4 ms·

Voodoo linux drivers were open source IIRC. No firmware blob was required. The day nvidia bought 3dfx was very sad one for me.

• dleslie 4y ago
  It was sad for everyone in the gaming industry.
• sprash 4y ago
  There was actually not much need of drivers or firmware. 3Dfx products had a very simple and straight forward way to write commands directly to registers [1][2][3]. 1.: https://web.archive.org/web/20180220234020/https://www.openglsuperbible.com/2013/09/07/voodoo-registers-part-1/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180220234020/https://www.openg... 2.: https://web.archive.org/web/20180629191415/http://www.openglsuperbible.com/2013/09/18/voodoo-registers-part-2/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180629191415/http://www.opengl... 3.: https://web.archive.org/web/20180628125330/http://www.openglsuperbible.com/2013/10/21/voodoo-registers-part-3/ https://web.archive.org/web/20180628125330/http://www.opengl...
  • userbinator 4y ago
    It's a fixed-function accelerator. They were all like that AFAIK.
• GuB-42 4y ago
  As much as I loved 3Dfx (with a capital "D"!) by the time it was bought by nvidia, it was already on its downfall. It did some interesting things, but clearly, they couldn't keep up with nvidia. I actually had some hope when nvidia bought it, but unfortunately, they killed the brand, only keeping "SLI", for something that isn't even SLI (scanline interleaving). And yeah, open source drivers, but don't you find it annoying when you only get open source drivers for subpar hardware? It is unfortunately a recurring problem.