I guess you could if you have the BGA reballing equipment for it, if you dont then .. its cheaper to just buy another FX5500, I wouldn't attempt replacing the core without some reballing gear and a hot bed as its exceptionally difficult.

These cards are dirt cheap so yeah without the right gear its just not worth it in either time or resources and even with the right gear Im still not convinced it would be worth the time.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-05-17, 13:17:

I guess you could if you have the BGA reballing equipment for it, if you dont then .. its cheaper to just buy another FX5500, I wouldn't attempt replacing the core without some reballing gear and a hot bed as its exceptionally difficult.

These cards are dirt cheap so yeah without the right gear its just not worth it in either time or resources and even with the right gear Im still not convinced it would be worth the time.

Problem is where I live, retro hardware is overpriced. Forgot to say the fried card (before i killed it), for the couple of seconds, was displaying but the screen was moving to the right and then it went blank again. Would flashing a new BIOS, on the card with artifacts, make an difference in behavior?

If the card has resistors on memory data lines, I would measure all of them to make sure they are not open.

you can use old MATS/MODS for DOS to test vmem on NVIDIA cards

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pFuLL … kJDv4TiJKE_GWNw

it will show you which exact memory bank is bad. btw also check the capacitors/resistors around the memory ic.

dm- wrote on 2024-05-21, 10:07:

you can use old MATS/MODS for DOS to test vmem on NVIDIA cards

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pFuLL … kJDv4TiJKE_GWNw

it will show you which exact memory bank is bad. btw also check the capacitors/resistors around the memory ic.

Hmm handy, thanks for this 😀 Do you know which generations this covers?

dm- wrote on 2024-05-21, 10:07:

you can use old MATS/MODS for DOS to test vmem on NVIDIA cards

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1pFuLL … kJDv4TiJKE_GWNw

it will show you which exact memory bank is bad. btw also check the capacitors/resistors around the memory ic.

Found 2 missing resistors. What i believe one is a 15ohm and the other one is 100ohms under U3. Ill replace them and see if that changes anything. Also, thanks for the link. I though only MONTEST is the memory tester for retro hardware.

I've been trying to use VMTCE to test memory faults but the Geforce FX memory layout is somewhat more complicated than the 1st gen AGP cards like the voodoo 1
Accurately troubleshooting video memory faults with VMTCE
It hasn't really worked well for diagnosing faults on a Geforce FX 🙁

For anything where the component value isn't clear, you could look at the P162 schematic which is what most FX5200 / FX5500 regular-height 128-bit cards are based off of. And there's the MS-8919 schematic which is similar but with a tv-encoder chip.

Replaced the missing components but there's another issue. My install of XP decided it was a good time to get corrupted. Ill try to resolve this issue.

Stopping working on this card as it seems like I worsened the condition of it to the point that it damages main boards. Thanks for help everyone.