Hello all, recently I got an itch to pull out my old PCI Voodoo from the closet, blow the dust off and try out some Glide games on my XP 32-bit system. I removed the GTS 250 and installed the Voodoo, not bothering to set PCI video to boot first in the BIOS. Screen came on and Windows loaded normally, recognizes the card and starts the driver update wizard, but around this time it locks up.

Next I plug my monitor into onboard and reseat the Voodoo in another slot, hoping to just get it recognized and installed without locking up. This time the computer freezes before Windows gets to the login screen. Tried it a couple more times in different slots and with different PSU connectors with similar results; computer locks up either before or right after loading the desktop. Once I remove the card the lockups cease.

I did note the card was quite hot in the middle whenever I pulled it out but both fans seem (verified) to be working on it and nothing seems damaged or missing. I'm aware failure is common for cards this old so I'm not expecting miracles... just hoping somebody out there can at least tell me if it's toast and I'm wasting my time trying to get it working with bios reflashes and whatnot.

I have just made a video in which I rattle on for some minutes about my poor dead baby in the dark and display some frankly awful camerawork while it boots. If you can get through that there's some semi-good footage of the card itself at the end.

edit: video removed, I got it working. Seems there was a conflict with my obnoxious overpriced X-Fi sound card that prevented the OS from loading. Now I know I tried booting it at least twice without the sound card in there before but who knows what the problem was then. I had just flashed the card from 1.11 to 1.16 in a last ditch effort and to my amazement Windows loaded.

I got the default Microsoft XP driver installed and proceeded to run dxdiag. After running the directdraw tests I saw that no sound card was recognized. Looking down, sure enough the light on the card wasn't on; it had gotten gradually nudged out of its slot by cables same as the Voodoo earlier. Shut down, push the sound card back in, reboot... locks up at loading bar. Remove sound card... boots into desktop. Onboard sound ahoy!

I theorize that there might be some IRQ conflict that is unresolved by the BIOS here. Through Google I found this page where a fellow seems to have the same issue. Google also tells me that these X-Fi cards don't like to play nice with 'IRQ Sharing' which I'm guessing it's very likely my M-ATX mobo with only 2 PCI slots employs.

Anyway, the card is not dead and I'm thrilled for that. Thanks everyone who took a look at it! I'm off to investigate Glide-capable XP drivers.

peasant wrote on 16.09.10 at 08:15:36:

not bothering to set PCI video to boot first in the BIOS.

this may be exactly the reason why are you having those lockups.I always had do set my BIOS to boot from pci first to avoid lockups..

Yeah, that was the first thing I tried. It's been set to boot PCI first for a while now (2+ days).

have you tried the card in another pc?

Can you point out ware the hot spots are?

Trying it in another PC is the last thing I have yet to do; I have a testbed computer that's practically complete, I just need to get a hold of a hard drive and case to finish it up. Well, at least the hard drive! Lack of funds is the only thing holding that up.

The hot spots are directly behind the VSA-100 chips (that's what they're called, right?) with the fans on them. The one closer to the VGA port in particular gets noticeably hotter - I think I could just about cook eggs on it.

edit: I also forgot to mention that using the 'force safe graphics mode' option for the LiveCD I can boot into a 1280 x 1024 desktop. I didn't dare try to run anything more demanding than a web browser but it was stable and ran overnight.

You know those zalman ramsinks that are 8 per pack well get one pack of those and put two on the card on top of each gpu. Like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZj6F8wGyV4

As you can see they are just right for the job.

Thanks everyone, I finally got it working. See edited original post above.

I left the card in overnight, and WOW is that sucker HOT behind the GPU's. I can't hold my finger on it for more than 3 seconds, yowch. I'm definitely ordering some of those Zalman heat spreaders!

glad you got it working.as for drivers,a small list can be found on the helppage: http://helppage.3dfx.sk/#cardtable

I would probably go directly for the latest SFFT driver.