Graphics card!

[Stephen Coates]

I finally have my VooDoo 3000 graphics card working on my Amiga 1200.

The reason I had trouble getting it to work was:

(a) The manual suggests that for my Blizzard, the config jumper on the Mediator should be open. This causes this computer to not boot fully. However, it turns out that the jumper needs to be closed, as everything functions correctly then.

With the jumper closed, the machine boots up fine and in Picasso96Mode prefs I can get a test card from the voodoo.

(b) This didn't solve the problem of the VooDoo modes not showing up in the Screenmode prefs.

The problem here was that in the VooDoo driver, someone (either myself or Rob from LAG who helped set it up) made a typo and put Picasso966 rather than Picasso96.


Anyway, all the graphics are working nicely now. I just have to set up the Network card, sound card and IDE devices as I managed to fry my buffered IDE interface last year (I expect it will be fixable.)

It is much better having millions of colours and high resolutions. Graphics are also much faster as well.

Pictures to follow.

[Harrison]

I look forward to some pictures Steve.

If possible could you do some nice closeups of the card installed too? Would be great to use once the hardware section of CA is finally up and running, plus such images could be useful for the Wiki.

[Stephen Coates]

I can do some closeups, but baring in mind that it is all just sitting on the floor, and ideally, I could do with a cooler for the graphics card as it gets very hot.

[Harrison]

Is your card the same as this one?

http://amigakit.leamancomputing.com/catalog/images/voodoo-3000-pci.jpg

I remember Voodoo 3000 cards did used to get quite hot, and do have some overheating issues. So I would highly recommend you get a better heatsink on it asap. You can get some GPU coolers very cheaply, or you could modify a cooler/fan from an old CPU. I know many people have done that.

[Stephen Coates]

That's the one.

Amigakit have a VooDoo cooling fan which has been recomended to me so I will probably get one of those.

[Harrison]

Do you mean the Voodoo Exhaust Fan they have listed? Not sure that is the ideal solution as it looks like just a standard PCI slot exhaust fan you fit into any PC. Will definitely increase the noise level the Amiga is making though as the small fans in those units tend to spin very fast.

Does the current heatink on your V3000 have the 4 holes like the picture I posted? If so then they should be for a fan mounting point, so you could try bolting a fan on and seeing if that sorts it out? Either a Socket 7 (pentium)(50mm x 50mm) or 486 heatsink fans (40mm x 40mm) should fit.

Or look at this (http://www.forumapex.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/2393). Someone has attached a Pentium 3 heatink and fan to their V3000. You could just as easily use an Athlon XP one, or I would opt for one of the newer low profile heatsinks you can get for small form factor systems, such as those used by Atom or Core 2 Duo systems.