I have *three* Diamond Monster 3D Vooodoo 1 cards, all basically identical, and all exhibit problems on my test setup. My test setup is a Wintac\Edom W6BXA (440BX) + P3 450 + S3 Trio64V2/DX + Win98SE. I just tested them all again with a Pentium 2 266Mhz underclocked to 200Mhz in the same board and all are still having serious problems. One doesn't even display an image on the screen. One gave a crazy blue striped screen when loading Descent 3, the other either displays a black screen when loading games or gives a crazy error message with lots of memory related information.
I have tested close to 30 3dfx cards on this system and only had problems like this on these cards. In fact, aside from these I've only come across *two* 3dfx cards that I couldn't get working. One Ensoniq Banshee that had turned its heatsink BROWN from overheating over the years and a Voodoo 3 1000 8MB AGP card that seems to be having a software issue no matter what drivers I use. I have a Canopus Pure 3D and an Orchid Righteous 3D and both work fine.
I will say, the little surface mount aluminum caps seem suspicious to me... some are a bit scratched up from neglect before I got them... but they're just such a pain to replace. I have replaced them on other cards and in fact I replaced some missing ones on these particular Diamond cards as soon as I got them. I'll probably just take a day to practice on some other board that uses these, then take one final stab at fixing a couple of these Diamond cards. Anyone know of any tricks for replacing these types of SMD caps? My biggest problem is getting the iron in there without getting too close to other components. It seems like it helps a ton to get the pads thoroughly cleared of all solder before setting the caps down, so that they sit flat, but its still time consuming for me depending on the board layout.
These are the type of caps I'm talking about:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/US-Stock-20pcs-10UF- … ard!16701!US!-1
EDIT: Looking at mouser, I see there's a gigantic variety of caps that look just like these, so I'm going to add some good low-esr caps of this type to my "caps to order" list, and I'll try recapping one of these again. The ones I had on hand have worked for everything else I've used them on, but maybe these cards are just more sensitive.
I'll probably pick one of these.
https://www.mouser.com/Passive-Componen ... ricing%7c0
Leaning toward the 850mOhm ESR ones. With as many cards and boards as I would like to fix, a pack of 100 is probably a good idea.
Now for some blitting from the back buffer.