Wow, "EGA Wonder"... haven't heard that name in a while...ATI Ega Wonder !
Back in '86/'87 as a high school student, could not afford a EGA/VGA monitor.
The EGA Wonder ! let you plug into a monochrome monitor and run EGA/VGA games.
I remember purchasing a $10 game from Waldenbooks, some horrible baseball game. It wouldn't boot on the card.
Contacted ATI in Canada, and they sent me a new EEPROM to install in the card with a return carrier for the old one.
That customer service, as a youth, is likely why I went on to buy the VGA Wonder !, Rage, 9700, 6850, 7850, 3900, 480 and 580 graphics cards.
I heard of the NV1 when it was already obsolete. Since then, I've always wanted one just for the novelty.Wow, "EGA Wonder"... haven't heard that name in a while...
I never had one, that's cool that you could play EGA games on a mono monitor with one. Oh, glorious EGA... KQ, SQ, etc.
Yeah, ATI was top-tier back then, along with Matrox. NVidia, at the time, was like "who's that?". Actually, I don't think that NVidia even existed back in the days of EGA graphics.
I actually had purchased NVidia's first GPU, the NV-1. It used Quadratics or something, and was INCOMPATIBLE with DirectX. That choice ALMOST sunk the company. It had an extensive sound-processor on it too. Kind of like a Saturn console-on-a-chip (minus the CPU). They had a Saturn game controller port on the back of the card, and it came with several Saturn game ports, including Datona USA, Panzer Dragoon, and Virtua Fighter, I believe. It was the Diamond version, I think.
I heard of the NV1 when it was already obsolete. Since then, I've always wanted one just for the novelty.
That is the same exact reason I got the Voodoo 3 3000....for Myst.3dfx Voodoo3, I bought it especially to play Myst.
Used to have a dual voodoo2 single-card thing. My twin brother got it from someone on this forum. I think the only official drivers were for Windows NT (maybe the card was meant for some kind of workstation).They're real collectors items now, much like basically any hardware with a 3dfx logo. Speaking of that, man I used to see all kinds of interesting test mule cards and one offs, probably from ID and the other devs around here. They'd show up at first Saturday sales when they were a year or two out of date. I bought a single card SLI 12MB Voodoo 2 that also had some strange Millennium 4MB 2D card on a riser, with a flat cable that fed the edge connection. Think I paid $5 for it circa ~2000, but it's long gone now, probably gave it away during one of my freebie 'get these parts outta here' giveaways.
I also saw a Voodoo 5 6000 with some kludged soldered on solid state Japanese Nihon caps and all socketed dram. I really REALLY should have jumped on it, not sure at the time I even realized it was never released to retail, but I had already moved onto GeForce GTS, GF2, etc by then and like most of us, kind of felt like Voodoo 3 (16-bit color limit, ugh) was a bit old fashioned compared to the Nvidia and then ATI alternatives. Voodoo 2 had real material advantages over Riva TNT and ATI Rage, especially the GLide ports done on so many classic games from ~96-00ish, but V3+ it started to get left behind feature wise. Damn I miss having more quality makers in the segment though. Was super fascinating especially 95-00. Matrox G500, Nvidia stuff, S3 Savage, 3DFX zaniness, ATI Rage, Rendition Verite (underrated!!) SLI and twin processor units, and even joke hardware like the Virge "3D". I always told my buddy IT partner, it means it's on the VERGE of being a video card, but sadly, it isn't.
Used to have a dual voodoo2 single-card thing. My twin brother got it from someone on this forum. I think the only official drivers were for Windows NT (maybe the card was meant for some kind of workstation).
I had a dual Voodoo 2 on a single card. I think it still required a 2D card and an external VGA loopback cable. It was two PCBs sandwiched together.If im not mistaken it was the VooDoo 5 5500 that was a dual, and then the uber rare voodoo 5 6000 which was a quad, running at 166mhz all on pci of
course lol. pics for refeView attachment 15838rence.View attachment 15837
Quantum 3D Obsidian2 X24I had a dual Voodoo 2 on a single card. I think it still required a 2D card and an external VGA loopback cable. It was two PCBs sandwiched together.
Yeah, Voodoo3 was already released by the time I got that. It was just an interesting piece of oddware and I thought it might work better with the UltraHLE N64 emulator, which only used Glide API (without the use of "wrappers" for OpenGL or Direct3D). If I recall correctly, UltraHLE had some issues with Banshee and Voodoo3.
I had a dual Voodoo 2 on a single card. I think it still required a 2D card and an external VGA loopback cable. It was two PCBs sandwiched together.
Yeah. Pretty sure this is what was on my first ATI All-In-Wonder. I had the 4MB upgraded version.ATI Rage IIc 4MB AGP. Horrible card. Deaccelerator. Nothing worked right and when something worked without issues, software rendering was faster. Still have grudges.
ATI Mach64 VLB... one of the first cards to offer hardware-assisted blitting, under the "Games SDK" (the original name for DirectX). Fox and Bear 60FPS shoutout! (Yeah, I was in game development back then.)How many here had either VLB or MCA video cards at some point lol
I upgraded to Riva TNT 2 Pro and had zero issues. Everything worked and the performance uplift was mind blowing.Yeah. Pretty sure this is what was on my first ATI All-In-Wonder. I had the 4MB upgraded version.
It came with "3D Rage Edition" of MechWarrior 2 and some other stuff but it was slower than software rendering. I recall seeing that it enabled filtered textures and Direct 3D in Monster Truck Madness but GOOD LUCK playing it that way. Can't believe they even pretended that this card did anything useful for games/gamers. When my friend got his All-In-Wonder Radeon with the built-in IEEE 1394 FireWire port o finally saw an AIW card that was decent for gaming. In my own system I went from a Voodoo3 3000 AGP to a launch Visiontek GeForce 3 and I never turned back. ATI/AMD had lost me.