aspiringnobody wrote on 2021-10-07, 00:51:

Lots of idiots trying to seep voodoo 2s for 350-500 on eBay right now...

Selling stuff on auctions isn't about charity, it's about making as much money as possible.
The prices are high because there's some people willing to pay that much - availability and demand.

It is not possible for such damage to occur during transport and the packaging does not show anything. In addition, the capacitor was damaged when the card was connected in the slot, which the carrier excludes. So it looks like the seller gave false information and sent the malfunctioning electrical scrap at the cost of the in-demand functional card.
Then, of course, they are liars and cheaters if they sell inoperable and damaged goods with false descriptions with full knowledge.
So much money - and so much seriously damaged card...
I can imagine how the buyer feels.

They should issue you a full refund and let you keep the card. It is of no use to them, it might not even be reparable. But you MIGHT be able to repair it, they can't sell it for crap as it is. I would fight for a refund.

They've offered to refund me, but neglected to specify if they want the card back and if so if they will pay for shipping. Because of the time difference we can only exchange one message per day so I won't know until tomorrow.

Anyone got any idea what the value of that cap is? There's no markings on it that I can see. The pad is pretty much entirely lifted but the via it is connected to is right above it so that is trivial to fix. I just need to know the value.

The legs of the TMU are likely salvagable as long as the impact didn't rip the wire off inside the package. I think I can bend the legs to the right of the bad one further away and make clearance without risking trying to "fix" the bad leg. 🤞

null

maybe this thread might help

Voodoo 2 component map

My experience with Electromyne has always been very good, but... you know, they sell A LOT of old parts (and they probably have a big warehouse), so stuff like this is inevitable.
What matters in these cases is how the seller responds to this type of complaints. This is what separates good from bad sellers.
Having said that, I'm sure they will sort out this problem.

Anders- wrote on 2021-10-07, 16:32:

Jasin Natael wrote on 2021-10-07, 16:10:

They should issue you a full refund and let you keep the card. It is of no use to them, it might not even be reparable. But you MIGHT be able to repair it, they can't sell it for crap as it is. I would fight for a refund.

They can sell it as "damaged", or they can attempt a repair themselves and then put up the card as "repaired damage, in working order".
It's just about whether it's worth enough money for the seller to try and repair said card...

Sure. But Electromyne isn't going to waste time and resources on doing either of those things.
They are large enough and deal with so many parts that they will write it off as a loss and move on with business.
I doubt very much they will want the card back regardless.

my concern is why exactly the capacitor blew off the board

ceramic caps can fail short, but it's certainly not common

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-10-07, 17:46:

my concern is why exactly the capacitor blew off the board

ceramic caps can fail short, but it's certainly not common

It's hard to say without testing it. I think the chip it's by is the one that switches the output between pass through and the voodoo, so without trying to play a game I wouldn't know if it's working.

The TMU that is bad is the second unit so unless I'm playing a multitexture game it also won't do anything.

I don't have anything to test this card with, I'm new to vintage computers so I haven't started a game collection. I can't find anything that is multitexture enabled that was freely available. The only one I know for sure is unreal and that requires a patch.

weedeewee wrote on 2021-10-07, 16:50:

maybe this thread might help

Voodoo 2 component map

That's perfect! Looks like it's supposed to be a 4.7uf 1206 ceramic cap.

I noticed that when 3dfx started selling these themselves as the v2 1000 it had a 10uf aluminum electrolytic cap there which had markings on it. So I'm testing with that since I had one handy. I'll switch it out for a 4.7 here in a minute. I need to get some 1206 caps on order I don't have any that size in stock.

Great find!

Watching with interest. I have noticed over the past year how the cheapest BIN Voodoo2s on ebay all seem to come from Germany. For many people outside the usual countries and shipping routes, the BIN auctions (accompanied by convenient ship-anywhere policies) are the only non-challenging purchase option for rarer items, so it's easy to see how this kind of situation could potentially happen to quite a few people. At least getting your money back is fairly easy, but it still doesn't compensate for the wasted time and disappointment and inconvenience.

That's a bad leg bend, worse than the ones I've had to deal with. Results are going to hinge upon how close to fracture it already is. I had the same thought as yourself about moving the adjacent legs away to compensate, as much as possible. At least we now have the capacitor specs nailed down.

Well, it "works"

I only have a 486 pc to test with at the moment, so not gonna get a lot done here. I also don't have anything capable of glide mode or anything that uses the multitexture feature -- so still no way to know if TMU #2 is okay. I'm happy that the legs are as good as they can be:

Aluminum electrolytic cap to test 4.7uf:

Interestingly this card has a factory bodge:

Boots to windows passing through the rage ii+ in this pc:

Runs 3d mark 99 max (D3D) with the ATi card unplugged (at like 1fps).

Anyone know of a multi texture glide mode game I can buy on gog and use to test both TMUs?

aspiringnobody wrote on 2021-10-07, 22:52:

Runs 3d mark 99 max (D3D) with the ATi card unplugged (at like 1fps).

0BDDDE2C-3CEE-4A8E-B33C-4BA57B69488D.jpeg

Anyone know of a multi texture glide mode game I can buy on gog and use to test both TMUs?

Could try a few of the tech demos from the site below. The ones that say they require Voodoo2 presumably may use both TMUs.
http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/artwork.htm

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-10-07, 22:57:

aspiringnobody wrote on 2021-10-07, 22:52:

Runs 3d mark 99 max (D3D) with the ATi card unplugged (at like 1fps).

0BDDDE2C-3CEE-4A8E-B33C-4BA57B69488D.jpeg

Anyone know of a multi texture glide mode game I can buy on gog and use to test both TMUs?

Could try a few of the tech demos from the site below. The ones that say they require Voodoo2 presumably may use both TMUs.
http://falconfly.3dfx.pl/artwork.htm

The donut demo seems to let me toggle between 1TMU and 2TMUs and it doesn’t artifact out or crash.

I’ll need to get this in a real PC with a pentium in it to really push it but it seems to work 🤞

As a side note, I just checked the current going rate of Voodoo 2 cards on ebay and holy crap! There's an STB card bid up to almost $200. Last I was in the market for them you could get them all day long for a smidge over $100 for a 12 MB version. Last ones I bought a couple years ago I paid $340 for 4 of them (2 Monster and 2 STB). They've sure gone up.

Brawndo wrote on 2021-10-08, 03:53:

As a side note, I just checked the current going rate of Voodoo 2 cards on ebay and holy crap! There's an STB card bid up to almost $200. Last I was in the market for them you could get them all day long for a smidge over $100 for a 12 MB version. Last ones I bought a couple years ago I paid $340 for 4 of them (2 Monster and 2 STB). They've sure gone up.

It's not just voodoo cards. The recyclers seem to have decided that the last generation of pci cards are worth a premium.

Exato knife and microscope work really well for bent legs

maxtherabbit wrote on 2021-10-07, 17:46:

my concern is why exactly the capacitor blew off the board

ceramic caps can fail short, but it's certainly not common

They're very reliable, but when they do fail I think they tend to fail short, so this could just be one of those one in a few million. I'm sure I've seen numbers on those that fail of >3/4 failing short with the rest a mix of failing open and value drift. It is near the edge connector, so might be exposed to more flexing than elsewhere.