Voodoo 3 pci

[Jay Estabrook]

Jay Estabrook wrote:
> Michael Kronsteiner wrote:
>> is anything good/bad known about the status of this card? i got one toda
>> y and cant wait to test it anyway :D hope to be able to replace at least
>> one of these f...ine ati rage xl blah cards
> 
> I believe it works fine for 2D under AC3 (Xorg 7.1). The 3D support was
> rewritten/reorganized recently to do away with the Glide library,
> IIRC, and AFAIK hasn't since worked (in 3D) on Alpha.

Just had the chance to (re)try Voodoo3 3000 PCI again under AC3 on DS10,
and here's what I found:

Configured first for 2D only (comment-out the 'Load "dri"' line in
/etc/X11/xorg.conf), the server crashed the machine hard, requiring
a power cycle.

Solved that problem by adding 'Option "SWCursor" "true"' line to the
Device Section in the config file; then everything worked fine in 2D.

Leaving sotware cursor enabled, re-edited the config file for 3D by
reactivating the 'Load "dri"' line. Everything came up, but as soon
as a 3D operation was tried, in this case only "glxinfo", it crashed
the server (but thankfully not the machine).

Updated the TDFX driver from xorg-x11-drv-tdfx-1.3.0-2.fc6.src.rpm, and
had success using the hardware cursor, but 3D operation still crashed
the server... :-(

Note also that 3D screen resolution is limited to 1024x768 if you have a
Voodoo3 3000 or Banshee card with only 16MB of videoRAM... :-\

On a different note, I found that ETCH 40r0 support for Voodoo3 3000 on
DS10 all "just worked" in both 2D and 3D - no config file changes were
needed, though the limitation noted above (1024x768) was also enforced.

So, bottom lines for Voodoo3 3000 16MB PCI:

1. AC3 needs a software cursor enabled to run at all
2. AC3 won't run 3D at all
3. ETCH 40r0 runs it OOTB
4. 3D support for 16MB videoRAM cards is limited to 1024x768 resolution

Good luck.

--Jay++

-- 
Jay A Estabrook                            HPTC - XC I & B
Hewlett-Packard Company - ZKO1-3/D-B.8     (603) 884-0301
110 Spit Brook Road, Nashua NH 03062       Jay.Estabrook at hp.com