Creative Voodoo 2 - picture quality issues \ VOGONS

Creative Voodoo 2 - picture quality issues

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First post, by DW12

Posted on 2024-12-24, 00:48

DW12 Offline

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Hi! Recently I finally had some time to repair a Creative Voodoo 2 12MB that I've got a couple of months ago. It was really dirty and had 2 knocked off capacitors. Also I had to do a reflow on second TMU with my soldering iron, because mojo was detecting 0 RAM. Now the card is working, however I've noticed some problems with picture quality. It kinda looks like screen is "wobbly" horizontally, like there is some horizontal noise. You can kinda see that in direct capture that I've recorded from Carmageddon 2 (in the background), irl it's more noticable:

https://youtu.be/djP1RxoIFzo?si=2-ipomGUHe9zXuFv

Does anyone also encounter this behaviour? I have the same issue with my A-Trend Voodoo 1 card, however my other Voodoo 1 from Diamond gives almost perfect picture. Is it failing DAC problem? Do I need to also reflow the FBI chip, maybe it has some flaky connections? Or that is just bad luck and these particular cards give poor quality picture?

Reply 1 of 5, by revolstar

Posted on 2024-12-24, 09:30

revolstar Offline

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I had a somewhat similar problem but for me, the wobbling occurred diagonally AFAIK, and it was even noticeable when viewing the Windows desktop. Then I swapped the PSU for a beefier, more modern unit and the problem went away.

Win98 rig: Athlon XP 2500+/512MB RAM/Gigabyte GA-7VT600/SB Audigy/GF FX5700/Voodoo2 12MB
WinXP rig: HP RP5800 - Pentium G850/2GB RAM/GF GT530 1GB
Amiga: A600/2MB RAM
PS3: Slim, CFW, mostly for RetroArch & PSX games
PS2: Fat, FMCB

Reply 2 of 5, by DW12

Posted on 2024-12-24, 13:51

DW12 Offline

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revolstar wrote on 2024-12-24, 09:30:

I had a somewhat similar problem but for me, the wobbling occurred diagonally AFAIK, and it was even noticeable when viewing the Windows desktop. Then I swapped the PSU for a beefier, more modern unit and the problem went away.

Thanks for your suggestion. On my testbench I was using an old FSP power supply, today I took out my modern Seasonic 550W and tested the whole setup again. Image quality is much better now! It looks like some cards are more prone to voltage ripple than others.

Reply 3 of 5, by Spark

Posted on 2024-12-24, 14:25

Spark Offline

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Would it be possible to fix this without swapping out the PSU?

Reply 4 of 5, by DW12

Posted on 2024-12-24, 21:50

DW12 Offline

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So after further testing, image quality is much better, however noise can still be seen a little, especially with my A-Trend Voodoo 1 card. Can anyone with experience in fixing Voodoo cards write in and explain what components have the most impact on image quality? I assume it can be a DAC part of circuit issue.

Reply 5 of 5, by Postman5

Posted on 2024-12-25, 08:58

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Sometimes a degraded switch modulates the output signal with noise from the power supply circuits

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