Hi folks,

Just tried swapping my Radeon 8500 for an agp Voodoo 3 I received from
ebay (2nd hand but allegedly working).
All I get is a black screen - no OF, nothing.

Does this mean the Voodoo is a dodo?

Have you checked if it's properly installed? Is the monitor connected to the card? (at times I manage to miss this very important step and sit confused for a moment)

If the Voodoo is a working one, it have to work without any further hassles. (I regularly swap my radeon and voodoo when demoing this and that, but for home I stick to my radeon, despite the lack of Warp3D support)

Hi !

I had the same problem few times ago...
If your pegasos boot but you have no vidéo out, it is a bios problem.
Almost of the voodoos are bios compatible with the firmware of the pegasos but
sometimes they don't (special bios). I tried to change it but it doesn't work.
You can either check it works on pc ! but not on the pegasos.
So you're unlucky, you buy one of these... :(

Perhaps you will have more chance with another one ;)
If you could, try it before buying...

Peg4a

Hi Warface,

I think I checked everything. I swopped it back and forth with the
radeon a few times in succession. Radeon output gfx, voodoo didn't.

My g/f's old pc has no agp so I can't test it there.
I could test it in the A1 but I don't have a case for that at the
moment.

@peg4a:

I feared it might be something like that. Oh well, guess I'll just
have to punt it back to e-bay.

Could it be a radeon for a mac? I think they are different somehow, and may not work.

>Just tried swapping my Radeon 8500 for an agp Voodoo 3

Why would you want to do that? Voodoo cards seem to be significantly slower for desktop use than Radeon cards. I get complaints from Voodoo users that window switching of my software is too slow (it defaults to SMARTREFRESH windows). A Radeon 7500 has no such problem, window switching occurs instantly even with ten such windows.

Quote:
Wasn't it the Voodoo, that was notworking?

I had a similar problem with my Voodoo3500. The screen is black in the openfirmware screen, but the computer boots anyway. I did the modifications to boot from hard disk with a virge and later plugged the V3. I don't have visible OF but I don't care much, my computer boots MOS without problems.

This may or may not help, but is there a pci card in the slot next to the agp slot? When I had my agp radeon card and a pci card next to it, I had serious stability problems.

@Dietmar:

I should be able to see Pro Station Audio properly with a Voodoo.

@Crumb:

Which modifications did you make to boot from HD?

OK - it gets weirder.

I got a case for my Amiga1 and the Voodoo works with it.
(Well, I haven't connected a CDROM or HD yet but I get the 3dfx OF
screen.)

:-?

mmm it could be that your voodoo doesn't fit very well in the agp slot due to your case and it doesn't make good contact.

About the auto boot... you have to write some lines in the smart firmware prompt... I can't remember the lines but remember that you have to write correctly the partition and the ide unit, the document is available in the genesi's ftp.

Quote:

If it was due to the case, wouldn't the Radeon be similarly affected?

Gfx cards aren't exactly the same size... try to put the gfx card without screws but put it firmly to see if it makes contact correctly. If it does you may have to bend slightly the metal piece to make it fit better.

It happened me with a Voodoo3 3000 on my peecee... the V3 didn't make good contact but TNT2M64, Intel740,Trident3D,Trio3D and GeForce2MX fitted perfectly. I simply bent a little the metal to make it fit correctly in the AGP slot and to be able to put the screw correctly.

@crumb:

Thanks for the tip. After much fiddling, I got it to work.

Now I've forgotten how to reset the screenmode to 1024x768 (yet again ) *and* my modem now makes a screeching sound on boot up which is *very* weird.

@ crumb,


Quote:

If you are talking about screenmodes in Ambient then
a) check Settings/System settings.../ModeEdit whether you have alredy defined a screenmode you wish to use

b) check Settings/System settings.../Screenmode and edit the Ambient settings to the desired screenmode




Quote:

Just a really wild guess: Is your modem connected to the serial port? If yes it *might* be that some debug information will be sent to it.
You can sent debug information to ram by setting the option "ramdebug" to your boot-file settings in OF (e.g. setenv boot-file boot.img ramdebug).



Bye HAK

@HAK:

Quote:

I managed to get that sorted eventually. Not sure what I was doing wrong there.


Quote:

Yes.

Quote:

Ahh - why would this not happen with the Radeon?

Quote:

Thanks. I'll try that tonight.

@Robert:
"Thanks for the tip. After much fiddling, I got it to work."

that's great!

BTW I would suggest to the MOS team to put an option to force ambiant to open a screen in 640x480 and 60hz pressing a key or something similar... if you save a wrong configuration or if you change your monitor you end up without the possibility of changing the screenmode easily.