This brings back the memory. I was working for a tiny company in Taiwan at that time. We had been producing VGA cards for a while at that time. An IC distributo

This brings back the memory. I was working for a tiny company in Taiwan at that time. We had been producing VGA cards for a while at that time. An IC distributor brought us a demo board of Voodoo 3D (V1) card. I ran the demo and told my boss that it was the best 3D graphic that I have ever seen. My boss just decided to run with it. Back in those days, VGA card vendor standard practice was to modify the reference in two way. 1. Modify the layout so it can accommodate many different memory chips. If your board can use cheaper memory chip, you will have better profit ( often mean chip which did meet standard memory testing, but still usable with some effort in layout and hardware design) 2. Modify the driver so you have a better benchmark score. Since we were a tiny company with not many resources so we decided to just manufacture the reference design. This decision enables us to be the first one in Taiwan to ship the product. I cold call 50 companies in Europe. I did not have much success at first since distributors in Europe were not convinced that 3D card can sell. Internet was slow back then, we were still using dialup modem and sending video capture was not an option. I finally got a break when I called the 42nd company on the list: Guillemot (France). Guillemot got their start in PC gaming sound card so they were already interested in the 3D card. Guillemot was talking to Orchid Technology but they need a lower price than what Orchid can offer. Since all other Taiwanese makers were still evaluating or in the development process, we got the business because our price is US$50 lower than Orchid and able to ship right away.