Hardware

Pitfall: 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 OEM BIOS

A few years back, I picked up a lot of 10 graphics cards on eBay for around $100. Most of them turned out to be junk—though they might make for interesting test subjects someday. But one card immediately stood out: a silver heatsink with the unmistakable shape of a 3dfx Voodoo 3! Of course, the lot was sold as untested – which, in eBay terms, means NOT WORKING! I really should have seen…
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How to XTIDE : Build your own binary file

Patching the fake cache BIOS

HardwareSoftware

How to XTIDE : Build your own binary file

XTIDE is a BIOS extension that helps to detect hard drives and probably a lot of other devices like Compact Flash and SD-cards. After I restored a 386 board at the end of 2024, I once more was confronted with a limitation of those old systems: HDD capacity. Many 386 and even 486 systems are limited to hard drives no larger than 500MBs. That is plenty of space for such old systems since…
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Reliving Tomb Raider on a Retro PC with 3dfx Voodoo Magic

Pitfall: 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 OEM BIOS

HardwareSoftware

Patching the fake cache BIOS

During one of my adventures at the scrapyard, I picked up a 486 motherboard – the BEK-tronic BEK-V429S. As it turns out, this board had fake cache chips installed! If you want to see the full story, here is the video in which I discover that fake chips. But how is it possible that seemingly nobody caught on and identified the fake cache earlier? The company or individual who owned…
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Reliving Tomb Raider on a Retro PC with 3dfx Voodoo Magic

Pitfall: 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 OEM BIOS

HardwareSoftware

EPROM Device ID List

EPROMs and EEPROMs can be programmed using a programmer like the XGecu T56 / T48 / TL866II. Unfortunately, the programmer cannot resolve the Device ID to an actual model number. The below list should aid as a lookup for anyone who needs to understand what device and model is behind a given Device ID. Device IDNameMFG NameType0115AM27C64AMD27C640189AM27128AAMD27128(12.7V…
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Reliving Tomb Raider on a Retro PC with 3dfx Voodoo Magic

Pitfall: 3dfx Voodoo 3 3000 OEM BIOS