Geforce FX5500 + Magic smoke = What problem? \ VOGONS

Geforce FX5500 + Magic smoke = What problem?

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First post, by DJonekill

DJonekill Offline

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Rank: Newbie
Posts: 32
Joined: 2022-11-04, 22:57
Location: Sweden

Hello! Just want to see if someone could ballpark what might have gone wrong with this FX5500 PCI.
It worked just fine, and the Chameleon demo worked great, until i booted it with a (unknowingly) problematic Abit AS8 motherboard that obviously had some kind of short around the PCI ports, which resulted in a small whiff of magic smoke.

Now, the GPU still works. It boots, gets to the desktop, but drivers seems to be hit or miss. Windows xp drivers (Microsoft) and Win7 drivers (Microsoft) works as far as desktop acceleration. But as soon as I'm trying to load an Nvidia FX demo, it craps out with a list of error messages. However, the GF3 demo Chameleon will load, but as you can see in the video, looks like crap.
And with drivers provided by Nvidia, i get the "device cannot start: Code 10" problem.

To sum up, something is broken, but what? And can it be a solder fix, or should i just give up?

Here is the Chameleon demo with the problem:
https://youtu.be/jRnoCCy_Ye4

Will be grateful for any input! Cheers!

Reply 1 of 2, by MikeSG

Posted on Today, 10:20

MikeSG Offline

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Posts: 454
Joined: 2023-02-14, 08:31

Looks like you have a blown cap on the back side of the card.

Typically the most unreliable ceramic SMD caps have a high value between 1uf-10uf. Now days they're usually very low ESR and are much more reliable.

You could test caps around 1uf, or if someone has a similar card it could be measured..

Reply 2 of 2, by DJonekill

Posted on Today, 10:56

DJonekill Offline

Rank Newbie

Rank: Newbie
Posts: 32
Joined: 2022-11-04, 22:57
Location: Sweden

MikeSG wrote on Today, 10:20:

Looks like you have a blown cap on the back side of the card.

Typically the most unreliable ceramic SMD caps have a high value between 1uf-10uf. Now days they're usually very low ESR and are much more reliable.

You could test caps around 1uf, or if someone has a similar card it could be measured..

Thank you! Very well spotted! Didn't even notice it myself when inspecting the card.
This should be a very easy soldering adventure compared to something like replacing a ram chip, as long as i can find out what the exact value of the component should be. If anyone else has this exact card, and can give the specific value, that'd be great. And if nothing comes up, I will try the value you suggested.

Again, thank you!

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