Recreating Voodoo Graphics and a Late-1990s Gaming PC on an FPGA

functionmouse

Will it support 31kHz video out via VGA I wonder? Would love a period-accurate PC in my superstation one.

wk_end

Tomb Raider (1996) ostensibly required a Pentium, and I remember (though memory may be faulty) the demo refusing to run on my 486. Does this FPGA 486 support the additional Pentium instructions?

shoobiedoo

So bummed out that I wrecked the HDMI out on my MiSTer. I was trying to figure out a new monitor layout and unplugged/plugged it in a few times. I could SSH into it no problem, but no HDMI out. After peeking around on the forums, turns out that the MiSTer doesn't take kindly to that while it's still on-- I forget the technical reason. Oh well. Many, many hours of fun playing games with my son on the it, I got my money's worth.

throwitaway222

I had that VooDoo card- Quake 1 was amazing on it. Of course today it's not amazing.

xupybd

The lack of example videos is killing me!

jumploops

In case it's helpful to anyone, MiSTer is a project[0] that recreates classic computers and video game consoles on hardware. What do I mean by hardware? Rather than emulating the device in software, which can cause various issues (especially related to timing), by mapping the actual device logic to a field programmable gate array (FPGA), you can achieve an "exact" replica of the hardware. It's a super cool project, and I highly recommend checking it out if you have an interest in old machines (Apple II, Commodore 64, etc.). [0] https://mister-devel.github.io/MkDocs_MiSTer/

ggm

I'd run the Virtual Notre Dame VRML demo in this, if I could!

Panzerschrek

Am I right that Voodoo had no early depth test and thus triangles are textured even if they are completely obstructed?

monster_truck

I mowed lawns for two summers to save up for a Voodoo 3000 PCI, still didn't even have half of what I needed. Parents covered the rest. Basically nothing I had hoped to be able to play worked. Spent an entire summer just trying to get Arcanum to even run, never did succeed. Learned a whole lot. Goddamn if that buyer's remorse didn't scar me for life, the amount of researching I did before any purchase from then on was obsessive. I still think of the card fondly for what it represented to 10 year old me. This story does have a happy ending, we ended up getting a Dell XPS not long after with a Pentium 3 & a GeForce 2, back when they were still beige.