First post, by Socket3
- Rank
- Oldbie
Hey guys.
Over the past couple of years I've gathered 6 defective voodoo 2 cards from various manufacturers, all recovered from a recycling center, and all with some sort of issue. Out of the 6 I've managed to get one to work correctly - a Skywell Magic 3D 2. Another 3 - witch I will talk about in this thread - I've gotten to sort-of work. Most of the cards had missing SMD components on the back, usually 1 or 2 larger 1206 capacitors right behind one or both of the TMUs, or some of the smaller 0805 capacitors located near the memory ICs at the edge of the card or a combination of both. Since these come from recycled computers, they were treated like raw material and tossed around recycling yards, left in open containers and knocked about other cards. These 6 cards are but a few of the ones I've come across while hunting retro hardware at the salvage yard - I've passed on so many others due to extreme damage - badly bent or broken legs on the 3dfx chips, badly scratched PCB's with lots of small broken traces, extreme corrosion and so on. These cards were the least damaged I could find.
I'd appreciate any help in getting these cards to work properly again - any suggestions are welcome!
All missing SMD components have been re-soldered - I've used this thread and another like it on falconfly forums to identify the value for missing capacitors: Voodoo2 component map + schematics
Here are the cards:
1. ViewTop Vulcan II 12MB:
This card had several missing SMD capacitors on the back, where the rear TMU is located. I've replaced them and the card works again, but there's an issue with the image:
In games that support multitextruing, these blue or green "spots" can be seen on various objects. They usually only appear indoors and are not visible in outdoor scenes. They seem to be affected by light sources - firing a weapon will make the blue spots disappear. The spots do not appear in GL_Quake, Pandemonium or 3DFX Descent 2 - they're only visible in Quake 2 and Unreal Tournament.
2. Gainward Dragon 3000:
This card only had two missing components - a 22nf SMD electrolytic capacitor and a 4.7uf SMD 1206 on the back of the card, behind one of the TMUs. I've soldered on the correct parts, but despite this, the card displays occasional artifacting:
Some illuminated surfaces as well as text seem to be affected.
