The Voodoo VGA passthrough cable is nothing special, I have used a regular VGA cable instead and it works no problems.
I have a socket 7 board where the pins in the socket were badly oxidised. The only way to fix that is to remove the top of the socket, which
is not easy depending on the design. I used a very slim file with and just cleaned the pins. Unfortunately I haven't tested that motherboard since.
You could try some electronic cleaner but it would have to be very mild oxidation for that to fix it.
Other than that I would suggest getting a cheap isa/pci post card and at least You then have an idea whether it does anything at all and if so , where it stalls.
Clean all the edge connector pins of the video card and ram with an eraser, as oxidised pins will stop it booting if bad enough.

lup31337 wrote on 2025-04-26, 07:24:

I'm making my first retro PC and things are not going smoothly. Well technically it's my 2nd, but a windows xp machine feels lik […]
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I'm making my first retro PC and things are not going smoothly. Well technically it's my 2nd, but a windows xp machine feels like building any normal present-day computer.

Assembled everything and it wont POST. Nothing on the screen, no beeps, nothing. Left only the 2D card in and disconnected everything, still nothing. Took the CPU out to check if the CPU was indeed the model I think it was and to recheck the voltages. Everything was set correctly, jumpers and stuff. Put the CPU back and I got video output. It posted. Turned it off to connect the other devices, again, no post. Disconnect everything, again, no post.
I'm guessing it's oxidation or something either on the CPU pins or motherboard socket, or both. How do you go about in cleaning those?

Another problem I am having is that I cannot connect the passthrough cable to the voodoo. The male vga connector on the voodoo is basically the same size as the female connector on the cable. They don't fit into one-another. I just bought some short vga male-female cable from aliexpress. Was the passthrough cable something proprietary?
Help is appreciated. Thanks!

Exciting!

I use WD-40 Contact Cleaner for all contacts including CPU contacts.

What post code are you getting from your $10 AliExpress post analyzer card?

The pass-through cable is male to female. They need to be as short as possible to get the best image quality. A couple of eBay sellers sell them.

Possible oxidisation on RAM slots. I had no post from that before. I use Isopropyl alcohol & a toothbrush.

I have a thermal grizzly thermal paste removal. In one of those eye-drops-looking container. That's high concentration Isopropyl alcohol, right?

I don't have a post analyzer card.

Regarding the voodoo connector I attached some photos.

The connector is the same size. One should be larger or smaller to fit into one another. The connector doesn't look dented or anything. Weird situation.

ThankYou China I guess!. Does the other end fit the female connector?

It's alive!!! I cleaned everything with contact cleaner and a semi-soft brush. Every card, every socket and the cpu. Didn't mess with the cpu socket though. It works fine now. Woohoo!

Regarding the voodoo card. I just bought it from some guy on the local market. The other connector works. I was thinking to get a vga splitter cable and connect the monitor to both outputs of the 2d and 3d cards. Isn't that the same thing of using the pass-through cable?

Pretty sure with the splitter, you will get a double image as the voodoo passes through and then switches the 2d passthrough off when it activates 3d.

Does that female end that won't fit on the card fit a standard VGA cable male end?

Mystery solved. I removed the pci bracket and the vga metal shell just fell off. I'm guessing the old ones were too rusty and someone tried to replace them. The mistake was placing a metal shell from a female connector onto the male connector. That's why i cannot connect the cable. Since the plug and socket have the same size outer shell, the connection cannot be made, they just "kiss" each other 😀

lup31337 wrote on 2025-04-27, 07:14:

Mystery solved. I removed the pci bracket and the vga metal shell just fell off. I'm guessing the old ones were too rusty and someone tried to replace them. The mistake was placing a metal shell from a female connector onto the male connector. That's why i cannot connect the cable. Since the plug and socket have the same size outer shell, the connection cannot be made, they just "kiss" each other 😀

Nice work!