ramiro77 wrote:

P55C 200? Not anymore. Now I have to choose between P55C 233 and Cyrix PR 233 because I bought a lot of stuff in there 😎
I'm astonished for this findings. He also gave me for free some old stuff, so if I take in account that, these cards costed me less than four dollars each.
I told him to call me if he finds more of this 3DFX cards. I really like them and they are very rare here. More rare to find one at this prices.

Fantastico! Sounds like you found a good stash of retro PC hardware. I foresee many days of testing and cataloging ahead 😁

Oh yeah! I have to benchmark 4 different cpu just for fun, test a hard drive, an at psu and the two Diamonds.

By the way: the Monster is broken. One capacitor is missing. It seems that it fell off the board for dropping it. I will search for high resolution pictures and repair it. The voodoo ii is fine. Tonight I will test it.

ramiro77 wrote:

Guys I went to see this seller. I got surprised. He has a lot of retro stuff. I was looking and looking when I found this puppie […]
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Guys I went to see this seller. I got surprised. He has a lot of retro stuff.
I was looking and looking when I found this puppies:

My eyes almost fell of my face. A Diamond Monster 3D 4mb and a Voodoo II. Both with cables. Don't hate me, but I must confess how much I paid for them: less than four dollars each 😵 😵 😵
It was a great day today for retro-ing. Now I will clean this beauties and test them. Also I bought a bunch of other stuff at ridiculous (low) prices. I will post them on the correct topic.

Nicely done! 😁

And about the V1 missing a component, could you take a high-res pic so I can compare it with one of mine? Then I can tell you which part your V1 is missing, it's a start 😀
Btw, perhaps the card is still functional? I can't be sure though as this depends a lot on which part is missing or damaged.

Yes, of course. It's labelled C104 near the vrams:

If you could tell me the value, I'll replace it asap.
The Voodoo 2 isn't working. I found a desoldered capacitor which I soldered back. Nothing. Windows detects the card but I get _GlideInitEnvironment:glide2x.dll expected Voodoo^2, none detected error. I googled a little bit and there is a high chance that the board is faulty. I don't see anything more bad than that capacitor I resoldered. I tried changing from socket, reinstalling drivers, but nothing.

I will keep looking a little bit more and if it's faulty, the seller doesn't have any problem to change any of this boards for another. He only has to look further for more of this boards in his house.

Looked at my Monster 3D and all capacitors have the same value - 5L, 10, 16v

Here's a large pic of the front, not very sharp but shows all components 😅

http://i.imgur.com/ucV8tFD.jpg

On my Diamond Monster Revision D C104 is labelled 79, 10, 16v, and is identical to c102 and all the other little capacitors. So if yours follows the same pattern it should be identical to C102 on your Monster 😀

10uF, 16 volt
It's an EMI filter for the RAM chips power but there are others that should handle the job okay if only one is missing.
Not likely to kill the whole card.
.
I would be more worried about any that look dented or smashed.
That could short it internally and that would kill the card.
.

PCBONEZ wrote:

10uF, 16 volt I would be more worried about any that look dented or smashed. That could short it internally and that would kill […]
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10uF, 16 volt
I would be more worried about any that look dented or smashed.
That could short it internally and that would kill the card.
.

Now that you mention it, the top of the cap located above the 2 top-right RAM chips on his pic seems to be a valid suspect for further inspection, top looks dented, but I can't tell from the pics, might be something else like the lighting.

I would replace the one on the top first of all. Or at least remove it and see if it works...

Tetrium wrote:

PCBONEZ wrote:

10uF, 16 volt I would be more worried about any that look dented or smashed. That could short it internally and that would kill […]
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10uF, 16 volt
I would be more worried about any that look dented or smashed.
That could short it internally and that would kill the card.
.

Now that you mention it, the top of the cap located above the 2 top-right RAM chips on his pic seems to be a valid suspect for further inspection, top looks dented, but I can't tell from the pics, might be something else like the lighting.

I said that because I noticed that. Wanted to see if anyone else would catch it before I mentioned it myself.
I guess you win the Scooby Snack.
.

RacoonRider wrote:

I would replace the one on the top first of all. Or at least remove it and see if it works...

Yes, just removing it would be fine for a quick test if the card will come back just from that.
If the card comes back I would still replace the cap before using the card.

If it's a complete short the resistance across it would be zero even in circuit.
Not all shorts are dead shorts though and there are possible parallel paths so a reading higher than zero doesn't tell you much.
.

ramiro77 wrote:

Yes, of course. It's labelled C104 near the vrams: […]
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Yes, of course. It's labelled C104 near the vrams:

If you could tell me the value, I'll replace it asap.
The Voodoo 2 isn't working. I found a desoldered capacitor which I soldered back. Nothing. Windows detects the card but I get _GlideInitEnvironment:glide2x.dll expected Voodoo^2, none detected error. I googled a little bit and there is a high chance that the board is faulty. I don't see anything more bad than that capacitor I resoldered. I tried changing from socket, reinstalling drivers, but nothing.

I will keep looking a little bit more and if it's faulty, the seller doesn't have any problem to change any of this boards for another. He only has to look further for more of this boards in his house.

Perhaps you should consider testing all the other things you bought from that seller. I've had some experience with people trying to sell their broken stuff to me and a few times I fell for it...but oh well, shame on me, it happens.

Well, you were right. I inspected the boards and they has several problems. And most important, the two Voodoos are dead.
The other things I bought are fine. The seller told me he let me choose for another cards. There is no problem, he is an honest seller, but he has so many things so there are a lot untested.

I will go in the next days to search for other cards. If I can't find a proper 3D accelerator, I will buy the TNT2 or maybe a SIS305.

Take a good look at that SiS305 PCI, I have a Pine XP-2800 with only 32 bit SDRAM memory, and it is not clocked high either.

I tested yesterday the SIS and the TNT2. Both are 32mb PCI. Of course the TNT2 is more powerful. Both are working perfectly. This problem with the Voodoos is because both cards were untested. I called the seller 15 minutes ago and he will take all the 3D accelerators he has and tonight I will go there for take a look at them. He can't test them because he has so many things lying around (is incredible the quantity of old hardware he has). But he is an honest vendor and if we can't find a working 3D accelerator, he saved me either the SIS or the TNT2 for me. And he is relatively close to my house, so I have no problem going there to search for cards, test them in my house and returning them if they don't work.

I will keep you updated on this. I promise that.

Looking forward to it 😀

Well, the seller didn't find more 3D accelerators. So he gave me the tnt2 for free and he didn't want back the voodoos. I'm really gratefull for his honesty!
So I will try to repair the voodoos. The voodoo 1 looks like needs some capacitor replacing. The voodoo 2 is more complex. There are several pins twisted in one chip. Also one pin is missing. I want to know what do you think. I have excellent experience doing soldering jobs, but I never did something this complex.

Edit: OH COME ON!!! Now the TNT2 doesn't work with my motherboard. It does work on another motherboard (Socket 370 P3 Compaq Deskpro EN). I'm pissed off 😠

Take a pic of the damaged pin area on the Voodoo 2 to see exactly what happened to the chip. It could be repairable - or not.

That's a strange turn of events with the TNT2. Maybe a CMOS/BIOS reset to default settings will somehow help? Did you try all PCI slots?

Nothing helped. I tried clearing CMOS taking the battery off, I tried every bios setting, I tried changing the psu to see if that helps and nothing. I tried it in the three PCI slots too. It does work ok with my Trident 9680, but if I put the TNT2 and the Trident at the same time with the CRT connected to the Trident, the system wont display anything too. It boots, I hear the hdd loading windows but no display. I also found that the power_good signal cable from my original AT psu was burning. I tried again with the other AT psu that I have for spare and everything is fine. It seems that this system is starting to show aging issues. But every stress test I ran were ok. So I don't know why the hell this isn't working. The TNT2 is working like a charm in my Deskpro EN as I said.

Regarding the Voodoo 2:

I can put those pins in place. But there is a missing pin and I have no room in the chip to place a wire. One solution could be drilling something like 0.5 - 1 milimeter the chip to make place and insert a thin pin and join it with what remains of the original pin. Another solution could be replacing the entire chip, but It's 99.99% unlikely finding a spare chip or another blown card at decent price in here.

And the Voodoo 1 still needs replacing some caps. I'm not possitive at all, but besides the issues with the TNT2 and my retro rig, I bought a bunch of working stuff at really low price. Sure, It will be a pity if I can't fix them. But they were something like a gift so I can't complaing too much about it.

ramiro77 wrote:

I can put those pins in place. But there is a missing pin and I have no room in the chip to place a wire. One solution could be drilling something like 0.5 - 1 milimeter the chip to make place and insert a thin pin and join it with what remains of the original pin. Another solution could be replacing the entire chip, but It's 99.99% unlikely finding a spare chip or another blown card at decent price in here.