Borked Voodoo 3 2000? \ VOGONS

Borked Voodoo 3 2000?

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First post, by ninjaf00t

Posted on 2021-01-22, 17:55

ninjaf00t Offline

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Hi all, this is my first post here, and it's a shame that it it is due to malfunctioning hardware rather than a celebration of a complete build or theory-crafting a new one as I had hoped.

So I thought I'd had a stroke of luck and acquired a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI for pretty cheap. I got it in the post and it displays an output but it's all garbled lines (see below). Would anyone be able to tell me what's wrong with it and if there's any chance I might be able to fix it? If I had to guess I would say that maybe a capacitor is loose or something. I've included a pic of the card itself in case there's anything obvious that leaps out to you all.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sdyLjpZQZ50O … iew?usp=sharing

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1qIf_dHX9sIME … iew?usp=sharing

Reply 1 of 4, by Spitz

Posted on 2021-01-23, 11:00

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Have You tried to test it in other PC ?

Well... I miss 80/90s ... End of story

Reply 2 of 4, by ninjaf00t

Posted on 2021-01-23, 22:09

ninjaf00t Offline

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Of course - I've tested it in a Super Socket 7 rig and two Socket 462 boards - all present the same garbled vertical lines (all boards work fine with a variety of AGP and PCI cards). After doing some hunting around I came across this post that seems to be the same (or similar enough) issue. Suggestions there seem to be broken memory chips or cracked solder joint under the GPU - either way it is unlikely to be an easy fix. I've found a couple of local electronics repair shops that can help with PCB repairs, so perhaps they'll be able to fix it, but I'm not sure what the cost would be - especially if I need to replace the RAM Chips

Reply 3 of 4, by Spitz

Posted on 2021-01-24, 07:30

Spitz Offline

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ninjaf00t wrote on 2021-01-23, 22:09:

Of course - I've tested it in a Super Socket 7 rig and two Socket 462 boards - all present the same garbled vertical lines (all boards work fine with a variety of AGP and PCI cards). After doing some hunting around I came across this post that seems to be the same (or similar enough) issue. Suggestions there seem to be broken memory chips or cracked solder joint under the GPU - either way it is unlikely to be an easy fix. I've found a couple of local electronics repair shops that can help with PCB repairs, so perhaps they'll be able to fix it, but I'm not sure what the cost would be - especially if I need to replace the RAM Chips

Yep, it seems to be problem with memory...

Well... I miss 80/90s ... End of story

Reply 4 of 4, by Intel486dx33

Posted on 2021-01-24, 10:02

Intel486dx33 Offline

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Thats an easy fix. I have had a few video card and even Voodoo 3000 cards with this problem. It turned out the ram chip solder joints have broken on the legs to PCB.
The fix is to reflow the memory chips back to the PCB.

1) You can just use a heat gun and some no-clean flux on the memory chip legs. Heat to the melting point of the solder which is about 350f Just heat the area of the legs and let the flux do the work of repairing the solder joints.
2) You can remove the memory chips with a heat gun and clean the PCB and re-solder the memory chips back on. You can use the Drag solder technique.

But the easiest way is to use method #1 and just reflow the solder joints.

See this video:
https://youtu.be/2Z7nCAxS2Rg

But dont heat the GPU chip.
try to reflow the ram chips first.

That is usually the problem. If you did not get any video then it might be the GPU chip.

No-Clean flux link:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/SRA-TF5000-No-Clean- … c4AAOSwuj1e4ZsW