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

[doctorq]

Maybe the key to the solution is the rev. of the PPC CPU reported by WhichAmiga.... I see WhichAmiga reports your PPC CPU as v2.1.

Well, the screenshots convinced me, even though I myself have tried to connect a G-Rex to a BPPC without getting it to work.

[x56h34]

I guess the new rule for rev. 0 BlizzardPPC usage with Grex1200 busboard is..."try it and see if it works". :-)

[Effy]

I guess we are never too old to learn something new  :lol:

[x56h34]

I'm tempted to give it another try.
Right now my Grex1200 is stored away in a closet, and the A1200T/PPC is connected to a Mediator 1200 busboard.
I'm kind of lazy to do it right away just to see if it would work, as it would involve flashing the PPC card to Grex compatible firmware and a lot of extra work in preparing the OS3.9 system partition, etc., etc.

I'll most likely try it out over a boring long weekend or something. :-)

[Effy]

Take an empty beer glass, fill it with red Cabarnet Sauvignon and put some Rammstein music on, that might get you into the right mood  :lol:
And if it doesn´t then at least you hopefully have some fun  :-)

[x56h34]

@thread:

I've tried installing Grex1200 again this weekend in my Elbox Power Tower 1200, and it wouldn't work with my BlizzardPPC rev. 0.

I've flashed the card with the latest Grex compatible firmware (2.2).

In the BlizzardPPC early-boot-menu, by clicking on the PCI button, I could see all the PCI cards connected to the Grex busboard. Voodoo 3, Terratec 128i, and Realtek 8029.

This means that Grex detects everything OK, however if I try to connect a VGA monitor to the Voodoo output, I get only a black screen. Right away this seems strange, as Voodoo 3 (just like BVision) should be able to display the BlizzardPPC boot menu on your monitor. Mine doesn't, and I even made sure that Enable 31khz display is set.

After installing OS3.9 with both boing bags, and the latest version of blizkick, I installed the grex drivers and I've updated CGX to v4 through the 42.7 update file.

By clicking on the CGXMode file in SYS:Prefs, it doesn't load up. SnoopDos shows that CGXMode tried to load some tooltypes from the Voodoo3 monitor file, but when I actually look at the tooltypes of Voodoo3, there are none. :-?

I haven't fooled around with Grex in about a year and my memory is not 100% fresh on how to exactly install all the drivers, so I was wondering if there's something that I missed? AFAIR, CGXMode should simply load up and detect my Voodoo 3 card, however I'm not sure if there's a step that I may have missed. LordSpider, any tips?

Also, when I run the latest pciscan file from shell, I can also see all the pci cards connected to the Grex busboard just fine.

[lordspider]

How did you connected the PCI cards? I don't know if it may be important, but my G-Rex had LAN in first slot (closest to the BPPC), Terratec in 3 slot and Voodoo in 5 slot.

The Early Startup Menu and the BPPC menu are displayed through the Voodoo card without problems, even with I set "No 31KHz screen".

I've first installed CGX 3 from this archive:

http://grex.amigaworld.de/download.php?id=31

After it was working fine, I've upgraded it to the CGX 4 version using the second archive:

http://grex.amigaworld.de/download.php?id=32

and the CGX 4 CD-ROM.

As far as I can remeber installing CGX 4 without installing CGX 3 lead to displaying the boot logo forever.

My Voodoo3.info has following tooltypes:

BITMAPCACHE=YES
BOOTLOGO=YES
DRAGGING=NO
PASSTHROUGH=YES

And the CGX variables are set as follows:

56KHZAUDIO = 1
ALERTEMU = 1
CPUP2C = 0
FORCECHUNKY = 0
HIDE15BIT = 1
HIRESCRSR = 1
KEEPAMIGAVIDEO = 0
NOMOUSERATIO = 0
NOPASSTHROUGH = 1
PLANES2FAST = 1
SAVEMEM = 1
SUPERGELS = 1
SUPERLAYERS = 1
USESEMAPHORES = 1
WBPATSPEEDUP = 1

Versions of all my CGX libraries you can find in one of previous posts.

[StormLord]

When I flashed mine with the latest grex firmware I could see the early-startup on my voodoo3 . But when the machine booted the driver didn't init .. so I could not open cgxmode to setup some screenmodes.. When I double click cgxmode it does nothing but the last command menu show my attemp to run it....
When I flashed back for bvision and pluged it in the cgxmode worked as it should.
I belive its something to do with CGX setup.. I thing it a crappy software as long as installer goes.. I also made the latest update to cgx4 but nothing.
I tried also a clean install of OS3.9 and cgx but nothing again.. I think the only solution is for someone with a working setup like this to archive all the needed files in the wright positions and send them to me... I know that its illegal but I have the original CGX4 CD.. so I belive its not too illegal !

edit: also the pciscan recognise corectly my voodoo3 card thats the only card atm connected to grex...

[djbase]

As far as I can remeber installing CGX 4 without installing CGX 3 lead to displaying the boot logo forever.

Yes, thats because the V4 archive contains only a patch for the voodoo driver of V3. Without V3 you cant patch it.

[x56h34]

lordspider wrote:
How did you connected the PCI cards? I don't know if it may be important, but my G-Rex had LAN in first slot (closest to the BPPC), Terratec in 3 slot and Voodoo in 5 slot.

Voodoo 3 in first, Ethernet in second, and Sound in third slot.

I also tried using only Voodoo 3 connected in first, and only Voodoo 3 connected in second slot with the same results.

I don't think it should matter where you plug in each card.

The Early Startup Menu and the BPPC menu are displayed through the Voodoo card without problems, even with I set "No 31KHz screen".

I think this could be a clue if your rev. 0 card works or not. Since I didn't see anything on my monitor (black screen) probably this means that my rev. 0 card is not Grex tolerant.

I've first installed CGX 3 from this archive:

http://grex.amigaworld.de/download.php?id=31

After it was working fine, I've upgraded it to the CGX 4 version using the second archive:

http://grex.amigaworld.de/download.php?id=32

and the CGX 4 CD-ROM.

As far as I can remeber installing CGX 4 without installing CGX 3 lead to displaying the boot logo forever.

I did the same thing, except since nothing worked for V3, I upgraded to V4 and again, nothing worked.

My Voodoo3.info has following tooltypes:

BITMAPCACHE=YES
BOOTLOGO=YES
DRAGGING=NO
PASSTHROUGH=YES

This I don't have. I'll give it a try.

And the CGX variables are set as follows:

56KHZAUDIO = 1
ALERTEMU = 1
CPUP2C = 0
FORCECHUNKY = 0
HIDE15BIT = 1
HIRESCRSR = 1
KEEPAMIGAVIDEO = 0
NOMOUSERATIO = 0
NOPASSTHROUGH = 1
PLANES2FAST = 1
SAVEMEM = 1
SUPERGELS = 1
SUPERLAYERS = 1
USESEMAPHORES = 1
WBPATSPEEDUP = 1

I have these more or less set like yours.

Thanks for the tips. I'll try again when I find time. :-)

[AmiGR]

Sound cards will not work in the third slot. Install any DMA-able cards in the first two slots (Sound or 100MBit ethernet or TV-Card), the Voodoo should not occupy a DMA slot, it does *NOT* support BusMastering.

Wierdly, so far I've heard of a lot of stuff that should not work on a certain PPC cards and yet worked when I tried. ;-) No, 95% of BPPC cards are not Rev.0, most 160MHz ones are iirc and some of the 200MHz ones. All the 240MHz boards I came across are rev.2.

[x56h34]

@AmiGR:

Interesting...

My Grex is the new version (2 DMA slots).
It seems that I only tried Voodoo 3 in slot 1 and slot 2 (the DMA slots), so I guess it's possible that that's why it didn't work / show any video when in early-boot-menu.

I guess I need to try again and see what happens when I use Voodoo in slots 3, 4, or 5.

BTW, my BPPC is an 060/240Mhz/SCSI version (not an overclocked 603e) and the card is a revision 0, according to boardtype.

[lordspider]

AmiGR wrote:
Sound cards will not work in the third slot. Install any DMA-able cards in the first two slots (Sound or 100MBit ethernet or TV-Card), the Voodoo should not occupy a DMA slot, it does *NOT* support BusMastering.

But the Terratec 128 WORKS in the 3 slot! I wanted to use the LAN card and sound card in the 2 DMA slots, but the sound card freezed computer after a few seconds of playing sound, that's why I moved it to the 3 slot, where it works perfectly.

[lordspider]

@x56h34:

My G-Rex has also 2 DMA slots, but when I used the sound card in one of them, the computer freezed after a few seconds when I tried to play any sound.

After experimenting I found the combination 1 (LAN) - 3 (Sound) - 5 (Voodoo3) as the best one.

[x56h34]

@lordspider:

Thanks for the advice.
It's probably best for me to try using just Voodoo 3 in the 5th slot (without anything else connected to Grex), until I iron out the bugs.

I'll report back in here after I finish my second test. :-)
I am anxious to try it again as I've obtained new info, so I'll probably mess around with it tonight, after I return home from work. ;-)

[x56h34]

@thread:

No go. This BPPC rev. 0 definitely doesn't work with Grex. I've tried using Voodoo 3 in every PCI slot, and the results were always the same. CGXMODE doesn't run, and there's no video output through Voodoo 3 when in early boot menu, or when in BPPC boot menu.

I've even made sure that the motherboard gets extra power through the floppy power connector, as well as the PPC card itself (+5V through the fan connector). P8 and P9 connectors are inserted directly to the Grex.

:-(

Back to mediator for me. :-) I'm not going to fool around with this anymore, as flashing the PPC card with different firmware back and forth ain't healty. I was curious to see if rev. 0 would really work, however it seems that it won't (at least not my card).