Check that the molex power cable connected to the V5 is firmly pushed in to the V5 power socket. Also, do all of the V5's surface mounted components look OK - generally speaking?

Yep tried that. I'll try another psu just in case.

These boards work [and still work] with other graphics cards?

I never ever put a new aquisition directly into a working system, you literally don't know what you're putting into your precious rig.
My advice:Always test it first!
I killed a motherboard twice that way, the harddrive turned out to be a motherboard killer and a stick of ram did the same thing, except make the motherboard behave completely erratic.

I got my V5 today but have not tested it yet... those surface mounted caps are a bit delicate!! 3 of mine are leaning to one side and i'm sure they are supposed to be flat against the board!

PowerPie5000 wrote:

I got my V5 today but have not tested it yet... those surface mounted caps are a bit delicate!! 3 of mine are leaning to one side and i'm sure they are supposed to be flat against the board!

Fingers crossed, it will work. Good luck with it! 😀 This is your £10 bargain, approx. I remember I got a V5 from ebay about 18 months ago. It was the rarer PCI version. £47, plus whatever the shipping was. Ugh, it didn't work - booted up with "messy looking pixels" spattered on the screen, and froze soon after running dxdiag.exe. No refund. 😢

Tried a third board and two other power supplies and the result is the same. Out of curiosity I powered it up without the connector and it seems to power up but of course no POST.
All my mainboards and psu's work just fine with other video cards.

Hey guys I've got a question. Will the Voodoo 5 AGP post even if the extra plug isn't plugged?

F2bnp wrote:

Hey guys I've got a question. Will the Voodoo 5 AGP post even if the extra plug isn't plugged?

Not that I'm aware of, you will just get all the fans to spin up but no POST and usually no POST BEEP's either.

Alright. Thanks!

F2bnp wrote:

the computer won't power up! The fans seem to try to spin and just stop!

Which fans? CPU & mobo or the ones of the V5? Do they "try" to spin or start to spin?

First: You might get more assistance here:
http://www.falconfly.de/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl
http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/community/en/

Second: Following information is without warranty:

From your description it is likely that a cap or a resistor is not working correctly and is thereby somehow corrupting the V5's internal current supply. That in reverse prevents the system from booting.
That the system boots without the power connector plugged in is unusual but not impossible. To be honest, I never tested that. But maybe your motherboard has an on-board graphic chip that the system uses if the AGP card fails?

If everything fails and you also get no help from the above mentioned forums, before you throw the card away or nail it at the wall, there is still a slight chance that the bios of the card is corrupted and you can try the following:

Seraphic's Recovery Bootdisk Maker

http://www.falconfly.de/info/readme-3dfx_flash_recovery.txt

You'll find it here (scroll down):

http://www.falconfly.de/tools.htm

Follow the step by step guide (s.a.) and again - no warranty, flashing the card may result in constant malfunction.

You may find the right bios and additional tools / advice here:

http://www.3dfxzone.it/dir/3dfx/voodoo5/bios/

Carefully choose the right one and don't mix it up with the ones for the V5 6000, which are offered at the same (first) place!

To answer your questions Silent Loon, first of all thanks for all your advice!

Let me recap because you seem to have got some things confused. The card won't work with the extra plug plugged or not. Now if I DON'T plug the power connector, well it doesn't post at all. No beeps no nothing. System powers up normally but it doesn't POST. If I plug the power connector though the system refuses to even power up. I press the buttons and every fan connected to the system, whether that's CPU or Graphics card, starts to spin for like a fraction of a second and stops.

I posted my problem on 3dfxzone (great site btw) and a guy there suggested I tried a program called PCI.exe to test whether or not the system finds the Voodoo 5. I plugged in a my Matrox Millennium 2 PCI card as well as the Voodoo 5, I made sure the bios was configured with PCI Init First, but the system still wouldn't post. So I have no way of booting with the Voodoo 5. My mainboard doesn't have any onboard graphics card btw.

In the end, I'm pretty sure the problem is with some capacitor like you said. I was just thinking that maybe the Voodoo 5 can POST even without the power connector in which case the card would be really DEAD or need a bios flash. I needed to find the real problem first.

F2bnp wrote:

I press the buttons and every fan connected to the system, whether that's CPU or Graphics card, starts to spin for like a fraction of a second and stops.

I think that's because of the current left in the PSU. If you disconnect the PSU of a working system and push the power button you should observe the same effect (that's why you should not open a PSU - normally)
In fact the power supply is allready disconnected for some reason. My guess is a short circuit somewhere - maybe on the V5, maybe at the connector, maybe somewhere between the graphics card and the board.
Stupid question: do you use a little extension cable to connect the V5 to the PSU? I only ask because my (used) V5 came with such a little cable, I don't know why. Maybe that's broken?

You can try to boot the system with an ISA graphics card installed. Regardless of the bios settings it should allways use the ISA card first. Than you can try some kind of (dos) diagnose utility to check if the V5 is discovered by the system. Try this when the extra power connector is not plugged in.

Well I've tried 3 different PSUs so far. With all of them I just plugged the connector in. No extra cable.

I tried something dangerous with the card. I powered the PC up with my Matrox Millennium 2 and once I heard the beep I plugged the Voodoo 5 in. I then used that program called pci and showed a lot of reserved pci slots/positions whatever.
Whatever, I let my dad who is an Physicist/electrician/problem solver and he checked the board for any damaged capacitors and stuff. He told me there didn't seem to be anything wrong and that the problem is probably on the chip area. So that means I'm screwed. Whatever, at least I get my money back, but hell I so wanted a Voodoo 5 for this summer 🙁

F2bnp wrote:

but hell I so wanted a Voodoo 5 for this summer 🙁

It seeems Voodoo5 is cheaper in ebay UK.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

but hell I so wanted a Voodoo 5 for this summer 🙁

It seeems Voodoo5 is cheaper in ebay UK.

That one is Ships to UK only.

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

but hell I so wanted a Voodoo 5 for this summer 🙁

It seeems Voodoo5 is cheaper in ebay UK.

And it is still 9 hours away, yet some douchebags have managed to get it up at 8 pounds. 😵

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

but hell I so wanted a Voodoo 5 for this summer 🙁

It seeems Voodoo5 is cheaper in ebay UK.

The V5 card appears to be resting on a jumper (as in item of clothing). Don't they have a tendancy to give off static electricity?

retro games 100 wrote:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote:

F2bnp wrote:

but hell I so wanted a Voodoo 5 for this summer 🙁

It seeems Voodoo5 is cheaper in ebay UK.

That one is Ships to UK only.

And the end price can still go up a lot before it's over. If there are snipers lurking around that auction at the end it can go ridiculously high.