Hello,

Well, taking into accout the information and advices from Komponent and by reading the mod that the Italian dude did it ( on forumzone.it) , I decided to try myself this mod.
Because a Skt.939 board  and a Venice 3500+ CPU were layng around, I decided to try the mod on this platform.

Test System:
Athlon 64 3500+ - Skt.939
Mobo: MSI K8T Neo2-F V2.0
Voodoo5 5500 AGP
512 DDR RAM ( only 266 MHz FSB )
40Gb HDD
Enermax PSU


So, I decided not to Modifiy the AGP Slot on the Motherboard – Reason: if the Mobo get burned, i can change it any time on warranty  8)
So that the next step was to cut the noch on the Voodoo5 card.
After a closer look an the AGP pinout, the pins from 42 to 44 came into discussion.

Pin            Side A           Side B

42       Reserved            3.3Vaux       
43       Ground            Ground       
44       Reserved            Reserved
     
After a closer look at the voodoo5 card, at these pins, I found out that:

Pins 42 ( both sides ) and 44 are not connected.
Pins 43 are connected to ground – this was confirmed by measuring them !
Well for the pin 43 there is a soldering point, witch is for every situation available. ( I thought that in the worst case when the card don’t start in the skt.939 Mobo, remains  the possibility to rescue the voodoo board by sodering this points to ground – luckely this step was not necessary )

The cutting operation mus be done with very much attention and patience !
Don’t hurry up ! Take care to eliminate every metal pieces and any rest that can later cause a electrical shortcut.
You will need the following Tools:



In the Foto you can see the modified card:



The area for Pins 42,43 and 44 was cuted. Unfortunately I was afraid to cut deeper in the card, in order not to damage some traces.
This lead to the following problem: the card did not stay very well in the AGP Slot.
This is a problem that should be fixed . ( The AGP Slot on the Mobo can be slightly modifyed….)
So, after this operation, I tried to start the card in my old Epox 8K5A2 board with universal slot. The card started without problems… it was a very happy moment for me   . my voodoo card was alive !
Then, the Skt 939 Board must be prepare for the voodoo5.
I started the Mobo with an agp4x card. Then the AGP Voltage in Bios was modified to 1.85 Volts, and the AGP to AGP4x. ( This settings remains available with the moded Voodoo5 card ! )





Then I pluged the voodoo5 card into the Mobo and …..
The card started !!!!

It was for me a glorios moment.
See the pictures.







The board is running from about 24 hours – continuously. No freeze, no BSOD…
The K8T800Pro is not hot; no components on the Voodoo board or on the Mobo are excessively hot…everything seems to work fine.
But…

3dmark2001 is hangig up in dual mode.
In single mode there is o problem !



I manage to start some games:

Call of Duty – no problems.
Start Treck Armadia – no problems. Even 4xFSAA is working well.
Edie Hard – Nakatomi Platza – no Problems.
Flatout2 – no Problems.
The Benchmark "Final Reality" also run without Problems.

Two Remarks:

1. I did not supply the Pin A34 with 3.3Volts like the italian dude did it – I don't agreed with this. Even the card is not rock stable in all application, I’m sure that Komponent will come with a solution.
I now, that the VSA100 must now operate with 1.5Volt signals.( the AVR Pins Problems..) Now they are probably working still with 3.3V signalling.
2.I did not connect the Pin2 from the Voodoo card on ground. ( TYPEDET ).

Many thanks to Komponent for his advices / informations and to the Italian dude ( ciacara ).
With theyr support / ideas / advices  this Projekt was possible.

Please, fell free to comment my experiment.


Regards.
Radu.

Excellent Radu!!!

ps. Beware. I had my V5 5500 AGP with notch AGP4x working without problems under Abit IS7-G until the card died three month later. 

Oscar

The VSA-100 is a native 1.5 volt part (aside from some poor PowerColor boards that run at 3.3), something about the Voodoo5 design is not compatible though.

It is to do with the SLI setup, not the chip itself.

Quote:


Soemething to consider- The area where the notch is could have something that is required for dual chip operation.

There is a modding thread started by Hank on the Italian board where he indicated that there were some important traces in the area that was sliced.

The question had been brought up in regards of a 5500 being modded for AGPx4.

ok i'm not as smart as some of you hear but i do want to help and also understand as much as possible, so i have a few question's

1) i thought that the reason the multi gpu cards wouldnt work was cause agp standard 2.0 didnt support them and that standard 3.0 that came out with 8x agp did?

2) If above is true to any extent then if a unerversal card which is 3.0 compliant 1x2x4x8x shows a setting of 1x2x4x 1.5 volt in bios then you would be using the 2.0 standard, which would mean it should show something like 4x8x in the bios which should be the 3.0 standard.

3) OK so now im reaching, so here goes, could it be that the 4500agp worked at 4x 1.5volt because it was a single gpu and met the 2.0 standard but the 5500 being a multi gpu could not meet the standard of 2.0 and now it could meet the standard of 3.0 but may need the 3.3 volts to be stable.

4) one more thing, it seems in the unerversal slots that support 3.0 and of course 2.0 make the distinction with a3 and a11 i think it is, so i'm just wondering if that needs to be looked at for both vsa's to work right.

Quote:


Check it
http://service.futuremark.com/compare?2k1=8265718

Here you can see like my V5 5500 AGP4X worked with 2 VSA-100.

ps. I think is better to buy an AGP RISER AGP4x - AGP1x. So you don't need to modify the card.
ps2. Would help a motherboard to able to handle  AGP Voltage more high than 2V?

Oscar

more replies at:
www.3dfxzone.it/enboard/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=6626


EXCELLENT WORK!! i really hope u can get SLI mode (dual)

i guess u should supply the Pin A34 with 3.3Volts.....

but i would connect
pin A43 and B43 to Ground Ground
and B42 to 3.3Vaux


BYE!

@ Komponent and @ All 3dfx Fans:

Every information that it's comming from you bring us near to our common Goal:

"The 3dfx Hardware has to live on."

That's why we are here.

Thank you all for your support my Friends.

Radu.