Skywell TwinPower
I have added this page after numerous requests. The info and files may be usefull to Skywell TwinPower owners.
Skywell Technologies was a consortium that began to manufacture graphics cards for the PC. Their first success came with the 3dfx Voodoo Graphics board. It received favourable reviews due to its use of 45ns DRAM. This was followed by the Voodoo Rush board. Their second success came with the Voodoo2 and continued when they introduced a very good value for money 16MB SGRAM PCI/AGP 3dfx Banshee and later on 16MB SGRAM AGP Nvidia TNT board. The last of their boards to be seen here was the 32MB TNT2/Pro/M64 series. The company also produced boards with the Rendition V2200, Riva 128/ZX, S3 Savage 3D, i740, & Voodoo Rush chips. From late in 1998 the company manufactured a number of Audio/Speaker/TV products. Their main web site no longer exists.
Skywell Magic TwinPower
Skywell produced a 16MB SGRAM AGP/PCI board based on the 3dfx Voodoo Banshee chipset which they called the "TwinPower". I think because it did 2D/3D in a single chip. Not (unfortunately) due to twin texture/pipeline operation... The main bonus of this board was the 8ns (125MHz rated) SGRAM, and the fact that later models came standard with a heatsink/fan for the banshee chip.
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Box
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Box
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Drivers
Skywell used generic drivers from 3dfx without much modification, so you may as well do the same. I recommend that you use the reference 3dfx banshee drivers. For Win9x I recommend either 1.03.04 or 1.04.00. Release 1.03.04 is DirectX6 compliant but is compatible with DirectX7. Release 1.04.00 is DirectX7 compliant but has control panels which don't install properly. There are a number of bugs in both releases, but the DirectX7 core is best with the newer games. My driver mix is based on this and can be found on the drivers page. If you want to experiment with the new Voodoo5 control panels, use my driver mix from the downloads section or mix your own. For Win2k/XP try the latest builds based on the reference beta drivers (v1.02.02) or my updated Win2k/XP sets here.
Use these files at your own risk!
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TwinPower Banshee AGP & PCI SGRAM BIOS (v1.00.10-SG) This revision is based on the reference 1.00.10-SG BIOS dated 02/09/99. It was released around June 1999. The graphics clock and memory clock are 100MHz/110MHz. This was the last revision and is very stable/compatible. I recommend this BIOS. Grab the latest Flash utils and SGRAM TSRs (if required) from the BIOS page. |
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TwinPower Banshee Reference AGP & PCI SGRAM BIOS (v1.00.10-SG) TwinPower boards were sold with the reference or "3dfx BIOS". This is the generic BIOS from 3dfx dated 02/09/99. This archive has both AGP & PCI versions. The graphics/memory clocks are set to 100MHz/100MHz. This BIOS has aggressive memory timings. Use the flash utilities from the BIOS page. |
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TwinPower Banshee AGP & PCI SGRAM BIOS (v1.00.03-ET) This BIOS is based on the reference 1.00.03-ET core dated 10/10/98 and was standard on first generation boards without a cooling fan. The graphics/memory clocks are set to 100MHz/100MHz. This BIOS has aggressive memory timings. Use the flash utilities from the BIOS page. I recommend the June '99 revision above. |
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*Note: Elpin Systems authored the BIOS core for 3dfx cards.
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