This is a fairly common card, easy to get good pictures from the net even specifically for rev E. For example (make sure to click on the photos, they are large)
http://hw-museum.cz/vga/7/diamond-monster-3d-rev--e

Thanks for the link, I did a google image search and the first 20 or so were all too low-res/not-sharp enough to read.

I replaced all the caps on the card. The computer and some programs can "see" it, but Windows (98SE, XP and ME were all tried) will not detect the cards presence.

Motherboard is an AOpen AX3S, i815 chipset, Pentium3-933mhz, 256mb PC133 SDRAM, SBLive and 3com905TX. Using the i815 onboard video for now.
The card shows up in the list that flashes up of installed PCI cards and their resources (its taking IRQ5).
I can "see" the card in PCIList and Everest and AIDA32.

But windows will not "see" it and cant install the drivers for it. No exclamations/errors in Device Manager, refreshing/scan for changes in device manager doesnt detect it and so on.

Anyone seen this before and have any suggestions to fix it? (I really hope its fixable) It was the same before recapping it as it is now, so I dont think I damaged it.

Edit:
I put the card into 2 other systems, an Asus TUSL2-C based (i815ET) P3-S 1.13ghz running WinME and a EpoX i865 based Pentium4 2.4ghz system running Win2k.
The TUSL2-C will not detect the card at all in any slot.
The Pentium4 detects and installs a driver for the card and it works fine!

Going to have to dig up one of my older systems to try it in tomorrow.

This all seems very odd to me.. is there some kind of incompatibility with the i815 and Voodoo1?
Anything I should try on them, I really want the card working in the original AOpen based i815E system since it will be "loaned" to my nephew for him to play some classic games on and learn to do more than just "use" a PC with.

Well the Diamond card works in a PentiumMMX-233 TX Chipset board, Pentium 133 HX board, an AthlonXP SiS chipset board, a 440BX P2, a i865-PE P4 system and a Biostar UMC AMD 5x86-133 system.
But not in ANY of 4 seperate and unique i815 (2 Asus, 1 AOpen and 1 Abit) based systems I have that I tried it in. Seems odd to me, but I can live with it I guess.
Bought a Best Data Voodoo1 locally for probably too much and it works fine in the i815's so I will give him that one.

jamesp15 wrote:

Well the Diamond card works in a PentiumMMX-233 TX Chipset board, Pentium 133 HX board, an AthlonXP SiS chipset board, a 440BX P2, a i865-PE P4 system and a Biostar UMC AMD 5x86-133 system.
But not in ANY of 4 seperate and unique i815 (2 Asus, 1 AOpen and 1 Abit) based systems I have that I tried it in. Seems odd to me, but I can live with it I guess.
Bought a Best Data Voodoo1 locally for probably too much and it works fine in the i815's so I will give him that one.

You know, I have two or three Diamond Monster 3D cards that all have random issues (graphical corruption, crashing or errors). Eventually I'm going to tackle this problem again to determine the cause.

Try setting the fsb at 100 or less.

My voodoo 1 can't handle 133mhz fsb.

My voodoo1 and rush cards do not like the Tusl2-c either, non of them work and i have a few of each. Do not even work at 66mhz fsb.

Voodoo1 can give graphical problems on systems above 450 mhz in some games, some cards do not like fast systems at all. I prefer a mmx or p2 system for voodoo1.

meljor wrote:

My voodoo1 and rush cards do not like the Tusl2-c either, non of them work and i have a few of each. Do not even work at 66mhz fsb.

Voodoo1 can give graphical problems on systems above 450 mhz in some games, some cards do not like fast systems at all. I prefer a mmx or p2 system for voodoo1.

This is very good information. I went through a ton of hassle with my Voodoo cards... I definitely will test them again with a slower system.

Its an odd one, I have tried it in a few more i815 systems and it refuses to work in any of them at a variety of bus/cpu speeds. (some you can "see" the card in something like pcilist and the startup listing of pci/agp devices, but no drivers can be installed and windows cant "see" it. and others it simply isnt detected at all.) Works fine in pretty much every other system I have tried it in from a 486 with PCI slots to an Althon64 system and most things in between that I have tested it in.

A Best Data and an Orchid Voodoo1 work fine in those same boards that the Diamond one wont work in.

Seems to be a quirky card.

I have *three* Diamond Monster 3D Vooodoo 1 cards, all basically identical, and all exhibit problems on my test setup. My test setup is a Wintac\Edom W6BXA (440BX) + P3 450 + S3 Trio64V2/DX + Win98SE. I just tested them all again with a Pentium 2 266Mhz underclocked to 200Mhz in the same board and all are still having serious problems. One doesn't even display an image on the screen. One gave a crazy blue striped screen when loading Descent 3, the other either displays a black screen when loading games or gives a crazy error message with lots of memory related information.

I have tested close to 30 3dfx cards on this system and only had problems like this on these cards. In fact, aside from these I've only come across *two* 3dfx cards that I couldn't get working. One Ensoniq Banshee that had turned its heatsink BROWN from overheating over the years and a Voodoo 3 1000 8MB AGP card that seems to be having a software issue no matter what drivers I use. I have a Canopus Pure 3D and an Orchid Righteous 3D and both work fine.

I will say, the little surface mount aluminum caps seem suspicious to me... some are a bit scratched up from neglect before I got them... but they're just such a pain to replace. I have replaced them on other cards and in fact I replaced some missing ones on these particular Diamond cards as soon as I got them. I'll probably just take a day to practice on some other board that uses these, then take one final stab at fixing a couple of these Diamond cards. Anyone know of any tricks for replacing these types of SMD caps? My biggest problem is getting the iron in there without getting too close to other components. It seems like it helps a ton to get the pads thoroughly cleared of all solder before setting the caps down, so that they sit flat, but its still time consuming for me depending on the board layout.

These are the type of caps I'm talking about:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Stock-20pcs-10UF- … ard!16701!US!-1

EDIT: Looking at mouser, I see there's a gigantic variety of caps that look just like these, so I'm going to add some good low-esr caps of this type to my "caps to order" list, and I'll try recapping one of these again. The ones I had on hand have worked for everything else I've used them on, but maybe these cards are just more sensitive.

I'll probably pick one of these.

https://www.mouser.com/Passive-Componen ... ricing%7c0

Leaning toward the 850mOhm ESR ones. With as many cards and boards as I would like to fix, a pack of 100 is probably a good idea.