Nice find!!

As it's shown in this picture, the missing component is indeed a SMD capacitor. It looks bigger than the C502 sitting next to it, so the capacitance seems not to be the same, but similar to C503 at least in size. It's not a very useful information but maybe a start.

http://hw-museum.cz/data/vga/pic/big/3dfx_Voo … _5500_PCI_B.jpg

Have you tried the card? Sometimes they work despite having lost a few things, bought a lot a while back that had a V3 3500 that was kinda smashed and was missing a Lot of smd caps off the backside but amazingly worked despite the damage.

You will likely have no choice but to replace the fans or outright upgrade the cooling (often the same cost).

Missing conditioning caps can translate directly to reduced ripple, harmonic, or resonance suppression, therefore reduced chipset lifetimes. Even if the board works without, I recommend replacing the missing components as soon as possible.

gdjacobs wrote:

Missing conditioning caps can translate directly to reduced ripple, harmonic, or resonance suppression, therefore reduced chipset lifetimes. Even if the board works without, I recommend replacing the missing components as soon as possible.

Yeah, this is how I feel. I've also seen cards work fine with missing components, but with something like this I'd rather try to fix it without running it. This likely happened after the last time it was used, so any number of things could happen to it when powered like this. I'd really be kicking myself if it damaged something that couldn't be fixed.

I did find a German site where someone replaced similar components on their AGP model, but sadly they are different sizes and in different locations than my PCI card:

https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en& … 832&prev=search

They were able to figure out the voltage and capacitance of the missing caps somehow... I wish they'd explained how.

EDIT: Wow, some really irrational part of me just realized that I still have PCI slots in my primary system with a 2500K at 4.2Ghz, 16GB of DDR3 and a GTX 970... I could actually install a 5500 PCI in this system to see what it could manage with an astronomical CPU performance imbalance. I know these cards like CPU speed due to the lack of T&L... but this is probably going too far. 😊

My guess would be that is VR2 SC1102 pin 1 VCC bypass cap 100nF or 220nF and not 100% sure if the input voltage is 12V but a 16V rated X5R is more than good for this.
Size I'm not sure if it's 0805.

Datasheet nominal capacitance is 100nF so that or not too much larger capacitance should be ok as long the voltage rating is good

Karhu0 wrote:

My guess would be that is VR2 SC1102 pin 1 VCC bypass cap 100nF or 220nF and not 100% sure if the input voltage is 12V but a 16V rated X5R is more than good for this.
Size I'm not sure if it's 0805.

Datasheet nominal capacitance is 100nF so that or not too much larger capacitance should be ok as long the voltage rating is good

Thanks so much!

I found a page where someone listed the values for many components on their AGP model.

http://www.voodooalert.de/board/index.php?pag … &threadID=19046

I know the locations are different on my PCI card, but does that information help to narrow it down any further?

I am looking at my card and can not tell what that is, it looks like the left side "EDIT: C503" cap underneath the 3DFX logo but about double the thickness.

Yes it's definitely the bypass cap for the SC1102 voltage regulator IC supply voltage, it's 5V straight from the PCI bus.

But, since the datasheet says it needs 100nF cap, and there's definitely two different caps on the card, it is hard to say if there is a 100nF and a 1uF, or a 100nF and a 10nF, and which one is chipped off. The missing cap is definitely physically bigger, but it is a bit difficult to estimate what size were a typical 100nF cap at the time of manufacture. And the important bit is not about the capacitance itself, but how good it is doing its job at the frequency range of interest. Physically smaller cap (if same capacitance) is better at higher frequencies, as well as smaller capacitance (if same physical size).

The AGP card does not even have the same voltage regulator IC, so that BOM is useless. A lot of caps are not listed anyway.

Best would be to find an identical card and remove the capacitor for measurement.
Or if the other card is broken, just transfer the missing cap from there.

But, it would be pretty safe to just put a 100nF cap there, that would most likely be good enough.
I bet it won't go up in smoke immediately because of that one missing capacitor (though there could be other reasons for it 😀

Thanks for all the information!

I have no other donor cards to work with, so I'll just have to try the 100nF cap.

What would be the specifications that I'd look for most likely? 16v 100nF? What about percentages and the 0805\0605 etc. numbers? Does quality vary much with ceramic caps?

If I'm going to spend $5 for 50 of the same thing from the US, its tempting to just buy a gigantic 1000 piece assortment from China for $8 with 50 different values... is that a bad idea? I know I'd never do that for electrolytics, but I have little experience with ceramic caps.

I grabbed my DE-5000 and checked out the C501 cap on my V5 5500 PCI and got a 55.25 µF in circuit. Assume its cut in half (close enough for this reading), while in circuit if the specs call for a 100 µf. While this unit is very good at reading in circuit caps, its not without fault. I hope that sheds some light on it.

***EDIT***

As a reminder, you can almost always go with a higher voltage cap but keep to the farad rating. There is always a variable with ohms when jumping to higher voltage, but for the vast majority of SMD and lower end through hole stuff its nothing to worry about as long as you aren't swapping in a whole host of caps that are higher voltage, then you have a stacking issue that can wreak havoc with the current of a circuit. To be honest, I wouldnt rely on my reading. Measuring in circuit caps is a big gamble. If I had my rework gear setup I would just pull it off and check for you. I'm not going to have it out until this summer though. Packed almost all of my stuff up for a new workshop that I built, but winter and other projects kept me from getting it wired up until now. Still going to be a few months before I get it online and everything unpacked. If you cant get a reliable value and can wait until this summer, I will desolder mine and tell you the correct value.

***EDIT***

BTW, my card is also dead and missing a cap. Its listed as C566 and its on the back near the upper right quadrant. I assume its the same as the cap listed as C527, but want to make sure. Anybody know what value that is supposed to be? For that matter, are there any spec sheets out there for the PCI version? I just cant seem to find them, only the AGP model.

I'm really itching to get this thing running, but if I don't figure it out by summer I'd definitely like to know the value for certain.

I also just realized just how uncommon these 5500 PCI cards are. I was thinking that a lot of the listings on eBay were PCI cards, but it seems that the vast majority are AGP... in fact none of the current listings are PCI! I don't know exactly how much this is "worth" but it's certainly more rare than I thought. This was a really awesome find... Even if it's damaged.

I've picked up a Voodoo 2000 AGP, a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, an STB Voodoo 2 and several other cards in the past couple of weeks. It's amazing what you find if you just look!

Since we're on the subject... Would a Creative CT6970 Annihilator Geforce 256 (I think DDR) and a Winfast Geforce 2 GTS be worth $32 shipped? I found a guy a couple hours away from me selling them super cheap ($15) but he wants like $17 for the trouble of having to ship them. I very rarely see Geforce 256 cards, and I 've been wanting one of those and a GTS to add to my collection... But I don't know if Geforce DDR is always hard to find or if they regularly turn up in cheap lots of cards.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

I'm really itching to get this thing running, but if I don't figure it out by summer I'd definitely like to know the value for c […]
Show full quote

I'm really itching to get this thing running, but if I don't figure it out by summer I'd definitely like to know the value for certain.

I also just realized just how uncommon these 5500 PCI cards are. I was thinking that a lot of the listings on eBay were PCI cards, but it seems that the vast majority are AGP... in fact none of the current listings are PCI! I don't know exactly how much this is "worth" but it's certainly more rare than I thought. This was a really awesome find... Even if it's damaged.

I've picked up a Voodoo 2000 AGP, a Voodoo 3 3000 AGP, an STB Voodoo 2 and several other cards in the past couple of weeks. It's amazing what you find if you just look!

Since we're on the subject... Would a Creative CT6970 Annihilator Geforce 256 (I think DDR) and a Winfast Geforce 2 GTS be worth $32 shipped? I found a guy a couple hours away from me selling them super cheap ($15) but he wants like $17 for the trouble of having to ship them. I very rarely see Geforce 256 cards, and I 've been wanting one of those and a GTS to add to my collection... But I don't know if Geforce DDR is always hard to find or if they regularly turn up in cheap lots of cards.

I've seen excatly one in person, and ive seen them maybe 10-12 times on ebay per year.

Okay, I got the replacement caps.

The caps I got are: AVX 0805 0.1uf 16v

They are absolutely identical in size, shape and color to the one on the Voodoo 5 that looks similar to the one that's missing. Lets hope that 0.1uf will do the trick.

I'm going to attempt the fix right now.

Also, what kinds of fans would you guys use to replace a bad fan on a 5500? Would you go as far as replacing the heatsinks as well? I want to keep or increase the card's value, so I'm not sure if keeping it all original (with bad fans?) is a better idea, or if it'd be best to improve it to make it more reliable.

Woohoo!

Its alive!

I replaced the cap without much trouble (though I probably heated it up too much), plugged the card into a board on my workbench that had already had my AGP 5500 installed before and the system booted right up, the driver installed, the system rebooted, my desktop works great in 32bit color and 3dmark 99 Max has run through a full playthrough so far with not so much has a single hiccup or artifact.

One of the fans had a slight slight rattle to it but that has gone away after running a couple minutes and they both spin flawlessly... so no replacement fan needed.

I'm stoked! 😁

... by the way, 5551 3DMarks (12271 CPU 3DMarks) with a Duron 800 (socket A) and 256MB PC-133 on a KT133 board. 😀

Nice! You can oil the fan motor if you like. I use petroleum jelly.