Checking those arcade schematics is just brilliant, it never occured to me, thank you!
This will prove quite useful if I ever decide to do with the OG Voodoo chipset what I'm doing with the V2, saves countless hours of sanding the pcb, scanning, retracing and getting a schematic.

As for the V2 TMU, I randomly compared about 30 pins, and they are identical to the
500-0004-02. I'll check all the pins and give an update later today.
Edit: All V2 TMU (500-0010-01) pins are identical to the V1 TMU (500-0004-02). This could prove to be quite interesting...

Regarding the TT bus, you are right.
A V2 looks like this:
FBI to TMU0 and FBI to TMU1 (same nets but the bus is split), this is the FT bus.
TT bus (from TMU1 to TMU0)
FT bus (from TMU0 to FBI).

Basically the TMU outputs are daisy chained back to FBI input.

Wow, thank you for checking that, that's amazing that the pinout is the same 😀
That's quite interesting that the TT bus is potentially just used to send the TMU's data back to the frame buffer and the FT bus is shared - that must be why there are FT address pins, to address data to each of the TMUs?

I've now done the same treatment for the 3Dfx 500-0003-03 FBI chip. This one's a bit different in how it addresses memory, there are only two sets of memory addressing pins and the notation for the framebuffer memory data pins doesn't clarify which set of FB_DATA pins goes to which memory chip. So I've clarified the picture with a colour highlight for each memory chip - the boxes with two colours are the pins shared between two memory chips.

Here's the colourised version:

And the unannotated version:

They're losslessly compressed this time 😀
Unfortunately this is where the Voodoo 1 differs from the Voodoo2 - the 500-0003-03 FBI chip has 240 pins while the 500-0009-01 CK or 'Chuck' has 256 in total. I do wonder if the pins would be the same up to pin 240 and then they added in some extra pins, or if it's all different.

Yes, you're right, that's why the FT has address pins. Each TMU has a few config resistors (hanging on the RAM bus, address pins if I recall correctly), that's how the TMU address is set, among other things.

In a day or two I'll post a delta between the two FBI ICs.
Btw, the OG Voodoo Graphics can have up to 3 TMUs and supports SLI, eg. Primary Image Pirahna IIRC.(if it's not that it's the Barracuda, although I think that uses the V2 chipset).

I compared the pinouts, the V2 FBI has the following extra pins:
- 2 extra RAS lines
- PCI INT pin
- SLI SYNC signals (2x)
- a reset signal that goes to the TMUs (buffered from PCI RST)
- a clock signal that goes to the SLI slave
- a pin for sensing if the card has a monitor plugged in, goes to the RAMDAC which detects the 75R VGA terminations (this is how 1 card becomes the master in an SLI setup).

If you give me a potential pinout I can make an initial pinout picture for you 😀 Just 16 pins between the two

I am trying to figure out why my Orchid Righteous 3D only sees 1MB on the TMU when I can't see any bad pins. I am wondering if perhaps I reconfigured one of the strap resistors - I did most of the work on this faulty card in 2021-ish, before I kept reliable logs of changes I make to each item.

Those additions for SLI / function make sense, as far as I'm aware the 3Dfx FBI chip has little the in way of GPIO type pins to assign extra functions to. Makes Anthony's King Shaman 3Dfx Voodoo 1 card quite impressive at a hardware level 😀

Wow, 18 months ago I forgot I made this picture when I was first troubleshooting my £20 trainwreck Voodoo 1 reference design card:

This is from the PI5C-3384Q datasheet since that's one of the first parts I was fixing. Should be the same on most designs that use this small 24-pin chip to switch between the two VGA sources like a KVM 😀

Most Voodoo 1 cards use resistors and resistor packs to connect up the memory data / address / RAS / CAS lines and if you've watched any 3Dfx repair videos you'll know those can be at fault too. I was trying to figure out what caused the black blocks on textures on my reference Voodoo 1 and through chance tracked it to the one resistor pack that connects up TMU memory on this cheaply made card (nicer cards will use resistor packs for everything):
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
One solder joint went bad on this resistor pack, which connected up the CAS (column address select) lines to the TMU memory chips, which broke the cards ability to put data into all of the texture memory even though all the RAM was good.

For troubleshooting memory issues I think it's probably best to start with checking that the RAS & CAS lines are still working. I've made this A4 sized colour printable version of the pinouts which includes the EDO RAM pinout too.
Instead of just checking from each side of the resistor pack, it's best to check from RAM pin to TMU / FBI chip pin, since applying pressure to the resistor pack might make it make a normal connection again.

Thanks for this information.
I had some success repairing my Diamond Monster card earlier this year. There is software You can check the Ram chips but need a PCI card that has expansion slots.

3dfx Voodoo 1 fault diagnosis and repair

I still have a friends card to repair and all RAM chips tested ok. I'll take a closer look at the resistor packs.

Imperious wrote on 2023-11-22, 00:30:

Thanks for this information. I had some success repairing my Diamond Monster card earlier this year. There is software You can […]
Show full quote

Thanks for this information.
I had some success repairing my Diamond Monster card earlier this year. There is software You can check the Ram chips but need a PCI card that has expansion slots.

3dfx Voodoo 1 fault diagnosis and repair

I still have a friends card to repair and all RAM chips tested ok. I'll take a closer look at the resistor packs.

Ah, your thread inspired me to keep going, thank you for sharing it! 😀
That thread is a great example of what an FBI / frame buffer memory failure looks like - very different from a TMU failure since texture memory doesn't affect overlay like that it, it only affects textures,

An update - I've repaired a few Voodoo 1 cards now with the reference design which directly connects the memory data & address pins rather than using resistor packs. The main weak point I'm seeing on Voodoo 1 cards is not so much the memory actually failing, but the solder on the legs of the TMU and FBI chips is often detached. That makes sense since those are the most complex parts on the relatively reference layout cards, the two chips are also located in the area that's going to get flexed the most. In comparison, the memory pads are huge and they're not liable to get flexed.
The TMU also seems to benefit greatly from a heatsink, I'm just putting a 40mm flat ceramic heatsink on mine and it makes a difference. *IF* you want to remove a heatsink from a Voodoo 1 / 2 card, please don't pull on the heatsink directly as the QFP legs are not a strong bond to the PCB. Spray or drip some IPA between the heatsink edge and the FBI/TMU chip which should loosen the adhesive, gently wedge a blade in and put in more IPA to break the bond with minimal force. Unless that thermal epoxy stuff was used, then I've got no idea 😜

I'm still working on my Orchid Righteous 3D though which will only see 1MB of TMU memory and has bad texture corruption 🙁 That does have resistor packs to check through each point of.
I don't get the TMU chip, the video memory is surely accessed in 16-bit chunks so why does it map the CAS lines to the Upper CAS of chips 1&2, Lower CAS of chips 1&2, then Upper & Lower CAS of chips 3&4 separately. It seems to use the RAS line as a chip / bank select, which is why the Voodoo 1 TMU memory upgrade mod works.

Anyone with a Voodoo 1 that's not working right here are a few common problems I've come across and the resolution for each:

• Green screen when starting games in Windows + Crash
  This has been caused on my test PC when installing a Voodoo 1 again after installing drivers for a Voodoo 2. Uninstalling the Voodoo 2 driver, manually clearing all files in the Windows directory that match the files in the V2 driver folder, clearing all 3Dfx registry entries, helped in my case. Then the Voodoo 1 drivers could be reinstalled and they no longer caused a crash. Alternatively just reinstall Windows
• Display fails to switch over in Windows, displaying background & game window + Seemingly Crashed
  This happened after I installed a heatsink that is liable to have flexed the upper left corner of the FBI chip. That connects the DAC and circuitry to switch over the display. Resoldering that side of the chip with plenty of flux resolved the issue. Beyond that there could be an issue with the 3384Q display switch chip but that's less likely unless there's evidence of an impact in that area.
• Texture errors - Diamond shaped, Black blocks or noise on textures
  Please note that this is different from lines across the whole of the image, texture errors should look like a normal game but with bad / broken textures which can often include text or backgrounds. The Voodoo cards are 3D only so the menu is a fully 3d rendered image with backgrounds being textures. You can test without textures with the Tomb Raider demo in DOS by entering "set SST_TEXMAP_DISABLE=1" before running the game. If the game looks normal enough with everything white but polygons & the display looks normal, then the fault is texture memory based.
  This seems to be commonly caused by the TMU chip having a detached leg that connects to a memory chip. Resoldering the left, top and right of the TMU chip can often resolve the issue. Be careful to check for solder bridges and use lots of flux. Personally I use an excess of fresh solder to clean the chip legsdrag along the side of the QFP, then suck up or wick off the excess, then make sure that area is still securely soldered.
  Another possibility if that doesn't help, or an alternative to check is the quad 0-ohm resistor pack (RA96) just above the top side of the TMU chip. That connects up the 4x CAS lines to the memory chips and if it's cracked or not attached somehow it can cause completely broken texture memory as well. There's also a 0-ohm resistor (R202) on the back of the reference design card in just about the same location, if that's broken them TMU memory will be completely non-functional.
  The legs / traces connecting the TMU to the FBI are quite unlikely to the problem with texture display issues. A failure of FBI > TMU and TMU > FBI communication usually results in a crash unless texture mapping is disabled, they use a dedicated bus in each direction and missing signals on those lines will cause outright failure instead of glitches. I think?
  After checking each of those things it could be worth replacing the TMU memory, seems rarer for it to fail in my experience though.
• Crash when trying to run Mojo.exe
  There can be a few things that caused this of course, but here's one I saw where the FBI chip on the card couldn't communicate with the TMU properly, not getting the return data which made it crash the PC. I think there may have been more to it with the file not even getting written before it would crash but I didn't write it down so it's gone 😀
  In my case reflowing the pins that go from the top of the FBI chip to the bottom of the TMU chip resolved the issue.
  Crash when trying to run Mojo

  sst1Init Routines: InitCode $Revision: 8 $
  sst1InitMapBoard(): BoardsInSystem = 1
  sst1InitMapBoard(): vAddr:0xe0000000 pAddr:0xe0000008 Dev:0x9 Board:0
  sst1InitRegisters(): Setting TREX-to-FBI FIFO THRESHOLD to 0x8...
  sst1InitRegisters(): Setting PRELIM FT-CLK delay to 0x8...
  sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX0INIT0=0x5441
  sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX0INIT1=0xf420
  sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX1INIT0=0x5441
  sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX1INIT1=0xf420
  sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX2INIT0=0x5441
  sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX2INIT1=0xf420
  sst1InitRegisters(): Setting up FAST DRAM Configuration
  ERROR: b_sum=0x650 r_sum=0x500
  sst1InitFillDeviceInfo(): Retry #1 for chip GetInfo()...
  ERROR: b_sum=0x650 r_sum=0x500
  sst1InitFillDeviceInfo(): Retry #2 for chip GetInfo()...
  ERROR: b_sum=0x650 r_sum=0x500
  sst1InitFillDeviceInfo(): Retry #3 for chip GetInfo()...
  ERROR: b_sum=0x650 r_sum=0x500
  sst1InitFillDeviceInfo(): Retry #4 for chip GetInfo()...
  ERROR: b_sum=0x650 r_sum=0x500
  sst1InitRegisters(): ERROR filling DeviceInfo...

• Card not detected
  Make sure the PCI pins are clean and check each of the "FBx" inductors for cracks.
  There are a few of the large dark grey "FB" inductors dotted around the card with many in the left left corner by the RAMDAC. Those are often providing filtering to the power coming into each chip so a cracked inductor can result in important components not being powered. They're also large so if improperly stored then they can be broken off. sdz has determined the proper replacement part here: Re: Diamond 3DFX Voodoo 1 repair
  Beyond that, check or resolder along the bottom and lower-left side of the FBI chip, those are the PCI connections.

I'll add more as I come across them in future. If anyone knows how to troubleshoot noisy / jittery VGA output on a Voodoo 1 / 2 please let me know 😀

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-11-15, 03:26:

Obsidian-GE-Schematic-Voodoo1-FBI-RAMDAC_compressed.pdfObsidian-GE-Schematic-Voodoo1-TMU-BYPASSCAPS_compressed.pdf

unfortunately these schematics have nasty errors in the fb-tmu connection in tf part. just check by any available photo of any v1 card. those connections are pretty straight-forward.

haven't checked the memory interface, but even if there's all ok real cards may have byte swapped and bit swapped data lines.

Do you mean the schematic in terms of how the TMU & FBI are shown to be connected, which has the error?
The pinout I've put in my pictures is correct I hope 😬

sorry, i was bad, that horizontal layout is hard to read. it's correct actually.

here's the schematics for 50 pro board for your pleasure, tested and working with no issues: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Vw7Kd3ACADkW … iew?usp=sharing

Thank you for sharing that, it's really nice and clearly laid out 😀 That clears up some questions I had about how the SLI works and how the VGA switcher works - I've got a V2 with really bad video output but otherwise 100% working so since SLI bypasses the RAMDAC hopefully it'll look better as an SLI secondary card hehe.

I decided to buy another Voodoo 1 because the recycler I like to buy from has had a bunch of faulty 3Dfx Voodoo 1 cards for sale for a month or two. The prices for the broken ones keeps going up because they tend to sell quickly but these took long enough that I could put in a decent offer.
The one I was interested in was a Diamond Monster 3D which had its bracket and wasn't especially rusty, but it's certainly very banged up and the seller found it didn't work:

Replaced the caps with new ones which seems like it was a good idea since the remaining electrolytic caps did make a fried fish smell on removal. Makes sense, these all come from flea markets or e-waste in other countries so they've got different types of faults than what I usually see with cards used only in the UK.

The 14MHz crystal had a big dent in it so no point trying to guess whether it works or not and I just put a fresh one on there. I didn't have enough electrolytic caps so I stuck them mostly around the analogue side and the digital side got modern MLCC capacitors that are also 10uF. There's a few more Lx inductors / ferrite beads that have infinite resistance or are broken, the L7 one hooked to I think the DAC's digital voltage and that breaks things if the DAC doesn't work, so that's got a jumper for now.
One of the purple capacitors near the top VGA port was smashed but the one next to it is 220pF and I verified the value on another card:

There were also some broken bits on the back like the light brown (10nF) and dark brown capacitor (100nF) pairs in a few spots. A few of the resistors are bashed but still all test good. Then there are those inductors near the VGA port, those go to the Red signal and 5V output, jumpered with wire for now til I get the proper parts in. From what SDZ has said the VGA port ones should be 70R 1206 ferrite beads and the power ones should be 600R 1206.

Testing initially it detected the PCI ID of vendor 121A and device 0001, which is a Voodoo 1 😀 But it doesn't work at all, just gives this output from Mojo:

1Info for Voodoo board # 0:
2=====================================================
3Virtual Base Address:                       0xe6000000
4Physical Base Address:                      0xe6000008
5PCI Device Number:                          0x9
6Vendor ID:                                  0x121a
7Device ID:                                  0x1
8FBI Revision:                               2
9FBI Memory:                                 0 MB
10FBI PowerOn Sense:                          0x0
11TMU PowerOn Sense:                          0xdead
12FBI DAC Output Color Format:                24BPP
13Scan-Line Interleaved?                      No
14TMU Revision:                               57005
15Number TMUs:                                57005
16WARNING: Board 0:  Bogus number of TMUs (57005)!

Apparently 57005 means "DEAD" in hexadecimal and that's just what mojo outputs where there's no legible value. I'd actually forgotten all this over a few months so it's been fun to come back to, Bits und Bolts' recent Voodoo 2 repair gave me some great pointers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIhhrocP_jk&t=1099s
That's because it stopped / failed before it got to the part where it enumerates the TMUs. Notice the FBI memory is 0MB and in the SST.log it's giving this error:
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting up FAST DRAM Configuration
ERROR: b_sum=0x5b8 r_sum=0x9b8
So that means in binary I think:
0000100110111000
was instead resulting in 0000010110111001

Like a pin swapped? What it was trying to write to the RAM for the framebuffer/card wasn't what it would read back, so the whole mojo check and any card functionality stops there. There were some bashed pins on the bottom of the FBI that I'd tried to solder back into place by eye. This was fixed by resoldering all the pins around the fb_data_0 to 15 pins, there was some mess around there which could only be fixed with the microscope. My understanding is that perhaps the first few bits out of the 64 are essential.
To actually move the chip legs under the microscope I use an SDK08 grabber that I cut the plastic insulation off of, so this grabber is dedicated to QFP repair instead of testing since it could now short stuff out:

With that fixed I got a working MOJO output and I thought from there it would all be hunky dory with it reading 2MB on both the FBI and TMU:

1Info for Voodoo board # 0:
2=====================================================
3Virtual Base Address:                       0xdd000000
4Physical Base Address:                      0xdd000008
5PCI Device Number:                          0x9
6Vendor ID:                                  0x121a
7Device ID:                                  0x1
8FBI Revision:                               2
9FBI Memory:                                 2 MB
10FBI PowerOn Sense:                          0x2
11TMU PowerOn Sense:                          0x11
12FBI DAC Output Color Format:                24BPP
13Scan-Line Interleaved?                      No
14TMU Revision:                               1
15Number TMUs:                                1
16TMU 0 RAM:                                  2 MB

Started a game and uh, black screen with blue bars and it seemed like the computer crashed. It hasn't and I can interact with Windows just fine when I put the VGA cable back onto the 2d card...
Now I run my little batch file to swap over msdos.sys so that instead of booting into Windows it'll just boot into DOS, the CF card I use is all set up for testing Voodoo 1 cards with all the drivers, environment variables and some batch files already set up.
Tried out Tomb raider 3dfx demo in DOS and that crashes in the same way, black screen with blue bars without showing the 3dfx spinny logo so clearly something's wrong and it's not drivers.

Then I tried some environment variables - "SET SST_FBIMEM_SIZE=1" and "SET SST_TEXMAP_DISABLE=1" in DOS before running tomb raider and aha the game now starts albeit with no textures and those blue lines still showed up a couple of times.
Now trying with regular FBI memory and the texture mapping disabled results in the game crashing so the problem is with the FBI memory.
Starting the game with just FBI memory set to 1MB, Tomb Raider is working and there are no bad textures! That means the card is working, just another memory fault that's less easy to track than the one that broke Mojo.

Then I did some probing around this 1997 revision of the Diamond Monster 3D on the FBI chip:
PIN 124 FB_RAS_B > U7 & U8 RAS
PIN 125 FB_RAS_A > U6 & U9 RAS
pin 126 FB_CAS0 > U6 UCAS/LCAS
pin 127 FB_CAS1 > U9 UCAS/LCAS
pin 128 FB_CAS2 > U7 UCAS/LCAS
pin 129 FB_CAS3 > U8 UCAS/LCAS
These all hook to their respective memory chips through two 100 ohm 4-way resistor arrays RP17 and RP18.

Checking the data 0 pin on each memory chip to see which memory 'block' it hooks to following the diagrams in the previous posts:
U6 = FB_MEM_DATA_1
U9 = FB_MEM_DATA_2
U7 = FB_MEM_DATA_3
U8 = FB_MEM_DATA_4

My understanding is that that means when just 1MB of FBI memory is enabled, U9 & U6 are the two in use as the 1st Megabyte of memory with MEM_DATA_1 & 2. Making it 32 bits wide and a separate bank from the 3 & 4 section.
I know that all the pins are attached on the corner of the chip with the mem data 3 & 4 pins and looked at the memory instead, all the SOJ EDO memory chips have bash marks all over them, could they be damaged?

To test that I just put flux and a load of fresh solder over all the pins of U7 & U8 to make sure they're all soldered properly. This card's taken enough knocks that some solder may have fractured.
And that was it, resoldering those two chips (shown in the grabber picture) fixed it and now the card works 100% in Tomb Raider and Unreal. Another one fixed 😀

If only there was some kind of memory test for the Voodoo 1 /2 that was more informative than Mojo.exe and the sst log data.

Nicely done! I will totally steal that idea and order some of those grabbers.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-12-07, 00:07:

If anyone knows how to troubleshoot noisy / jittery VGA output on a Voodoo 1 / 2 please let me know 😀

If the noisе (vertical interference) is only in 3D, you can press the auto-adjust button on the LCD monitor.
If the jitter is in 2D, you may need to replace the 3384Q bus switch.
Voodoo1 with Pentium 800 and faster can give vertical lines jitter, up to image crash.

Postman5 wrote on 2024-08-20, 22:13:

If the noisе (vertical interference) is only in 3D, you can press the auto-adjust button on the LCD monitor. If the jitter is in […]
Show full quote

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-12-07, 00:07:

If anyone knows how to troubleshoot noisy / jittery VGA output on a Voodoo 1 / 2 please let me know 😀

If the noisе (vertical interference) is only in 3D, you can press the auto-adjust button on the LCD monitor.
If the jitter is in 2D, you may need to replace the 3384Q bus switch.
Voodoo1 with Pentium 800 and faster can give vertical lines jitter, up to image crash.

For most of my testing I use a K6-2 450 so it's definitely not too quick 😀
I've tried adjusting phase and stuff to no avail.
The two cards I'm having trouble with, one had damage to the bus switch but the other was just missing some of the FBx components, I'd thought the common factor was the TVP3408. But now I'm kind of seeing that the common factor is both cards had random inductors put in place of the original ferrite beads.
I'm putting in an order for some correct parts for Mouser and will try that out when they get here.

I would not be too surprised if this Voodoo 1's image quality is not fantastic even with that though, check out the state of this thing's RAMDAC and KVM display switch chip: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

sdz wrote on 2024-08-20, 08:31:

Nicely done! I will totally steal that idea and order some of those grabbers.

Thanks 😀 I use them for their actual design purpose sometimes too, pretty good for affordable probes. Though flux gets stuck in the grabber of the one I use for soldering pretty easily.

Have you come across a faulty TMU chip and do you know where it might be possible to source one for a Voodoo 1? In the first post you can see an Orchid Righteous 3D with all its RAM removed and that one I have failed over and over to fix. Swapped the RAM around and the fault remains with the TMU which just sees 1MB of RAM and there are unmoving black spots on textures in a grid pattern in tomb raider for instance.
Yesterday I verified that every single pin (RAS, CAS, Addr, Data) on all 4 chips was hooked up and every one read with the proper value, data lines having 0 ohms resistance and the address & RAS/CAS/etc going through 33 ohm resistors.
I know from when I got it that the seller said it failed in use and when testing it the TMU does get really hot, moreso than most Voodoo 1 cards I've come across, I'm thinking a bond wire has broken in the chip?

I haven't come across faulty V1 TMUs, but I only fixed 1 V1 card (I needed a working V1 when designing the 4400H and 4440H, and all my ~20 V1 cards were broken).
This supplier has a couple of thousand NOS V1 TMUs: https://ecmarts.en.alibaba.com/
They also have RAM ICs, RAMDACs etc. I have bought quite a few things from them recently, everything was new old stock and worked without issues.

sdz wrote on 2024-08-21, 09:22:

I haven't come across faulty V1 TMUs, but I only fixed 1 V1 card (I needed a working V1 when designing the 4400H and 4440H, and all my ~20 V1 cards were broken).
This supplier has a couple of thousand NOS V1 TMUs: https://ecmarts.en.alibaba.com/
They also have RAM ICs, RAMDACs etc. I have bought quite a few things from them recently, everything was new old stock and worked without issues.

Thanks for the pointer, in the end I took a different route because my fixer upper Voodoo 1 reference card has given me enough trouble that I'm now using it as a donor and display card. The bad TMU from the Orchid card has been swapped over and now the Orchid Righteous 3D card is working properly at last. Which is great because the 3d quality is great from the Orchid card while it was terrible on this rather damaged reference card with the Ti TVP3409 RAMDAC even after replacing the ferrite beads to spec.

BTW also thank you for sharing the details of which ferrite beads to replace the ones for the RAMDAC and the VGA output - I did actually mix up the ferrite beads for the VGA output and had really soft VGA on one card until I put the proper 70r ones on instead and then it was nice sharp VGA output.

I don't know if anyone else has found this but it seems to me that the pre '98 TMU and FBI chips run REALLY hot, here are some examples: