Doornkaat wrote on 2020-12-12, 09:17:
Sorry to hear that. Sounds like very bad luck to me. I have more than twenty 3dfx cards and only two have (had) problems, both contact issues due to mechanical damage. One is already repaired, the other is still waiting for reflowing.
The transistor on PCI V3s gets scorchingly hot though. In my experience even a slight bit of turbulence over the transistor's heatsink is enough to keep temperatures well within spec though.
Btw: You said the transistor damaged a chunk of the pcb when exploding - the heatsink between the transistor and PCB should have been enough to protect the PCB from an exploding transistor. The thermal mass of that heatsink and its dissipation capabilities should also be sufficient to protect the pcb from the heat generated during a typical transistor burn out. Is it possible your card was missing the heatsink? That could have caused the transistor to overheat in the first place. That heatsink is absolutely necessary!
It did have the default heatsink found on all Voodoo 3 PCI cards, but many traces still got scorched and the PCB almost melted around it - the heat seems to have been extreme, it was not the usual 'burnt MOSFET event' (which is generally not that dramatic). I'll try and find it to take a picture, it looks extremely bad (so bad that I didn't even bother trying to repair it).
Doornkaat wrote on 2020-12-12, 09:17:
No, you're right: The Voodoo 5500 isn't that great of a card, especially considering a GF 4200 Ti runs circles around it and is still widely avaliable for reasonable prices. OpenGL or Direct3D games? Forget about Voodoo 5500.
But if you want to play Glide games at maximum frame rates on real hardware there isn't really anything better avaliable. (apart from unobtanium) So if you're aiming for maximum fps why limit yourself to a slower CPU than necessary? Especially if you can run a low voltage Athlon XP-M in many KT333 boards, giving you a powerful Win9x system at low TDP.
Fair enough... but truthfully, I don't know of any Glide exclusive games that support very high resolutions so that they would be able to take advantage of a Voodoo 5 (there might be some, though). Many people are using Unreal as an example, but let's be honest - even though Unreal used to have a broken & slow Direct3D implementation, it was eventually fixed (well, the performance part was mostly 'fixed' once CPUs and GPUs got much faster). Yes, in 1998 - 1999 it ran GREAT on 3dfx hardware, but years later that all changed. Nowadays, Unreal runs and looks much better on a GeForce 4 / FX. 😀
1 x PLCC-68 / 2 x PGA132 / 5 x Skt 3 / 9 x Skt 7 / 12 x SS7 / 1 x Skt 8 / 14 x Slot 1 / 5 x Slot A
5 x Skt 370 / 8 x Skt A / 2 x Skt 478 / 2 x Skt 754 / 3 x Skt 939 / 7 x LGA775 / 1 x LGA1155
Current PC: Ryzen 7 5800X3D
Backup PC: Core i7 7700k