Retronerd878 wrote on 2025-08-12, 05:49:

I'm trying to bring back to life a Creative voodoo 2 with 12 mb. soldered back some missing caps. And reflowed some loose pins. Got the card to work at some point, and managed to do a Quake 2 benchmark. Now the card doesn't post. Did a full reflow of the TMU's. The card posts and mojo detects the FBI and both TMU chips, however, one TMU chip with zero memory. When I tried to do a full reflow of the FBI chip, some pins got stuck to one-another and when i tried to align them, they were stuck to the pad as well. The pad get dislodged. This happened to maybe 4-5 pins. I managed to align all the pins and solder them to the pads, even though some pads are loose. One pad was shorting a neighboring pad and i used a needle to squeeze between the pins and align the pad in place. Now it's not shorting, even though it's technically loose, and just anchored to the pin. The card doesn't post though.
What am I suppose to do? I'm thinking of removing the chip all together to get a good look at the pads. Even though it's not clear to me how to stick the pads back to the board.

Voodoo2 Home Repair Kit. It's also a good idea to have excellent eyesight and a great binocular microscope.

Retronerd878 wrote on 2025-08-12, 05:49:

Can you post hi-res pictures?

I'm just gonna add basic advice.

Some pads will have visible traces going from the pads "outwards" to some other component, and are the ones you can easily check for continuity.;
others will have traces going under the chip - requiring its removal to repair the broken trace, unless you know where it connects and place a bodge wire instead.

I figured it out. It wasn't the loose pads. The pads are still loose. Yet I checked for continuity and for shorts, and everything looked normal. So even though some of them are loose, they are correctly connected to the pin and to the trace. So that seemed off to me. After further inspection there were some solder bridges. Problem was that they were not detectable in the normal position under the microscope, birds-eye-view if you will. After taking the card in my hands and tilting it at an angle, I managed to spot some bridges in 3 points. So, lesson learned here, to switch the view angle you are looking at the pins. You never know what you will find 😀