It looks like somebody removed the chips. It is possible to solder new chips on it, but you'll need a hot air soldering station.

dominusprog wrote on 2024-08-05, 06:48:

It looks like somebody removed the chips. It is possible to solder new chips on it, but you'll need a hot air soldering station.

I have all the equipment necessary. The other strange thing is that the single chip is in the U1 position but all the pics of boards with two chips ive found have them in the U3-U4 position. Theres also different caps and resistors populated. Its going to be a bit of a chore getting this board right!

Use a non-working motherboard as a donor, I believe you can use the cache chips. Search the internet for the part numbers.

dominusprog wrote on 2024-08-05, 13:16:

Use a non-working motherboard as a surrogate, I believe you can use the cache chips. Search the internet for the part numbers.

The chips on eBay are going for about $4 so I might just pick up some of those if I cant find a cheap donor. I am also going to track down a working module to use as an example as well. Thinking this may be an interesting board to reverse engineer and open source for the community if it hasnt been done already.

These are SGRAMs on the module and mobo cache chips absolutely aren't gonna work. The chips are generic though, and there are many SGRAM manufacturers so there are a variety of parts to choose from. My ATI card had Fujitsu chips on it and chips I stole from another card to max it out were Samsung ones IIRC. There's no going wrong with using the parts already on the module and/or the video card itself.

That particular module never had the other chips on it. I'm not sure how it is supposed to work, the card needs the chips in pairs. Maybe this module was for a specific low end conf...?

Tiido wrote on 2024-08-05, 15:36:

These are SGRAMs on the module and mobo cache chips absolutely aren't gonna work. The chips are generic though, and there are many SGRAM manufacturers so there are a variety of parts to choose from. My ATI card had Fujitsu chips on it and chips I stole from another card to max it out were Samsung ones IIRC. There's no going wrong with using the parts already on the module and/or the video card itself.

That particular module never had the other chips on it. I'm not sure how it is supposed to work, the card needs the chips in pairs. Maybe this module was for a specific low end conf...?

I guess I won the bad luck lottery with this module. There is a single solder bridge where it shouldnt be so I am starting to wonder if someone did pull the chips off this thing. If they did they did it exceptionally cleanly! Anyway I ordered an sgram module that should be functional so we'll see.

Late reply, but today I got exactly the same memory module and installed it on the same card and it didn't work either.

That is why I stumbled here.

I got memory module from old Socket 7 motherboard with integrated 3D Rage chip with same slot for memory upgrade, just a version with lower amount of memory.

Smucek wrote on 2025-07-07, 20:24:

Late reply, but today I got exactly the same memory module and installed it on the same card and it didn't work either.

That is why I stumbled here.

I got memory module from old Socket 7 motherboard with integrated 3D Rage chip with same slot for memory upgrade, just a version with lower amount of memory.

Have you soldered the SMD caps too?

dominusprog wrote on 2025-07-08, 15:44:

Smucek wrote on 2025-07-07, 20:24:

Late reply, but today I got exactly the same memory module and installed it on the same card and it didn't work either.

That is why I stumbled here.

I got memory module from old Socket 7 motherboard with integrated 3D Rage chip with same slot for memory upgrade, just a version with lower amount of memory.

Have you soldered the SMD caps too?

I didn't, I can't even find a reference, and also don't have hot station, but If I knew what exactly to do I have an electronic shop close by that I could use.

Smucek wrote on 2025-07-09, 11:22:

dominusprog wrote on 2025-07-08, 15:44:

Smucek wrote on 2025-07-07, 20:24:

Late reply, but today I got exactly the same memory module and installed it on the same card and it didn't work either.

That is why I stumbled here.

I got memory module from old Socket 7 motherboard with integrated 3D Rage chip with same slot for memory upgrade, just a version with lower amount of memory.

Have you soldered the SMD caps too?

I didn't, I can't even find a reference, and also don't have hot station, but If I knew what exactly to do I have an electronic shop close by that I could use.

Well, you don't need a hot-air station for a couple of SMD caps. Can you post a picture of the board?

Here it is mate

Smucek wrote on 2025-07-13, 18:08:

Here it is mate

You can find out the value of both the caps and resistors, and you can solder them using a normal solder iron. But you'll need a hot-air station for the chips, so I suggest finding the chips and give it to someone who can solder them for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5H9A-szr8Y