Voodoo hex

[xPhilx]

Hi All,

Here's the setup:
Micronik towered A3000D.
A3640 CPU card.
8MB ZIPs + 128MB ZorRam.
Prometheus PCI bus board.
Voodoo3 3000 GFX. (yeah right! Read on)
RTL 8029 NIC.
ATX 200W PSU.
9GB Micropolis SCSI HDD. (which gets hotter than a star gone super nova!)
Plextor PlexWriter SCSI CD-R.

And here's my problem:
I started getting corrupt graphics in RTG mode at workbench.  This would be small random dots or short lines but always accompanied by a vertical line to the right-bottom of the pointer.  Later this worsened to thick black vertical lines at equal distance across the screen.  I tried re-inserting the voodoo3 3000 into different PCI slots, moving the Prometheus to different Zorro slots, removing the A3640, replaced the original A3000D PSU, uninstalling - reinstalling P96.  All to no avail.  The Amigas native PAL screenmode is fine.

Assumption = knackered Voodoo card.

I remembered I have a Voodoo4 4500 PCI card in storage so tried that.  At first I had garbage on-screen but a reinstall of P96 sorted it out and it runs perfectly - no graphic corruption.  Screen redraws and updates are a little slower than the Voodoo3 but no biggy.

Action = get another Voodoo3 card

I got another voodoo3 3000 from eBay which arrived today.  After installing it I find this card has, how can I explain this . . . 6 rows a dashes "-" horizontally across the screen which move with the pointer, and hello, there's that vertical line to the right-bottom of the pointer again??  Surely I've not bought a duff card, not off eBay lol.

Thoughts = to explicit!

I decided to try both voodoo3 cards in a PC.  Yep, both show corrupt graphics.  The original card displays DOS characters as garbage and once windows boots there are vertical black bars at equal distance across the splash screen.  Am I right in thinking this is bad memory?  The second card is okay in DOS but in windows it has thin orange vertical bars at the same equal distance as the first card.

Now, I'm left wondering if both cards have died a 'natural' death or did the Promethues have a hand in their demise.  I don't want to use the Amiga and risk any further damage.  I guess I'll have to get yet another Voodoo3 card and try it in the PC first to make sure it's working okay.  If that card corrupts graphics in the Amiga I can only assume I have a dodgy Prometheus board . . . unless anyone knows different?

I guess what I'm asking is has anyone seen this behavior before with the Prometheus and am I right in thinking that the Voodoo memory is bad.

Oh, while I'm here; silly question I'm sure but is the Voodoo3 2000 compatible with the Prometheus?

Cheers.

[xPhilx]

Okay so I've just done a little homework on the Voodoo cards:

Voodoo3 2000 = 300 MHz RAMDAC
Voodoo3 3000 = 350 MHz RAMDAC
Voodoo4 4500 = 350 MHz RAMDAC (VSA-100 GPU)

So yeah, you would expect a comparable speed between the 3000 and 4500.  Now I'm no techie by any stretch of the imagination, but as the "3dfxVoodoo.chip" Amiga driver is for the Voodoo3 I would expect that card to have the edge over the 4500. Someone please correct me if I am wrong.

In real world usage, namely web browsing with AWeb, there is a slightly slower screen update using pgup/pgdn with the 4500.  As I said this is no biggy.

@Heiroglyph
Wise words.  I'll get to checking the PSUs later on today when time permits.

@Iggy
See above about the driver.  It would make more sense using the 4500, less heat and the heatsink has a fan fitted as standard.  Its just that I now have an itch and I have to scratch it.  I have to know why both Voodoo 3000s showed the same(ish) faults, was it just fluke or a hardware fault in my Amiga?  I'm 99% certain I just had bad luck with 2 bad cards, but I'd like to be sure.

Cheers.