VOGONS


Broken psu.

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First post, by Baoran

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I was just testing a socket 7 with pentium 100Mhz. There was a voodoo 1 card and I just launched 3dfx version of tomb raider and exactly when the voodoo card was suppose to take over I head small zap sound and power supply turns off.
Now I am wondering if the voodoo 1 card is broken and might break something else if I tried in another system or if it was just spike in power consumption that caused the psu to fail when the voodoo 1 card took over.
The psu was only 200W and there was a cd drive, a hard drive and a floppy drive and a cpu fan connected to it too. Video card was diamond stealth 64 dram. I don't think the system should have used more than 100W but can't be sure.
There isn't any burning smell inside the system. Not even from inside the psu. Should I just test the voodoo card in another system or is there anything else I should do?

Last edited by Baoran on 2018-11-25, 16:05. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 1 of 7, by dionb

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Probably bad caps in the PSU that had nothing to do with the Voodoo1. If in doubt: test on expendable motherboard+PSU. It doesn't have to run in any sensible way (so a P4 motherboard or similar is fine), just prove whether you can boot without something blowing up.

Reply 2 of 7, by Baoran

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I took the psu out.

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I opened it a bit.

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Looks like there is a fuse I could try to change to a new one.

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I just feel worried about touching there and I don't know where I could get a replacement fuse in case the fuse is broken so I put it back together for now.

Reply 3 of 7, by Baoran

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I opened it again and checked the fuse with a multimeter and fuse is fine so the problem must be somewhere else.
I did put the voodoo 1 card to another motherboard and it boots fine.
I hope the same thing won't happen if I try to install a 3dfx game and run it.

Reply 4 of 7, by Baoran

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Voodoo card is working on another pc fine. I spent an hour playing tomb raider at smooth 30 fps. Too bad about the psu because it was probably the best quality psu that I had.

Reply 5 of 7, by gdjacobs

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Do a diode check on the bridge rectifier and impedance checks on the X caps (yellow bricks in the picture above) and filter choke. I suspect something has failed open on the primary.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 6 of 7, by sf78

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There's also quite a bit of dust inside that could cause all kinds of trouble so just to make sure I'd use compressed air to clean it up and examine it again.

edit: Is there any insulation (should be clear plastic film) between the bottom of the board and the case? It might be the camera, but the board looks a bit warped and some of those solder joints seem awfully close to the case which would short it.

Reply 7 of 7, by Baoran

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There is some kind of insulation between the board and the case. You can see 2 layers in the picture and the layer closest to the board is some kind of foamy material.