How to have a Voodoo3 board work with a Voodoo1 or 2 board
(Getting Quake 1 and others to work with a Voodoo3 equiped Mac)

I recently fiddled with my Voodoo3 card a bit, and in the end came to the same conclsuion as everyone else: Klingon Honor Guard and Quake 1 (1.09) just don't work with the Voodoo3. Luckily I still had my old Voodoo1 Power3D card (note that all point should also work with a Voodoo2 board) installed (plugged in) and I found that it had to be possible to get that card to work TOGETHER with the Voodoo3. The Voodoo1 cards Glide driver is called "3DfxGlideLib2.x", while the Voodoo3's driver is called "3Dfx GlideLib2.x". However, note that those drivers are NOT the same. Having both load at startup and then launching Quake, Quake will report an error, that I can't find a required Library.
After a little thinking I found a solution that works nicely:


Now as the driver conflict was solved, I needed to find a way to connect both card in a way it would work. There are basically 4 solutions, depending on the number of video cards you have installed and the number of screens you have. I have 2 screens and 3 video cards all together. My primary screen is fed by the Voodoo3 in 2D mode, and by the Voodoo3 and the Voodoo1 in 3D mode, depending on the application. To have this work, all you have to do is attach the monitor to the Voodoo1, and attach the pass-through cable to the Voodoo1 on one side, and the Voodoo3 on the other. The second screen is fed by the ATI Rage 2+ for 2D and 3D mode.

I have made a little scheme that demonstrates the setups that are possible.
(Note that setup 2, either requires you to switch the monitor every time, get a monitor switch, or 2 separate monitors, it is by far the least elegant)

setups

Known issues
There are currently only two known issues to me.
-Users who used to overclock their Voodoo1 card with "3Dfx Tweaker" and the "2D/3D Swap Extension" can no longer have this Extension load at startup. There seems to be a great conflict between the Voodoo3 drivers and that extension. My system froze at startup everytime I tried. This requires either a fix from the author of 3Dfx Tweaker or 3Dfx.
-Voodoo cards generate a LOT of heat, so having a Voodoo3 and (especially) a Voodoo2 card in the same machine, might cause the cards to get REALLY hot. So I can only recommend you to install an additional cooler for at least one of the cards. The beige G3 Tower has two places for additional coolers that blow on the PCI cards, I installed one of those coolers. I recommend to test things out carefully before doing anything silly. I can not take any responsibility for any damage done to your cards, Mac or whatever. It works fine for me, but that does not mean it will for you.

Test results:


The following games ran perfectly in Voodoo3

Update: There now is an Update for Tomb Raider 2 to work with Voodoo3 cards. (1.03)

For any results with games that I have not tested, or for different results, let me know.
For questions and comments email at: bensch@datacomm.ch

Voodoo1,2 and 3 are trademarks of 3Dfx Inc., Rage is a trademark of ATI coporation, all the suggestions here are applied on your OWN risk. I am not resonsible for any inconvenience or damage done to your card or system due to overheating cards, extension conflicts, bad performance or data loss. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners. © Bensch Blaser, 1999