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Garbled graphics on Voodoo 3 1000

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First post, by alpm

Posted on 
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Hi folks, I've recently purchased this Voodoo 3 1000 from eBay (see attached pictures).
The first tests showed a very garbled image. I saw that some caps had some dents on them (as in 20220112_013008.jpg), so I've replaced all 5 electrolytical caps (with same spec ones from Panasonic).

After the recap, the image was more "consistent" and with less flickering. It is still "garbled" with vertical artifacts and unreadable text in DOS. Pressing the GPU on the top right corner produces some changes in the image, but nothing major. Do you folks have any suggestions on how to proceed?

I took some screenshots from the DOS Video Function Timing Test from Roy Longbottom (extracted from Phil's DOS benchmarks).

Thanks!

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Reply 2 of 2, by TheAbandonwareGuy

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If pressing on the GPU affected it you more than likely have a BGA failure. Its also possible the VRAM has gone bad.

That type of artifact usually happens when the RAM either fails or the GPU can't communicate with the VRAM correctly. You could try replacing those RAM chips though that's not going to be a fun job, I wouldn't even attempt it unless you consider yourself to be masterful with a soldering iron.

As far as the BGA failure, I'm not sure if anyone is offering reballing services for Avenger based cards atm. A cheap and bastardly way would be to use a heat gun to reflow it though this could make the problem worse or even worse yet make the card bricked.

Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone: https://discord.gg/jK8uvR4c
I used to own over 160 graphics card, I've since recovered from graphics card addiction

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