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Hypothetical situation (Read 7242 times)
VDX
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #45 - 14.06.04 at 23:45:38
 
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
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FalconFly
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #46 - 15.06.04 at 00:18:45
 
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)
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« Last Edit: 15.06.04 at 00:22:41 by FalconFly »  
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DenisF
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #47 - 15.06.04 at 00:53:58
 
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 Smiley
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #48 - 15.06.04 at 01:19:22
 
Quote:
[...] or the Radeon 7000, both [afaik] were made in 128mb configurations and should have the chips needed availible Smiley


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

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" ?! ...

/ me stops exercising deeper RAM Philosophy now, and goes to bed Lips Sealed
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« Last Edit: 15.06.04 at 01:25:29 by FalconFly »  
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DenisF
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #49 - 15.06.04 at 02:21:04
 
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?
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VDX
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #50 - 15.06.04 at 02:57:24
 
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
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VDX
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #51 - 15.06.04 at 03:09:04
 
also maybe something like this -->  http://cgi.msn.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=14916&item=3486624739...

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


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VDX
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #52 - 15.06.04 at 03:49:53
 
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
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #53 - 15.06.04 at 09:43:47
 
DenisF: Aha - another 17 years old Smiley 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 Wink

If I just could figure out how I would gladly do it because of the amount of V5s I have...
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #54 - 15.06.04 at 12:34:17
 
So many questions Grin

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 Tongue]

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]
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #55 - 16.06.04 at 08:30:46
 
Hm, my Voodoo5's have 8x 8MB Chips...
(don't forget the Card's other side, which holds 4 RAM's as well Wink )
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #56 - 16.06.04 at 08:48:30
 
I never actually /had/ a voodoo5, to be perfectly honest Wink

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 =\

DenisF smacks self
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #57 - 16.06.04 at 16:05:45
 
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...
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #58 - 16.06.04 at 17:37:35
 
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.
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« Last Edit: 16.06.04 at 17:37:55 by FalconFly »  
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VDX
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Re: Hypothetical situation
Reply #59 - 16.06.04 at 19:50:59
 
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
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« Last Edit: 16.06.04 at 20:01:52 by N/A »  
 
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