Creative 3DBlaster Voodoo2 CT6670

Hello
I found your website from a thread under VOGONS Video section titled "History of 3Dfx Graphics cards Vol. 1" by "yjfy". He was crediting your image of a "Voodoo2 reference board 6MB Late version".

I'm trying to date my two cards I've owned since new, one purchased a few months after the first. At the time, I was upgrading my Win95 build (still have it).

On this Hardware Page, you've PCB dated this card as 9905 yet I don't see it anywhere in your pictures. I'd really appreciate any insight you could offer on how to decipher mine.

A few days ago I posted images of the boards on the same thread "History of 3Dfx Graphics cards Vol. 1" at VOGONS. Would it be possible that you could have a look?

Either way, no problem. I really am glad to have found your site. It has some excellent information and images on SO MANY WONDERFUL retro bits!

Nice write up on the IBM CGA adapter. I like how you said "...graphic modes seem very limited compared to later EGA and VGA adapters but remember it is 1981 hardware..."
Soooooo true. I bought my 5150 in '82 (my first bank loan), upgrading from a ZX81 that had a whopping 2k of RAM. I was in total heaven having 16k of VIDEO RAM.

Carlos

Thanks!

On this Hardware Page, you've PCB dated this card as 9905 yet I don't see it anywhere in your pictures. I'd really appreciate any insight you could offer on how to decipher mine.

I took new photo's of the card on which you can see the PCB date better. Especially on the last picture you can see 0599 printed near one of the RAM chips. This indicates that the PCB has been made in week 05 of 1999 .

Not all PCB date-codes are printed on the same location. I also took new photo's of this 8MB Creative card and you'll notice on the last picture that the date is shown on the top right corner.

I see you have photo's of your cards in the VOGONS topic. The brown card looks a lot like my 8MB card so you might zoom in on the back of the card near the SLI connector. Can't really see it on your photo but that might be due the shadow of the SLI cable.

The green card is actually a pretty early one! The Chuck-chip (the one closest to the PCB connector) is dated first week of 1998! Its PCB date is 0898. You can find this on the back of the card between the RAM chips.

Regarding the CGA-card; it's nice to reflect back to when hardware was actually made. CGA dates back a long time but not many people actually had access to CGA in the early 80'ies. Here in Europe a lot of (non tech savvy) people would see CGA graphics (if not emulated on Hercules) for the first time in the late 80'ies on their first PC.

Thank you so much for taking the time out to reply.
That new picture clearly shows the date now. So now, understanding this much better I’ll pull and inspect the brown card closer.

Indeed, CGA cards were created with little high integration other than the 6845. I’m much better at deciphering the ages on the IBM ISA cards. Like 3Dfx, theirs many different versions of components and main boards.

Thanks!