I am trying to setup an older system I have with my Voodoo 2 it's an Athlon 600 running windows 98... I installed the drivers for Direct X 6.1 since I didn't have a copy of Direct X 7 nearby.  And it is finally stable with the 6.1 drivers... but I can't find any evidence except  System -> Multimedia whatever -> Voodoo 2 that the thing is even installed

   I ran Dxdiag and it said "Now 3d acceleration found"
   I don't know if it's supposed to give a hint to it's existance in Display properties... but I couldn't find any there either.   The thing theoretically seems to be installed. But when I try to run Total Annihilation it gives me the standard error that iHave come to believe means "no 3d installed"

   Any ideas as to how I can test whether my Voodoo is actually installed.  ???

Well, the actual Problem you noted right in your first Post :

If the Voodoo2 does not show up in the device Manager (Multimedia Device), it is not properly installed.

Don't bother trying 3D Applications before that.

If your Windows System did not detect it at first boot after installation, recheck the Bios Screen at initial Boot-Up.

Depending on Bios, you should (for a very short time) see a Hardware Summary at the Bottom (press "Pause/Break" Key to Pause the text display).

If that is also not present, re-check if the Bios is set to "PnP OS Installed = Enabled".
(or try Disabled to force detection at boot)

Last resort, move the Card to another PCI slot, and if even that fails, test it in another Machine.

Finally, if all that failed, the card might be defective after all  
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Q : Why did 3dfx do the right thing, and made an Add-On card first ?

A : Because people were already gaming in 3D (Software Rendering) with their quite expensive and specialized 2D Cards w/ Vesa 2.0 & often full Windows GUI Accelleration.

At that time, there was no 2D Core existing, that 3dfx could have used to challenge the tremendous 2D Speeds of a Tseng Labs ET4000 or even the ET6000 chip, for example.

People loved their existing 2D Cards just like people today love their 3D Beasts, and sure did not want to exchange it for something far less capable in 2D, just to get the 3dfx 3D advantage.

(Bare in mind there were still alot of non-3d Accellerated Games out there, not even to mention the great, older ones still being played).

I ran my first Voodoo1 besides a Hercules Dynamite 128/Video PCI, which (when I bought it) was quite costly, and was on the performance King of the Hill for a long time

The attachment of a completely separate 3D Card was (and still is) a very easy thing. It just needs to work in the first place, everything after that is almost failsafe.

   Actually you misred.  I said I can't find any evidence except under device manager to it's existance.  I'll check my bios that sounds like a good track to follow

And how did you know i had a Tsung 4000... (You were joking about termendous speeds right? 2mb wonder can't even display 1024x768 in 16bit right now...)

Also... are 3dfx tools required to be installed?

Also... should dxdiag show any hint to it's existance if installed properly?

Well apperantly somthing went terribly wrong...

I downloaded the Official 3dfx drivers for DirectX 6.1 don't remember the exact number... and then downloaded the DirectX 6 Athlon patch...
and installed the "newest 3dfx tools" but there is still no tabs in my display properties...

My primary is a Tseng ET6000 according to drivers... the card is so far out of memory I don't have a clue what it was when I bought it...

When I had the DirectX7 drivers installed (Latest official drivers) it did have a voodoo tab I think....
but it would lockup whenever I touched it... which was what made me believe ineeded the older directX6.1 drivers for a fresh install of Windows 98 SE

Time to go burn my nteenth CD full of drivers...

Glad to hear they arn't intended... because they aint doin nothin.

Well here is what I did.

I removed it the card in the Device Manager..
I removed th card.
rebooted.
Put the card in a new slot
installed DX 7.0
Installed Athlon Drivers 3.02.02
Installed apperantly needlessly the 3dfx tools
rebooted
the computer is stable... unlike the normal 3.02.02 or the 3dfxers or whatever they are called's drivers. and still DXdiag only sees one video card there is no "secondary display" option.  Shadows of the empire still doesn't detect it.  And there is still no tab under display properties...
Off to try the Fastvoodoo if this doesn't work... I the king of screwy problems Am going to shoot myself

(Just to give you an example of how I attract these kinds of errors... I once had a computer that unless the keyboard was unplugged it wouldn't turnon... that was a hastle

Hmm...

Very odd, I ran my Voodoo2 for testing besides a Radeon 9700pro, and after installation (using an older FastVoodoo2 release back then), everything worked right from the beginning (?)

Hm, are you sure it is a Voodoo2 ?

Because if it is not, this is the only reason I could imagine why all Drivers fail...

Do you have a Picture of the Card ?

Hm, my tests with the Voodoo2 were done with DirectX 9.0 .

I'll keep an eye on 3dfxzone.it for updates concerning the FastVoodoo2 3.5.
(After all, it is only a few days old, maybe there's a Bug in it? )

...and I did test it quite a bit, Unreal Tournament, 3D Benchmarks (even 3D Mark 2001SE) etc.
Worked fine, so I believe it is not needed to stay on a DirectX 6.1 or 7.0 level.