hold on I rebooted my pc after a while and ran the diamond voodoo test and its gone , I also pushed the passthrough cable in a bit prior to booting , so maybe thermal expansion moved the cable a bit or the dac is flaky , ill have to be a bit more careful with how long I run the card in the future, just in case.

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-01-18, 14:03:

hold on I rebooted my pc after a while and ran the diamond voodoo test and its gone , I also pushed the passthrough cable in a bit prior to booting , so maybe thermal expansion moved the cable a bit or the dac is flaky , ill have to be a bit more careful with how long I run the card in the future, just in case.

Add a fan. A big one.

Also does anyone know where the myth savegame folder is ? I might have corrupted the game after panic ALT-F4ing while it was loaded with a distorted image and it wont run now and gives a gob file error.
Id probably want to back it up before I do a reinstall.

Yeah. Get a fan. Back in the day, I had a fan on my Orchid card. People said you didn't need one, but my thought was that it's better to have a fan than not. I OC'ed mine a little, but I definitely felt safer having one. Someone used to sell these weird lil fans on thin metal arms that would then sit just above the card. I eventually replaced it with a slot fan when I had a VooDoo2 (I totally forgot about that until just now).

If you're running the V1 with a CPU faster than about a P2 400, some people say this can cause problems. It's likely that this would maintain full utilization of the card and produce more heat.

Voodoo1 would have been used with 1996-1997 CPUs. So like Pentium II 300 and slower.

You could experiment with CPU clock and see if the problem goes away at slower CPU speeds.

Glendower wrote on 2025-01-18, 17:25:

Yeah. Get a fan. Back in the day, I had a fan on my Orchid card. People said you didn't need one, but my thought was that it's better to have a fan than not. I OC'ed mine a little, but I definitely felt safer having one. Someone used to sell these weird lil fans on thin metal arms that would then sit just above the card. I eventually replaced it with a slot fan when I had a VooDoo2 (I totally forgot about that until just now).

The case only has provisions for one fan at the front with the psu fan acting as exhaust, and I'm not sure where to fit one near the 7 expansion cards the system contains , but I'll look into coming up with some sort of solution.

swaaye wrote on 2025-01-18, 19:42:

If you're running the V1 with a CPU faster than about a P2 400, some people say this can cause problems. It's likely that this would maintain full utilization of the card and produce more heat.

Voodoo1 would have been used with 1996-1997 CPUs. So like Pentium II 300 and slower.

You could experiment with CPU clock and see if the problem goes away at slower CPU speeds.

The system has a pentium 233 MMX so should be within spec.

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-01-18, 20:05:

The case only has provisions for one fan at the front with the psu fan acting as exhaust, and I'm not sure where to fit one near the 7 expansion cards the system contains , but I'll look into coming up with some sort of solution.

You can try a side-mounted fan bracket. I'm using one of those in my Voodoo 3 build (see pic).

These are available on eBay, Amazon and other places. Just search for PCI fan bracket.

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-01-18, 20:06:

The system has a pentium 233 MMX so should be within spec.

The card might have a broken solder joint somewhere. Changes in temp often exposes those.

Also look very closely at the chips for any pins that are bent and possibly touching or nearly touching a neighboring pin.

It's 30yo.
All things eventually wear out.
Watch some repair videos, and see if you can figure out what might be wrong.

Don't panic. It's not dead dead, but one tiny few cent component probably is.
It's just a matter of finding it.

For that matter, you can probably fix the other one too.

If you have a multimeter, here's some rules of thumb:
Resistors fail open. Capacitors fail short. Component legs shouldn't move when gently poked. Test powered off.
Standard voltages are ~12v,5v,3.3v,2.5v,1.8v +/- a bit. Test powered on.

Poke around carefully and you might see something that looks weird.

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-01-18, 20:05:

Glendower wrote on 2025-01-18, 17:25:

Yeah. Get a fan. Back in the day, I had a fan on my Orchid card. People said you didn't need one, but my thought was that it's better to have a fan than not. I OC'ed mine a little, but I definitely felt safer having one. Someone used to sell these weird lil fans on thin metal arms that would then sit just above the card. I eventually replaced it with a slot fan when I had a VooDoo2 (I totally forgot about that until just now).

The case only has provisions for one fan at the front with the psu fan acting as exhaust, and I'm not sure where to fit one near the 7 expansion cards the system contains , but I'll look into coming up with some sort of solution.

you could also just epoxy some heatsinks on the FBI and the TMU. if you wanna go all in, glue some heatsinks on DAC and VRAM.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2025-01-18, 20:18:

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-01-18, 20:05:

The case only has provisions for one fan at the front with the psu fan acting as exhaust, and I'm not sure where to fit one near the 7 expansion cards the system contains , but I'll look into coming up with some sort of solution.

You can try a side-mounted fan bracket. I'm using one of those in my Voodoo 3 build (see pic).

These are available on eBay, Amazon and other places. Just search for PCI fan bracket.

I found this one on aliexpress , is it the same one?

Thanks for the suggestion btw , this solution might be the way to go.

myne wrote on 2025-01-19, 05:03:

It's 30yo. All things eventually wear out. Watch some repair videos, and see if you can figure out what might be wrong. […]
Show full quote

It's 30yo.
All things eventually wear out.
Watch some repair videos, and see if you can figure out what might be wrong.

Don't panic. It's not dead dead, but one tiny few cent component probably is.
It's just a matter of finding it.

For that matter, you can probably fix the other one too.

If you have a multimeter, here's some rules of thumb:
Resistors fail open. Capacitors fail short. Component legs shouldn't move when gently poked. Test powered off.
Standard voltages are ~12v,5v,3.3v,2.5v,1.8v +/- a bit. Test powered on.

Poke around carefully and you might see something that looks weird.

Tell me about it , I've got some other retro hardware that is pushing 40 years old, its a miracle most of it still works.

Yeah , I've got a multimeter , I'm also borrowing a friends oscilloscope , but I'm pretty much a total newbie when it comes to using them since I never got my hands on one before.
But yeah ill keep the tips about Resistors open , Caps short in mind.

If it goes belly up again , ill do some probing , as for the other card , there isn't any saving it , I bought it a few years back to get a cheap voodoo card as it was sold with pins that were loose , I didn't have a hot air gun at the time and my soldering iron was pretty garbage , so when I tried strip soldering it , I broke off a number of pins on the TMU or the FBI , I forget which , either way I still cringe when I think about it. So its only really good for parts now.

Kampfkoloss wrote on 2025-01-19, 10:39:

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-01-18, 20:05:

Glendower wrote on 2025-01-18, 17:25:

Yeah. Get a fan. Back in the day, I had a fan on my Orchid card. People said you didn't need one, but my thought was that it's better to have a fan than not. I OC'ed mine a little, but I definitely felt safer having one. Someone used to sell these weird lil fans on thin metal arms that would then sit just above the card. I eventually replaced it with a slot fan when I had a VooDoo2 (I totally forgot about that until just now).

The case only has provisions for one fan at the front with the psu fan acting as exhaust, and I'm not sure where to fit one near the 7 expansion cards the system contains , but I'll look into coming up with some sort of solution.

you could also just epoxy some heatsinks on the FBI and the TMU. if you wanna go all in, glue some heatsinks on DAC and VRAM.

Id be iffy about that in case of the need to remove it later on and breaking off the ICs.

AppleSauce wrote on 2025-01-19, 12:56:

I found this one on aliexpress , is it the same one?

Yup, looks just like mine.

Thanks for the suggestion btw , this solution might be the way to go.

You're welcome! 😀