Computer Hope

What is a pass through adapter and how is it used?

Sorry they don't use a pass-through adapter, I was imprecise.



That's a Voodoo 2. Notice how it has two Ports on the back?

You connect the output of your "normal" graphics card to the input (I think it's the black one, though I don't know), and then you connect the output of the Voodoo2 to your Monitor.

The voodoo card takes over and "blocks" the other card when being used, but otherwise allows the other card to "pass-through".

Ah, that's how it works.  I never used voodoo 2.  So the Voodoo 3 and on were standalone graphics cards?

I believe so, as they only have one connector.

In my last Win 95 computer, I used an Nvidia FX 5200 256mb graphics card and it worked well but I never played the 3DFX era games with it.  Would those games work with the FX 5200?

No. Games that are designed for 3dFX hardware use the Glide API exclusively and No other manufacturer provides any support for it. The "FX" series of cards from Nvidia are merely a series of graphics cards and have nothing to do with 3DFX, or 3DFX "compatibiility" whatsoever.

To make things more confusing, you can run Windows-based games that use the Glide API on ATI and Nvidia cards. That seems to contradict what I just said, but it is done using "Glide Wrapper" software; this allows the games to use the conventional Glide API functions and "think" they are running on a 3DFX card, but "translates" them to use OpenGL or Direct3D calls instead, so they work without any actual Glide Hardware.

I don't know how they did it but this guy made a utube video I saw running Carmageddon which is a 3DFX game using a Dosbox using specific commands to make it work.  Thanks for the info, I can see how all this works now.