Voodoo 5 5500 Repair (project thread) \ VOGONS

Voodoo 5 5500 Repair (project thread)

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First post, by Kizmo

Posted on 2019-04-13, 21:20

Kizmo Offline

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Hello again!

This time around i have another V5 5500 on the healing bench. The card belongs to a member of this forum.

Basic info:
- Non modified Rev 2500 V5 5500 AGP
- Suddenly stopped working, heavy artifacting during POST/boot and crashes in windows
- Judging from dust and fan motor wear the card has seen high number of hours

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First step of troubleshoothing is cleaning. The card was dirty and nothing beats ultrasonic bath and alcohol. Then I checked voltages. Every rail was present and at correct level and there was no excessive noise or ripple which may indicate failing capacitors or vrm.

I kind of hoped this would be memory related issue and worked on that first. I resoldered and later replaced primary VSA-100 memory chips with known good ones but nothing changed.

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Then I noticed this

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The primary VSA-100 heatsink is literally floating on huge blob of adhesive. Someone at 3DFX did not do very good job of pushing the heatsink nice and flat on the chip when adhesive was still soft. This leads me to believe that the GPU itself is toast and needs to be replaced.

Luckily i have 25 brand new chips so i will give it a go tomorrow. This kind of failure is not entirely unheard of, i have replaced several failed VSA-100 chips, one V5 5500 needed both chips replaced before 3D was stable.

3DFX - Gone but never forgotten

Reply 1 of 8, by Kizmo

Posted on 2019-04-14, 12:07

Kizmo Offline

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And the story continues.

First of, here is a safe way to remove Voodoo 4/5 heatsink. Something i totally failed 15 years ago with my own card 🤣

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bleOkwOxAyE

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After heatsink removal i scraped off the thermal adhesive which was super thick.

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There was strange dirt like substance under the GPU. This makes me believe it may have caused the problem and maybe the chip is still good. But PCB can take only limited number of reflow cycles before risk of damaging the PCB is too high so i went for new GPU instead of reflowing or reballing the old chip.

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Here the card is cleaned, ever so slightly fluxed and being preheated to +140 C. Foil is protecting heat sensitive things like capacitors and fan connector-

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As alarm screams we hit the specified peak temperature of this soldering alloy (+210...+220C). Next step is nice and slow cooldown which results finer grain structure in joint which translates into more reliable soldering result.

Fingers crossed, will it POST without artifacts? Yes it did! And it booted to win98 and drivers loaded correctly.

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The card has been looping 3dmark99max for few hours right now, completly glitch and crash free! Another one saved!

3DFX - Gone but never forgotten

Reply 2 of 8, by Paadam

Posted on 2019-04-14, 13:10

Paadam Offline

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Thank you very much Tuomas 😀

Many 3Dfx and Pentium III-S stuff.
My amibay FS thread: www.amibay.com/showthread.php?88030-Man ... -370-dual)

Reply 3 of 8, by anthony

Posted on 2019-04-14, 19:36

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215c soldering temperature? Why? This is for unleaded soldering. 190 is more than enough for voodoos

Reply 4 of 8, by Intel486dx33

Posted on 2019-04-14, 23:26

Intel486dx33 Offline

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Nice,
I have a couple V3 Evil Kings PCI I would like to replace the GPU's on.
Would these GPU's work for my Evil Kings ?

The VSA-100 is part Number 355-0026-220 3dfx
The Evil Kings have 3DFX GPU part number 355-0024-220 3dfx

Reply 5 of 8, by anthony

Posted on 2019-04-15, 00:58

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Its a bad idea to try to fit napalm chip on v3 card. Absolutely different footprints

Reply 6 of 8, by Intel486dx33

Posted on 2019-04-15, 03:59

Intel486dx33 Offline

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anthony wrote:
Its a bad idea to try to fit napalm chip on v3 card. Absolutely different footprints

Do you happen to know the models and numbers of the 3dfx GPU's on these Voodoo cards ?

Reply 7 of 8, by Kizmo

Posted on 2019-04-15, 08:50

Kizmo Offline

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Posts: 28
Joined: 2019-01-17, 07:22
Location: Finland

anthony wrote:
215c soldering temperature? Why? This is for unleaded soldering. 190 is more than enough for voodoos

I prefer to follow standard process for reflow. Specification calls for 210-220 C peak temp for leaded.

For unleaded it is 230-255C peak.

3DFX - Gone but never forgotten

Reply 8 of 8, by meljor

Posted on 2019-04-17, 18:34

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@kizmo: I need friends like you 🤣

Awesome job!

asus tx97-e, 233mmx, voodoo1, s3 virge ,sb16
asus p5a, k6-3+ @ 550mhz, voodoo2 12mb sli, gf2 gts, awe32
asus p3b-f, p3-700, voodoo3 3500TV agp, awe64
asus tusl2-c, p3-S 1,4ghz, voodoo5 5500, live!
asus a7n8x DL, barton cpu, 6800ultra, Voodoo3 pci, audigy1

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