Yep, you read that correctly. Not an April fools joke.

The 3dfx Archive has been in service beginning in late 2001, meaning it's been operational for over 15 years now.

Folks will surely have noticed that I stopped expanding the 3dfx Archive and also am hardly active in the Forum since a long time now.

After investing many hundreds of hours of assembling the Files (and with the helpful assistance of other guys around the world) and investing what accumulates into many thousand Dollars/Euros over all these years, I simply think it's time to move on.

Apart from someone from Switzerland actually sending me 5 Euros via Mail as a little note of appreciation , no income has ever been gained from the entire Site.
As I hate Internet Ads, that was never an Option either - thus all working as intended.
Always seen the 3dfx Archive as a purely service-oriented thing, a pure investment for public service purposes.

I long planned to downsize/restructure my Servers for a more personal use and I believe after so many years it's fair to say it's a good time for these changes.

And after over 15 years, I'd go as far as to say "Mission Accomplished" with a straight face.
The 3dfx Archive and its attached Forum did their respective jobs. But now it's time for them to eventually retire.

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Timeline I have in mind isn't pressing.

I'd reckon I'd take it down no earlier than mid-2017, so that leaves about 6 months of slack time.

Notes :
- the very old offer to send a set of DVDs containing the entire 3dfx (File) Archive to any location worldwide, free of any cost, remains standing
- naturally I'll keep everything archived in local storage, so there's no real deadline attached where "everything would be lost"
- just want to be positive that this Forum will go offline as well, so make sure to copy/archive anything you still need in the future
(restoring anything from Forum backups is next to impossible to me, especially anything Users might have stored in their PM folders which I naturally never had any access to)

So please plan accordingly and prepare to phase out the usage of this Forum.

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Kinda hard to tell what's the right thing to say after such a long time, other than things seemed to work out pretty well.

I want to thank all 3dfx Supporters for their long-lasting support and activities, and especially everyone keeping this Forum friendly and useful

So keep Jun/Jul 2017 in mind when it comes to using this Forum.

PS.
This Thread is open for any discussion, questions or requests

When it comes to Forum Threads, one would have to manually Copy&Paste their Content, or use the Browser to save entire Pages locally for later offline usage.

Alternatively, I'm sure there's Software Tools to archive specific Threads.

I've just deactivated the Forum-contained "Harvester Blocking", allowing such Software to now freely crawl and download/archive any chosen content.
(haven't used one of these in a very very long time though, so if there's any issues with using such Software on the Forum content, let me know)

The Forum itself stores all content in specific numeric Files, unsure if there'd be any means to clear-read these at all. Above methods would clearly be the better choice.

Hi FalconFly,

I think this site and forum is a great resource and I would be sad to see it go.

I run an IT company in Sydney, Australia and would be more than happy to offer you a virtual private server will sufficient resources to host the site, forums and files.

Otherwise maybe we could transfer the site and forums over and keep them in an "archive" state.

Please let me know if you are interested or wish to discuss further.

Thanks,
Michael.

Hey, understand and thank you for your previous work!

My main concern is all the various websites linking to specific files will be broken etc.

Do you plan to let the domain go or will you keep that? I'm happy to mirror the site.

Thanks again!

I'd be more than happy to host the entire thing and maintain the forums if you're interested.

I'll soon(tm) implement adequate Notes on all Download Pages, but it's fairly clear that many deep-links will indeed become broken.

However, that's the responsibility of all Sites linking directly and any Webmaster is well aware of the risks when doing so (as opposed to hosting files locally).

Just to be clear on the Forum :
It's mainly legal reasons that prevent the Forum from being transmitted, as it naturally contains all Accounts, Passwords and also Private Messages.
Even if those are somewhat encoded, I can't and won't transmit these for above reason.

All I need for the File Archive DVD to send is any valid Shipping Address.
Postage won't kill me for these, so that's all good

PS.
The DVD will include all 3dfx Archive Webpages, so all Descriptions etc. will remain intact. Should make any re-hosting elsewhere fairly easy.

What happens with the Files is really not relevant, although I wouldn't want to see a complete 1:1 replica.

I don't hold any Copyrights, so my name for example is of no relevance

As I said, no Files of the Forum will be exported. Saving certain Threads of interest to Disk should be easy.

Thank you so much for being a big part of my passion for graphics cards, I've always enjoyed visiting the forums and being able to download the necessary files.

I totally understand where you are coming from, unfortunately, I had to 'move on' several years ago, but am usually lurking here once or twice a week.

I think all of us can understand the dilemma, and for what it's worth I think you probably made the right decision.

This should give enough time for any old users that only very occasionally come by to see what's what. Maybe you could send an email to those who haven't been on the boards for a certain amount of time.

I for one will miss everything. Thanks for all your hard work and investment over the years.