Lets say that someone who modded his Voodoo 4500 into a 64mb card.

Based on the above, lets assume that's the **only** V4 with 64mb of ram, there isn't a card like it, 3dfx never made it, and again - it's the **only** card that has 64mb per a VSA chip. (other V4/5 have 16mb/32mb per chip)

Lets say that person is in some really deep trouble, money-wise, and would even sell his left nut [but that's not the topic here]

For how much do you think, that hypothetical person, would be able to sell it?

The most correct answer : unknown and unassessable

Voodoo4 with 64mb would be possible, since it there are "free" ram spaces on the PCB, but really, how much difference in performance would that make? None. Only when using FSAA, but the again, the Voodoo 4 (one VSA 100) can only do 2x FSAA. Let's not forget a BIOS modification.

IMHO, it's not worth jack.  :D

Not *would* but *is* :)

Currently running in my machine ktnx

Actually gives about 300 more points in 3dmark2001SE, but i wasn't going to sell it as the 'ultimate V4 in performance', rather as 'just as rare as amigamerlin's Rampage'

Can you post pictures of the card please ?

Ofcourse, bit later though when i'll reboot or something of that sort

EDIT
Behold the greatness that it is :)
http://denisfak.homestead.com/files/v4564.jpg

Dump the BIOS and email it to Stanto; that's if he still takes BIOS'.

Hm, I'd be interested who did the Mod, and how he had it working out ?

(I've heard of similar Plans to mod a Voodoo5 to 128MB, but due to the Problems involved it was never realized)

id be interested in buying it just to send it to hank, maybe that would help him out with the v5 mod, seems no one else has been able to do this mod, at least that i know of,  of course on the v5 you would have to unsoder the ram and put more in its place, still how much do you think you want for it? i wish i had the skill to do such work  :(

@Lecram25
The bios i have there isn't GPL'd yet, sorry :)

@FalconFly
The hardware-level things were handled by a friend of mine, he's a master when it comes to soldering things.

Software wise, it was all me.

@VDX
I could probably do the 128mb mod for V5 pretty easily aswell, but that one has 2 VSA's, bit different bios code etc', harder work but i think it's possible too

@Patience
The memory /everywhere/ is recognized as 64mb :) dxdiag/3dfxtools/raw bios strings, you name it.

If your asking for an 'how did you do it' explenation, it's rather simple;

1) find a voodoo4 that has Hyundai ram, 6ns
2) find someone who has a GF2mx or a GF2mx400 with the same Hyundai 6ns ram (those are /very/ popular)
3) solder the ram off the GF2mx
4) clean it with alcohol etc'
5) solder it on the voodoo4
6) *clickety click* *few bios hacks* *some more bios hacks*

Viola :) you have a 64mb Voodoo4 :)

Well, if I were you, I'd start making a small series of Cards (maybe on a per-request basis), and sell them.

That should get you a nice margin there ;)

Good idea falcon, might just do that :D

@patience
Ofcourse it's possible, the thing is that you have to find /identical/ ram as your v4 is using.

And the most popular card that has Hyundai 6ns ram is the GF2mx (not mx200, that one has 64bit ram).

Hypotheticly, if i had a V4 with 6ns Samsung ram, and id'e find a card that has the exactly same ram, id'e be able to do the mod there too.

But since i never tested that situation, i'm not totaly sure. (i only had 2 V4s, both of which are Hyundai ram, one sold the other is this one)

The way I see it-

While an interesting piece any game that would need that much ram for local video would also no doubt require more horsepower and features then the V-4500's VSA-100 could provide.

I'd say it's a buyers market on such a piece.

Indeed

now this is my kind of thread, since i have no luck getting in touch with hank your the only other person that seems to be interested in this modifacation, im willing to send you a working v5 and the money  to do the work, if you think you would like to do it and come up with a price i will relocate the thread on where to get the ram needed, please let me know what you think, if you dont want to do it ill understand,


also anyone no where that thread was on the ram?  someone had it all figured out

Nera-X from the VoodooAlert.de Forum was (is?) into this a while ago...

Hynix HY57V283220-5 was being said to be only RAM possible for something like that.

But as to how far this went, I cannot tell, and I've never heard of any progress or updates.

wrote on 07.06.04 at 22:22:24:

Where would you put the additional 64 mo (or less) ? you remove the existing ? You need perhaps and also to sacrifice a Voodoo 5 in order to get the memory ?

Id'e go for replacing the existing 16*4 with some 32*4 chips.
Will be a bit hard to find the exact same chips with higher capacity, but where there's a will - there's a way.

@VDX
Sure id'e do it

First things first you have to find the same ram as on that V5 but in 32mb chips. if they even exist.
or some compatible chips [ie used on another V5 of the same revision] with higher capacity [the thing here is to get the exact same pinout]

If your intrested in all that hard work, i'll take a looksee into the V5 bios and see how to make it all work,
shouldn't be /that/ hard though.

Thing is, i have no problem risking my own hardware [v4] for such a crazy project.
but id'e feel really bad if id'e destroy someone else's V5, especially since those are getting rare-er by the day

well, ill send out some emails on the ram, as i remember someone found it but you have to buy a few, as far as the v5  id send you my o/c v5 since it hits 200 as it is, if it doesnt end up working thats ok, as long as your willing to give it a try im willing to also, first off ill see if i can get the ram, that seems to be the first objective.

Ok, ty falconfly for that info, ive sent out an email to the maker on the ram, from what i can see from there site the speed on that is 200 which is nice, i asked them if they still had any and price on minimum order, so ill wait and see, crossing my fingers

I'm expecting a high rise in demand for Hyundai memory based V4's on ebay!  8)Expect prices to double!  ;D

Yeh but sellers don't usualy specify what type of ram it has.

Heck, both v4s that i had (sold one) were listed as "3DFX Voodoo4 4500 AGP/PCI" without even specifying the amount of ram :)

just got lucky that's all

well here's the reply i got on my email i sent out on the ram ----->

Subject : Re: Hynix HY57V283220-5
Answer : Dear Customer,

Thank you for visiting our website.

We have sales channel in U.S.A.
The following is contact information.

HYNIX SEMICONDUCTOR AMERICA INC. (H.S.A)
3101 North First Street,
San Jose, CA 95134, U.S.A
Tel: 408-232-8000     Fax: 408-232-8103
E-Mail : akassak@us.hynix.com

Please contact our sales channel.
Have a nice day.

so i sent them out an email today, im not sure if they still carry this ram or not but if they do and its what we need than i want to get it, im not sure if anyone else is even interested in this since ive seen these topic's come and go all the time elsewhere but im not into any B.S.  so if and when they email me back again ill post it here.

You are saying that Voodoo 5's and Voodoo 4's are getting rare?

I can buy up to atleast 20 of each here for just $3.5 each...

Then you're lucky, in Germany you can increase this Price by a factor of no less than 10x (!)

Try to get a Voodoo5 5500 PCI here, and you'll be scratching upto 100 Euro.

If you can make it, please buy 100 Voodoo4's and 100 Voodoo5's for me; I could almost retire on the Auction outcome ;D

It's not that they are hard to replace, anyone who has the money can always find one on ebay or whatever [heck, like i said in some other thread - many retailers still have those anyway]

but if Avg.Joe sends me his hard-earned-and-paid-for voodoo5 and some not-very-cheap 4x32mb chips of ram, and i accidently burn the damn thing - it won't make him a happy man, now would it?

But heck if they cost 3.5$ to replace, start sending me your voodoos people  ;D

lol, not trying to do this mod at all would be just as bad, this will keep people involved that much longer with their 3dfx cards which is good news for me, more people means more chances that some of them will be able to help with drivers, bios, hardware. some people have moved on and thats ok, but for us that are left its nice to have hope, so please dont give up the hope, its nice to have cards in boxes sitting on shelves and looking at them once in awhile but to have it in your main rig while your gaming is better.

Agreed :)

Every little step forward is a good step for 3dfx !

...simply because if it weren't for all those little steps the Community did in the Past, we'd be sitting on nothing but 3 years old Drivers, with no know-how left to carry on.

Anyway, if there's any way of entering "mass production" (to whatever extend) for those Mods, count me in :)

First lets hope that Hyundai/Hynix still have those sitting in an old box somewhere and that they don't mind selling them for peanuts ;D

After that i'll do one v5, if it succeeds - i'll have absolutly no problem doing that 'mass production' that falcon is talking about.

If not.. well.. it's one v5 that will go down the drain

Either way, whoever will be the first guy/girl to send me his V5, please make sure you are not emotionaly bound to it :p lol

Yup, both.

See the V4 is like <V3, it's downright simple.

But in the V5 case i'll have to take care of the memory allocation for SLI [textures and all that]. i'll have to see that the SLI itself works properly, and taking care of 2 cores isn't as easy as handling one ;)

Maybe i'm wrong though, maybe 3dfx have made the v5 bios code as simple as the one on v4 - and the sli is handled via percentage of avail. memory.. don't know.. haven't looked at the source yet..

[BTW, speaking of the source, my copy is of a --very-- old revision {i'm not on the linux box right now so i can't check which rev exactly}, does anyone know where i can get a source of 1.18?]

if i dont get a reply by monday ill call them on the phone, i wonder if there is any other ram we can use if they dont have it anymore? anyone have an idea on that  just in case.

The source patience :)

What's the exact Problem with your Login there ?
You might have to delete and Restore the Forum Cookie, or you accidentally prohibited Cookies in your Browser setting or by installing 3rd Party Software (Norton Internet Security and alike spring to mind ;) )

well i just had a re-format done [stupid windows update crashed my entire registry and file allocation tables.. ARGH] so i had to retrieve my password.

I tried to use the "retrieve password" thing, and i *still* haven't got an email :(

I've sent you a Test Email to the Account you're registered with.

I got your email but i didn't get the one from the forums.. lol.. need to stop using that hotmail account


luckily i found my 'welcome to 3dfx archive' email, good thing that hotmail keeps an archive  ;D ;D

Odd...

I just had the Forum send one to myself, and it arrived within 1 Second ;)

well just got back in town and no email yet so i will contact them monday on the phone, patience what is the #'s for the replacement ram if any, do you know? just in case we need another source ::)

sent an email off to them --> www.cmbcomponents.com/
to see if they had that ram  ::)

Ain't the biggest problem with a V5 that there is no real place on the circuitboard to place the new memories? A v4 clearly has some free spaces that were meant to be used fr memory but on a V5 you have to either change the existing Memory or fuix a extra circuitboard and connect it in some weird way to the v5... or - am I wrong?

If a v4/v5 costs 35$ in Germany - why the hell doesn't I buy all the stuff they have and then earns money like hell... Well, I could but I think its a too big risk. I am not used to Ebay and such yet and doesn't have confident as I have said. Also I am underaged (17) and I think that doesn't make things better...

But you FalconFly - doesn't you Germans love to have your vacations here in Sweden? (Looking at the mooses and soo ;)) You could then buy the stuff for yourself here. I live in the south of Sweden soo if you are lucky you could even come here in a daytrip. That means if you live in the north of Germany ;)

I'm also 17 btw, and i had that 64mb V4 mod done when i was still 16 :))

lol, actually never been in Sweden, but if I ever do, I'll for sure check it out ;)

I also think a 128MB Voodoo5 Project would be by far the most difficult. Not impossible but very difficult.

^^ agreed

ok lets not give up here people, well i called them up and found that they do not sell just the ram, only the whole module, so off to frys ill go to see if there memory has those ram chips on it, if it does that would mean taking it off of there also, but hey nothing good ever comes easy :P

Since those certainly are "the" RAM specialists, I'd simply tell them the intended use/purpose for the RAM's needed.

As (I guess) the internal configuration and the Timings of the RAM are paramount (new RAM's must be compatible), they might actually be the best address to just know exactly what type of RAM you need.
(e.g. tell them the exact RAM models found on the existing Voodoo Cards, so they have a chance to look up the internal organization and any possible special requirements/features in their Database)

That way, you might reach your goal alot quicker, with the advice of the makers themselfes ;)

well i tried to tell them but the people i got in contact with told me they could not help because they only sell the ram on the module, they told me to try frys(there biggest retail account) to see if the ram we needed was on a module, in other words the person i got wasnt gonna help at all, so im gonna goto frys and see what the deal is, also im wondering if that ram came stock on any other video card manufacter cards, might be an option, it would have to be either an old card or a cheap one :-/

Hey by the way lets not give up yet, im not stopping till i try every single way of getting some ram for that v5, so far there are 3 ways i can think off:
1) original manufacter
2) off a module
3) off another video card

i have togo back to work but first im gonna start checking ati and nvidnuts cheap cards before all the cheap ones even had ddr

Hm, the original Manufacters probably only sell in large amounts (e.g. 1000 Packs), and they likely don't have these old RAM's in Stock anymore.

It's probably really the best to use it off other (possibly defective = cheap) Cards.
(hoping their owners maybe killed the GPU, but not the RAM)

So in the end, that might leave us checking all Cards of that time Period (~2000) that used the same RAM as the Voodoo4/5 Cards.

....and then EMailing dozens (hundreds?) of EBay sellers, which are selling them to find out if they have the right RAM Modules on their Cards.

PS.
I'll check my Collection in 2 days (got 24hrs shift tomorrow) to summarize what suitable RAM I might find on them.

Since IMHO the Bios Releases for the Voodoo4/5 were independent from the RAM used on them, we should have  a small series of generally compatible Modules.
Chances are, some of those were built in large volumes on other Cards as well (e.g. in special I'm thinking cheap OEM Cards using not the lastest Tech, like SiS series Boards of 2000 to 2001 or alike)

Yeah, what falcon said.

I think the best card to look for the ram is the Geforce2 GTS /Ultra (whichever came with 32mb chips) or the Radeon 7000, both [afaik] were made in 128mb configurations and should have the chips needed availible :)

Quote:

[...] or the Radeon 7000, both [afaik] were made in 128mb configurations and should have the chips needed availible :)

*ugh* , let's rather settle to solder around and defunc some NVidia Boards, than killing a nice Radeon 7000 :'(

As far as I can tell, the GF2 and Radeon 7x00 series only made it to 64MB RAM; GF3 and Radeon 8500 were the first to offer 128MB.
But with the right number of Chips (= correct Capacity per Chip) it would not matter.

....although....technically....
...wouldn't it be strange to have a unique 3dfx Voodoo5 5500 Pro/XT 8) 128MB..."powered by NVidia" ?! http://www.falconfly.de/img/crazysmile.gif

/ me stops exercising deeper RAM Philosophy now, and goes to bed :-X

yeah it would, my unique V4 is 'powered by nvidia geforce2mx'  ... lol

Wait but what about double-sided ram? (like on many 8500's, you have one chip on each side of the .. uh.. "slot" [?])


or am i dreaming now?

pricewatch.com --> go under sdram, lots of cards there, could be the ones under the 64 mb section, cant see if all memory is on front or not, plus what mempry they have is the pin out ok? someone stated it had to be the same before and im not to tech inclined lol

also maybe something like this -->  http://cgi.msn.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14916&item=3486624739&rd=1&ssPageName=WDVW

i sent an email to owner to have him send #'S off one of the rams

ok last post lol, now if this memory worked it could take care of 2 cards, not too bad, its fairly cheap and brand new --> http://store5.yimg.com/I/memx_1797_31031757

DenisF: Aha - another 17 years old :) Cool! How did you get the knowledge really to make such a thing? I myself are intrested in electronics but have never really got to learn too put things together. And how did you figure out the bios stuff? Or it maybe is somewhat obvious when you see the source and more than just binary numbers?

What memory are you after? Are you trying to exchange the existing with memorys with double storage capabilities or are you trying to put the double amount of memory chips?

If you can exchange the existing with bigger ones it would be the easiest - but I think it may be tricky.

Even though it might be even more tricky to place extra ram-modules to the card but it would be easy to find them at least - just slaughter a V5 ;)

If I just could figure out how I would gladly do it because of the amount of V5s I have...

So many questions ;D

1. just experiment with stuff till they work.. heh
i did the hardware mod a couple of week prior to getting the bios to properly initialize the extra ram modules.

It's a logic thing, a bios source code is no different than php source code, once you get the drift of what those 3dfx programmers did, and where/how they did it, it's rather easy to figure these things out.

2. Well my mod was to simply add 32mb [4x8mb chips] to the empty slots on the reference V4 design.

But now VDX wants me to do the never-before-attempted 128mb V5 mod, which goes for exchanging the 4x16mb chips with 4x32mb chips,
[much harder, mind you :P]

3. "If you can exchange the existing with bigger ones it would be the easiest - but I think it may be tricky."
quite the contrary my friend, initializing 4 extra slots is a hell lot easier than trying to convince the bios that it has more memory than it's supposed to.
And the routines on that V5 for memory management aren't the cleanest iv'e seen so far. [not that iv'e seen so much.. anyway]

Hm, my Voodoo5's have 8x 8MB Chips...
(don't forget the Card's other side, which holds 4 RAM's as well ;) )

I never actually /had/ a voodoo5, to be perfectly honest ;)

BTW
stupid me.. i went all over the web searching for the sources of V5's 1.18 bioses.. and the whole time it was sitting in my 3dfx_source folder =\

* smacks self

Yes, there is 8 ram modules on a v5 as FalconFly say - 4 on the front and 4 on the back...

Why would it be easier to attach new ones? Then you would have to figure out where to connect those rams instead of just using existing lines on the circuitboard...

I could imagine, worst case the only way might be to actually use the same amount of Modules, but only have their address range being used to 50%.
That may end up using up 256MB on a 128MB Card.

But since the Voodoo4 also has one design using only 50% of available RAM positions, it might be as simple as a line of Bios Code.

ok, how about a geforce2 mx 400, they come with 64mb and it looks like thats just 4 rams ( at least all i can see, cant seem to find a rear photo) so i could get 2 new ones for around 70.00,  you used a gforce2 for your 4500 and it works , what do you think?-->http://www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/product_spec.asp?MPSNo=14&PISNo=74

35 USD for a 4 year old nvidia card?
man.. your nuts..

*hint* eBay *nudge*

and now that we have this invaluable piece of information [that the v5 has more ram slots than i thought] i'm actually thinkin that this whole thing might just work  ;D

ok so you think the memory will be ok of that card? the reason im looking at a new card is i didnt want to take the chance of some burned out memory, but i could check to see if its working first

well i am just dumb, ;D
but wouldn't it be more efficient to replace the 6ns memory with 5ns memory or is this imposible?

but i am also interrested in a v4 64MB or v5 128MB

greetz SnaG

Hi,

recently mi Voodoo4 passed away because of a stock heatsink removal (yeah, me stupid, I deserve to die), but the card itself and the memory chips remain untouched. If anyone is interested in getting 32 mb of reliable ram to make this mod, he/she can send me a message. I don't like the idea of collecting a defunct card, at least I would find a use for it.

that would be good for a v4 to 64mb upgrade i guess. on that heatsink removal, ive never had a problem and this may help you in the future, i put card in freezer in antistatic bag for about an hour, that crystlizes the glue and i pop the heat sink right off, anyways sorry to hear about your card

I think he probably damaged the core, if that's the prob - nothing you can really do

i mean.. memory mods are fun and all.. but replacing a core? out of my league sorry :p

I know what you mean@DenisF! :o

If someone wanted to replace a core you'd need :P: -

1. A replacement 'core' chip (well DUH!) ::)
2. A PCB rework station ($3000-5000!!!) :o
3. Patience (not our admin... ::))
4. A LOT of skill! ::)

In other words, for the profesionally trained technician ONLY! 8)

I have 10 of those in my garage  ;D

(professional techs, that is  :D)

yikes fella's i was talking bout putting the ram off that v4 onto another ::)

ok, i dont know anything about these cards, so well there do for the ram swap? does anone know? http://cgi.msn.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5104052471&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1

got 6 days to let me know...

*lol*

This guy is making a fortune off us there *g*

Anyway, seems very expensive for 4 of those el-cheapo GF2MX Cards IMHO.

what do you mean Patience?   ::)   i was thinking of buying them if memory would be what is needed, as long as there is no memorey on other side it would be of right size? plus this is type card denisf already used for ram on his card right? i dont know thats why im asking in case anyone else does :-/

oh, thats not a good price, i havent really checked it out much, i was hoping to get at least 2 or 3 cards, didnt know how much ram he might go thru trying this mod

I used a GF2mx for mine yeh, doesn't really matter if it's the 400 or not. [the only different thing there is the core speed]

And i used that simply cause my V4 was sporting Hyundai 6ns SDR, and the most popular card at that time that had the same exact ram was the GF2mx.
so i used that..

if whoever's voodoo5 i'll get is using Samsung/Infenion/MT ram and that whoever can find a card that's using the same exact ram, i have no problem trying the mod there.

So you shouldn't go on hunting hyundai's :)

btw, so far iv'e found these boards with same ram as v4/5 used;
Radeon SDR
Radeon 7200
Riva TNT2 Pro
GeForce SDR
GeForce 2 MX/400
GeForce 4 MX 420
SiS 300
SiS 315
Trident Blade XP

Although not all of the above have 64mb versions.

hmm, well first thing ill go out and get a magnifer so i can read that ram, then ill go from there, very soon i think we will be ready, ty for all your help, team effort and all.

Is the reason why the GeForce2MX memory can be used, is because it uses SDR RAM??

I never knew that, as I always thought it was similar to the other GTS/Pro/Ultra series.

I use a nVidia GeForce2 Pro, so I guess that would be out of the question as it uses Elite MT DDR memory?  ???

Hope orders can start soon.  ;D

wrote on 24.06.04 at 11:27:06:

Is the reason why the GeForce2MX memory can be used, is because it uses SDR RAM?? I never knew that, as I always thought it was similar to the other GTS/Pro/Ultra series. I use a nVidia GeForce2 Pro, so I guess that would be out of the question as it uses Elite MT DDR memory?  ???

I'll repeat again, the ***only*** reason why i used a GF2mx is becuase it had the same ram as my V4, for heaven's sake people stop thinking that it's the only possible card :P

And yeh the GF2mx is the only GF2 that has SDR ram.
There /are/ a few cards that have DDR, and advertised as "WHOOPASS GF2MX DDR!!!1OENOEN", but they have 64bit DDR, which is just as bad as 128bit SDR

The ram on the V4/5 is pretty much standard.
SDR, 6ns, 166mhz.
I just didn't want to use different chips than what was already there, to avoid any kind of potential incompatibility. [my V3, actually has ram from 3 makers on it.. lol]

And no my friend, DDR is not possible.
The core just doesn't support it,
and even if the core did - trying to hack a bios to use a completely different type of ram, is not a hobby - it's a job :) [if you get what i mean :P]

well i still havent gotten to see what the rams are that i have, ive been very busy im sorry, but i wonder what ram the g2 mx used, and if they only used 1 kind?

Standard 166mhz 6n SDR, most commonly Hyundai ram was used, but in other cases Samsung, Infenion and Siemens were used aswell.

[early nVidia reference designs used 5.5ns ram clocked at 183mhz, i actually have one of these beta boards made by nVidia, but as far as i know no retail boards had 183mhz ram]

The Ram of the V5 5500 should work, shouldn't it? I've got a damaged V5, so the Ram could be used for a V4 with 64MB.

i havent given up(just to let you know) ive been stuck with overtime at work for 2 weeks now, plus im trying to get my 3dfx mod theme case together which always seems to need a part i dont have yet,  so please dont give up on idea.

okay my Voodoo4 4500 AGP has this memory reading:

SAMSUNG 043
K4S643232C-TC60

_{UL1604CA KOREA}

So how can I find out how many ns my ram is?

here's a photo of my Voodoo4 4500 AGP Rev 3300 A0:

ftp://213.10.80.171/3dfxPictures/3dfx%20Voodoo%204%204500%20AGP%20Front%202.jpg

and what about a 256MB Voodoo5 6000  ::)

Lets see...
V6k have 128mb, spread across 16 chips, [8 back, 8 front, right?], that means each chips is 8 meg.

Can be easily replaced with 16m chips.
The problem is digging up 16 chips of the same make and latency.. heh

But that can be done, for sure.

Another problem would be finding someone crazy enough to put the life of a V6k on the line.

Heh indeed

An automatic soldering machine would be really nice too..

I mean.. c'mon..

Soldering 4 chips to a V4 isn't a problem.
Re-soldering 16 chips on a V5500 ... meh.. couple of days work
But 32 chips on a V6k .. holy crap..

That is really not work that should be done manually

Well do it SLOWLY. If you do it to fast things are more likely to go wrong. The amount of chips is not the problem it is the patience a person has.

DenisF, im bidding on pci5500 cards right now(i guess its just better sense togo pci now), as soon as i get one (i have just my boxed one) im going to the small pc stores here and checking some cards for the ram( easier i think than asking people for it on ebay) and then ill notify you so i can send them to you, very sorry for the delay, just like the rest of you ive been a little busy.

ok i won the 5500pci, when it gets here ill check ram, then ill goto the pc shop and see if i can find a card with right ram, from what ive seen its easy to find same ram of same mb, harder to get it at twice the mb :-/ antone seen the right hyu6 ram at higher mb on a specific card?

ok, i just got the v5500 pci delivered so this weekend ill hit up a couple local pc shops, lucky for me there are several within 20 minutes----------now for a question, i never have looked for a build date on a card before but i see these # on the back 210-0414-001-A1, can anyone please explain these # to me, ty :-/

You need to look for something like this :
(Example taken from a Voodoo Rush)

http://www.falconfly.de/img/PCB-Code_Production_Week.jpg

9752 indicates :
Calendar Week 52 of Year 1997

It gets a bit Tricky since some manufacturers swapped year and week numbers, which becomes a factor with Cards produced 2000 or later.

The build date is sometimes very hard to find, and occasionally, it is encoded rather somewhere on a Number-filled Sticker, than soldered into the PCB itself (which is the normal case).

In the past (and still today), it is often incorrectly referred to as "Revision", frequently used to name Voodoo5-6000 "Revisions" for example.
(although later/more current PCB's indeed often go hand in hand with somewhat revised designs)
---------
210-0414-001-A1

...is the 3dfx-specific Model/Part Number for the Voodoo5 PCI PCB; more precisely the 3dfx Part # is 210-0414-001 , the PCB is Revision A1 in this case.

ok, ty so much falconfly, i found it, its 31 00 which has hyundai ram, got another its 29 00 toshiba ram, oh well that was fun ty :)

Ok, so far this isnt looking all that good, might just be me but so far this is the only card that has the right size ram(manufacter isnt the same thou)

http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/2598

and to make matters worse i cant find this card, not even on price watch >:(

has anyone else spotted a card with the right size ram? most have the same ram as is already on the card.

Guess this is why no one ever made this 128mb mod eh  :(

i really thought this would be easier to find on a card than by itself, it seems for this kind of ram 64mb was as high as they went for 8 chips, except this card so far, which i cant even find :'(

http://www.allstarshop.com/shop/simprod.asp?pid=8371&ad=pwatch

http://www.toolspcs.com/asgefnvidmx6.html

Hmm - I thought of this "project" while I took pictures of all my cards. http://xn--grsten-jua.se/3dfx/

I saw that the GeForce 2 MX 200 I have, and got for free, the Hercules 3d Prophet 4500 and my Voodoo 4 4500 all has similar rams.

A Prophet 4500 has 8 Samsungs and a GeForce 2 MX has 4 I think. All of them has the same size as the ones on a Voodoo 4/5... A pity but it makes it easy to get enough chips to extend a Voodoo 5 board. The Prophet 4500 should be easy to get. They costs around $15 here.

Although - one of the better solutions now may be to slaughter many old GeForce 2 MXs or to slaughter a V5 for a V5. I can still get more over here for a very cheap price (because of they being the worst computer shop in the world)

I don't know if this is interesting but I can also say that the V5s they have is the Hundai or how it now is spelled. I myself have 4 of those.

well i think the problem is we need ram with 2x the mb of whats on there not 2x more ram ???

Yeh

Having extra 4 chips of 8 megs won't do any good.

the V5 already uses 8mbx4 per-vsa, what's needed here is 16mbx4

I know the Toshiba memory also has a 16MB version.
When I looked up the numbering on my ram on the Toshiba site I found no reference to 8MB chips, only to 16MB chips with the exact same numbering.

Anyone think of looking at SDR-SDRAM memory modules? (Those things you stick in your motherboard :P) Single sided 128MB modules should have 16MB chips

Perhaps the ASUS V7100 Pro has 16MB chips?
http://uk.asus.com/products/vga/v7100pro/overview.htm

Ofcourse they should, but the sdram you find in a standard motherboard is 1) 64bit 2) 133mhz at best*


*or you can pay a premium, and get PC150 (166mhz) ram

Anyone think of looking at SDR-SDRAM memory modules? (Those things you stick in your motherboard ) Single sided 128MB modules should have 16MB chips

ya thought of this, i contacted chip make and they could only tell me i had to go to stores and look at ram to see what was what, now i dont know of a store thats gonna let me look thru all there ram is the problem, plus the fact that the ram is slower than what comes on video cards :-/

Some info from my end of the world :P

My V5 5500 has the following memory:

Toshiba F38156
0013 KAD (<- could be 0013KAD)
Japan
TC59S6432CFT-60

According to this site, the following exists:

TC59S6432CFT-50 2MX32 TSOP 3.3V  TOS
TC59S6432CFT-54 2MX32 3.3V  TOS
TC59S6432CFT-60 2MX32-PC166 TSOP 3.3V CL3  TOS
TC59S6432CFT-70 2MX32-PC143 TSOP 3.3V CL3  TOS
TC59S6432CFT-8 2MX32-PC100 TSOP 3.3V CL2
TC59S6432CFT-80 2MX32-PC100 TSOP 3.3V CL2

On the 15th of November of 2003 I did a search on the Toshiba site and found only documents about the 16 megabyte variant of my memory. Unfortunately, those documents are no longer online.

This site is full of info.

Found this document which tells about this memory.

However, there is one thing I don't understand.
Are the memory chips on the V4/5 in a 4Mx16 format or a 2Mx32 format. In other words: Is the memorybus 64bit or 128bit per VSA-100 chip?


(and no, the format for the chips is not 8Mx8 because that would mean that you would have at least 8 memory chips per VSA-100: The last number in 4Mx16 or any other format is calculated by dividing the size of the memorybus per chip, by the amount of memorychips per chip.)

The bus per-chip is 128bit
[total 256bit on a V5500, 512bit on a v6000]

Yeah, I did some more searching, found an article on AnandTech about it :)

Aye

You know though, sdram=sdram=sdram
in technical-theory, any graphic sdram chip can be used on any voodoo card.

I'm gonna do a new mod next week [after i get my new pc parts], i'm gonna try to mod a banshee with some 183mhz memory.

If that works, the possibilities are endless :)

Did some more searching on my memory:

Specifications of the 5.4ns variant plus an image of a videocard that's using this.
Unknown if it's the standard 2Mx32 or what we're looking for; 4Mx32.

http://unika.com.cn/info/images/13/991133667_1.jpg

"Organization : 524,288 words x 4 banks x 32bits"
Am I looking at the wrong thing or is this most definately 4Mx32?

http://unika.com.cn/info/images/13/991133667_2.jpg

Did some more searching and found a german site with a newsartikel about Unika:

Quote:

English: UNIKA will launch a geforce2 Pro chip based video card called Fast Fit 7000 AGP soon in next week. What are the unique features of this card? Well, first it will be equipped with 32MB 5.5ns 190MHz SDRAM, not the DDR SDRAM we commonly see on all other Geforce2 Pro video card. The core speed is 200MHz.

http://www.rivastation.com/go.htm?http://www.rivastation.com/cgi-bin/newsp/search.cgi?category=1&keyword=unika


I think we need this card:
Did some more searching on the Unika site.
This card has potential: http://www.unika.com.cn/includes/product.php?id=305

128bit, 64MB total memory 4(?) chips.
Most likely this is 4Mx32; what we're looking for.

http://www.unika.com.cn/products/product_spall.php/#2
Other products, most interesting are the Geforce2 SDR products.

We need the 64MB version:
64MB divided over 4 chips: 16MB per chip.
128bit bus divided over 4 chips: 32bit per chip
Format will be 4Mx32

Anyone know where we can buy these cards?

i would go for even faster ram at the same amout if thats all we can find, ive been looking for that 128mb gforce but it seems to be either not made or gone ???
http://www.tech-report.com/onearticle.x/2598
also i want to say in a post months ago i said my v5500 had 5ns ram, well i got glasses and its 6ns,  which i must say was a let down, but i still can hit the 200 mark so i figure faster ram would be nice to try.

Well, Unika had a 128MB card but it had 8 chips which means it's *Mx16 but the V5 has *Mx32.

ok help me here ??? im not a tech, the v5500 has 8 rams for 64mb, so ive been looking for cards with either 4 rams at 64mb or 8 rams at 128mb, now am i all wrong or what because thats what i thought was needed, like i said im not a tech so i could be all wrong :-/

Here's the deal:
Voodoo 5 5500

2x VSA-100
Each VSA-100 has a 128bit memorybus and 4 memory chips.
That means that every chip has 32bit available.

Currently each chip is 8 megabytes so we are looking for 16 megabyte versions.

An 8 megabyte chip with a 32bits interface is commonly referred to as: 2Mx32

2M = 2 Megabit
Divide by 8 (8 bits per byte) and multiply by 32 and you get the size of the chip (8 megabytes)

We want to double the memory so we need 4Mx32 chips; 4 divided by 8 times 32 is 16.

I hope this make things clear. (I just recently learned this myself :P)

ahh, ill have to read that several times,  :P

http://www.hkinventory.com/public/Home.asp


Quote:

A trading hub for brokers, merchandisers and distributors to trade all kinds of electronic components, including obsolete and hard-to-find parts.

Toshiba memory

Is it time to be happy yet? ;D

Is that the one we need   ???  great job if it is ::), if your sure this is the right one we must contact right away and try and get some, let me know, by the way thank you for looking ;)

I don't know if it's the right one. Could be 2Mx32 or 4Mx32, doesn't say. It's actually still better than my current memory seeing as I've got the 6ns version ;D

Unfortunately you need to register which also requires a fax number which, obviously, I don't have :P
It's getting late anyway, I'll see what I can do tomorrow.

hi everybody. i have a V4 with toshiba tc59s6432cft-60, but my V4 will never die. i say this because one time i tried to change the cooler, and the cooler was not well glued... my V4 began to do very strange things. suddenly, my V4 dead. the pcb was full of thermal compound... i was very angry so i cleared ir whit water, shampoo, soap, alkohol, disolvent, ... the video card was really dead, or killed xdd. then i saved it into his box

two years later, i was at home very bored and i decided to test all my hardware. i was very surprised when after putting and thermaltake vga orb the voodoo4 returned to live. now my V4 is a zombie. but works, and that idea of increasing the video ram seems very interesting. i always wondered why the V4 has 4 free slots

ill try to find 4 more toshiba chips. the soldadure is another history...

one more thing i wolud like to say. in the top right side corner there should be a condensor (=capacitor): the C131. but, my board dont have that capacitor. i dont know what i did whit it, but one day dissapeared haha. its incredible that my V4 continues running whithout one capacitor, dust in the pcb and into the vsa-100 chipset, and a heavy load of water, shampoo, alkohol, desinfectant ...

TRULY INCREDIBLE! :o

But now you know WHY they are called "Voodoo" cards... ;)

They have voodoo magic to keep them working! ::)

BTW? Maybe one of the other board members can find the value of C131 and let you know what to replace it with... :D

Just a thought... :P

Hm...

That C131 is exactly the same like the C64 (right above the Fan Power Connector), or the C7, C41, C46, C71, C75 etc...

Marking :
10
16S
0G2

I've read about 75% of the thread.


So let me get this straight. It's best to get the same exact ram as the V4 or V5 you have but just with a higher size mb?


Whats the best ram a Voodoo 4/5 card can have? 5ns?

some very rare Voodoo5 cards have  5,5 ns rams.  and they are not protetypes , they are retail cards...  you just have to be lucky.. ::)

afaik the 'best of the best' ram that 3dfx used is EliteMT 5.x ns, if i had a card with that - i could prolly push it to the 250mhz region, and even then the core would be my limitin factor

I found Logicalmadness just posted this in the x3dfx Forum (Link) :

http://www.ensil.com/international/services/rework.html

Don't know what prices those guys to take for a rework (or enhancement for that matter) of damaged or rare Hardware, but they got a plain contact address listed (no hassling around Web Forms).

For some of those 'special needs' , and/or for special Hardware, a professional job like that might be an Option :)

nobody know what is the function of that capacitor? my voodoo4 seems to work fine without it..
only seems because direct rendering under linux is impossible to switch on, and under windows smetimes gl games freeze the system when entering 3d mode..

ome more thing to say. if anybody of this forum has 4Mx32 memory chips with the same number of connections in his/her hands, how can he/she put into the card?

* is doing some browsing again ;D


Not sure about this one, might be wat we're looking for.
http://www.jdr.com/interact/item.asp?itemno=4MX32-60

Very interesting German site: (I think)
http://www1.akcent.de/P_HGR23_BGR0329_106386.html

Don't think this is of any value to us:
http://www.gaw.ru/pdf/White/0n1bcv01.pdf

Stumbled across this one:

http://www.hynix.com/datasheet/eng/dram/details/dram_01_HY57V64820HGT.jsp

The correct Hyundai (Hynix now) memory chips ;D

And another card:

MSI MX200 Pro32S (8829)

http://www.msi.com.tw/program/products/vga/vga/pro_vga_detail.php?UID=175

@DenisF - just wondering if it's possible to 'mix' brands of RAM if you do this MOD, as long as... ::)

1. RAM is same size (4x8MB chips mixed with 4x8MB chips) ;)

2. RAM is same speed (6ns mixed with 6ns) ;)

The reason I ask is that I have a faulty V5500 that has some 6ns RAM on it - but it's NOT Hyundai like the V4500 needs... :-/

...I'm thinking of doing the same MOD and the RAM chips match speed and size, just not brand name :P

You could remove all the RAM from the V4 and use all the RAM from the V5. Just a thought ;D

@paulpsomiadis
Yes, you can do ANYTHING to memory chips - different brands, different speed... When our Radeon 9500 with 2.5 Hynix RAM (re-soldered from FX 5600 Ultra) received Vmem=4V and half of chips burned, we just placed some 2.8 Samsung from Ti4600 on it.

Actually if anybody have questions regarding memory/gpu resoldering - feel free to ask me :) We'd done this plenty of times :)

@DenisF
Good work! BTW i'm not sure if V5 5500 will allow you to place 128 Mbit chips on it and will recognize them correctly... Though maybe its a question of bois hacking, i'm not a pro in software issues here - only hardware:)

@NitroX infinity
Funny. Checked that ENSIL site... It is possible to re-solder any BGA chips with open-type electric oven and hairdryer (well, average one won't allow you to give enough temps, so need to be modded or just to a bit broken:)) of heatgun.

Ah0y folks!

For those of you who have been wondering "where the heck is that israeli spammer kid :s", i'm here, just the drive in my desktop pc died two weeks ago and i can't really do much of anything from my linux box [the specs are really poor].

So anyway you must be wondering what's up with the V5 mod.
Well, i'm starting to see why the other modders have failed in doing this one.

I already have the card, a V5 5500 AGP 3700, modded to a total of 128mb, but i'm hitting a deadlock when it comes to SLI [the v5's most obvious feature].

See, the bios i now have, recognizes this card as a 128meg, [64mb in dxdiag, as opposed to 32mb on a normal v5] and everything *seems* to work properly.
emphesis on *seems*

When I do any kind of 3d in it, for some bloody reason it 'forgets' about the additional ram.
it jumps back to 64mb [32x2] as if the extra ram just isn't there.
BUT, if the second VSA chip is disabled, i get the full 64mb for the first.

This is an oddity that goes beyond my understanding.

Once i get my desktop box back up, i'll continue to do my bios hacks to try and fix this show-stopper. but i think that it's the driver's fault here. not sure.

@paul
yeh it is possible, but you always get the best performance by using identical chips.
cause for example, you can use four samsungs and four hynix, but the samsungs will be 2mhz behind, or won't be able to coop with the timings that the hynix chips can. etc'
just the same as it is with your pc's ram. mixing different sticks from different vendors isn't always a pleasant expirience.

@
alt-f13

tnx :D

Pardon, I confused my v5 with my v4.
the v5 i have is a pci 3300

@DenisF,

Keep at it, this is still good news  8)

Denis, where did you get the memory from?

He stated somewhere in the beginning of the post that he got the memory from a Geforce2 Mx.

That was with his Voodoo 4 4500. Those were just 8MB chips he soldered on the free spaces that his card had.

The memory is from two GF4mx 420 cards.
got lucky enough to find two oem cards that had 4 chips on each.

originally, the 5500 had hyundai chips, and now it sports eight samsungs =]

Wow ::) gj, keep up the good work :)

I knew those gf4 mx ram chips where the right ones  :P.
If I get myself a V5 AGP I will also mod it to a 128mb one. But first I will need to find 2 gf4 mx 420.
Can you e-mail me the V5 BIOS Denis. Maybe I can help.

Creative 3D Blaster GeForce4 MX420

http://www.ferra.ru/online/multimedia/16460/

And especially for the Dutch:
http://www.tweakers.net/pricewatch/67619

;D

Review from Guru3D:
http://www.guru3d.com/review/creative/geforce4mx420/index3.shtml

Unfortunately it's still 6ns :'(

No wait, according to this they also used 5ns :D
http://www.digit-life.com/articles/creatgf4/

Okay, I'm stumped here.
The Geforce4 MX420 has a 128bit bus and 8 chips.
The VSA-100 has a 128bit bus but only 4 chips.

Dennis, maybe that's the reason the why it won't work properly?

Hmm, according to my calculations those chips are only 4Mx16 which comes down to 8MB. I'm confused. I'll wait for an answer from Dennis.

Most of the retail gf4mx420 were 8chip based, but there are a few companies who bought half-size oem versions from nvidia [look at pics of a radeon 9200se if you don't know what i mean].

and i have two of those =]
bought them for less than 20$. [locally]

btw, as far as ram speed goes - the vsa100 isn't very scaleable when it comes to core/clock speeds.
remember my 4500'turbo' that did 210mhz?
bearly any speed increase from the stock 166mhz.

@3Dfx_Tweaker
Sure, once i get my desktop pc up n' running.

though, the more i think of it, the more i feel that the drivers handle SLI memory allocation.
[hinted by the fact that if SLI is disabled, the first chip operates with full 64mb capacity]

all this hard work.. argh... it better be worth it..
if at the end i'ma get a 100 point increase in 3dm01, i'm gonna throw this thing out the window.


[j/k :P]

Ah, you mean low profile pcb's like the infamous 'L' shaped Voodoo 4 4500?

Yeh.

second attempt

If it is a software thing, I am sure that some vsa100 specialized programmer can help you.

Hi

My 4 4500 has toshiba ram

Can it be converted to run with 64mb.

James

Yes it can.
If you have extra space for memory on your card you just need to find the same ram. If you have a card on which there are no extra places for memory, you need to replace the current memory.

Hi

It has the extra spaces for the memory.

What needs to be done to make it into a 64 mb card.

is there anyone that can do it for me out there.

James

Have you read the topic? If so, than you already know the answer to this question. Unless your English is really terrible ;D

Hi

Iam english.

I was born in England.

My Family are English.

They were born in England.

And Iam not trawling through 11 pages of information

James

wrote on 11.02.05 at 10:15:59:

And Iam not trawling through 11 pages of information

I suspect you are on your own with that attitude.

Hi

I Live with my mother   ::)

I have just broken my mother board in my main pc

I was removing the water cooling system. cause i have had enough of it leaking etc.

I was reinstating my air cooling and i went to start it and it didnt do a thing,

I must have splashed water on the motherboard.

Thats why iam so grouchy. :(

Sorry
James

Well what about a Voodoo4-2 4200 PCI / Voodoo4-2 4800 AGP  with 64MB DDR 128Bit of 256Bit, or would that be the impossible?

DeniseF,
yes, I do believe that the V5 1.18 BIOS does handle the extra ram as I did the research on this a couple or three years ago.  availablity of the ram was at issue then as now.  the V5 cards will need a "jumper" change in the form of the small resistors around the VSA100 chips as well as a couple of "blue wire mods" to add the extra address line(s) between the ram and the VSA100's.  I do not know of any revs of the physical V5 boards that have the extra address lines already installed, as I saids the BIOS looks to be able to handle the extra RAM.  I can pull my notes out and get you the ram part#'s I had come up with......... :P

http://www.allicmall.com/order.jsp?no=22585101 bloodworm here is a link i left at other forum, this is for faster but same amount of ram, im not sure about 128 instead of 64 as to which ram is correct.

http://www.isocomponents.com/Inventory/1009

http://www.usbid.com/search/AddPartNoLogin_action.cfm

there seems to be several company's with the faster ram bloodworm, sry i didnt get to email you, BFG

Larger ram is the more important thing for us,  I don't think that faster is going to be worth the effort for the same size, but while we are at it, I definately want to go faster too on top of LARGER.  I will start looking at datasheets again and let you know what to look for in the numbering........  the more peeps we have searching the better.......

DenisF, is there any chance that you will make available for the 3Dfx comunity the bios you moded for the 64Mb Voodoo 4500? I understand the amount of work you invested in tweacking and hacking the original Voodoo 4 bios in order to accept double the size of initial RAM and effectively make use of it, but the majority of us don't have the skills to replicate your steps starting like you did, from "zero", but still we are enthusiastic about the ideea. As for the hardware mod, we might handle it (is only about soldering chips in the empty spaces, right?), but without your compatible bios, well ..., it's useless ...
I respect your decision, DenisF, whatever will it be, to share or not to the comunity the moded bios.
PS. Please excuse my poor english ... Although I frequently read the forum at Falconfly's for quite some time, this is my first post here :)

theoretically the same would have to be possible also with a Voodoo3/3000 Pci SGRAM (16mb to 32mb), or?
the Card has 4 free Places

wrote on 26.05.05 at 00:00:30:

theoretically the same would have to be possible also with a Voodoo3/3000 Pci SGRAM (16mb to 32mb), or? the Card has 4 free Places

Nope, Voodoo 3 can only access 16MB.

wrote on 26.05.05 at 00:21:10:

A Voodoo II 8MB is able to be upgraded to 12MB, too. The only thing to do is add some more RAM, the rest will be determined by the drivers since it has no BIOS

There are board level IC's that report the card ID to the drivers.

Been there, tried it.

Well this thread is old but the project is quite interesting, so since I felt capable of performing sucht thig I'm heading for it...
I recently got a card off ebay just for the ram (exactly matching with the one of mine 4500)

Since SMD tools are very expensive I'm going to "manufacture" custom tools just for the soldering to fit into one cheap soldering iron, modded for the sole purpouse of SMD ram soldering

Too bad DenisF did not give away a bios dump, It's going to be some hard work on the software point of view.

Thats not all that has to be done...
Hank noted that a resistor has to be placed on the back of the card, in order to recognize the doubled ram size...
Too bad that the exact position of that resistor is not known right now...

i was thinking about this again myself since a AMD64 3700 was the last board ive found with agp4x the only way to get more umpf is to mod the v4 agp, so im wondering if it all doesnt lead right to Gary's 4800 or whatever it is called, really a v4 with 64ram and it works, so any extra parts needed or bio's problems might be solved with a look at that card.

Well, I'm going for it no matter what...
Now once I started I'll do my best to sucessfully finish it.

Any hint (or even direct instruction) comes handy

@BFG3dfx
Well first thing I checked... Santo hasen't got a 4800 bios image :P

wrote on 19.08.05 at 21:43:05:

i was thinking about this again myself since a AMD64 3700 was the last board ive found with agp4x.

Am I miss reading this?

"AMD64 3700"

Is this an AMD Motherboard with a 4 X AGP that can handle a 3700+ chip?

ya as far as i have been able to find the agp 4x stops at the AMD64 3700 i think its the 754 pin after 3700 they went to i believe the 939 pin(guessing on these pin #'s)

some guy beat my damn 4500 score, he got like 4500 in 2001se, from the speed of his cpu(wasnt all that fast) im pretty sure it was the 3700

so its pretty much the end of the line unless someone can come up with a adapter to use the 66mhz pci to agp, instead of the 33mhz pci to agp

and i know there are those of us that love using the pci v5 or v4 but with the faster cpu's they dont hold up, 33mhz was fast enough for the tbird 1200 or p3 but its time is over, been over

and as some of you will not like to hear if you use the 2001se test and are testing just 3dfx cards against 3dfx cards it is a fair test, in top end systems(2800 barton and up) the agp is much better than the pci, all i can think is the pci 33mhz is a bottle neck between the 3dfx card and the cpu that the agp doesnt have, or to that extent(or i had 2 bad v5 pci cards and 1 bad pci v4 card)

in my nvidia nforce2 board my v4agp card beat my pci v5 card easy, cpu was running at 3200 400fsb

sorry to rattle on gamma, here's the board im looking at because im getting a new micro case that i wanna rock this board has a ton of modern features also
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813123240&CMP=OTC-pr1c3watch&ATT=Motherboards

ok and this(below) is the shuttle i just picked up, and shuttle tested it with the v5 5500 agp so all is cool, up to a 3.06 p4 at 533fsb, gonna give it a try even though im not a huge intel fan and see how it compares with the EPOX board for AMD, one thing that is nice is its small form factor and i couldnt even find a AMD micro board with 333fsb suport
http://cgi.ebay.com/SHUTTLE-XPC-SS51G1V1-Like-New-Condition-SILVER-COLOR_W0QQitemZ5232197713QQcategoryZ80193QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItem

wrote on 19.08.05 at 19:42:41:

Thats not all that has to be done... Hank noted that a resistor has to be placed on the back of the card, in order to recognize the doubled ram size... Too bad that the exact position of that resistor is not known right now...

Anyone know any details on that resistor...
also other details are welcome regarding this project
I really wouldn't wanto to end up with a burnt 4500 and 64MB of matching ram chips

wrote on 19.08.05 at 19:42:41:

Thats not all that has to be done... Hank noted that a resistor has to be placed on the back of the card, in order to recognize the doubled ram size... Too bad that the exact position of that resistor is not known right now...

Wasn't that for the V5 card only?

The info was here :
http://voodooalert.de/wbb2/thread.php?threadid=9617&threadview=0&hilight=hank&hilightuser=0&page=2
It dealt with a mod for a V4, but maybe is also true for a V5...

Hmm I see...
Hank has the info... but how to get to him...
Boh... anyway, in case DenisF is still alive he could give some hints about this one but as I see he stopped posting quite some time ago.

well you could post him an email via 3dfxzone.it ;)

here is his member info:
http://www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/pop_profile.asp?mode=display&id=199

Jep I tought about that

So 5 months later, and what ever hapened to this 128mb 5500? Was it a success or no?  ???

well I've heard that the bios didn't support more that 32MB per VSA, so that may have been the problem.

I thought it was being hacked though?

hmm yeah I did think that also but maybe they weren't that  far back then hehe, but I do wonder if this plan has gotten any further :)

imagine a Voodoo5 5500 with 128MB or even a 6000 with 256MB :_X oh man that's gonna make those cards have a nice boost :)

That's why I decided to ressurect the thread, I'm interested in this mod myself  ;D

well Denis_F hasn't been online in sometime he was the man behind this whole idea, maybe you should PM Denis_F or send him an E-Mail he might be able to give you more answers.

Try asking Hank.

just read this whole topic

I'm sorry to tell you this guys,
but your dear Dennis seemed more interested to SELL you his (never proved) MOD based on the V4 4500 than to help the community

SHAME on such people

don't wait anything from him : I'm sure there is NO modded bios from him  >:(

Can't read read his toughts, but I belive he was probably a bit more dedicated to 3dfx than you think, so there is no reason to post bald accusations.

wrote on 07.06.04 at 20:17:22:

@Lecram25 The bios i have there isn't GPL'd yet, sorry :) ..... If your asking for an 'how did you do it' explenation, it's rather simple; 1) find a voodoo4 that has Hyundai ram, 6ns 2) find someone who has a GF2mx or a GF2mx400 with the same Hyundai 6ns ram (those are /very/ popular) 3) solder the ram off the GF2mx 4) clean it with alcohol etc' 5) solder it on the voodoo4 6) *clickety click* *few bios hacks* *some more bios hacks* Viola :) you have a 64mb Voodoo4 :)

Don't forget the *clickety click* : you need all the knowledge of sir dennis, not just his hacked bios
;D


BUL**H*T

wrote on 23.01.06 at 00:11:00:

Can't read read his toughts, but I belive he was probably a bit more dedicated to 3dfx than you think, so there is no reason to post bald accusations.

why not help the others : publish what he pretends to have done right?

Now he can prove I'm wrong ; he can answer here ;)

Now Mr. "I Can Read Toughts" what is your point?
Facts are:
DenisF is an inactive user from november 2004
The 64mb V4 mod is possible as is Denis's work

If he chose to either protect his developments or either make up the story there is nothing you can do about it, he did not publish his developments in detail and I hardly belive he is going to resurrect after more than 1 year just because of your whining.

My point is, stop being annoying and giving random accusations to people you never knew.

wrote on 23.01.06 at 00:03:41:

don't wait anything from him : I'm sure there is NO modded bios from him

Even if there was, as I have posted on a number of boards including this one- Increasing ram size and changing/diddling the BIOS isn't enough. A strapping resistor has to be added to the pcb which overrides any BIOS modifications.

Hank was very clear to me on this subject. Is the project possible? Sure, once the resistor location is found and the extra piece added.

After that the STOCK BIOS will handle everything.

Why is guest posting allowed first off?

And secondly about finding this resistor, is there a generalized area that it sould be bridged between? Anyone willing to sacrafice a few V5's? I sure as hell am, could probably pick up a few on eBay  :)

So it's this way, the resistor location always ends up to be the missing info :P
But till now I have never heard of its exact purpouse, u might now something on that?

The strapping resistor informs the board another bank of ram is installed, without it in place the second bank is never accessed.

Info from Hank, perhaps he will chime in.

http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/albums/album52/strapping_options.jpg

gary, you have a working 4800, right?

so you only have to compare this card to a generic 4500...

... correct me if i am wrong  ::)

As far as I know even on those 4800 cards with 64 MB ram the extra ram in not used because the resistor is missing, too.

wrote on 23.01.06 at 09:33:01:

As far as I know even on those 4800 cards with 64 MB ram the extra ram in not used because the resistor is missing, too.

Correct- I have not had to to investigate as there are a large number of things on my plate. Sooner or later I will get around to doing so but I'm in no hurry.

google that "HY57V64820HGT"

sorry but in my opinion this whole 4500 mod is a hoax! after months of asking i get a picture....the ram-chips are soldered on the pcb...but a proof of functionality is missing!
and if you look at the stock bios you can see that a v4 bios support 128mb...

these "bios hacks" and more "bios hacks" sounds very unreliable! in the past we didn't know a real 4800 but today we can compare and do not have to believe what a single person says...

i compare this mod with the hoax from x3dfxgamers! they said they have a 128mb v5 but they cleaned the ram-chips in order to protect copies...no real proof...only a few edited bios strings...

well...and after several times of trying to contact this person called DenisF via icq i ended my search....no answer is an answer too (i hope this german saying works in the english language ;) )

a voodoo 4 4500 (or 4800) AGP Prototype with 64MB (and DVI/TV Out) is underway to me... its a copper-board i think.

i will compare it to a generic 4500 and we'll see!

If anyone needs Hyundai 6ns memory chips,(for a noble purpose ofcourse <- like adding 4 of them on a V4) I have 8 pieces from my V5. (that one has 4.5ns EliteMT now but isn't really working  ;D) They are on a give away basis. I would like to give them to someone who is really willing to solder them on a board, not just keep them in a drawer. So if you don't have concrete plans with them, don't even ask for them.
Best regards. Alpar

wrote on 09.02.06 at 08:52:51:

a voodoo 4 4500 (or 4800) AGP Prototype with 64MB (and DVI/TV Out) is underway to me... its a copper-board i think. i will compare it to a generic 4500 and we'll see!

*applaus*
i guess you know why....

@TM30,
Like this one?

http://www.3dfx.ch/gallery/albums/PROTOTIPOS/TM30.jpg

Oscar

I sense you you are right Oscar I can sense that in the Force!
looks like it has the same small DVI connector like some older Voodoo3's have.

If it's smaller than DVI then it is a DFP connector.
DFP is the predecessor of DVI. (digital flat panel)

but a DFP has the same purpose as a TFT LCD connector I'm ashuming DVI since that a TFT LCD the same thing is as a Digital Flat Panel same purpose right?

By the way do these 4800 protos also support full 4x AGP interfacing?

hmm i suppose they do since the use the same PCB layout as the common 4500 AGP's.  8)