3dfx Voodoo 3 3500 TV: Video, Radio, BIG DONGLE
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Date: 2024-09-13
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Comments and reviews: 20
raelik777
Yeah, that SD card problem is actually demonstrating one of the BIG weaknesses in that 3dfx capture software: no buffering controls. You're seeing the effect of buffer overrun in action. The incoming video source never stops, so the software has to keep up with it. The SD card through the adapter will only write data so fast, and tends to be very bursty when it does, so when the buffer fills up while the software waits for the SD card to finish its write operation. you get what you see here. If the software let you change the buffer settings (or if it had been programmed to dynamically set one by measuring the write speed of the underlying storage, it could easily work around this problem.
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Yeah, that SD card problem is actually demonstrating one of the BIG weaknesses in that 3dfx capture software: no buffering controls. You're seeing the effect of buffer overrun in action. The incoming video source never stops, so the software has to keep up with it. The SD card through the adapter will only write data so fast, and tends to be very bursty when it does, so when the buffer fills up while the software waits for the SD card to finish its write operation. you get what you see here. If the software let you change the buffer settings (or if it had been programmed to dynamically set one by measuring the write speed of the underlying storage, it could easily work around this problem.
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Cpgeekorg
I was always enamored by these high end all in one gpu / video capture solutions. - particularly the ati all-in-wonder series. I've always loved pc video capture and editing, far before it was an actually reasonable option: D today, I have several $30 usb dongles that are bus-powered 1080p30 hdmi capture devices, but back in the day, the only way to get even 320x240 video into a pc fast enough (barely in many cases) was with a pci card.
the pinacle of my TV (specifically) capture journey was the happauge wintv pvr 250. that thing, along with my og amd athlon machine, served as my entire entertainment system from tv to video games for many years.
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I was always enamored by these high end all in one gpu / video capture solutions. - particularly the ati all-in-wonder series. I've always loved pc video capture and editing, far before it was an actually reasonable option: D today, I have several $30 usb dongles that are bus-powered 1080p30 hdmi capture devices, but back in the day, the only way to get even 320x240 video into a pc fast enough (barely in many cases) was with a pci card.
the pinacle of my TV (specifically) capture journey was the happauge wintv pvr 250. that thing, along with my og amd athlon machine, served as my entire entertainment system from tv to video games for many years.
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Raletia
Ooooh! I bet with how easy it is to make stuff now, if you let someone have a look at the dongle they could replicate it, probably in a nicer and lighter form factor too. Maybe even just a circuit board that screws into the DVI port on it, could use the coax ports as extra attachment points for stability and pass them through.
Oooh! Or or! Attach a circuit board to a second slot cover and use A DVI to HDMI cable to connect to the card and have enough room for the VGA and RCA connectors! It could even use a blank pci connector to provide extra support.
So many possibilities now and it could make those cards missing dongles useful again!
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Ooooh! I bet with how easy it is to make stuff now, if you let someone have a look at the dongle they could replicate it, probably in a nicer and lighter form factor too. Maybe even just a circuit board that screws into the DVI port on it, could use the coax ports as extra attachment points for stability and pass them through.
Oooh! Or or! Attach a circuit board to a second slot cover and use A DVI to HDMI cable to connect to the card and have enough room for the VGA and RCA connectors! It could even use a blank pci connector to provide extra support.
So many possibilities now and it could make those cards missing dongles useful again!
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Blackadder75
I had this, but not in 1999. I got it years later in a 2nd hand game PC I bought. I think I still used it to play World of Warcraft in 2005. That feels crazy because in 2024 we have WoW Classic, a game I still think of as 'modern' despite it's aged graphics. So you can use this card to play a modern game! (note I didn't test if you really could play wow classic on this card.
note2: it kinda sucked to play wow so in winter 2005/2006 I bought a new PC because I needed better performance to go raiding! But I don; t remember what kind of graphics it had, it was something boring
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I had this, but not in 1999. I got it years later in a 2nd hand game PC I bought. I think I still used it to play World of Warcraft in 2005. That feels crazy because in 2024 we have WoW Classic, a game I still think of as 'modern' despite it's aged graphics. So you can use this card to play a modern game! (note I didn't test if you really could play wow classic on this card.
note2: it kinda sucked to play wow so in winter 2005/2006 I bought a new PC because I needed better performance to go raiding! But I don; t remember what kind of graphics it had, it was something boring
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arpinchock
I actually helped test the drivers on this and the short lived VoodooTV for 3Dfx.
Some of the glitches Clint experienced were fixed. Not sure where to get official upgraded drivers though.
I used the capture a lot because the European ones could capture PAL and NTSC.
At the time it was also easy to play DVDs region free which was one of my main motivations. Sometimes movies weee out on DVD in the US before they were cinemas here in Germany.
I liked the card a lot but switching to making their own cards and lagging in innovation killed them in the end
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I actually helped test the drivers on this and the short lived VoodooTV for 3Dfx.
Some of the glitches Clint experienced were fixed. Not sure where to get official upgraded drivers though.
I used the capture a lot because the European ones could capture PAL and NTSC.
At the time it was also easy to play DVDs region free which was one of my main motivations. Sometimes movies weee out on DVD in the US before they were cinemas here in Germany.
I liked the card a lot but switching to making their own cards and lagging in innovation killed them in the end
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NullStaticVoid
I had the ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder. I forget whether it was 8500 or 9500 or 9800. Long time ago. But it came with a break out box for all the video inputs and outs besides the DVI. It also had an RF remote! I used that thing for about 10 years in a weird little coffee table computer I built. I used the DVR function so I could watch DS9, which came on at 1pm, after I got home from work.
Disk space was still expensive so I erased each DS9 episode after watching it. I did also pick up an old video camera at the flea market that cold plug into the video input
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I had the ATI Radeon All-In-Wonder. I forget whether it was 8500 or 9500 or 9800. Long time ago. But it came with a break out box for all the video inputs and outs besides the DVI. It also had an RF remote! I used that thing for about 10 years in a weird little coffee table computer I built. I used the DVR function so I could watch DS9, which came on at 1pm, after I got home from work.
Disk space was still expensive so I erased each DS9 episode after watching it. I did also pick up an old video camera at the flea market that cold plug into the video input
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briangoldberg4439
I had an ATI Rage Pro PCI card at that time and it was great for whatever I was playing (mostly Half Life and Descent. That one looks like it would have been quite an upgrade from what I had, but when it came out, the Rage Pro cards were already getting price cut at Comp USA to like half price sales to clear stock for the upcoming Radeon cards and they were soooo cheap compared to the full priced Voodoo cards. I think I got the Rage for like $100 and it came with full versions of Thief Gold, Descent 1, 2 and 3, Half Life, Counterstrike, and Need for Speed
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I had an ATI Rage Pro PCI card at that time and it was great for whatever I was playing (mostly Half Life and Descent. That one looks like it would have been quite an upgrade from what I had, but when it came out, the Rage Pro cards were already getting price cut at Comp USA to like half price sales to clear stock for the upcoming Radeon cards and they were soooo cheap compared to the full priced Voodoo cards. I think I got the Rage for like $100 and it came with full versions of Thief Gold, Descent 1, 2 and 3, Half Life, Counterstrike, and Need for Speed
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73rmin8r
Nice! I actually have one of these.
If you don't want to use the absurd dongle it comes with there's two options.
Dell and i think a few other companies made adapters for some other thing that work on this to adapt the slightly larger than normal dvi port (called an M1 or p&d connector) on this into a vga port. The one I have is a CBL-C4403-N.
Or you can get a normal p&d to vga adapter, but the one i got i had to kinda stretch out the edges on the female p&d end on the adapter to fit over the male end on the card. Not sure what that was about.
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Nice! I actually have one of these.
If you don't want to use the absurd dongle it comes with there's two options.
Dell and i think a few other companies made adapters for some other thing that work on this to adapt the slightly larger than normal dvi port (called an M1 or p&d connector) on this into a vga port. The one I have is a CBL-C4403-N.
Or you can get a normal p&d to vga adapter, but the one i got i had to kinda stretch out the edges on the female p&d end on the adapter to fit over the male end on the card. Not sure what that was about.
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saxxonpike
Oh man, I had one of these cards and that girthy dongle for a hot minute a couple years ago. The TV features were pretty cool, but I eventually switched out the dongle for a P&D-VGA adapter for my own sanity.
Edit: if you are looking to do a similar swap, the P&D connector will not fit exactly - the outer frame of the P&D connector needs to be bent out slightly. But it does map the VGA pins appropriately, and Monoprice sells these adapters (M1-A) even today. This makes a suitable substitution if you find yourself with a 3500 TV and no dongle.
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Oh man, I had one of these cards and that girthy dongle for a hot minute a couple years ago. The TV features were pretty cool, but I eventually switched out the dongle for a P&D-VGA adapter for my own sanity.
Edit: if you are looking to do a similar swap, the P&D connector will not fit exactly - the outer frame of the P&D connector needs to be bent out slightly. But it does map the VGA pins appropriately, and Monoprice sells these adapters (M1-A) even today. This makes a suitable substitution if you find yourself with a 3500 TV and no dongle.
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Estolcles
I had this! It was an upgrade from my VooDoo2.
I used to run my Cable and VCR through it. and since my VCR had multiple video/stereo inputs, I had all my N64, Dreamcast, AND PlayStation able to be played on my PC (in the long cabled way, and got it to run on my TV. (Which was just as big as my CRT monitor, so I usually didn't bother running the desktop on it. if I could have. I honestly can't remember)
So many hours of EverQuest. RIP Brad McQuaid.
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I had this! It was an upgrade from my VooDoo2.
I used to run my Cable and VCR through it. and since my VCR had multiple video/stereo inputs, I had all my N64, Dreamcast, AND PlayStation able to be played on my PC (in the long cabled way, and got it to run on my TV. (Which was just as big as my CRT monitor, so I usually didn't bother running the desktop on it. if I could have. I honestly can't remember)
So many hours of EverQuest. RIP Brad McQuaid.
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CommanderGrog
Oh, that big dongle energy! I really loved this graphics card. As I was already doing a lot of video editing back then and had bought my first camcorder in 1998, the card with its many inputs and outputs (for the time) was of course exactly my thing. I also used the S-Video Out to play games on the big TV of my parents. I still miss 3DFX as a brand today and was (and maybe am) still salty that Nvidia bought the brand only to do nothing with it.
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Oh, that big dongle energy! I really loved this graphics card. As I was already doing a lot of video editing back then and had bought my first camcorder in 1998, the card with its many inputs and outputs (for the time) was of course exactly my thing. I also used the S-Video Out to play games on the big TV of my parents. I still miss 3DFX as a brand today and was (and maybe am) still salty that Nvidia bought the brand only to do nothing with it.
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JessicaFEREM
I think the dongle is cool, but I don't know why it had to have a break out box so big. just have it big enough to set on top of the PC or better yet just stick the ports on an optional bracket or use 3. 5mm TRRS plugs for AV in
the big mistake to me was making the wire so long, because the longer you make the cable, the thicker the cable has to be to retain the same signal strength and the more shielding you need. .
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I think the dongle is cool, but I don't know why it had to have a break out box so big. just have it big enough to set on top of the PC or better yet just stick the ports on an optional bracket or use 3. 5mm TRRS plugs for AV in
the big mistake to me was making the wire so long, because the longer you make the cable, the thicker the cable has to be to retain the same signal strength and the more shielding you need. .
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memadmax69
I had one of these, and back then the more(and bigger) cables you had, the better.
Loved it when my friends would be tracing all the cables to verify that I had what I said I had from the scsi to the jukebox to this tv card etc etc
All my hard drive bays had hard drives plus some laying out on the bottom of the case. The noise it made, the lights dimming when you turned on multiple power supplies lol
Good times.
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I had one of these, and back then the more(and bigger) cables you had, the better.
Loved it when my friends would be tracing all the cables to verify that I had what I said I had from the scsi to the jukebox to this tv card etc etc
All my hard drive bays had hard drives plus some laying out on the bottom of the case. The noise it made, the lights dimming when you turned on multiple power supplies lol
Good times.
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kimura317
Man I had this card and it was really surprisingly solid! There was a lot of stuff that over promised back in the day, but this thing was legitimately good at bringing in TV signals to a window on the computer. I actually used mine when I went to college to watch TV on my computer, which saved a lot of space in my tiny little dorm room! I remember playing mostly Quake 3, Half Life, and Falcon 4. 0 on that thing.
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Man I had this card and it was really surprisingly solid! There was a lot of stuff that over promised back in the day, but this thing was legitimately good at bringing in TV signals to a window on the computer. I actually used mine when I went to college to watch TV on my computer, which saved a lot of space in my tiny little dorm room! I remember playing mostly Quake 3, Half Life, and Falcon 4. 0 on that thing.
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myleft9397
Great video, still watching, just wanted to say, this was when a GPU was priced like another card, not another computer, $250 was cray cray when people were expecting $100-$150, AND, that is a pretty big dongle, but big dongles were pretty common for anything beyond the VGA or later DVI ports. USB C and HDMI, and their mini and micro versions, didn't exist or weren't really in use yet.
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Great video, still watching, just wanted to say, this was when a GPU was priced like another card, not another computer, $250 was cray cray when people were expecting $100-$150, AND, that is a pretty big dongle, but big dongles were pretty common for anything beyond the VGA or later DVI ports. USB C and HDMI, and their mini and micro versions, didn't exist or weren't really in use yet.
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marcorivas1534
what I had back in the day was an ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 PRO basically the same thing but more convenient donglewise haha, and I had a VooDoo 3 3000 with 16 megs, can't remember if it was PCI or AGP but I remember running Diablo 2 in it, OMG it was fantastic, and there was a couple of games, like 4x4 Evo that showed that 3DFX Logo at the game start, sweet PC gaming times.
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what I had back in the day was an ATI All-In-Wonder 9800 PRO basically the same thing but more convenient donglewise haha, and I had a VooDoo 3 3000 with 16 megs, can't remember if it was PCI or AGP but I remember running Diablo 2 in it, OMG it was fantastic, and there was a couple of games, like 4x4 Evo that showed that 3DFX Logo at the game start, sweet PC gaming times.
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Neamerjell
I actually had one of these. This purchase was the reason why I will NEVER buy previously returned items from Microcenter (or anywhere else) again. It was pretty cool - when it worked. The software was buggy AF to begin with, and then pair that with what ever was wrong with the hardware that made it so glitchy when it did work. I think that dongle was most of the problem.
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I actually had one of these. This purchase was the reason why I will NEVER buy previously returned items from Microcenter (or anywhere else) again. It was pretty cool - when it worked. The software was buggy AF to begin with, and then pair that with what ever was wrong with the hardware that made it so glitchy when it did work. I think that dongle was most of the problem.
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rootbeer666
I had a TV tuner video card in the past. What a useless toy it was. Literally fun for a day and a nuisance the rest of the time.
As for Voodoo 3s, the 3000 is a better buy, most of them easily run the 3500 clocks so don't worry about not getting the highest number card, you aren't losing out on anything. (Honestly, you can mod any 3, so even 1000 is a good buy)
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I had a TV tuner video card in the past. What a useless toy it was. Literally fun for a day and a nuisance the rest of the time.
As for Voodoo 3s, the 3000 is a better buy, most of them easily run the 3500 clocks so don't worry about not getting the highest number card, you aren't losing out on anything. (Honestly, you can mod any 3, so even 1000 is a good buy)
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TerryRed
This was my first video card in my early days of PC gaming. I remember getting my FREE copy of Unreal Tournament. and my life in gaming was changed forever. Loved the card and became a forever fan of UT. Eventually my last 3DFX card was the Voodoo 5 5000 (to have 3DFX fold not much later. and people think today's video cards were expensive for what you got: )
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This was my first video card in my early days of PC gaming. I remember getting my FREE copy of Unreal Tournament. and my life in gaming was changed forever. Loved the card and became a forever fan of UT. Eventually my last 3DFX card was the Voodoo 5 5000 (to have 3DFX fold not much later. and people think today's video cards were expensive for what you got: )
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stefanbol4078
I did own a Matrox G400TV back in the day with simular dongle. It was terrible. Never got it working right. It only could capture video in MJPEG low re. Software did crash a lot, low resolution etc Problems in Win98 and ME. Even in XP it did not work properly. Very low quality for the money. The same as with this card.
Nice video BTW! Thanks!
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I did own a Matrox G400TV back in the day with simular dongle. It was terrible. Never got it working right. It only could capture video in MJPEG low re. Software did crash a lot, low resolution etc Problems in Win98 and ME. Even in XP it did not work properly. Very low quality for the money. The same as with this card.
Nice video BTW! Thanks!
reply
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