pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-10-07, 00:22:

Motes of crumbs and strange text scattered all over in boot up POST. This is from seller's photo. https://www.ebay.ca/itm/265 […]
Show full quote

Motes of crumbs and strange text scattered all over in boot up POST. This is from seller's photo.
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/265889123717

The card is on enroute to me, made by STB, AGP card.

I have soldering skills so SMD repair, electronic test tools is not a issue. Due to my job, I have to deal with this daily repairing cell phones and tablets means I use hot air station and soldering irons.

I plan on replacing the dram IC as I have source to get new 6ns ICs but I could not find any 5ns SDRAM 1mbit x 16 bit 3.3V ICs 50 pin TSOP.

Cheers,

Might just be a partially corrupted vBIOS/character ROM (or not) or maybe bad solder. I hope it's an easy fix .

EDIT : For SDRAM chips, you might be able to harvest some from other otherwise dead/sold for parts cards.

Tis this true on salvaging the SDRAM chips dead and sold for parts, yet I have not found one yet.

Cheers,

Received the voodoo3 3000 and inspected carefully, found few cut traces on the VRAM circuit area on back of card. Will clean up and repair these cut traces, add capacitors to blank spots.

After the repair, will test once I have a motherboard put together.

Cheers,

Looks like bad ram chips. Most likely the solder joints have broken on the ram chip legs.
You can reflow the SMB ram chips by putting some solder paste on ram chip legs and heat with an heat gun.
Set you heat gun to melting point of solder which I think is around 215 degrees F.
Just heat the solder paste until it melts an let the solder paste do all the work of repairing the welds with the ram chip legs.
Should only take a few minutes to reflow all the ram chips.
Don’t move the ram chips just let the solder paste do the work of fixing the solder joints.

I fixed a few Voodoo3 cards this way.

See my posts:
Voodoo-3 Evil King Pro Repair

Examples of reflowing with solder paste.
https://youtu.be/2Z7nCAxS2Rg

https://youtu.be/ZypXa9BDXHw

Or you can use No-Clean Flux.
I used NO-Clean Flux as there was NO clean up and it worked great.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-10-14, 23:01:

Received the voodoo3 3000 and inspected carefully, found few cut traces on the VRAM circuit area on back of card. Will clean up and repair these cut traces, add capacitors to blank spots.

After the repair, will test once I have a motherboard put together.

Cheers,

Best of luck with that . Hope it works and that you don't need to go RAM hunting .

darry wrote on 2022-10-15, 04:02:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-10-14, 23:01:

Received the voodoo3 3000 and inspected carefully, found few cut traces on the VRAM circuit area on back of card. Will clean up and repair these cut traces, add capacitors to blank spots.

After the repair, will test once I have a motherboard put together.

Cheers,

Best of luck with that . Hope it works and that you don't need to go RAM hunting .

Thank you about the soldering stuff, I work with soldering for a living, BGA rework (only small ones), and have a microscope at work for tiny stuff that comes with phone, consoles and tablet repair.

I already located a seller that sells a micron 1mbit x 16bit memory chips SDRAM in a 10 piece lot and keeping it in reserve if I need that.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-10-15, 15:06:

Thank you about the soldering stuff, I work with soldering for a living, BGA rework (only small ones), and have a microscope at […]
Show full quote

darry wrote on 2022-10-15, 04:02:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-10-14, 23:01:

Received the voodoo3 3000 and inspected carefully, found few cut traces on the VRAM circuit area on back of card. Will clean up and repair these cut traces, add capacitors to blank spots.

After the repair, will test once I have a motherboard put together.

Cheers,

Best of luck with that . Hope it works and that you don't need to go RAM hunting .

Thank you about the soldering stuff, I work with soldering for a living, BGA rework (only small ones), and have a microscope at work for tiny stuff that comes with phone, consoles and tablet repair.

I already located a seller that sells a micron 1mbit x 16bit memory chips SDRAM in a 10 piece lot and keeping it in reserve if I need that.

Cheers,

I think you meant to answer Intel486dx33 , not me . 😉

Yea, A update, I had spare time before I go home for the day, installed bridge wires over the break and the nicked tracks, microscope made job easier and got done quickly about 8 bridges total. Looks good and added a MLCC capacitor to empty spot.

Cheers,

Had a chance to put together a test bench using a PIII 800 and board.

First picture is from seller photo what it looked before the repair. Second and third photos is after the repair.
Improved than before due to tracks repair but I still have one issue to deal with. I squeezed and warped the card with no change.
Now blank lines one way then another direction depending on what is displayed, here's the two photos:

What causes these black lines?

Cheers,

Update: I purchased set of Micron SDRAM ICs 10 pieces from a USA seller, waiting to receive memory chips, then try replace the originals.

This fixed this voodoo3 3000 completely after replacing the memory chips. Will post photos once I get iphone charged up enough.

Cheers,