Double check all the pins again, and also maybe wash the card with some alcohol then check the solder points for the memory chip pins and the traces to see if any are scratched or corroded before getting rid, may be worth putting on ebay as spares or repairs someone else may be able to fix it if you cant.

Which TMU had bent pins on it, also can you tell bent pins numbers? I might be able to tell you exactly which memory IC might be affected.

Here's the pictures https://postimg.org/gallery/lm7a6puq
the damage on 500-0009-01 chip damage seems to be cosmetic, pins did not touch and the bent pin is not broken, just badly bent.
500-0010-01 on the right side of the card did have those two pins touching before i bent them back, I had powered the card on with them touching as well.

My real problem is finding the ram chips, there's plenty of people who fix electronics and can solder chips this big for me provided I have some.

From what I understand TMU2 (the one on the left) does not really do much if a game is not designed to use multi-texturing?
I should try Quake 2 to see what happens but in carmageddon 2 it's kind of 50% of textures are covered in dots and the other half isn't, which textures are affected will change with camera movement/scene altering.
If I disable texturing via env var all looks fine, geometry is untouched.
I really hope it's just 4 DRAM chips in the primary bank that are throwing a fit.

Also does anyone have any clue why Homeworld does not suffer from mem corruption with 3dfx opengl driver? could it be that it's specific implementation for some random reason just uses TMU2 and doesn't touch the first one?(game does require just 4 mb of vram so it's possible.)

Sorry for the tripple post but I have done tests and no TMUS share the workload and the culprit absolutely must be TMU 1s dram.

https://postimg.org/gallery/272ej5mtc/

Q1 with 2 tmus looks weird but sort of passable, but give it only 1 tmu and it's technicolor madness.
Homeworld is almost entirely untouched with 2 TMUs but with 1 it immediately becomes all sorts of messed up(the background is fine as it uses pure vertex color to achieve those sexy backgrounds, no textures there)

I'm sort of glad because it's down from 24 dram chips needing to be replaced because I have no clue what is what to "just 8" and I hope with your wisdom we can narrow it down to 4 or 2!

TheCoach wrote:

From what I understand TMU2 (the one on the left) does not really do much if a game is not designed to use multi-texturing?

Yes, you are right, if game/app is not utilized for multi-texturing, then second TMU will be not used at all. In your case pin 103 and 104 were shorting on first TMU, those pins go directly to U12 and U24 and connects to pin 33 and 34 (I/O data lines, 33-D10, 34-D11). Both U12 and U24 mem ICs share same data lines, so either both or one of them gone bad.

In my case, the texture corruption got gradually worse when culprit IC was getting colder (yep, colder). When it was warming up, textures kept twitching until it reached certain temp, then twitching stopped and picture was left with non-changing corrupted texture pattern.

I'd suggest you to try such method trying to locate defective ICs (if it's somehow heat related) using "donut" 3dfx techdemo:

1. Make sure that your card is colder than the room temperature.
2. Run demo, press space, I, R and with right mouse button zoom in the toroid, press T to disable second TMU;

If textures are slowly stabilizing, cool down U12 and U24 separately and observe any changes.

Hope that helps.

I don't think mine is responsive to temperature.
But I did discover quake only corrupts that bad if I limit dram to 2mb(and only 1 tmu), it looks more or less the same on 1tmu without a dram limit.

Remember that limiting texture memory in software does not disable BANK1 memory, it's still being accessed.

OK so given that it's probably those two chips (top and bottom) that are faulty, the question is do I need to replace them with the exact same model of dram chips or will just getting same spec chips do?
Or maybe lower spec chips can work here as well? From what I know voodoo2 dram only runs at 90mhz instead of the 100 it's specced for so dram that runs comfortably at 90mhz should work as well right?

TheCoach wrote:

OK so given that it's probably those two chips (top and bottom) that are faulty

Top and bottom? Both DRAMs are at bottom, unless your IC marking on pcb is different, my Helios 3D V2 uses same component layout as yours Magic 3D, so i guess U24 is right behind U12, right?

TheCoach wrote:

the question is do I need to replace them with the exact same model of dram chips or will just getting same spec chips do?

All 256kx16bit SOJ40 EDO memory uses same pinout and are compatible, you just need to choose right timing ones, 22ns - 110 MHz, 25ns - 100MHz, 30ns - 83MHz, 35 - 72MHz. Worst you can go with is 30ns memory, wouldn't recommend it though.

Frequency determining characteristic is "tpc" in memory IC datasheet.

Also, not every V2 uses default clock freq of 90MHz, some use slightly more or less, for EG. i have a Yakumo V2 which by default is clocked at 83MHz, while Helios 3D is clocked at 92Mhz, but you will be able to change freq anytime with GRXCLK env. variable ofc.

TheCoach wrote:

(top and bottom)

Oh, you might probably meant front and back ICs, my bad.

Yes exactly:
<U12>
BOARD
<U24>

OK so probably the final question now, where do I find some compatible dram? There are place I find that appear to sell the chips but I have no idea if they sell small orders to non-companies and if they are in any way reliable... This for example lists prices but if you say click on alternatives or search for this part it comes up empty.

I'm dealing with exact same problem now myself, there are no high performance EDO dram sold individually, just bunch of 35-70ns ones.

Well that site I just link does allow you to proceed to checkout with those drams. I think i'll get another voodoo from ebay, make sure it's buddy buddy in sli with my card and if all checks out i'll get that minimum order of 25 bucks from that site, I mean having some extra DRAM chips does not hurt, who knows what could happen later, or maybe the entire TMU1 dram bank is busted.

Well a bump for an update I guess, utsource did answer my test inquiry about 24 dram chips and they do apparently have them in stock. for 24 chips you can essentially just buy another Voodoo 2 but i'll buy only 8 chips (enough to cover the chips of the tmu that has some of them damaged) and 6 40mm heatsinks for both of my voodoos from them and report to you the results.

If the chips work out then hey we might have found a reliable source for voodoo 2 dram replacements!

Ah yes the 2nd voodoo2 arrived and it is in perfect working order so that's a relief.