> Note: Documents wanted<p>> If you are in possession of any of:<p>> NVIDIA RIVA 128 Programmers’ Reference Manual<p>> NVIDIA RIVA 128 Customer Evaluation Kit (we have the NV1 CEK version 1.22)<p>> NVIDIA RIVA 128 Turnkey Manufacturing Package<p>> Source code (drivers, VBIOS, etc) related to the NVIDIA RIVA 128<p>> Any similar documents, excluding the well-known datasheet, with technical information about a GPU going by the name “NV3”, “STG-3000”, “RIVA 128”, “NV3T”, “RIVA 128 Turbo” (an early name for the ZX) or “RIVA 128 ZX”<p>> Any document, code, or materials relating to a graphics card by NVIDIA, in association with Sega, Helios Semiconductor or SGS-Thomson (now STMicroelectronics) codenamed “Mutara”, “Mutara V08”, or “NV2”, or relating to a cancelled Sega console codenamed “V08”<p>> Any documentation relating to RIVA TNT<p>> Any NVIDIA SDK version that is not 0.81 or 0.83<p>I feel this. A lot of information has been lost.
As a designer of Weitek's VGA core, this is a very interesting read. I had no idea how valuable the core was to nVidia. As Weitek was going under, I also remember interviewing with 3dfx and thinking how arrogant they were. I'm not surprised they eventually lost
> 5.0 came out late during development of the chip, which turned out to be mostly compliant, with the exception of some blending modes such as additive blending which Jensen Huang later claimed was due to Microsoft not giving them the specification in time.<p>Not sure if this is the same thing I had, but on my Riva128 the alpha blending wasn't properly implemented. I distinctly recall playing Unreal Tournament and when I fired the rocket launcher there were big black squared with a smoke texture on them slowly rotating :D couldn't see where I was shooting :D
The expectation around the Riva 128 was intense. 16bit color, integrated 2d/3d, and a reasonable price were going to doom 3dfx. It was a little underwhelming, and wasn't until the TNT, TNT2, and Geforce 256 that it really became obvious that these guys were on a path to rule the market.<p>It really would be cool if someone could get a sitdown with Jensen to reminisce about the Riva 128 period.<p>Who else bought NVDA back in '99?
Not sure I'd characterize NV3 as a "success". It probably made money, and kept the company above water. But they didn't have a genuinely "successful" product until the TNT shipped in 1998. At this stage, 3dfx completely owned the market, to the extent that lots of notionally "Direct3D" games wouldn't generally run on anything else. NVIDIA and ATI were playing "chase the game with driver updates" on every AAA launch trying to avoid being broken by default.<p>Which makes it, IMHO, a weird target to try to emulate. NV2 was a real product and sold some units, but it's otherwise more or less forgotten. Like, if you were deciding on a system from the early 70's to research/emulate, would you pick the Data General Nova or the PDP-11?
<i>What may be called graphics commands in other GPU architectures are instead called graphics objects in the NV3 and all other NVIDIA architectures.</i><p>I think this choice of terminology reflects both the era in which it was chosen (OOP was a <i>huge</i> trend back then), and the mindset of those who worked on the architecture (software-oriented). In contrast, Intel calls them commands/instructions/opcodes, as did the old 8514/A, arguably the one that started it all.<p><i>A specialized hardware accelerator for the manner by which Windows 95’s GDI (and its DIB Engine?) renders text.</i><p>Drawing text (from bitmap font data) is a very common 2D accelerator feature.
I wonder if anyone at old school Nvidia remembers if the NV1 card did quads to try to win a contract with Sega, or if the designers at Sega overtly wanted a card that would do quads. My suspicion is that this must've been shitty influence from Sega.<p>The Sega Saturn released in November 1994, with one of the most mind boggling bad hardware designs ever committed to a console. The thing had two CPUs, and unlike every console or 3d rendering machine to come later, actually rendered quads rather than tris. This is because you can more easily render lots of sprites for 2d games with quads (!!!). It was allegedly extremely difficult to program for such that its complexity stymied emulation for years after its release. I also read that Sega (which is actually a US company) had some sort of weird dynamic with its Japanese division such that the Japanese side of the company would design and ship hardware without consultation from the American side. Allegedly, the creator of Sonic the Hedgehog (Yuji Naka; who is currently in prison for securities fraud) would not pass the 3d engine used to build "Sonic Team's" first 3d game to the American team what was supposed to develop the main 3d Sonic game for the Saturn, and the main programmer for the Sonic 3d game engine in the US (Ofer Alon, who went to to found the company behind the 3d modeling software Z-brush) could not get a 3d sonic game to run on the Saturn because he tried writing the engine in the "slow" language "C", rather than 'ol fashioned assembly like Naka's team.<p>Whelp, that was my knowledge dump on 90s Sega!
Were there any games or apps specifically tied to these cards, or did everything go through D3D at this point?<p>I remember some earlier titles that were locked to specific cards such as the Matrox ones and didn't support any other accelerators.