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VGA Repair report collection

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Reply 20 of 35, by dm-

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i had some 9700/9800 cards where gpu was disattached from pcb, cards were thrown or it is an aftermatch of cooler removal ( yellow glue attached).
had to reflow a gpu to pcb. sometimes it was also accompanied with memory ic reflow/reball.

Reply 21 of 35, by kotel

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This post made me gain courage to try and tackle my dead 9550 and my 9600 which I've used as parts donor for the 9550.
9550 had an missing cap on the core which I've needed to resolder, although it looks like one end of it is disconnected (I made sure to reflow that side multiple times). Sadly it's artifacting badly ☹️ Now armed with R3MEMID and VMT I can diagnose which chips are bad. I'm pretty sure it'll say all are bad 😅...

"All my efforts were in vain...
Let that be my disappointment."
-Kotel

Reply 23 of 35, by kotel

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tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-01, 16:07:

You'd be surprised. One memory IC or missing series resistor to one can make the card look broken as hell.

Huh, well that makes this repair far more complicated as I had already replaced the resistor arrays (those darn things don't wanna solder on!). At least I have a pad repair kit which actually works (unlike the relife ones).

"All my efforts were in vain...
Let that be my disappointment."
-Kotel

Reply 24 of 35, by tehsiggi

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kotel wrote on 2025-09-01, 16:23:
tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-01, 16:07:

You'd be surprised. One memory IC or missing series resistor to one can make the card look broken as hell.

Huh, well that makes this repair far more complicated as I had already replaced the resistor arrays (those darn things don't wanna solder on!). At least I have a pad repair kit which actually works (unlike the relife ones).

Go with running R3MEMID. You may have to run it "blind" if the screen is too corrupted. So make sure to use the -LOG flag, it'll create a R3MEMID.LOG with the results.

Just make sure to exit the application properly to get the log file written. If you can, try running it with a known good card, so you "recognize" the menu items 😁

AGP Card Real Power Consumption
AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 25 of 35, by kotel

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Welp, I just remembered what piece of work the small TSOP-48 pads were to replace. I don't think those cards will ever work again...

"All my efforts were in vain...
Let that be my disappointment."
-Kotel

Reply 27 of 35, by kotel

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If I may ask, what was that AGP data lines tester tool you've used in the first post? How does it work? (if you know this)

"All my efforts were in vain...
Let that be my disappointment."
-Kotel

Reply 28 of 35, by dm-

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is it ok if i join you -)

found a 9250 pci on scrapyard. diagnostic show no generation on oscillator.
so i have to remove gpu to see this

The attachment WhatsApp Image 2025-09-03 at 18.56.53.jpeg is no longer available

after fixing the pads...

The attachment WhatsApp Image 2025-09-03 at 18.57.41.jpeg is no longer available

Card is alive

The attachment WhatsApp Image 2025-09-03 at 18.58.08.jpeg is no longer available

Reply 29 of 35, by tehsiggi

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dm- wrote on 2025-09-04, 03:14:

is it ok if i join you -)

Please join! This is not "my thread" - it's a collection, to whoever wants to share their results! Thanks for showing it here!

kotel wrote on 2025-09-03, 16:19:

If I may ask, what was that AGP data lines tester tool you've used in the first post? How does it work? (if you know this)

It's one of those combined PCIe & AGP testers from aliexpress.

Basically it has one AGP slot and two PCIe slots (both in parallel, not sure why they included two of them).

They leverage the fact that GPUs have ESD protection diodes on their I/O pins. Those diodes are there to redirect over-voltage on the inputs to the power rails, meaning positive spikes to something like VDDC and negative ones to GND. Basically anything that is around 0.7V > than the supply voltage of that input section of 0.7 < GND will be flowing through those protection diodes. They are however not very current capable. So they don't protect the GPU from a user forcing a lot of power into an I/O pin.

The attachment Screenshot from 2025-09-05 11-49-09.png is no longer available

However the tester uses these protection diodes in a funny way. They *short* both the cards power rails and GND together, so that there will be no current flowing into the power circuitry of the card. Then they connect that combined rail to a supply voltage around 5V.

They then connect an LED + resistor onto each I/O pin of the AGP slot. Due to the diodes in the GPU, there will be a current flow through the GND protection diode (D2 in my drawing) of the GPU.

The drawing is *very* simplified, but basically shows the idea. If an LED is much brighter than the other ones, the current does *not* flow through the GPU but there is a bridge somewhere to a power rail. If an LED is not lighting up, the connection to the GPU is missing.

For PCIe they're doing a bit more fancy stuff, they use some logic ICs + Pulsed voltage, since the data pair lines of PCIe have capacitors in series, which only allow for AC current to go through.
All in all a handy little device for a first check, if anybody is still home.

AGP Card Real Power Consumption
AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 30 of 35, by dm-

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yesterday i got one 9800 pro for repair.

screen show full mess upon start, r3memid show errors on all banks...
ended up replacing gpu. soldered r360 instead of r350.

works fine.

Reply 31 of 35, by tehsiggi

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dm- wrote on 2025-09-19, 06:36:
yesterday i got one 9800 pro for repair. […]
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yesterday i got one 9800 pro for repair.

screen show full mess upon start, r3memid show errors on all banks...
ended up replacing gpu. soldered r360 instead of r350.

works fine.

All bank errors are basically a safe indicator. Good job!

AGP Card Real Power Consumption
AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 32 of 35, by tehsiggi

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Cross reference: PNY XLR8 GTX 780 Ti Enthusiast Edition OC - Artifacts [FIXED]

Memory fault on a GTX 780Ti, faulty memory was identified and replaced, card works again. Done by zuldan

AGP Card Real Power Consumption
AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 33 of 35, by tehsiggi

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### R6XMEMID for R200 based GPUs / Graphics cards ###

While searching the web for additional tools I stumbled over R6XMEMID. The naming in conjunction with R3MEMID and R5MEMID would suggest that this is for R600 series, but that is not the case.
In fact, while using R3MEMID, there were already traces of R6MEMID log files in the code and output, suggesting that R6MEMID existed beforehand. This is very interesting.
I suspect the architecture Rage6 being the origin of the naming.

I'll dig deeper into what that means for R3MEMID, as it sheds some light onto the usage of that as well.

One interesting find is the R6XMEMID.CFG file. It is basically a memory mapping for existing cards, telling you exactly which IC is broken. Handy thing! Of course, there are more cards out there than this default file has, but perhaps I'll go and add more cards to that file, once I had some time.

## Where to get it? ##

I attached a zip of R6XMEMID here:

The attachment R6MEMID.zip is no longer available

## How to run it? ##

You will need to execute it under DOS. I tested it with FreeDOS in SafeMode and it works just fine

The simple run will just be R6XMEMID.EXE -NOCFG

## Which cards will work with it? ##

I have tested the following cards with it:

- Radeon 9200 (RV280)
- Radeon 9000Pro (RV250)
- Radeon 9250SE (Mobility Radeon 9200 chipset)
- Radeon 9250SE (RV280)
- Radeon 9100 (R200)*

For the 9100 I had to use the -NORDFLOAD switch as well, otherwise it would not run

## What switches are available? ##

Use R6XMEMID.EXE -HELP to see them. There are quite a lot!

## What does the result look like? ##

Good card:

The attachment r6good.jpeg is no longer available

Bad card:

The attachment r6bad.jpeg is no longer available

AGP Card Real Power Consumption
AGP Power monitor - diagnostic hardware tool
Graphics card repair collection

Reply 34 of 35, by kotel

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Does it differ from normal R6MEMID?
Also here's the link for normal R6MEMID and R5MEMID.

"All my efforts were in vain...
Let that be my disappointment."
-Kotel