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Flashing a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI PC graphic board to be recognised by a Mac light version As usual, I cannot be responsible for any damage to your machines when you will experiment the following tutorial. Why a new graphic board? 1) because of the bad performances of the original G3 B and B ATI one 2) (At the moment I wrote this note) the high price of the sole PCI macintosh board on the market: 120 euros for an ATI 7000 32 Mb, which, indeed, is not of high performances at all! 3) my brother-in-law has an unused one... and gives it to me ;-) 1) So, nothing complicated except the usual precautions when inserting it in the PCI slot. The impressive cooling unit murmurs us to avoid to place it too close of another extension board ! So, now, the flashing program and the mac ROM. "Easy" they said: http://www.voodoofiles.com/type.asp?cat_id=0 -> http://www.voodoofiles.com/8674 -> http://66.119.198.19/voodoo3.sit :-) but... but there is a server's problem :-( -> So asks... Google "Voodoo3 Mac drivers and flasher beta13" I found: http://www.falconfly.de/voodoo3.htm -> Voodoo3 MacOS Drivers File Size / Type Remarks 3dfx Voodoo3 Beta 10 321k SEA Beta Release 3dfx Voodoo3 Beta 11 330k SEA Beta Release 3dfx Voodoo3 Beta 12 420k SIT Beta Release Well no "beta 13" but if we open the page in cache... we win :-) -> http://www.planetfalconfly.de/downloads/macvoodoo113b.smi.sit.bin -> a self-mounting image which only contains the extensions :-( -> So, back to web-fishing and I found: http://www.macdrivermuseum.com/video.shtml where I read: Voodoo 3 Driver - Beta 13 Drivers for Voodoo3 2000/3000. Also includes ROM flasher and ROMs to convert any Voodoo3 2000/3000 to macintosh! -> a beautiful voodoo3 topic whith 4 directories and a lot of details ;-) --> into Extensions Folder 3dfx GlideLib2.x 3dfx GlideLib3.x 3dfx Graphics Accelerator 3dfx Hardware Resource Mgr 3dfx OpenGL Renderer 3Dfx Rave --> into Preferences Folder Voodoo3ModePrefs FlashROM FlashROMVoodoo3 V3-143-5-29-2000.rom V3-166-5-29-2000.rom Release Notes MacOSGlide Notes OpenGL Notes Release Notes Software License Agreement Voodoo3 Read Me Ok: all I need to perform the operation. -> I shutdown the G3, unplug it and put the PCI board into place. Plug-in it again, restarts... but still on the origin board. 2) The new one is simply viewed as a display... We can see my 3 partitions and the MacVoodoo image which never helps me :-) 3) -> So I run the "FlashROMVoodoo3" 4) The program discovers (as the Apple System Information does) my board in slot J11. It asks me the board ID I want to upgrade and, as it gently suggests me, I key in "1" and hit return. 5) The program then next warns me that the board contains a PC ROM and asks me to confirm the overwriting action. Of course "y"es! 6) It asks me the rom file to be installed. I copy/paste the more recent I have: V3-166-5-29-2000.rom 7) "Hey... it is a Macinstosh ROM.. flashing it now will prevent you to use this board again on a wonderfull Windoze machine..." Of course I want... GO AHEAD ;-) 8) The program first saves the initial ROM on the disk... if one day I want to buy a PC ;-)... and finally install the new one. Shutdown and reboot. 9) Right: a 3Dfx :-) But a "3000" when this board is a "2000"... the abyssal mysteries of the informatic science... :-) As detailled in the readme file, I put the right files at their right place. For the "Voodoo3ModePrefs" file, I put it in "Preferences" and in "Préférences" because I do not know if the driver will recognize a French OS. I restart and... hourrah... best performances... more in Unreal than in the Finder... 10) Peformances are confirmed by the speedometer test. On the left, the Voodoo board, on the right the original ATI one: the higher the value is, the better the performance is 11) Unfortunately, WCIII does not want to start ! And the worst is that I have to desactive the 3Dfx drivers when booting on the ATI board to avoid an error of type 3 when WC starts :-( 12) And under X ? My personal opinion is that I do not use it because too slow under X. But the board is recognised by the system. However, I do not have benchmarking program under X to compare the two boards in this environment :-( 13) And again, WC does not run :-( -> so: this board is interresting under 9 for non recent games.