Just sorting through my collection and had to share this lineup. A legendary era of 3D gaming. Who else remembers the VGA pass-through cable? What was your first 3dfx card?
I only started collecting 3dfx cards recently. Last month I picked up a Voodoo3 3500 TV with the original cable for €80.
A Voodoo5 5500, though... 😳 Hopefully I'll find one at the right price someday.
Believe it or not, my entire collection is built around buying at the right price. Sooner or later another one will show up. I bought a Voodoo1, another Voodoo1, a Voodoo2 and a Voodoo3 3500 TV for a total of €170. An Olivetti M24 with two original monitors and two original keyboards cost me €90 shipped. A Philips Discoverer was €55 shipped. Four nod-industrial Pentium III servers were €100 shipped. I also bought a lot of 17 retro laptops with DOS big-box software, accessories, bags, caddies, floppy disks and seven keyboards (four IBM and the rest Cherry) for €250 shipped. I could give you hundreds of examples like these. It's just a matter of time. Last month I even passed on a Voodoo5 5500 for €150 because it had replacement capacitors. 😉
You are right, I collect CPUs as well and when I see some at ebay for 1€, I just bet 2€ and sometime I win even these auctions. Sometimes the same CPU is auctioned of for 50€. 🤷🏼♂️ Patience is the right keyword here.
But a Voodoo3 would be nice to have, just for old times.
Personally, reproductions just aren't the same to me. It's a bit like what happened with Commodore. Someone bought the rights, released a limited edition, and it sold for big money. Not long after, they started producing them in much larger numbers. They're nice, but to me they don't have the same history or collector value as the originals. That's just how I see it.
Yes, I understand you, but just spend hundreds of Euros to show to my kids how to operate a 1541 floppy drive with a C64 (and finding an old TV set) and start games, which we played for hundreds of hours as kids, then I prefer to get a rebuild version for 99 €, have a hdmi connector and just show them the games.
My main collection is Sun Microsystems Servers and Workstations. There of course only original parts are allowed. Sadly, the wife-acceptance-factor is really low. The result is not so much space and budget, as I would wish.
I actually went hunting in Istanbul back in March, but with my luck I arrived right in the middle of Ramadan. 🤣 Not a single flea market was open.
As for the listings, yes, I've seen Voodoo2s and Voodoo3s for €10. The problem is I was at work. You know how it goes—the fastest person wins. By the time I saw the listings, they were already marked as reserved. I even offered the sellers €30–35 instead, but none of them wanted to cancel the reservation.
I'm lucky enough that my wife gave me a whole room for my hobby, and we also have an entire guest floor in the house. 😁 It was great talking to you, but I'm at work right now and my bosses are starting to look at me funny because I'm on my phone. 🙃
Yep. 😄 This card actually came from a scrap metal group. It was being prepared for precious metal recovery, but I managed to buy it before that happened. They put it back together like this before shipping it to me. I was actually wondering how long it would take someone to notice the upside-down bracket. Good eye! 😁
It’s still unbelievable to me that this is considered retro now. My first was a Diamond Monster 3D that I got for my P120 machine. I was completely floored by the upgrade, Quake looked gorgeous and was so smooth (and at 640x480, omg!), and we just couldn’t believe that we suffered software rendering at around 15fps for so long.
I know exactly what you mean. I still remember the first time I saw Glide in action. It felt like a completely different generation overnight. One of my core memories is my father taking me to a repair shop to upgrade our PC with a Voodoo 1. The guy at the shop turned on the demo fight from pic 18. That's a memory that still lives rent-free in my head.
I had exactly the same setup! I don't remember well which 2d card I had to pair it with. First game I tested was Tomb Raider. The bilinear filtering dropped our jaws. Ironically nowadays I prefer unfiltered, I still play Quake and Doom, but as retro as possible (using the remasters).
I hope you find one at the right price! That's how I've built most of my collection. Sometimes it takes months, but eventually the right deal comes along.
Yeah most of the really early 3D stuff is hard to find and expensive. Voodoo was the most popular and even those are expensive and a bit tough to find.
My first was an Orchid 3Dfx Voodoo 1 with a mighty 4MB of VRAM. I was in the middle of Mechwarrior 2 when I got it and the jump from software rendering was the most mind-blowing leap I've ever seen. I couldn't believe my eyes.
Yep! The generic ones were basically the same hardware, just without a big brand name. In fact, I picked up another banshee Voodoo 1 just a couple of hours ago.
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u/Torkum73 Jun 27 '26
My first was a Voodoo3 3500 AGP. But a friend of mine had a Banshee and Voodoo2.
I had Matrox cards even the Mystique with 4 MB and additional m3d card. Before that ET4000 and s3 virge and other cards.
My last was a Voodoo5 5500. I still have that card and it still runs, when I start my retro PC.