any hope for this VGA card? \ VOGONS

any hope for this VGA card?

Topic actions

First post, by ratfink

Posted on 2014-01-31, 15:51

ratfink Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1795
Joined: 2006-05-09, 15:06
Location: Reality but it's touch and go

Got o VGA card recently, PCI interface, rendition verite v2x00.

Tried in two known working motherboards (ga5ax and pa2013) with two known working monitors (lcd and CRT).

In all cases I get a rolling screen of snow on boot up, and after a few seconds a blank black screen.

Have cleaned the PCI connector. No obvious damage to components or traces.

If I press delete during the boot, what I guess should be the BIOS screen is a screenful of vertical blue and yellow stripes. Escape turns it red and white, and so on. So the card is doing something.

Any ideas other than baking it (or chucking it, or hanging it on the wall etc)?

Just wondering if the symptoms point to a particular component.

Reply 1 of 7, by DNSDies

Posted on 2014-01-31, 15:59

DNSDies Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 264
Joined: 2013-08-03, 17:39

Could be old leaky capacitors.
Can you solder? If so, try replacing the old capacitors with newer ones.
Inspect the board for any that are bulging or leaky. Use an old toothbrush and 90+% isopropyl alcohol to clean the mess up too.

Reply 2 of 7, by h-a-l-9000

Posted on 2014-01-31, 18:57

h-a-l-9000 Offline

Rank DOSBox Author

Rank: DOSBox Author
Posts: 4511
Joined: 2005-02-23, 00:14

Do the stripes change when you press on the chips?

1+1=10

Reply 3 of 7, by ratfink

Posted on 2014-02-01, 01:07

ratfink Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1795
Joined: 2006-05-09, 15:06
Location: Reality but it's touch and go

h-a-l-9000 wrote:
Do the stripes change when you press on the chips?

Finding it hard to tell. When I first tried it seemed as though pressing on one of the memory chips and/or the Rendition Verite chip caused the screen to change to a mass of random characters. But it seems like it might just be touching the board or minor components can cause this.

I'll clean the board with alcohol and see if that helps.

Reply 4 of 7, by Nahkri

Posted on 2014-02-01, 10:57

Nahkri Offline

Rank Member

Rank: Member
Posts: 441
Joined: 2013-02-10, 21:23
Location: Karlsburg:RO

If nothing else work u could try a reflow on the card before u trow it out

Reply 5 of 7, by idspispopd

Posted on 2014-02-03, 13:24

idspispopd Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1213
Joined: 2012-02-15, 21:08
Location: Hamburg / Germany

Rendition cards sometimes used weird frequencies so you could have trouble getting a display. I don't know if this could be the case for text mode, though.
With the TFT I can easily imagine that it might have trouble syncing. How high can the CRT sync?

Reply 6 of 7, by ratfink

Posted on 2014-02-03, 17:35

ratfink Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1795
Joined: 2006-05-09, 15:06
Location: Reality but it's touch and go

It's Lacie electron iv so that makes it a Mitsubishi Diamondtron under the hood, so I think it should be easily capable of displaying whatever the rendition outputs.

Reply 7 of 7, by ratfink

Posted on 2014-02-06, 18:24

ratfink Offline

Rank Oldbie

Rank: Oldbie
Posts: 1795
Joined: 2006-05-09, 15:06
Location: Reality but it's touch and go

Ok cleaning it off makes no difference, but I wonder if one of the small components is kaput - see picture, one of the corners of one of these 8-legged components [RP3] seems to look like it's puffed out a white lump. Not very clear I guess but it's the best picture I can do.

Could that be the cause of the failure on this card?

None of the other similar components [RP1 etc] look like this, they are all intact.

Go to top of page Go to top of page

Back to General Old Hardware