Voodoo Banshee 16MB Hardware Acceleration

kolt · 12-01-2003, 08:23 PM

I've searched for a long time already and I didn't find anything...

How to get the Voodoo Banshee 16MB Hardware Acceleration under Slackware 9.0? Is there some kind of a driver or the system supports this card?

Thanks in advance

kolt · 12-01-2003, 08:31 PM

I've just found something:
Glide3-3Dfx-20010826-1.i386.rpm (307kb)
I'm not at home right now and I can't try it. Do you think it could help me?

kolt · 12-04-2003, 02:33 AM

Ok. I found some other rpms but all I get is failed dependences...
Doesn't anybody really know? I just don't believe this...I'm sure I'm not the only one with Voodoo Banshee 16MB...

mcleodnine · 12-04-2003, 03:18 AM

You should have kernel support for this card from way back, and I'm pretty sure you'll be able to find it already built under the default slack modules. Kill all instances of X and run 'xf86cfg' and see if you can find your card in the list.

If you don't have it (unlikely) you can buid it...
You'll find it under the "Character devices" in the "DRM 4.1" section - the module you want to build is tdfx.o (select "3dfx Banshee/Voodoo3+" from the list)

kolt · 12-04-2003, 05:57 PM

Ok, thanks, mcleodnine! I can't do this right now but when I do it (in about 10-12 hours) I'll post the result.
Actually I'm using the card and it works with the 'tdfx' driver, but the problem is that I can't get the acceleration to work. I tried everything in the XF86.config file: enabling 'glx' and 'dri', or just each one of them...nothing. Maybe I should recompile the kernel with 3dfx support because I don't remember what modules I've included (excluded) in the last compilation...

And...is there difference between the XF86config and XF86cfg commands and what exactly is it (excluding that the XF86cfg has a graphical interface)?

mcleodnine · 12-04-2003, 08:18 PM

Yeah the xf86cfg is a nifty GUI, but make sure you back up your current configuration.

You may also want to look in the logfiles /var/log/XFree86.0.log for some recent output of error messages. 'grep -B 10 -A 10 tdfx /var/log/XFree86.0.log' will search for that module name and give you the 10 lines before the occurance and after.

kolt · 12-04-2003, 08:46 PM

Thanks once again. I'll do some experiments later (when I get near my linux PC

). I'll also look in the logs, like you suggested, but I don't expect to see anything other than "glx missing on display 0:0" or something like that. Anyway...nobody knows

kolt · 12-05-2003, 07:28 AM

After recompilig, reconfiguring with xf86cfg and digging in logs, I finally figured out what is wrong: an nvidia driver which I had forgotten about

After uninstalling it I have acceleration (finaly) but everything is really laggy

With 'glxgears' I get 140.00 FPS which I think is really slow... Unreal Tournament hardly breathes... And that is just the menu I just didn't see point in going further into the game...
Here is the section of the banshee in the XF86Config file:
Section "Device"

### Available Driver options are:-
### Values: <i>: integer, <f>: float, <bool>: "True"/"False",
### <string>: "String", <freq>: "<f> Hz/kHz/MHz"
### [arg]: arg optional
#Option "NoAccel" # [<bool>]
#Option "SWcursor" # [<bool>]
#Option "UsePIO" # [<bool>]
#Option "ShowCache" # [<bool>]
#Option "VideoKey" # <i>
#Option "NoSLI" # [<bool>]
#Option "TexturedVideo" # [<bool>]
Option "DRI" # [<bool>]
Identifier "Ban"
Driver "tdfx"
VendorName "3Dfx Interactive, Inc."
BoardName "Voodoo Banshee"
ChipSet "3dfx Banshee"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
EndSection

Do I have to enable dri and what options should I put to it in the bottom of the file? (I tried it but saw no difference)
About the BusID - my card is AGP. Does it make any difference?

I'm running KDE 3.1 1024x768@16bpp

Hope someone can help me...

kolt · 12-05-2003, 05:16 PM

Whatever...
Today I bought a new nvidia videocard and everything is perfect...
At least I got the banshee acceleration working

10x for the help, mcleodnine!

mcleodnine · 12-05-2003, 05:22 PM

I get about the same output for glxgears on an PIII 733. The voodoo card in that rig was bought in... 1998 or 1999, so it's low-tech by today's standars.

finegan · 12-06-2003, 06:49 AM

The 3dfx-glide stuff is pre-built for Slackware-9.0, its just one of those little extra bits that's not on the CD, its in the slackware-9.0/extra/ directory of your favorite slack mirror. Mine has it here:

ftp://ftp.oss.cc.gatech.edu/pub/slac...ra/3dfx-glide/

Also, there's the DRI subsection declaration that all the other distros paste in but that Slack doesn't exactly build for you:

Code:

Section "DRI"

    Mode        0666

EndSection

That'll of course just let joe user get to DRI, but the glide modules "I think" are required for hardware GL to work on these cards... the only one I've got is in a dual-head so I traded DRI for xinerama.

Cheers,

Finegan