Seems your new VSA-100 chip has balls already, so no need to mess with a stencil. Makes it easier.

ph4nt0m wrote:

Seems your new VSA-100 chip has balls already, so no need to mess with a stencil. Makes it easier.

Yes, im not very big fan of reballing old crap manually 😀

There are a lot of medical dramas on TV. Why has nobody ever made a show about hardware surgery? I would watch it. 😁

Sneak peak video about todays work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnNJn7Ebybw

And yes it does, no more green bars.

I will put together final video once i get the custom cooling solution machined. Also noticed the card is missing some decoupling capacitors around both GPUs. 10+ years in electronics scrap box did its thing, battle scars. Will repair those as well.

Kizmo wrote:

Sneak peak video about todays work: […]
Show full quote

Sneak peak video about todays work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnNJn7Ebybw

And yes it does, no more green bars.

I will put together final video once i get the custom cooling solution machined. Also noticed the card is missing some decoupling capacitors around both GPUs. 10+ years in electronics scrap box did its thing, battle scars. Will repair those as well.

So you got it fixed? GREAT! Congrats!

meljor wrote:

Kizmo wrote:

Sneak peak video about todays work: […]
Show full quote

Sneak peak video about todays work:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnNJn7Ebybw

And yes it does, no more green bars.

I will put together final video once i get the custom cooling solution machined. Also noticed the card is missing some decoupling capacitors around both GPUs. 10+ years in electronics scrap box did its thing, battle scars. Will repair those as well.

So you got it fixed? GREAT! Congrats!

Yes it does run perfectly. Passed 3 hour 3dmark loop without any issues.

I keep finding battle scars such as missing capacitors. So far i have replaced 4 capacitors, all of them in GPU power plane. And all of this is because this card spent literally 10+ years in a box of misc junk with little to no protection. But it will come out good.

Kizmo wrote:

If my source for VSA-100 chips turns out the be good i can offer my services for reasonable price.

In my case the damaged chip was removed with hot air but new chip will be soldered with professional rework machine ( https://www.kurtzersa.com/electronics-product … r-pl-550-1.html ). I have bad experiences trying to solder large BGA chips by handheld hot air station 😀

Nice rig. Just as a curiosity, how much do these machines cost?

infiniteclouds wrote:

Kizmo wrote:

If my source for VSA-100 chips turns out the be good i can offer my services for reasonable price.

In my case the damaged chip was removed with hot air but new chip will be soldered with professional rework machine ( https://www.kurtzersa.com/electronics-product … r-pl-550-1.html ). I have bad experiences trying to solder large BGA chips by handheld hot air station 😀

Nice rig. Just as a curiosity, how much do these machines cost?

this particular one $10-15K, Chinese ones >=$2K

rasz_pl wrote:

infiniteclouds wrote:

Kizmo wrote:

If my source for VSA-100 chips turns out the be good i can offer my services for reasonable price.

In my case the damaged chip was removed with hot air but new chip will be soldered with professional rework machine ( https://www.kurtzersa.com/electronics-product … r-pl-550-1.html ). I have bad experiences trying to solder large BGA chips by handheld hot air station 😀

Nice rig. Just as a curiosity, how much do these machines cost?

this particular one $10-15K, Chinese ones >=$2K

A $150 temperature controlled industrial heat gun will do the job just fine. You may add underside heating in case of a large GPU with lead-free balls. Something like an infrared electric cooking stove.

BGA reflow is somewhat simple operation but this machine does more than just heat up the solder. It has prismatic camera aided pick and place function which of course is not needed for ICs this old and large 😀 It is extremely nice to have when you work on something that has 0,3mm balls and no silk screen alignment marks. Like apple products 😁

Heat gun method sure works but having better control adds way more security and repeatability to the entire process.

And i got for almost for nothing, it was discarded from a electronics company as defective tool to be scrapped. Friend of mine rescued it from the scrap pile, repaired it and sold it tome for very reasonable price (price of repair parts)

Kizmo wrote:

And i got for almost for nothing, it was discarded from a electronics company as defective tool to be scrapped. Friend of mine rescued it from the scrap pile, repaired it and sold it tome for very reasonable price (price of repair parts)

That was a bargain for sure. Although when I had to repair something with very small balls like those Volterra power chips, I just soldered them without any balls using the heat gun alone. It worked.

Do you fix other people's Voodoo 5 cards, too?
My Voodoo 5 5500 has SLI problems (single chip is fine)

Sure, i have done few in past.

But mind you i live in Finland so overseas shipping os not a viable option if you happen to live far away outside europe. PM if interested 😀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtbNU0gHtck

So this is the end for now. Next please? 😀

Now i really have to whip up a high end PC for this card.

im not yet able to respond private messages so if you want to get in touch with me here is my e-mail address:

can you fix artifacts at bios on ATI Radeon 9xxx cards ?

Do you know how to upgrade the card to 128MB?

dries_86 wrote:

can you fix artifacts at bios on ATI Radeon 9xxx cards ?

I might, but im not sure if its worth of doing

Arctic wrote:

Do you know how to upgrade the card to 128MB?

Yes but so far only PCI version. AGP should be doable but the layout is little bit different so it would require some reverse engineering or asking for modding schematics from somebody who has modded 5500 AGP.

dries_86 wrote:

can you fix artifacts at bios on ATI Radeon 9xxx cards ?

If it's a 9800 Pro, must be a GPU failure due to poor cooling. A simple reflow without reballing may help. If it doesn't, a GPU replacement needed which is cost prohibitive most likely.

Arctic wrote:

Do you know how to upgrade the card to 128MB?

What's the point? There are numerous compatibility issues. The PCB lacks traces for the additional address strobe which has to be wired manually and that doesn't look pretty.

I can get much better performance by upgrading the memory chips from 6ns to 4ns of the same 64Mbit density.

^ My thoughts exactly.

Large memory cards i have seen or heard of seem to be pretty difficult things to get running stable. The mod can be done with smd components, thinner green wire and no hot glue but it is still visible.