Voodoo 4 M4800

    this is pure brulliance I'll share this at x-3dfx with credit to you sdz :respekt:8)
    16:10 is natively supported by VSA-100, would be ideal to add reso's for 16:10 as well.

    1280x800, 1440x900, 1680x1050, 1920x1200 & 2560x1600.

    Edited once, last by Gold Leader (June 4, 2024 at 4:12 AM).

    Gold Leader Thank you!

    I haven't yet done anything regarding 16:10 resolutions. The laptop I'll use this card in has a 16:9 aspect ratio screen.

    I don't think that the VSA-100 can do 1920x1200 and 2560x1600 on the digital interface. 1920x1080 is already pushing it.


    I programmed the scaler on the VSA-100 card (what I posted previously was on a small dev board I designed with only the scaler).




    Voodoo 4 M4800, LVDS output from scaler, PC test.
    youtu.be

    This is the card connected to a regular PC, LVDS output from the scaler.

    On a laptop the VSA BIOS won't be executed, and the video format will be wrong. Next step is to make some changes in the FPGA, after which the card can be plugged into the laptop.

    Edited once, last by sdz (June 4, 2024 at 12:20 PM).

    Here it is, world's first 3dfx powered laptop :)







    World's first 3dfx powered laptop
    youtu.be


    There are still a few things to do, fix brightness/contrast, figure out why the image is shifted right by about 5 pixels and fix it, read temperature sensors, control fan, send shutdown signal to host in case of overtemperature, and maybe figure out a way of controlling the panel's backlight from the OS. But the card works perfectly :)

    You can do 1920x1200 with the V5 5500 (The limit of single link DVI) you can't do 2560x1600

    But it would be Ideal if you could build a 1920x1200 screen in the notebook. Then you could run 800x600 @ pixel perfekt scaling (1600x1200)!

    2560x1600 then you can do 1024x768 @ 2048x1572. and just run the desktop @ 1280x800...

    This is crazy! I build a Laptop in a wood case with an Via C3 CPU and a Voodoo3 PCI.... with a height about 60-70mm. It looked so stupid.

    Your work ist from outa space! Thank you very much!

    If need some ideas for your future Project. The Community need a Quad SLi Bridge for Voodoo2. :love:

    Be happy he got a V4 working V5 will be complicating because lack of space in a laptop's chassis, the VSA-100 isn't small chip being 0.25 Micron like most modern Mobile chips are, so space limitations is one thing and the heat as well.

    So in the actual reality a V5M is kind of unrealistic, unless someone manages to remake the VSA-100 or better the VSA-101 to a very small die size thereby making it more useful for notebooks etc.

    All what "sdz" has done already truly blew my mind guys, this are them high valued epic 3dfx moments, but one for sure I never expected happening even we all have dreamt for a mobile 3dfx solution, well here it is.

    Edited once, last by Gold Leader (June 5, 2024 at 1:37 AM).

    Bier.jpg

    1920x1080 with regular timings on the V5 5500 DVI internally renders at 1920x1080 and actually outputs 960x1080.

    1920x1080 with the tweaked timings (that make DVI work and breaks VGA) only works for me with 1 monitor, and doesn't work with the other 5 monitor models that I have. I haven't even bothered trying 1920x1200 on the V5 via DVI output.

    Regardless, the VSA-100 could render at a lower 16:10 resolution, and the scaler will upscale that to the 1920x1200 panel resolution, if such a panel is used.


    Any panel resolution higher than 1920x1200 would require a different scaler. I can make it work, but I won't be able to release the design files because of NDAs.


    osckhar Thanks for the kind words!


    Gold Leader This card is an MXM 3.0 type A module. There are also MXM 3.0 type B models, usually found in 17" laptops. It just *might* be possible to fit two VSAs in there and make a mobile Voodoo5. It will take a lot of effort to fit all that in, and route it on the limited number of layers available for that PCB thickness.


    There would be one downside though. Because of the two VSAs, the existing cooling solution from an MXM3.0 type B laptop won't be compatible with the card.

    So this will require a custom cooling solution, which is quite expensive. (machined parts, heatpipes, fin stack, which requires a die to make the fins).

    yea hence why a V5M would be kind of unrealistic in the sense of being.
    but if there was a way to reverse engineer the VSA-100 or VSA-101 it's self then you could make these much smaller dies and inter connect them side by side on a single PCB.
    just a hypothetical theory of course, smaller dies means more play space to work with.

    Das erinnert mich an Elianda, der Mal hier unterwegs war und halt Quantenphysiker ist. Er (und wahrscheinlich noch andere Leute) haben das "Sound Interface Device" reverse engineered, das ist der uralte Audiochip in Commodore 64 Computern. Diese Chips wurden in 7µm und später 6 µm Prozessen gefertigt und hat aus ca. 30000 Transistoren bestanden. Wenn ich mich recht entsinne, hat Elianda dennoch ein Elektronenrastermikroskop dafür gebraucht, so daß er den Chip danach für absolut korrekte Softwareemulation in Java reimplementieren konnte.

    Somit wäre es wohl ein extrem schwieriger und teurer Prozess, das mit einem so komplexen Chip wie dem VSA-100 zu machen. Elianda hatte einfach Glück, weil er schon Zugang zu so einem Mikroskop hatte (und nebenher auch noch zu einem fetten Photonen-Synchrotron. 8)).

    Aber he, was weiß man. Es gibt ja Leute die schon Sachen zusammengebracht haben, die ich nie für möglich gehalten hatte, so wie komplette Voodoo 5 Karten nachzubauen...

    --

    That reminds me of Elianda, who used to be in this forum a while back and who is a quantum physicist. He (and probably some other people) reverse engineered the "Sound Interface Device", which is the ancient audio chip in Commodore 64 computers. Those chips were made on 7 µm and later 6 µm process nodes and were made up of approximately 30000 transistors. If I remember correctly, Elianda still needed an scanning electron microscope to do it, so it could be re-implemented in Java for entirely correct emulation.

    So, reverse-engineering something as complex as a VSA-100 would be a really hard and insanely expensive process. Elianda was lucky because he already had access to such a microscope (and a photon synchrotron as well by the way. 8)).

    But hey, you never know. People have already accomplished things I would've never thought would happen, like reverse engineering and manufacturing complete Voodoo 5 cards...

    1-6000-banner-88x31-jpg

    Stolzer Besitzer eines 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP Prototypen:

    • 3dfx Voodoo5 6000 AGP HiNT Rev.A-3700

    [//wp.xin.at] - No RISC, no fun!

    QotY: Girls Love, BEST Love; 2018 - Lo and behold, for it is the third Coming; The third great Year of Yuri, citric as it may be! Edit: 2019 wasn't too bad either... Edit: 2020... holy crap, we're on a roll here~♡! Edit: 2024, finally last year's dry spell is over!

    Quote Bier.jpg@IRC 2020: "Je schlimmer der Fetisch, desto besser!"

    Edited 3 times, last by GrandAdmiralThrawn (June 5, 2024 at 1:41 PM).

    With the card installed in the laptop, 64MB RAM, 200MHz core/mem clock, XP SP3, SFFT1.9, 3DMark2001SE default settings, 1024x768 32bpp, no tweaked LOD: 2148 3D Marks.

    Pretty decent for 220 rev VSA-100 and 166MHz rated RAM.


    My bad. It's a single VSA100, I think, the score is okay.

    "Du bist und bleibst a Mensch und du kannst eben net deine menschlichkeit überwinden."

    Dennis_50300

    Yeah... not really a mod...


    I managed to fix the whole image shifted right bug.

    Also, now 1920x1080 works (VSA-100 outputs 1920x1080). There are some timing issues to fix, as can be seen in the picture, but it works.



    And the following resolutions currently work fine with the card inside the laptop ( VSA-FPGA-SCALER-PANEL chain):

    640x480

    800x600

    1152x864

    1280x1024

    1600x900

    1600x1024

    1920x1080 with minor errors (which I hope will be an easy fix, but the FPGA is already pushed quite far...)

    Sadly, I have to take a break from this for about a month.

    Engineer would of been the proper word to use,as this is anew custom engineered design no other 3dfx Engineer ever designed.
    other probably words could be Creator or designer per example.