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owl [soylentnews.org] writes:

Graphics firm 3dfx was a pioneer in PC 3D acceleration and ploughed a deep furrow in the PC industry from about 1996, until it went insolvent in 2000. Just before the lights went out it launched the Voodoo 5 5500, one of a quartet of VSA-100 GPU-based graphics cards that it had showed off at Comdex, Las Vegas, in November 1999. You can read the HEXUS review of the Voodoo 5 5500 if you want a trip down memory lane.

At the aforementioned Comdex event, 3dfx showcased the VSA-100 processor including the products Voodoo 4 4500, Voodoo 5 5000/5500 and Voodoo 5 6000. The graphics chip was codenamed Napalm, packed in about 14 million transistors, and was built on the 250nm process. One of the goals of the VSA-100 was scalability (VSA = Voodoo Scalable Architecture) and thus the Voodoo 4 4500 was the only SKU with one VSA-100, the Voodoo 5 5000/5500 used a pair of these processors, and the Voodoo 5 6000 was slated to pack in four VSA-100 chips – but it never arrived in commercial quantities. Only about a thousand Voodoo 5 6000 graphics cards were produced in an initial batch, and they hardly ever turn up on the used market.

Earlier this week a modder and enthusiast called Anthony revealed that he had built his own Voodoo 5 6000 graphics card by purchasing a number of VSA-100 chips, SDRAM modules, and applying a sizable pinch of electrical engineering know-how. The finished full working sample is pictured above.

Original Submission