Linux And Drivers For Forlorn 3DFx Cards?

CyberKnet asks: "I'm new to 3D gaming, but have been using Linux for a substancial amount of time. I recently started downloading all the applications/drivers required to run 3D under Linux, but in the course found out I was supposed to download Glide and Device3Dfx. With 3Dfx now sold and no longer offering their linux device drivers, where can I download all the code I need to get a Voodoo2 PCI working under linux? It doesnt work with 'out-of-the-box' RPMs."

View through the looking glass.

[Mercury]

I suppose that the first thing I have to do is answer the question with another question.

What distribution are you running? And what release of that distribution?

For Debian Potato or Woody you just use apt-get to grab a few packages[1][2].

Other posters covered some for RedHat, and http://sourceforge.net/projects/glide/ [sourceforge.net] is the SourceForge poject for glide and device3dfx.

For the Voodoo 3, Voodoo 4, and Voodoo 5 cards you definitely want to look at http://dri.sourceforge.net [sourceforge.net].

Hopefully this will help you find what you need.

Zephaniah E. Hull.
(The Debian glide maintainer.)

1: For Debian Potato you want libglide2-v3 and mesag3-glide2.
2: For Debian Woody you want libglide2 and mesag3-glide2.

How to get the RPMs to work.

[slick_rick]

I have a VoodooII 8 meg PCI. I recently got it working under Debian. The following is how:

These are the three RPMs I used.

Device3Dfx-2.3-5.src.rpm
Glide_SDK-2.2-14.i386. rpm
Glide_V2-2.53-6.i386.rpm

Device3Dfx is the source for the actual driver, the second is the "developer" package, the third is the Glide runtime stuff. I believe you need all three.

First, su -.
The source rpm I just did an rpm -i on. This puts the sources in /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES. I then went to that directory, and did a make. When the make is finished you should have a 3dfx.o file in the same directory. This is your voodoo driver. Copy it to /lib/modules/yourkernelname where yourkernelname is the name of the kernel you are using.

Now check /dev for a file name 3dfx, mine looks like so:
workstation:/usr/local/rpms# ls -l /dev/3dfx
crw-rw-rw- 1 root root 107, 0 Feb 1 03:45 /dev/3dfx

Next I did an rpm -i on the other two RPMs. Now go to /usr/local/glide/bin and run the test programs (I believe there are three). They should work. If not try to do a ldconfig first then try them again. If they work, try running the tests as a non super user. If they work as root, and not super user, then check your permisions on the /dev/3dfx file.

Mine works great. I play UT all the time, and I even dabble in Mesa (OpenGL) programming and the acceleration works fine.

Good luck!

v1-v5

[Beowulf_Boy]

can be found at www.linuxvoodoo.com
But, their Glide SDK for the V3 is messed up.

Re:How to get the RPMs to work.

[Chris Pimlott]

You shouldn't need to use RPMs... all the stuff you need is in potato:

glide2-base [debian.org]

libglide-vg [debian.org]

libglide-v2 [debian.org]

libglide-v3 [debian.org]

device3dfx-source [debian.org]

mesag3-glide2 [debian.org]

Re:How to get the RPMs to work.

[Chris Pimlott]

I'm sorry, I should have replied to the parent of your post. I assumed since you were asking him about it you were using Debian too.

Re:View through the looking glass.

[CyberKnet]

I run Mandrake 7.0, and have tried running several rh6.1 packages previously with no luck. I get different outcomes with different versions of different packages. I believe it was the Glide SRPM from the 7.0 cd that wouldnt compile. Recently I have tried the 7.1 SRPM and it compiled, but then *mesa* wouldnt compile with it as well. (previously I have not been running device3dfx, which was probably a mistake)

---

Re:How to get the RPMs to work.

[CyberKnet]

Hi, thanks for the (really complete) details!
A few questions:
1) Where did you get those RPMS from? There are several sources for them out there, and I'd like to use the same ones if possible.
2) What kernel version are you running? Have you upgraded your kernel since you installed?
3) What version of Mesa are you running?

I've had some problems getting glide and mesa to play nicely, I havent had dev3dfx running though. did you have to make Mesa with i386-linux-glide or some such or not?

Thanks,

CK

---

Re:How to get the RPMs to work.

[CyberKnet]

I run mandrake linux, not debian. as such, there is no support for .debs on my system, and although I have heard a lot about apt-get, I'm not quite ready to install it on my system and begin the (long) task of updating everything to apt-get's format.

---

right here

[AntiNorm]

This [dct.ufms.br] place has Linux drivers for 3Dfx cards from the Banshee/Rush to the V5. Yes, it even has Voodoo2 [dct.ufms.br] drivers.

---
Check in...OK! Check out...OK!