VOGONS


First post, by crapasanya

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A few years ago my Voodo 2 was flooded along with the house and I didn't have access to it until recently. When i got it again, I cleared the oxides, cleaned the contacts, resoldered the oxidized memory of the right TMU, but accidentally poked the soldering iron tip on the legs of the TMU, moreover, forgetting to clean the soldering iron tip. Then, trying to fix everything, I only made it worse and decided to take a break until I gain experience. Now, having gained experience and a microscope, I restored the severed leg and straightened the bent legs. I double-checked my old soldering job and while it's far from the prettiest, it should work - no missing connections or solder bridges. I also checked the contacts of the FBI and the right TMU - everything is ok, there is a connection. Now when I run MOJO with debug variables I get this. I suspect that there are memory problems, but I do not know which chip's memory is.

Last edited by crapasanya on 2023-07-25, 09:10. Edited 4 times in total.

Reply 1 of 9, by crapasanya

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Update: I have tried different Environment variables and got no sucess. There is also good and bad news. Good: I found one loose leg, soldered it and got init with TMU ram: 0MB, but that was the original problem. And now the bad news: I swapped the memory of one TMU with the noname 12mb single-sided (double density) version, but it got hot and stank during testing. I'm afraid that I won't be able to revive that 12MB version now... By the way, the 12MB version without this memory still hangs the system. Tomorrow, first of all, I will return original memory to its places and check if it hasn't gotten worse. Also, on my board, the rightmost leg under the rightmost memory chip completely rotted. There are 2 vias under each other and I'm not sure which one the pin of the IC should go to. I suspect to the top one, can anyone confirm this?

Reply 2 of 9, by Robx66

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crapasanya wrote on 2023-04-09, 13:32:

A few years ago my Voodo 2 was flooded along with the house and I didn't have access to it until recently. When i got it again, I cleared the oxides, cleaned the contacts, resoldered the oxidized memory of the right TMU, but accidentally poked the soldering iron tip on the legs of the TMU, moreover, forgetting to clean the soldering iron tip. Then, trying to fix everything, I only made it worse and decided to take a break until I gain experience. Now, having gained experience and a microscope, I restored the severed leg and straightened the bent legs. I double-checked my old soldering job and while it's far from the prettiest, it should work - no missing connections or solder bridges. I also checked the contacts of the FBI and the right TMU - everything is ok, there is a connection. Now when I run MOJO with debug variables I get this. I suspect that there are memory problems, but I do not know which chip's memory is.

Hmmm where did you get MOJO from ? I'm looking and looking and can't find it 😒
Edit: found it !

Last edited by Robx66 on 2023-05-17, 22:26. Edited 1 time in total.

Save vintage / retro computers from ending up in the bin. Keep them in working condition. It's a great history !

Reply 3 of 9, by Gmlb256

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Robx66 wrote on 2023-05-13, 20:03:
crapasanya wrote on 2023-04-09, 13:32:

A few years ago my Voodo 2 was flooded along with the house and I didn't have access to it until recently. When i got it again, I cleared the oxides, cleaned the contacts, resoldered the oxidized memory of the right TMU, but accidentally poked the soldering iron tip on the legs of the TMU, moreover, forgetting to clean the soldering iron tip. Then, trying to fix everything, I only made it worse and decided to take a break until I gain experience. Now, having gained experience and a microscope, I restored the severed leg and straightened the bent legs. I double-checked my old soldering job and while it's far from the prettiest, it should work - no missing connections or solder bridges. I also checked the contacts of the FBI and the right TMU - everything is ok, there is a connection. Now when I run MOJO with debug variables I get this. I suspect that there are memory problems, but I do not know which chip's memory is.

Hmmm where did you get MOJO from ? I'm looking and looking and can't find it 😒

MOJO.EXE can be found on the 3dfx Glide 2.43 SDK for DOS and Windows. 😉

VIA C3 Nehemiah 1.2A @ 1.46 GHz | ASUS P2-99 | 256 MB PC133 SDRAM | GeForce2 GTS 32 MB | Voodoo2 12 MB | SBLive! | AWE64 | SBPro2 | GUS

Reply 4 of 9, by Imperious

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crapasanya wrote on 2023-04-14, 21:27:

Update: I have tried different Environment variables and got no sucess. There is also good and bad news. Good: I found one loose leg, soldered it and got init with TMU ram: 0MB, but that was the original problem. And now the bad news: I swapped the memory of one TMU with the noname 12mb single-sided (double density) version, but it got hot and stank during testing. I'm afraid that I won't be able to revive that 12MB version now... By the way, the 12MB version without this memory still hangs the system. Tomorrow, first of all, I will return original memory to its places and check if it hasn't gotten worse. Also, on my board, the rightmost leg under the rightmost memory chip completely rotted. There are 2 vias under each other and I'm not sure which one the pin of the IC should go to. I suspect to the top one, can anyone confirm this?

What got hot? If it was just the memory chip the voodoo card may still be ok. I would not combine the 512k and 1MB chips unless doing some research first to see whether the same pinout.
These chips aren't the easiest to solder back onto the boards, especially if You want a neat job.

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Reply 5 of 9, by Robx66

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Gmlb256 wrote on 2023-05-14, 03:12:
Robx66 wrote on 2023-05-13, 20:03:
crapasanya wrote on 2023-04-09, 13:32:

A few years ago my Voodo 2 was flooded along with the house and I didn't have access to it until recently. When i got it again, I cleared the oxides, cleaned the contacts, resoldered the oxidized memory of the right TMU, but accidentally poked the soldering iron tip on the legs of the TMU, moreover, forgetting to clean the soldering iron tip. Then, trying to fix everything, I only made it worse and decided to take a break until I gain experience. Now, having gained experience and a microscope, I restored the severed leg and straightened the bent legs. I double-checked my old soldering job and while it's far from the prettiest, it should work - no missing connections or solder bridges. I also checked the contacts of the FBI and the right TMU - everything is ok, there is a connection. Now when I run MOJO with debug variables I get this. I suspect that there are memory problems, but I do not know which chip's memory is.

Hmmm where did you get MOJO from ? I'm looking and looking and can't find it 😒

MOJO.EXE can be found on the 3dfx Glide 2.43 SDK for DOS and Windows. 😉

Thank you !!

Save vintage / retro computers from ending up in the bin. Keep them in working condition. It's a great history !

Reply 6 of 9, by Robx66

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crapasanya wrote on 2023-04-09, 13:32:

A few years ago my Voodo 2 was flooded along with the house and I didn't have access to it until recently. When i got it again, I cleared the oxides, cleaned the contacts, resoldered the oxidized memory of the right TMU, but accidentally poked the soldering iron tip on the legs of the TMU, moreover, forgetting to clean the soldering iron tip. Then, trying to fix everything, I only made it worse and decided to take a break until I gain experience. Now, having gained experience and a microscope, I restored the severed leg and straightened the bent legs. I double-checked my old soldering job and while it's far from the prettiest, it should work - no missing connections or solder bridges. I also checked the contacts of the FBI and the right TMU - everything is ok, there is a connection. Now when I run MOJO with debug variables I get this. I suspect that there are memory problems, but I do not know which chip's memory is.

I would check all the caps, resistors and filters first. Check if you got all the voltages correct, if chipsets got power source, ramdac too. If it doesn't see memory then possibly some or one of the resistors can be bad.

Save vintage / retro computers from ending up in the bin. Keep them in working condition. It's a great history !

Reply 7 of 9, by crapasanya

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I apologize for such a long absence, I needed to take a break from this after three months of almost fruitless work.

So, now I was able to make progress: I repaired the legs of the right TMU, now there is a full initialization, but TMU1 still does not recognize the memory. I also swapped the video memory chips of the left and right TMUs and that didn't make any difference (other than I know it's not the video memory), so I'm not sure if the TMU I'm trying to fix is the right one at all. So, the question itself is: what is the numbering of TMUs? Left is 0, right is 1, or the other way around?

Reply 8 of 9, by crapasanya

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I found the numbering (TMU position, location, order) of TMUs: Right is TMU 0, left is TMU 1.

How did I know this? I almost fixed it! I found the fourth torn off element, it was a capacitor on the back of the left TMU (the one that did not recognize the memory). Now it launches games! Albeit with texture artifacts. It also freezes when you wiggle it, so the repair isn't finished yet, but it's a HUGE progress. At first, the left TMU1 only saw 1MB of memory, but it turned out to be just bad soldering of U13 RAM chip. I suspect that the same soldering problem is still there because i resoldered them 6 (!) times, so I another time will press on different chips, but today and tomorrow I do not have time for this.

Reply 9 of 9, by pentiumspeed

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Do you have a tube of no-clean flux paste? Amtech 559 the genuine one is preferred, careful where you buy from whom. These clean up very easily with alcohol, not that smelly when smoking while soldering.

These problems is not having these sufficient flux hinder your soldering ability.

Buy these from that seller. Or from seller in France. Never from china - fakes.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/175560029428?hash=ite … ABk9SR_avhPexYg

PS: Years before I came across this flux when I started at new job, as electronics and repair hobby, I was making do with what I have and didn't have flux paste, boy, I missed that! Once I had the flux paste everything went much easier with tiny SMD and regular stuff like this.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.