That bodge transistor doesn't look very well. Is it the photo angle or... ?

Looks weird indeed, like it's missing 1 leg. Maybe it's a diode and doesn't need the third leg.

@Meatball do you have an oscilloscope? If the card doesn't throw any errors it's probably mostly OK. I had a card with the exact behaviour as yours, it was missing hsync or vsync, don't recall which one.

weedeewee wrote on 2022-05-29, 18:36:

That bodge transistor doesn't look very well. Is it the photo angle or... ?

I'm not quite sure what a Bodge Transistor is, but if you're talking about the goofy-looking fix near the RAM, it seems it was from the factory to address a bug.

https://thandor.net/object/105

Make sure this bodge fix's transistor's third leg is not broken off.

Cheers,

sdz wrote on 2022-05-29, 19:00:

Looks weird indeed, like it's missing 1 leg. Maybe it's a diode and doesn't need the third leg.

@Meatball do you have an oscilloscope? If the card doesn't throw any errors it's probably mostly OK. I had a card with the exact behaviour as yours, it was missing hsync or vsync, don't recall which one.

I don't have one. I see them on Amazon for less than $50. Are these good enough? Is it good to have one around, in general?

pentiumspeed wrote on 2022-05-29, 19:08:

Make sure this bodge fix's transistor's third leg is not broken off.

Cheers,

Thanks for the suggestion - I have checked with a magnifying glass, and I tapped each leg to check for any movement. All 3 legs are secure.

I don't know what you get for that price, for measuring hsync/vsync, sure, it should do it. But for other stuff it might be useless.

Meatball wrote on 2022-05-29, 19:12:

I don't have one. I see them on Amazon for less than $50. Are these good enough?

no

Meatball wrote on 2022-05-29, 19:12:

Is it good to have one around, in general?

no if you have to ask

Find a HAM or hackerspace near you, ask nicely for a favor, offer box of chocolates or a 6pack 😀. What you want is looking at VGA outputs, and RAMDAC inputs/outputs with https://retronn.de/ftp/docs/pc_hardware/DACs/ICS5342.pdf in hand

Hi there, wondering if this was ever resolved.

I'm in the same position, a 90-2440 that is happily recognized by Windows 98, but refuses to show anything. The CRT I'm using it with goes into power save and never comes out of it.

The one I have is from Hydro Thunder. Apparently it has a CPLD on board that does some handshake with the arcade hardware. Is it possible the card won't work in a PC? The CPLD sticker is 546-0024-03. Wondering if anyone with this exact card and "security" chip has it working on a PC.

To further this theory, in the case of Hydro Thunder, work has been done to modify the game files to skip the security check in order to allow other VooDoo2 cards to work. The modder mentioned that this bypass actually causes the game NOT to boot with the original card installed.

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/conf … 13#post-3215996

"-Also, do NOT do this modification to a machine that has the legit graphics card (CPLD of 546-0024-03).
Apparently that video card keeps the video off, and the CPLD must turn it on when it receives data. Since we are bypassing that, this never happens."

Are the unlock commands one and done or do you have to constantly fulfill some challenge-response mechanism? Maybe a small unlock.com in autoexec.bat would suffice to make this card PC compatible.