GRex PCI + Voodoo 3 3000 16 MB + LAN + Sound

[Effy]

Just found this nice auciton on Ebay about :

G-Rex 1200 PCI busboard with 2 DMA slots (newer version),
+ Voodoo 3 3000 PCI 16 MB 3D graphics card,
+ Terratec 128 PCI sound card with ESS Solo-1 chipset,
+ 10 MBit ethernet card with Realtek RTL 8029 chipset,
+ CD with drivers and updates,
+ user's manual (english/german.

[VooDoo]

great..but is not for me...My BlizzardPPC have revision 0  any chance to run G-rex on BPPC v0?? without sending BPPC to DCE!!tnx!

[doctorq]

Nope, it's not possible to use a G-Rex on a BPPC rev 0. Maybe with an older G-Rex flash, but I don't think it is recommended anyway.

[Effy]

Lord Spider had already an auction about a BPPC 200/040/25 that appears to work with a Grex  :-)

[Effy]

DoctorQ : I have sent a mail to Lord Spider and just got the following stuff back :

Me : "Hi Lord Spider, is there a way to upgrade the firmware of a BPPC without sending it to DCE "
 
LS : "I don't really know. The set just worked fine with a few BPPCs with "Revision 0", only one of them refused to work."

Now what  :-?

[x56h34]

Let me clear up some facts. :-)

I think that Lord Spider is basically talking out of his ass. What he does  in his "tests" is this. He simply installs the latest Grex flashrom onto his rev. 0 BPPC card, and then plugs it in together with a Grex1200 busboard. He looks at the list of connected PCI cards (through the BPPC/Grex early boot PCI menu) and he sees all of them in the list, including Voodoo. He assumes that it works and he advertises it as "Grex compatible". This is of course incorrect and very misleading.

The point where you actually realize that your rev. 0 BPPC card will be incompatible with Grex1200 is when you try to "turn on" the Voodoo 3 driver, which of course will only work with a rev.2 card. CGX v4 simply can't see it and even if it does you would get errors if you try to set up screenmodes (e.g. heavy graphics corruption or a totally black screen).

I believe that Grex1200 can only be used with rev. 0 BPPC cards if you plan on using just a sound PCI and ethernet PCI card. RTG is not possible if you don't upgrade to rev. 2.

[Effy]

Maybe you better send the seller a mail and ask for info, that´s how I often do when I have questions about an auction

[x56h34]

@Effy:

Of course. Especially with items such as PPC cards. :-)

[Effy]

Please keep us up to date because I don´t know much about the Grex, only that it´s a lot cheaper than Mediator and if you forget to connect the power cablet to the Grex that it will fry your BPPC card :lol: But I guess that happens also when you forget to connect that cable to a Prometheus in an A4000  :lol:

[lordspider]

I'm not talking out of my ass. I tested the whole set with AmigaOS 3.9 and CGX4 for your information. The system works perfectly and the Voodoo 3 driver has NO problems with my Blizzard PPC Rev 0 card. If there were any Voodoo related problems, the Amiga wouldn't even show the Early Startup Menu (I had only one rev 0 card with such problem, but the card was upgraded from BPPC 040 to BPPC 060).

So what you're writing is NOT true, at all not for every BPPC rev 0 card.

My description of the card is NOT incorrect and very misleading, as you may think. All I wrote is true.

The CGX Voodoo 3 driver recognizes the Voodoo card without any problems, the screenmodes can be set up and there's no graphics corruption.

All applications just WORK, you can play games such Wipeout or Heretic II, so I just don't know where did you find all those informations about Voodoo and BPPC rev 0 problems.

[Effy]

[StormLord]

The CGX Voodoo 3 driver recognizes the Voodoo card without any problems, the screenmodes can be set up and there's no graphics corruption.

All applications just WORK, you can play games such Wipeout or Heretic II, so I just don't know where did you find all those informations about Voodoo and BPPC rev 0 problems.

because I have a bppc rev0 and a grex with voodoo3..
can you tell me what versions of the driver for pci,voodoo,cgx and also the flash ver of the ppc ?
I have the problem where I can see all the devices on pciscan but the V3 driver does not load and I can't start cgxmode to setup some resolutions to the cgx driver...
But when I flash the card with latest grexupdate I can see in the output of voodoo the early-startup screen but when the amiga boots the above problem exists also. (ofcourse when I flash I exchange the pci driver and pciscan with the correct version it that it needs every flash). :pissed:
I know that some people here said that they have a working grex with voodoo3 and bppc rev0, but until now I'm not one of them....  :-(

[x56h34]

@lordspider:

You are being misleading again. I know that if you use the original, outdated...old firmware, things work as the original intention was by DCE...however quite slow...and Voodoo 3 capability is not being utilized to its true potential.

Originally, DCE knew that a lot of Phase 5 produced BPPC cards (perhaps 95% of them out there) were revision 0, so they utilized the firmware to be in compliance with this fact, as they needed this compatibility in order to have a market at all.

As the competition grew, they needed some improvements to their busboard performance, so they made a new standard...revision 2 BPPC required!

The latest firmware which requires BPPC logic to be revision 2 will not work with a Voodoo 3 card, period. This is a known fact. It is a very important update to any BPPC card that is to be used with a BVision or Grex as it provides better power management and fixes a lot of issues which originally concerned BVision usage. BVision will happily work with revision 0 PPC cards, however even for it I would recommend a revision 2 PPC card, however this is not a must.

If you want to use the original old revision (was it 1.3?) of firmware, go ahead. Things will..."work"...but you will have a joke of a busboard, crawling compared to other solutions out there.

If you want the regular, speedy Grex compatibility, you need 2.2 flashrom and a revision 2 BPPC card. Your eBay description fails to mention this.

[Effy]

Didn´t know it was that complicated. All I see at his auctions are an Infinitiv tower, a BPPC card, and the Grex. Seems like he sells his entire tower ...

[lordspider]

@x56h34:

Hmm... I'm using flashupdate 2.2 and NOT the 1.3 (both can be found here: http://grex.amigaworld.de/index.php?lang=de&page=15)

There are also CGX 3, CGX 4 and Warp3D drivers I've installed to use my Voodoo 3 3000 card.

About the speed: I also had Mediator 1200 and it was SLOWER than G-Rex. Isn't it strange? According to you're post, my G-Rex should work slower ("crawling") than other solution, but the fact is it works faster. Why? Maybe because of the 2.2 flashupdate. And the card still has revision 0.

So, I have regular, speedy Grex compatibility with the 2.2 flashrom and a revision 0 BPPC card. My eBay description is TRUE, because the BPPC has the newest flahrom.