehow, and disabeling vsync is a workaround in some cases. I measured the VSYNC-Pin on the IC, it is clearly connected to its trace and it is not shorted to neighbouring pins. So that's not the issue.

    Hey nice, I even forwarded @Hank Semenec a message of this at x-3dfx since I am friended to him I am curious if he may know more hmm

    What you could do is try to enable V-Sync in the games you play, and hopingly this will eliminate the page tearing, just an idea.

  • Hank answered over in the x-3dfx group at FB:

    Zitat

    V5 master does not drive digital out. It is configured in digital sli. Only slave drives the data to master. You get sli stripes.

  • Hank answered over in the x-3dfx group at FB:

    Zitat

    V5 master does not drive digital out. It is configured in digital sli. Only slave drives the data to master. You get sli stripes.

    You beat me right to it, I asked Hank myself and he always replies to me since heck he invited me to x-3dfx at the first place!
    But yea I did tell Hank that when disabling V-Sync the image was fine, this I don't understand yet tho.

    Then why even mount a DVI-D to a V5 if V5 Master has no digital out anyway?

  • I suspect a Sli problem too. V5 Sli seems to be 32 lines, exactly the height of my bars. If I increase the resolution, the number of bars increase to keep the 32 pixel width.

    It looks like the V5 master ist working correctly, because it is probably the only one generating an image in 2D-mode, like windows, and in this situation everything works fine. And it is always starting with the second SLI-bar, that the problem happens, the first bar is displayed correctly.

    So it looks like my slave VSA100 is not outputting singal to my DVI chip. Perhaps it needs some hardware configuring i overlooked?

    I carefully checked a shot of the V5500mac i found via google and compared it to my card. It looks identical, besides that one resistor close to the RAM above the right VSA100, it is labeled R91. This one is always covered by the fan power wires in the shots and I can not see, if there is a resistor, or not.

    Should i try to remove this one?

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Physikant (8. Januar 2022 um 11:21)

  • No, thats not it. I removed it, and windows is not booting anymore. Putting it back solves that.

    Hank got back to me :)

    ------------------------------

    Hank Semenec:

    See if sli disable will restore the display. The digital out function shares the same signals with sli. I think we were short on pins on vsa100 to have 2 digital ports. Kind of sad, now a 5$ lattice part would have solved the problem.
    ------------------------------


    I hope this helps you a bit, it's kind of beyond me rofl :topmodel:

  • How can i disable SLI? I know that i can set AA to single chip mode, but that doesen't disable SLI generally, right?

    SLI can be disabled in the FSAA Tab, just set the card to Single Chip mode< which you can do here:


    Here the same setting if using V.Control 1.82b

    Would be nice if there was a way to do FSAA x2 in Single chip mode since in a hypothetical theory this should be doable.
    Single chip mode disabled SLI afaik, only the Main VSA-100 will be used as it's the only chip that is digitally signed. same goes for Voodoo5 5000 & 6000 cards.
    they all work like a V4 4500 in that sense, only no FSAA x2 can be used, since the drivers don't have an option backed in for that for single chip mode like a V4 does have.

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Gold Leader (8. Januar 2022 um 12:47)

  • Okay. This is awkward.

    I tried to update my schematic of the DVI region and was tracing lines with my multimeter, especially searching for the VSYNC-line (for anyone interested, it looks like VSYNC does not come from the left VSA100, i was not able to find the signal there, but it IS connected to the Atmel controller in the top center).

    After doing this tracing, I tried Gold Leaders hint to switch to single chip only mode again, being sure that doesn't help since i tried it already when Backfire asked me to do so.

    Well, what can I say; now it is working. Not only the single chip mode, but all modes, VSYNC on or off. No bars anymore. I tried Unreal with several resolutions, still working. The only thing that seems to have errors is Chasm (i only have these two games installed right now), but this doesen't correlate to any software setting and can be fixed by just restarting the game.

    It looks like now it is working as intended.

    I suspect that i had a bad connection on one of the via barrels, probably VSYNC, and by pressing my multimeter probe in the barrel, i somehow deformed it to be connected again.

    I will do some more tests, but it looks just fixed now.

    Sorry for all the hassle.

    Anyone with a good idea how I can produce a fitting slot bracket? :D

    For everyone interested, here is the schematic i've reached this far, I can supply a layout, too. The resistor values are correct now, the only part missing is the connection to the DVI output and the components related to that. And the HSYNC/VSYNC/DE signals.

  • bschicht86

    Here is a drawing i made using my hands and paint while thinking about making a fitting bracket. Please don't judge me :) , I'm far better at electronics than at anything mechanic. I was thinking about doing something with drills, a dremel and a file, but that will look horrible, for sure...


    Bier.jpg

    I played for some hours now, and I didn't have any problems, so it seems just fine. The resolution seems to have the same limits like using the VGA port, and that is what I expected, looking at the schematic.

    Yes, i can do that mod again, but this takes time and I won't do it for free. AND you have to take the risk that the card could get damaged. I'm doing electronics engieering for many years now and I have some soldering experience from many prototypes I made, but these boards are old, and I would call the pads of this TQFP-package suboptimal for hand soldering. To be honest, selling my scarce free time for even more electonic fiddeling is not something I'm really happy with...

    If this still sounds okay for you, you can contact me using my email: voodooalert (AET) nikolas-becker (DOT) de

    Otherwise I would recommend trying to source the parts from my list at my first post from ebay and soldering according to the list. It's not that impossible, just a pain to solder.

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Physikant (8. Januar 2022 um 22:11)

  • Here is a drawing i made using my hands and paint while thinking about making a fitting bracket.

    Ich habe ein Blech gefunden, welches zwischen beiden Buchsen einen TV-Out hat, wenn der dich nicht stört. Ansonsten sind DVI und VGA ~28,5mm auseinander, sodass du wohl um etwas Nacharbeit nicht drumherum kommst.

    -----

    Google-Englisch:

    I found a bracket that has a TV-out between the two sockets, if that doesn't bother you. Otherwise, DVI and VGA are ~ 28.5mm apart, so you can't avoid doing some rework.

  • What still bothers me a little is my problem with Chasm. If I start the game, in 50% of the cases (seems to be random) the images gets out of sync.

    If the sync error doesen't happen, the game works flawless. Using the VGA output, this error never happens.

    I could imagine that this is not an issue of the mod, but the V5500 DVI in general.

    I know, the game is not that good, but I have a weak spot for it because of my memories :)

    Does anybody here happen to have a Voodoo5500MAC flashed to PC compatibility and owns the game to check if this happens with all V5500MAC?

    Einmal editiert, zuletzt von Physikant (11. Januar 2022 um 17:26)

  • What still bothers me a little is my problem with Chasm. If I start the game, in 50% of the cases (seems to be random) the images gets out of sync.

    If the sync error doesen't happen, the game works flawless. Using the VGA output, this error never happens.

    I could imagine that this is not an issue of the mod, but the V5500 DVI in general.

    I know, the game is not that good, but I have a weak spot for it because of my memories :)

    Does anybody here happen to have a Voodoo5500MAC flashed to PC compatibility and owns the game to check if this happens with all V5500MAC?

    Well I do own one, a Rev.A1 2900 which uses PC Bios 1.18_DVI
    But currently it is in Germany at BackFire's home atm, so maybe Backfire could test this for you with my card, that is if it's still there at his home in Germany :)

    Since here where I live I don't seem have a DVI-D supported flat panel to test it out, so yea I too would be curious if a real V5 PCI Mac would suffer from the same thing as well.