Did mess up with the 4x4 system dual CPU dual GPU with the Voodoo V... Seems the card is capable of 180MHz, did not expect that, will try 190MHz after replacement of the stock coolers, as these heatsinks are total piece of shit... Id expect them to add like Voodoo III 2K heatsink and fan on top of that, but no they added some cheap af crap.... So i wont risk to mess up so valuable and expensive piece of history, so i will just do more OC when i have the copper Titan coolers installed.

Aside from that installed all drivers needed, could not run for some reason the WI-FI Linksys adapter, no matter it did work before with the same driver 🤣, installed bunch of games. For some reason GTA III did lagg like shit, meanwhile GTA VC did run WAY better, not sure wtf, maybe the GTA 3 i did install is some crap, no matter it did seem stock one, not modded, but who knows...

Still looking what games to install and stuff. I am planning to install Win 98 on that system as well, since it cant be main OS, cuz of the dual Tualatins, it will suck to have x2 processors, and one of the to be UNusable from the system.... So that will be dual boot systems, as i want to have some 98 games on the Voodoo V too... But the primary 98 system witll be the one with Pentium II 450MHz, some 2D card, and Voodoo SLI....

H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-09-04, 17:02:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-04, 09:49:

I'm pretty happy with the PII Overdrive as it fixed the 16bit code issue earlier Pentium Pros had which makes it a far more useful CPU to play around with,

Well, also the 133 extra MHz probably also adds to the usability? 😉

The extra speed doesnt make as big a difference as you might think, the 16bit code fix makes a huge difference though, especially for DOS and Win3.1 programs.

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-04, 22:25:

Did mess up with the 4x4 system dual CPU dual GPU with the Voodoo V... Seems the card is capable of 180MHz, did not expect that, […]
Show full quote

Did mess up with the 4x4 system dual CPU dual GPU with the Voodoo V... Seems the card is capable of 180MHz, did not expect that, will try 190MHz after replacement of the stock coolers, as these heatsinks are total piece of shit... Id expect them to add like Voodoo III 2K heatsink and fan on top of that, but no they added some cheap af crap.... So i wont risk to mess up so valuable and expensive piece of history, so i will just do more OC when i have the copper Titan coolers installed.

Aside from that installed all drivers needed, could not run for some reason the WI-FI Linksys adapter, no matter it did work before with the same driver 🤣, installed bunch of games. For some reason GTA III did lagg like shit, meanwhile GTA VC did run WAY better, not sure wtf, maybe the GTA 3 i did install is some crap, no matter it did seem stock one, not modded, but who knows...

20220902_195115.jpg

Still looking what games to install and stuff. I am planning to install Win 98 on that system as well, since it cant be main OS, cuz of the dual Tualatins, it will suck to have x2 processors, and one of the to be UNusable from the system.... So that will be dual boot systems, as i want to have some 98 games on the Voodoo V too... But the primary 98 system witll be the one with Pentium II 450MHz, some 2D card, and Voodoo SLI....

Did you have to recap that voodoo 5, or does it run fine with original components?

Bought a Trident 9000i-3 from a seller.. I was surprised that it wasn't working in any system I tried it on. I did notice that the memory chips would get hot... Started to suspect a shorted cap etc..

Was studying the board and noticed the orientation of the silkscreen for the memory chips was different to the way the chips were inserted... Checked identical cards on eBay and the silkscreened position was accurate. Flipped the chips... And we have display!

Wonder if it was like this from the factory??
First pic is the correct orientation.. lower pic is how the card shipped to me

You're lucky the memory chips hadn't been killed! Well spotted

smtkr wrote on 2022-09-05, 00:02:

Radical Vision wrote on 2022-09-04, 22:25:

Did mess up with the 4x4 system dual CPU dual GPU with the Voodoo V... Seems the card is capable of 180MHz, did not expect that, […]
Show full quote

Did mess up with the 4x4 system dual CPU dual GPU with the Voodoo V... Seems the card is capable of 180MHz, did not expect that, will try 190MHz after replacement of the stock coolers, as these heatsinks are total piece of shit... Id expect them to add like Voodoo III 2K heatsink and fan on top of that, but no they added some cheap af crap.... So i wont risk to mess up so valuable and expensive piece of history, so i will just do more OC when i have the copper Titan coolers installed.

Aside from that installed all drivers needed, could not run for some reason the WI-FI Linksys adapter, no matter it did work before with the same driver 🤣, installed bunch of games. For some reason GTA III did lagg like shit, meanwhile GTA VC did run WAY better, not sure wtf, maybe the GTA 3 i did install is some crap, no matter it did seem stock one, not modded, but who knows...

20220902_195115.jpg

Still looking what games to install and stuff. I am planning to install Win 98 on that system as well, since it cant be main OS, cuz of the dual Tualatins, it will suck to have x2 processors, and one of the to be UNusable from the system.... So that will be dual boot systems, as i want to have some 98 games on the Voodoo V too... But the primary 98 system witll be the one with Pentium II 450MHz, some 2D card, and Voodoo SLI....

Did you have to recap that voodoo 5, or does it run fine with original components?

Not me, the guy i did get the trade from, said there was x2 missing caps on the Voodoo V, so he did install them, but aside from that the card was fine. I saw multiple Voodoo III cards that did miss 2 or 3 caps on them, yet they was working fine, but is prob. not a good idea at all to use them like that but...

Why do u ask, i mean did u get faulty Voodoo V 5500 or ?

The card is more then fine is mint condition, i do even wonder if the guy lie, since the places he did point to me, the caps seem like factory ones, or maybe he is very good with the soldering iron...

Anyway i am happy i got the holy grail of retro videocards and collector stuff so well preserved, and for cheap, if the card was damaged, or even dead was going to be tragedy. Since i have seen many Voodoo cards, but some of them are in so sorry state it sucks.. On other hand i dont have luck with Voodoo II cards, all of them have some BS going on...

holdencars11 wrote on 2022-09-05, 05:22:

Bought a Trident 9000i-3 from a seller.. I was surprised that it wasn't working in any system I tried it on. I did notice that t […]
Show full quote

Bought a Trident 9000i-3 from a seller.. I was surprised that it wasn't working in any system I tried it on. I did notice that the memory chips would get hot... Started to suspect a shorted cap etc..

Was studying the board and noticed the orientation of the silkscreen for the memory chips was different to the way the chips were inserted... Checked identical cards on eBay and the silkscreened position was accurate. Flipped the chips... And we have display!

Wonder if it was like this from the factory??
First pic is the correct orientation.. lower pic is how the card shipped to me

If the card is brand new, or NOS, sure u may say that... But since is second hand, the possibility of some idiot to do that is more then 95%... So my bet is on the idiot seller, or someone before him.. I wonder did he test this shit even before to ship it to u... If he did state in the AD it was tested and working, then he is a piece of shit...

debs3759 wrote on 2022-09-05, 08:03:

You're lucky the memory chips hadn't been killed! Well spotted

Definitely lucky! Even when I first tried to POST the card, the chips were VERY hot after a few seconds. It's just not something you expect.. and I guess it would have been toast if I had closed the case and was wondering why I got no signal.

I'll try to find out if the card was used or nos (I'm just curious)... It did come with the driver diskette sealed in the antistatic bag. It was from a used computer store that has a lot of surplus and old second hand parts.

Saved an rather peculiar A7V8X from being sent to recycling. Was left in the rain for half a day before I could get to the rather smashed PC it was in.

Before:

After:

I recently got one of these boards, the same rev 2.0 you have here, no idea if mine works as it has a few blown caps in the VRM section but the seller said it did boot just not all the time.

Might eventually get around to repairing it but its on the to do pile.

Mine had blown Chemicon KZGs in the VRM section as well, though I replaced mine with OST RLX.

I know, I should be punished for using OSTs, but the only Sanyos I have seem to be absolutely dead, surprisingly, and the OSTs were the only ones I really knew they were never pushed too far (they came off a SiS based PCChips M848 that ran a Sempron for all of its life.) so they were rather good candidates for the VRM caps.

That, and I have legitimately never had bad luck with OSTs - the only time I had a issue with them was on a M2V-MX and they looked rather shady. (they came off a Gigabyte 7DXE and had different printing than the ones I usually use, as well as a darker color than I'm used to seeing on them.)

PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-05, 08:54:

Mine had blown Chemicon KZGs in the VRM section as well, though I replaced mine with OST RLX.

I know, I should be punished for using OSTs, but the only Sanyos I have seem to be absolutely dead, surprisingly, and the OSTs were the only ones I really knew they were never pushed too far (they came off a SiS based PCChips M848 that ran a Sempron for all of its life.) so they were rather good candidates for the VRM caps.

That, and I have legitimately never had bad luck with OSTs - the only time I had a issue with them was on a M2V-MX and they looked rather shady. (they came off a Gigabyte 7DXE and had different printing than the ones I usually use, as well as a darker color than I'm used to seeing on them.)

Im not sure if I should just replace the blown caps or replace all the VRM caps in one go, the other caps look to be in good shape and sourcing electronic parts right now can be difficult so I might just replace the three blown ones and see how the board goes. Its never going to be in heavy use so Im not wanting to invest a lot into fixing it.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-04, 23:19:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2022-09-04, 17:02:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-04, 09:49:

I'm pretty happy with the PII Overdrive as it fixed the 16bit code issue earlier Pentium Pros had which makes it a far more useful CPU to play around with,

Well, also the 133 extra MHz probably also adds to the usability? 😉

The extra speed doesnt make as big a difference as you might think, the 16bit code fix makes a huge difference though, especially for DOS and Win3.1 programs.

Yeah, afterall, it was PPro's disadvantage for the average consumer.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-09-05, 10:05:

PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-05, 08:54:

Mine had blown Chemicon KZGs in the VRM section as well, though I replaced mine with OST RLX.

I know, I should be punished for using OSTs, but the only Sanyos I have seem to be absolutely dead, surprisingly, and the OSTs were the only ones I really knew they were never pushed too far (they came off a SiS based PCChips M848 that ran a Sempron for all of its life.) so they were rather good candidates for the VRM caps.

That, and I have legitimately never had bad luck with OSTs - the only time I had a issue with them was on a M2V-MX and they looked rather shady. (they came off a Gigabyte 7DXE and had different printing than the ones I usually use, as well as a darker color than I'm used to seeing on them.)

Im not sure if I should just replace the blown caps or replace all the VRM caps in one go, the other caps look to be in good shape and sourcing electronic parts right now can be difficult so I might just replace the three blown ones and see how the board goes. Its never going to be in heavy use so Im not wanting to invest a lot into fixing it.

I'd just replace the 4 (or 5, since there's a free spot on the VRM side) caps and be done with it. The smaller ones (and the 1500uF 6.3v that are around the CPU and RAM) don't seem to fail, it's just the big 3300uF that go bad.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-05, 08:54:

Mine had blown Chemicon KZGs in the VRM section as well, though I replaced mine with OST RLX.

I know, I should be punished for using OSTs, but the only Sanyos I have seem to be absolutely dead, surprisingly, and the OSTs were the only ones I really knew they were never pushed too far (they came off a SiS based PCChips M848 that ran a Sempron for all of its life.) so they were rather good candidates for the VRM caps.

That, and I have legitimately never had bad luck with OSTs - the only time I had a issue with them was on a M2V-MX and they looked rather shady. (they came off a Gigabyte 7DXE and had different printing than the ones I usually use, as well as a darker color than I'm used to seeing on them.)

Well rain, water whatever wont harm computer HW ofc if there is not current running on the parts... It may be shitty ASUS, but at least is working... I have washed ton of parts, using cleaner to them, and then giving them bath, as some of them did have soil on them, snow, some of the parts have crap all over them, that cant be cleaned the proper way, then water comes very handy...

KZG caps are one of the biggest garbage caps, i saw sooooo many many of these KZG to be blown up, or even if they are fine, they will eventually spill their guts too, hate that model real shit. I Wonder how did Nippon-Chemicon did so bad caps, maybe they were ones of the companies that did try the stolen Rubycon formula, and edned up with BS, similar to Nichicon and others 🤣...
Id take OST, Teapo and other of the underDOG shitty "reliable" brands, over KZG every day, since they work ALOT better, Hitano too, i rarely saw any of the boards and parts i have with new Hitano to fail. From like 20 recapped mobos and video cards only on 1 board 1 Hitano did blow up in like 2 weeks after recap, it was prob bad from the factory... These days sadly Hitano is no where to be found here, and that suck, since their price/ quality ratio was VERY good... I wont go as far to buy Panasonic or Rubycon caps, since whole recap will cost me as much, and even more then the parts i have, no matter if we talk about GUS, Voodoo card, or some rare dual socket mobo........ Hitano for the most part is more then fine for me, they are very realiable for dog brand, and they cost pocket change for whole recap...

Nah, OST is a special kind of caps to me - they're cheap and hardly ever fail. KZGs (and Toshin Kogyo (TK) ATWY series) are absolutely craptacular - I've had KZGs fail bloated IN STORAGE! So just by mere sitting unused, they went a' poppin'. TK's failures are literally without any bloat. They just develop insane ESR or are totally dry.

The mainboard did get dried with an "industrial" paint removing heatgun (the kind you find in hardware stores and usually ranges anywhere between 300 and 500*C). It indeed had some soil on it, though it wasn't much and washed just fine with tap water in the kitchen sink, without any detergent/soap water. Just plain water that was later dried with the said heatgun (which I also use for reflowing GPUs every now and then, on the 350*C setting.)

As for Nichicon - their issue with the HM and HN caps wasn't the stolen formula. The 2001-2004 batches had actually TOO MUCH electrolyte than the can allowed. Not sure but KZG and KZJ might be in the same boat, although I've seen way much less KZJs failed than KZG. IIRC Sanyo also had this issue with the WF series - I've legitimately had Sanyo WFs bloat. As far as my memory goes, it wasn't any of the known brands that stole Ruby's formula - UCC, Sanyo, Panasonic, Nichicon and I think ELNA too (they weren't as present in the PC industry though - I remember finding ELNA in audio equipment and some of the older ATMEL-based gas boilers). It was the chinese companies (and mostly the bottom of the barrel ones like GSC/Sacon/Evercon) that stole it. Though that doesn't explain at all how come that OSTs and some of the black sleeved G-Luxons (which I suspect are rebranded Teapos at this point) are way more less failure prone than other chinese caps.

About TEAPO - I would pick them too, just not their SE/SEK series. Those are absolute plague - I recall finding them by the hordes on EPoX and MSI mainboards, and most would bloat in storage. I had at least two of them bloat on a Totem TM-S730LMR (which is a rebranded PCChips M810, forgot the revision but I know for a fact the I/O ports are placed differently than other M810 revisions.) and I bet on anything that I might find some more bloated TEAPOs if I check it again.

For me the most common badcaps have always been Choyo, G-Luxon, Fuhjyyu (almost always blown in PSUs), GSC, Teapo, HM from 2003 or so and KZG.

Usually I just replace with Panasonic FM series, though I haven't checked the prices recently as I have a large cache of common values. As long as the ripple current is comparable and it tests good with my Peak ESR meter it's a good sign

PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-05, 11:01:

Nah, OST is a special kind of caps to me - they're cheap and hardly ever fail. KZGs (and Toshin Kogyo (TK) ATWY series) are abs […]
Show full quote

Nah, OST is a special kind of caps to me - they're cheap and hardly ever fail. KZGs (and Toshin Kogyo (TK) ATWY series) are absolutely craptacular - I've had KZGs fail bloated IN STORAGE! So just by mere sitting unused, they went a' poppin'. TK's failures are literally without any bloat. They just develop insane ESR or are totally dry.

The mainboard did get dried with an "industrial" paint removing heatgun (the kind you find in hardware stores and usually ranges anywhere between 300 and 500*C). It indeed had some soil on it, though it wasn't much and washed just fine with tap water in the kitchen sink, without any detergent/soap water. Just plain water that was later dried with the said heatgun (which I also use for reflowing GPUs every now and then, on the 350*C setting.)

As for Nichicon - their issue with the HM and HN caps wasn't the stolen formula. The 2001-2004 batches had actually TOO MUCH electrolyte than the can allowed. Not sure but KZG and KZJ might be in the same boat, although I've seen way much less KZJs failed than KZG. IIRC Sanyo also had this issue with the WF series - I've legitimately had Sanyo WFs bloat. As far as my memory goes, it wasn't any of the known brands that stole Ruby's formula - UCC, Sanyo, Panasonic, Nichicon and I think ELNA too (they weren't as present in the PC industry though - I remember finding ELNA in audio equipment and some of the older ATMEL-based gas boilers). It was the chinese companies (and mostly the bottom of the barrel ones like GSC/Sacon/Evercon) that stole it. Though that doesn't explain at all how come that OSTs and some of the black sleeved G-Luxons (which I suspect are rebranded Teapos at this point) are way more less failure prone than other chinese caps.

About TEAPO - I would pick them too, just not their SE/SEK series. Those are absolute plague - I recall finding them by the hordes on EPoX and MSI mainboards, and most would bloat in storage. I had at least two of them bloat on a Totem TM-S730LMR (which is a rebranded PCChips M810, forgot the revision but I know for a fact the I/O ports are placed differently than other M810 revisions.) and I bet on anything that I might find some more bloated TEAPOs if I check it again.

Yes OST i find them to be one of the best dog brands, ASSrock has that brand alot on their crap boards, and u will very rarely see OST to be blown up, really good brand. Teapo is worse then OST, they fail more, specially the Teapos on ABIT, EPoX and other brands, not as reliable as the OST, but still WAY better by far then others.. Hitano is also very good brand, at least the newer ones, that i used some years ago. SaNyo is mostly good brand, yet some of their caps did spill guts, saw multiple GEforce cards (MSI ones) that had x3 caps on the end of the board, and they were all blown up... As for Rubycon i never saw them fail on normal boards. But i saw multiple HP Pentium 4 era mobos, to have alot of blown Rubycons, but the cooling on these systems was non existent, so the blame is not on the caps, but on the idiots from HP... Nichicon yes they had some bad series, that sadly did blow up as well, multiple Gigabyte mobos 2002-2006 did have bad Nichicons...

The caps i find on the older ABITs (pre orange NF7 V2) are supreme garbage they just fail no matter what, similar to the shitty KZG (god the KZG should be one of the worst caps, and when you take into account, that they are Japan brand is retarded really), so older ABIT boards should be 100% recapped...

Maybe OST have some good formula, or skilled alchemist is working in OST, since their caps are for sure one of the best dog brands, and very realiable as well.. I used to check on dead boards OST caps, and all of them did have still good amount of electrolyte inside... Too bad most board makers did not use OST, it was going to be ALOT better for many of us but ehh what can be done...

The fact u stated about why these 2 Nichicon series are bad is very interesting... I will think the more the better, seem that is not the case 🤣... Anyway early Nichicons from before 2000 are fine, the brown ones, u can find on OEM Intel mobos mostly...

I have Elna caps on some parts of my IBM PC 365, that whole machine contains only high end Japan brands, like Elna multiple caps, Panasonic, Rubycon... So yes ELNA is motly found in audio stuff, but some times they are in some PC parts.. I think there was even some ELNAs in Compaq Deskpro AP550... Rubycon and Panasonic are insane caps, never saw them on consumer boards to fail, too bad most brands did not use them instead..

I wonder since the caps on some parts (for example Voodoo III) are polymer, they should be WAY more realiable, even if they are some shitty brand like G-lyxon or other, then the same crap but electolytic caps...

I used to dry up boards and parts by hand i did shake them alot till there is no water drops, and then i will put the part on the sun, or somewhere high (like wardrobe) where to dry up faster. But these days i also use heatgun to reflow GPUs, and i use it on the washed parts too. BTW how much time do u take to heat up the mobo in order to dry it ? Since as we know the electolyte caps dont like so much heat at all, even 100c is bad for them...

It took me about three hours to fully dry the board, even then there was still a few droplets in the AGP slot but it srems to have quickly dried during normal usage as it didn't short anything, it seems.

As for the lytics, I managed not to kill them as I was rapidly moving the heatgun, just enough that the caps would quickly cool down. That, combined with hitting the board's PCI slots against a case panel ever so slightly to check if there still was water.

Fixing a sick Packard Bell today. It had both(!) PS/2 ports bad. I guess someone tripped over the cables and yanked on them pretty hard or something.

New ports installed and working!

Had picked up a couple NOS Zalman fanless GPU heatsinks awhile back, so I decided to install one on my GeForce 4 Ti 4200. The stock fan was extremely loud, so anything to quiet it down would be a blessing.

This was the last noisy component in my Athlon 2000 / Windows 98 rig. With a combination of modern quiet fans, fanless cooling for the graphics card, and an SSD, this computer is now virtually silent.