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Albatron PC6600LEQ - help with identify dead chip

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First post, by ruthan

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Hello,
i Albatron PC6600LEQ there is some completely dead chip on the back side, it felt apart, label is gone, no 1 letter readable.
https://www.pcstats.com/articles/1866/index.html

I have tried to find some closeup photo of this card or video, no luck. I also checked other Geforce 6600LE cards, for similar or same PCB design, again no luck to find the similar layout. I wasnt able to find better than uploaded images and they are very blurry.
Im also not familiar with this Albratron brand, i like card because has passive cooling (22 W) and its 1 slot. ALbatron is from Taiwan and started to make cards in 2002. it seems to be still active but they are doing some embedded industrial stuff.

There 1 chip, with similar or same size, label on it is:
RT9214
PS7C70U

I found out that is:
The RT9214 is a synchronous buck PWM DC-DC controller by Richtek Technology Corporation, designed for 5 V or 12 V supply rails, drives MOSFETs, fixed 300 kHz frequency, etc.

Its marked U900, dead chip is U901, i was never in PCB, make sense that if name is almost the same, that U900 and U901 would be same chips? Make sense to have such cards

The attachment albatronpc6600leq_rear.jpg is no longer available
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I also dunno if just can buy new this chip and replace it, or it need some special code, impossible to get, code to upload.. If it needs special code, i would need someone with the same card to download code from the chip through some chip programmer and upload it.

Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 1 of 7, by tehsiggi

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So I did some research. Apparently there was a PC6600LEQ2, which has a similar, but still different PCB layout. So that's out of the picture for checking the part number.
There was an Albatron PC6600U which appears to have the same PCB in use, but I haven't found any high resolution pictures of that either. Perhaps you have more luck.

Since you have the card at hand, could you make some high resolution photos of that area, so I could check if the RT would logically fit in that space.

Don't worry about the chip itself too much. Switching regulator controller ICs one those cards are all fixed function and don't require programming. The only programmable thing on those cards is the EEPROM for the video BIOS, the rest of the chips are all fixed function off-the-shelf stuff.

Cheers

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Reply 2 of 7, by ruthan

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Thanks,
are some detailed photos, but chip in question is completely burned and felt apart:

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Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 3 of 7, by Dothan Burger

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Not the same card but this is a 128bit 6200. I would bet that chip is the same as the other two surrounding it.

The attachment IMG_0970.jpeg is no longer available

Reply 4 of 7, by Rwolf

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You might want to check the surrounding loads after removing the burned one, as it could have failed due to other parts shorting out and overloading it, or the replacement may suffer the same fate.

Reply 5 of 7, by tehsiggi

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ruthan wrote on 2025-11-21, 15:03:

are some detailed photos, but chip in question is completely burned and felt apart:

Alright, I checked the RT9214 datasheet.

The attachment DS9214-15.pdf is no longer available

It appears that the circuitry around the burned chip is similar to the one that still exists. It looks like some parts might be on the other side of the PCB. But the bootstrapping diode etc, looks similar. The pinout could technically match. However that death is quite the catastrophic failure.

I'd say go ahead and remove the remnants of that chip. Clean up the PCB there and check the FETs on the other side if they are shorted.

AGP Card Real Power Consumption
AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 6 of 7, by ruthan

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Dothan Burger wrote on 2025-11-21, 23:13:

Not the same card but this is a 128bit 6200. I would bet that chip is the same as the other two surrounding it.

Thx, If you can photo where would be readable labels on U16 and U18, it would be great.

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 20:05:

Thx, Alright, I checked the RT9214 datasheet.

It appears that the circuitry around the burned chip is similar to the one that still exists. It looks like some parts might be on the other side of the PCB. But the bootstrapping diode etc, looks similar. The pinout could technically match. However that death is quite the catastrophic failure.

I'd say go ahead and remove the remnants of that chip. Clean up the PCB there and check the FETs on the other side if they are shorted.

I have some theories why card died:
1) Too much heat over time - i dunno how this chip temperature resistant, but because of passive cooling PCB could get quite hot and if im not wrong Geforce 6 cards, probably does not have some 2D / 3D clocks power saving and running at max speed all the time.. Or maybe driver is needed to run to enable power savings, im running the card most often in modern OS, without drivers at disabled PCI-E root device, to not bother me.. i need it only for some retro boot option.
Also machine is quite stuck of cards and there are only few low speed fans on CPU radiator and GPU which can only if card is running some heavier load. PSU is also fanless, case is quite big Corsair Obsidian 750D.

2) Something touched the chip - Because machine is stuck of cards, this chip i bit above the card - some other card could touch it, during some cleaning or component fiddling during machine is on (yeah sometimes did such ugly stuff, because im lazy or in hurry).

3) On other side i see some capacitators which are bloaded, not yet exploded.. maybe the bloated because of this chip failure, or chip burned because of them.. I definitely will replace them.

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Im old goal oriented goatman, i care about facts and freedom, not about egos+prejudices. Hoarding=sickness. If you want respect, gain it by your behavior. I hate stupid SW limits, SW=virtual world, everything should be possible if you have enough raw HW.

Reply 7 of 7, by Dothan Burger

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ruthan wrote on Yesterday, 21:06:
Thx, If you can photo where would be readable labels on U16 and U18, it would be great. […]
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Dothan Burger wrote on 2025-11-21, 23:13:

Not the same card but this is a 128bit 6200. I would bet that chip is the same as the other two surrounding it.

Thx, If you can photo where would be readable labels on U16 and U18, it would be great.

tehsiggi wrote on Yesterday, 20:05:

Thx, Alright, I checked the RT9214 datasheet.

tehsiggi is correct, RT9214.

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