VOGONS


First post, by Ozzuneoj

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I have a Diamond Monster 3D II 12MB that was abused by scrappers. Amazingly, the only real physical damage (aside from missing parts of the VGA connectors and the back plate) is a single broken pin on the right side TMU. I've fixed bent pins on these before, but this one was broken off from the chip when I got it. It was still attached to the solder pad at the bottom. I tried simply dabbing it with some flux and tapping the top of the pin with a soldering iron to reattach it, but it pretty quickly desoldered the bottom of the pin and then it was no longer worth trying to reuse that pin. I can see now there is almost nothing to connect to, so I'm thinking the only way to repair it reliably would be to cut back the plastic casing of the TMU slightly to reveal more of the broken pin, but I've never attempted this before and it's quite small.

Then I got to thinking... it might be nice to have a schematic of this chip before I do anything like that. For all I know, this could be an extra ground pin or something. I could always try the card, just to see if it works anyway, but I'd rather know for sure what this pin is for, even if the card works fine under testing.

Has anyone ever located a schematic of a Voodoo 2 TMU? There were enough chips floating around out there, I'd be surprised if no one knew the pinout... but I wasn't able to find anything in my searching.

Last edited by Ozzuneoj on 2021-01-16, 00:47. Edited 1 time in total.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 2 of 2, by Ozzuneoj

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My point for creating the thread was to see if there was a pinout available, in general. If it comes down to tracing out pins because there isn't, I'll move on to that next. It's pretty obvious what needs to be done if the pin is necessary, so I didn't bother with pictures.

I'd wager that these are one of the most widely known and repaired cards in retro x86 gaming, going by the threads created here. Just thought maybe someone might have a pinout of the TMU, which could potentially help all those who post about repairing voodoo 2 cards they've found.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.