New AGP to PCI adaptors for sale

[ph4nt0m]

Allows to run a 3.3V AGP card in a PCI slot whether 5V or 3.3V keyed. It's an active adaptor using a PLX PCI6152-CC33BC bridge and a 74LVTH125 quad buffer for interrupt routing.

Leftovers of the last batch manufactured in 2007. High quality production using 2-layer PCB and gold over nickel plating. If you're wondering about a gap in the AGP slot, the manufacturer couldn't source any AGP 1.0 or universal slots in the time of production, so had to use those for AGP 2.0 / 3.0 cards. The key notch has to be removed manually. It's time consuming and I hate to do this actually.

In theory, the adaptor is compatible with all 3.3V capable AGP cards and PCI based mainboards conforming to the PCI 2.1 specification and the PCI-to-PCI bridge architecture specification 1.0. That's probably year 1998 and newer. In reality, it depends on a chipset and BIOS and drivers. I have tested this adaptor to boot to Win98SE successfully with many AGP 3.3V capable cards in my SiS based Abit SG-72. That's incuding 3Dfx Voodoo Banshee, Voodoo 3 and Voodoo 5. What happens after the installation of drivers is a kind of lottery. Some cards work just fine, some work partially, some don't work at all. For example, all Voodoos hanged up during the installation process. I have figured out the on-board SiS Mirage video can be confusing, but there is no way to disable it in the BIOS, so I have moved on to a VIA based Abit KW7. Banshee and Voodoo 3 don't post at all, Voodoo 5 boots but hangs up like previously. However I've got a Radeon 9800 Pro working. There was no AGP texturing through the adaptor of course, so the Catalyst 6.2 refused to render any Direct3D stuff, but all OpenGL benchmarks ran just fine. Finally, I have put a Voodoo 5 into an ASUS Crossblade Ranger with a 4.0GHz A10-7860K. Booted to Win2k3 x64 using the on-board video, installed the latest SFFT drivers, expanded the desktop to the Voodoo and it was fine, though with hardware acceleration disabled. Display was very unstable with it enabled. Could be the drivers or power requirements, I didn't investigate.

$50 each

If you want it without the key notch removed, I'll give you a discount.

Direct postage at actual cost, about $10 give or take for registered mail. Shared postage to AVICC is also possible.

[ph4nt0m]

I think most power related issues are about 3.3V supply through the adaptor. Needs a mod with a piece of thick wire and some ceramic capacitors.

UPD: It seems additional wire and capacitors help to some extent, but much better to connect an external 3.3V supply or some mini DC-DC convertor you can buy for $1 on Aliexpress. Those high performance AGP cards draw a lot of current on the 3.3V rail. What's coming through the PCI slot is simply not enough, so the cards are unstable.