@@vswitchzero greetings vswitch. Watching this video, in which you use an S3 Virge DX, I ask you a question for help. I have an S3 Virge DX card (AOpen PT 75), which I had never used before (so dont know its previous state). after a good cleaning and soldering a capacitor that had come loose. I tried it and it did not give an image, the PC emitted several beeps. After an additional review and more cleaning, it managed to show the vbios report, but then it goes dark. Reviewing it more in depth I saw that it had a position where another capacitor seemed to go and in the images that I looked for I saw that yes, it was missing another capacitor (those are the two on both sides of the PCI connector i this card). In the images I cannot see the data of the capacitor, but visually it is the same as the one that I soldered before. So I matched this capacitor and put it on, but the card remains the same, it shows the information from the vbios, and that's it, it doesn't give an image. during boot up i keep touching the chip and i feel it getting hotter than i think it should, so i turn off the pc. Can you give me any advice on this? also I have two AOpen VI15G motherboards , the revision with support for 3.3v CPUs (it has the power regulator). They are part of some PCs (the other is a Pentium) that I had at the end of the 90s or the beginning of this century and all the parts and pieces were stored in working conditions almost 20 years ago. A few months ago nostalgia assaulted me and I am reassembling them. All the parts needed a lot of cleaning, from the PSU to the cards, due to the dust accumulated even inside the boxes, in addition to some slight oxidation. Everything was pristine after cleaning. one of the two psu need some repair but the other ones is working flawlessly. I have some 486 but the best one is an Am5x86. I didn't remember if the jumpers were set for use that one (i think they were, but not sure at all, 20 years bro), so I looked for the documentation and I found two documents, one original from the first version of the motherboard, which only supports 5v, and another with jumper settings updated for the revision with 3V support). I configured the motherboard as an Intel 486DX4, also as an AMD DX4 (the board is from 2 years before the 5x86), based on some recommendations I read around. both are 3.3/3.45 volt processors, but when measuring the voltages on the socket pins and on the regulator output, it's always 5V no matter the configuration. It happens equally on both motherboards, I don't think the regulator is defective in both cases. I would appreciate if you help me with the correct configuration to be able to use the Am5x86 (or 486DX4 from Intel or AMD, as a valid config as I see). The other 486 compatible I have is an AMD 486DX2-66 but of course the primary interest is the Am5x86. I still need to check them with the DX2s to make sure. the PentiumMMX is also not working, no post, but i will see it latter Any help will be very appreciated.
Pre-heating absolutely makes a huge difference. You'll get more bulk heat soaked into the board meaning you don't need to dwell as long with the hot air station.
Excellent work. 25:35 it would be really interesting to see if the Voodoo 3 is able to run at over 200 mhz with 5ns or even faster memory. Apparently the fastest Voodoo 3 ever released was made by Falcon Northwest runnung at 200 mhz, but I never saw one on the internet and I wonder if such a card even exists.
Very interesting about the Falcon Northwest Voodoo 3. I've never heard of that one before. I'm definitely going to try to get this card past 200MHz, stay tuned :)
Congratulations on 11K and a nice repair! Those tiny traces are really easy to miss. Especially on those cards where it's quite busy with SMDs everywhere.
Thanks very much! Very true - I spent a lot more time checking the back because of all the scratches all over but those are all easier to spot since there are no SMDs anywhere :)
Flux is needed to clean surfaces from oxides during soldering. But when you desolder with a hot air station, it only interferes - you do not see the moment when the solder becomes shiny, completely melted. The flux evaporates rapidly, as the temperature of the hot air station is too high for it, and produces too much smoke, which makes the desoldering process more difficult. So there is a chance to tear off pads. But for soldering components back or cleaning pads - there is not such thing as too much flux.
I actually saw a voodoo 3 on another channel that had vbios issues. So he flashed it. It worked. He examined the old rom. Only a few changed bytes. 9 in total. So he reflashed the original. Still worked perfectly. lol It's so bizzare.
It is very strange indeed. I had a similar experience with a socket A motherboard a while back. The BIOS was bricked/corrupted and the system wouldn't post. I pulled the image off via my external programmer, and its checksum matched the one I downloaded from the ASUS site exactly. Flashed it back and it worked just fine. I suspect the external programmers do a better job of reading "borderline" cells that don't have enough charge left in them than the board/card does. I remember hearing that it can take too long to read those cells too, which can be an issue. So the image pulled by the programmer is good, but the card/board doesn't pull the same data when it tries to read it. Flashing it again restores all those flaky cells. If I find another EEPROM in this kind of state, I'd like to do more tests on this.
@@vswitchzero yeah that was my guess as well. That it was marginal and just not fast enough to POST. But flashing I guess doesn't care about speed? /shrug
I really enjoy your videos, the way you describe your techniques and logical troubleshooting is really interesting to follow. You explain things clearly and your filming quality is absolutely top notch. Thanks for these interesting adventures you bring us on!
You are absolutely right about using flux, never ever do fine soldering (micro/smd) without proper amount of flux, or as Alex @ northridgefix would say, flux helps with the flow of solder.
Nice Job. It appearance to me that you have the right approach fixing it. I had that same model once. I still have fond memories of this card. I really miss 3dfx :*(
I haven't done significant soldering in a while, but I did a lot of small electronics repair for my father's business back in the mid 00's, similar SMC sizes to these. Anyway, we always used a flux impregnated solder and it worked fantastically. It was also lead based I'm pretty sure, and at least back then, the non-lead based solders were crap and required much higher temps.
Thanks for your comment and for sharing! I have never tried lead-free solder before (since most of what I repair is from before that era) but I've heard its much harder to work with.
@@vswitchzero They had a certain brand they loved with the flux in it and stock piled it. The business went under (tech they fixed basically went obsolete), but he still has some somewhere in his garage. But because it was flux impregnated, we never needed extra flux and would just melt a little extra solder if you needed to and then wick away the excess.
This really is invaluable information. I have a Banshee that also pops up with the same error message when flashing, but it doesn't show up under device manager sooo. Who knows.
15:45 When plugging in a USB cable, the open side (where you can see through the two square holes) ON THE CABLE always faces away from the PCB. That almost always means that the open side will face up on a laptop, or to the left on a desktop PC when reaching around the back. There are some exceptions to this, like most notably two IKEA items I have, a charger and a battery bank where the USB ports are upside down from the norm, with the "open" side facing down from the top.
If you haven't under preheater - better to mix the solder of chip with the rose alloy by a soldering iron, and then unsolder it hot air gun. Rose alloy has a much lower temperature of melting and it's hardens with muuuuch more time that ordinary solder, that is why unsolder chips with it much easier
You're becoming quite an expert on Voodoos. I have a V2 that has seen better days, no clue what happened with it, but it won't even be detected by OS or bios.
Best of luck with your V2! If it isn't detected - take a closer look at the frame buffer chip (the middle one near the slot). If there are any shorted pins, that could do it. Also make sure the regulator is providing the correct voltage output. Could also be failed resistor arrays, which I've seen before too.
I scrapped so many of these sorts of things in the early 00s. Basically I was buying each generation as they came out from the first Voodoos for developing on. It turned into a giant pile of stuff... that eventually went for recycling. I carefully archived all the 80s 8-bit kit I had, but never thought anyone would collect PC video cards. I'm sorry!!
I never would have imagined back then either. I always sold off my aging hardware to fund the next upgrade, or just gave stuff away when it was too old to be useful. Hard to think that people may be trying to collect GTX 1080s and cards like that in the future :D
Hurrah! Nice work. I really appreciate the style of your videos they're really chill, great narration and nice editing, good work! Oh and correct 3 attempt insertion of USB plug 😂
Great work 👌 👏.Preheating is necessary when there is a bga ICs on the board .Preheating before removing the IC and after soldering the IC. It must be go from room temperature to soldering and de-soldering temperature in gradual manner. Because the thermal shock may not affect the removed BGA IC, but affects another BGA IC adjacent to it, and breakage occurs at the BGA solder points.
Thanks very much! And thanks for the info. I'm hoping that one of these days I'll be able to attempt some BGA work. That's one area I've never ventured into yet.
I remember walking into Futureshop and buying my Voodoo 3 2000 in early 2000. The only piece of hardware that I'm not sure what I did with when I had to upgrade. I should track down one someday.
I have so many fond memories of going to Futureshop back in the 90s. I still remember going there to buy my first modem, and again later on to buy my first 3dfx Voodoo card too. Was always an exciting place to visit :-)
Congrats for the milestone, very well deserved! Nice video and I have a feeling the seller where you found the card is the same I source some of my stuff from 🙂 Preheating is a must. Someone might say ‘I’ve never used it and it’s always worked for me’ but just blasting silly temps to an IC is not good for either the component nor the pcb. For the broken trace, I’d say the pin would be floating and not low all the time - so it would probably be seen low and high at random by the chip. Anyways, I enjoyed the video and well done!
Thanks so much Tony, I really appreciate it! Congratulations on all of the success on your channel as well. I really enjoy watching your repair videos and have learnt a lot from you :) .. Thanks for the tip on preheating. I will look into picking one up. If you have any recommendations, it would be appreciated! .. also great point on the pin "floating".. I automatically assumed it would just behave as low when disconnected but there is clearly more to it! Thanks again.
Thanks very much! It's always such an exciting feeling to get something working (especially after numerous failed attemptes).. that "aha" moment is priceless :D
Hi, yes a multi plane PCB certainly needs a pre heat, it will make desoldering much easier, less tracks and pads pulled off, Small boards you can pre heat the underneath with your hot air gun before doing the yop. Bob. UK
That was the best one yet, learned a lot today. I love the way you troubleshoot these cards and explain every step so well, you're very intelligent. Congrats on the milestone man looking forward to more!
Thanks for this video! I'm trying to troubleshoot a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI that isn't displaying, but the system will POST with it in, and found your vid. I'm very impressed with your troubleshooting skills, I wish I had that familiarity with soldering and circuitry.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of it in too much of an "on/off" situation and there is clearly more to it than that. Appreciate the comment!
Not being connected is not the same as having a grounded pin or a "low" applied. The pin might actually be floating as it's called. Basically it's level is undefined as the datasheet specifies what happens if the pin is properly connected not when it's not. It might have a defined level if there are internal pullups or pulldowns. ( And they are activated). But I would not expect them to be there on a flash chip.
Don't feel bad about the false start on troubleshooting. When you have to magnify the board to that level, it's so easy to miss some damage like the kind you eventually found.
The pin was likely defaulted to high, the busted trace stopped it being pulled low (to ground). It's the only situation that fits the data sheet. Congrats on 11k 👍
Thanks for your comment! Yes, I'm pretty sure you are right about that. I assumed that a disconnected pin would be 0V, but I checked the pin again with the system powered up and during normal operation it measures 3.3V. So I think you are right that the trace pulls it low instead of the other way around.
@@vswitchzero you can see that CS, OE and WE pins all have "bars" over their text names. This means that they are active low signals, i.e. must be pulled low to be considered active (asserted). When they are high the signals are inactive (negated). For many types of ROMs and RAMs you need to assert both CS and OE to read from the device, or CS and WE to write to it. In some cases, OE can be permanently tied to ground, and reads are effected simply by asserting CS, or writes can be made by assessing both CS and WE, where WE effectively overrides OE. This can save a little bit of circuitry during design. I don't know if I've ever come across a datasheet which indicated whether an unconnected pin on one of these devices would be pulled high or low by default (I've certainly never noticed it if it was mentioned), but since they are very likely based on CMOS manufacturing processes, an unconnected pin will float to some random state and could thus result in unpredictable behaviour. What value it floats to could be influenced by noise from neighbouring circuitry, or by simply moving your hand or some test instrument near it. And this can even change from moment to moment, which can lead to very confusing behaviour during troubleshooting. Given they are active low signals it would make more sense for them to be pulled high if unconnected, to make sure the device is disabled and wouldn't interfere with any others that are fully functional. But I suspect they aren't pulled in either direction and are expected to be connected to something that sets their state. I would also suggest that "output disable" mode can't really be broken. That mode simply means that, since OE is negated, the ROM won't ever drive the data bus if CS is asserted.
Top work as always, I can only aspire to be as good as you at this kind of stuff! Ive modded a few retro consoles but my skills aren't anywhere near good enough to attempt such small work as you do. Well done :) You have a new Patron in me, thats for sure.
Wow, thanks so much for becoming a Patron! I really appreciate your support! I had almost zero soldering skill only a couple of years ago. It just takes practice, patience and some decent quality tools. If I can do this, anyone can, that's for sure :) .. thanks again!
Big congratz for the milestone and another repaired card of course! Found your channel a while back and have been enjoying it since and learning myself while I do!
Amazing video. Again I learned so much from this. Super valuable information that I will definitely come back to if any of my Voodoo 3 cards stop working.
Good efforts man, thanks for sharing Man in older times we had lots of display/video card choice now there be just AMD versus Nvidia with Intel as 3rd choice Intel jumped all the way from i740 to Arc gpus 380, 750 & 770 but never the 580 it was cancelled :/
Something like that would be really useful! I did look around for something of that sort came up empty. Probably wouldn't be too complicated to design but not my area of strength unfortunately.
This is the case with TTL families due to the way the gates are constructed, but absolutely not the case with CMOS families (which this ROM and indeed near on everything else on the board are manufactured in.)
Those atmels have a 20 year guaranteed life span. They die not long after that. I had e same problem with my nomad jukebox. Replacing it and flashing a new chip fixed it
Great repair. I have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI that I don't use because it locks up Windows 98, usually when exiting Windows DOS prompt or a DOS game. No clue what is wrong with it..
Thanks for the tip. Haven't tried no-clean stuff yet, but the flux I use is really easy to get off without much effort. I used some cheap flux paste in the past that required a lot more work to remove.
I have the same model card that hasn't worked since I bought it (system wouldn't post). Thanks to this video I tried the switcheroo trick with a PCI card, but my system still won't post, so I get no video output at all. Any ideas on what could be wrong? Edit: tested on a different system...it's completely dead
Thanks for your comment! If the card isn't detected at all, it could be power related (check the regulator for the correct voltage output and test the ferrite beads/filters to the left of the 3dfx chip to make sure there is near zero impedance across them). Unfortunately, some of these types of issues are due to BGA contact issues, which can be much more difficult to fix. I have a V3 here that I believe that is the issue on. One of these days I'll need to learn how to do BGA rework.
Awesome thanks! The song at the end was a custom track composed for the channel by Bertrand Gagan and is called "Prelude to Space". He does some amazing work! You can find more of his stuff here: ruclips.net/channel/UCMrG-4sGyKJriiKIpFeuz5Q
Congratulations to the milestone! And to the fixed V3 of course as well ;)
Thanks very much! :)
two of my favorite youtubers! i love seeing the retro community connect!
@@vswitchzero
greetings vswitch. Watching this video, in which you use an S3 Virge DX, I ask you a question for help.
I have an S3 Virge DX card (AOpen PT 75), which I had never used before (so dont know its previous state). after a good cleaning and soldering a capacitor that had come loose. I tried it and it did not give an image, the PC emitted several beeps. After an additional review and more cleaning, it managed to show the vbios report, but then it goes dark. Reviewing it more in depth I saw that it had a position where another capacitor seemed to go and in the images that I looked for I saw that yes, it was missing another capacitor (those are the two on both sides of the PCI connector i this card). In the images I cannot see the data of the capacitor, but visually it is the same as the one that I soldered before. So I matched this capacitor and put it on, but the card remains the same, it shows the information from the vbios, and that's it, it doesn't give an image. during boot up i keep touching the chip and i feel it getting hotter than i think it should, so i turn off the pc.
Can you give me any advice on this?
also
I have two AOpen VI15G motherboards , the revision with support for 3.3v CPUs (it has the power regulator). They are part of some PCs (the other is a Pentium) that I had at the end of the 90s or the beginning of this century and all the parts and pieces were stored in working conditions almost 20 years ago. A few months ago nostalgia assaulted me and I am reassembling them. All the parts needed a lot of cleaning, from the PSU to the cards, due to the dust accumulated even inside the boxes, in addition to some slight oxidation. Everything was pristine after cleaning. one of the two psu need some repair but the other ones is working flawlessly.
I have some 486 but the best one is an Am5x86. I didn't remember if the jumpers were set for use that one (i think they were, but not sure at all, 20 years bro), so I looked for the documentation and I found two documents, one original from the first version of the motherboard, which only supports 5v, and another with jumper settings updated for the revision with 3V support). I configured the motherboard as an Intel 486DX4, also as an AMD DX4 (the board is from 2 years before the 5x86), based on some recommendations I read around. both are 3.3/3.45 volt processors, but when measuring the voltages on the socket pins and on the regulator output, it's always 5V no matter the configuration. It happens equally on both motherboards, I don't think the regulator is defective in both cases.
I would appreciate if you help me with the correct configuration to be able to use the Am5x86 (or 486DX4 from Intel or AMD, as a valid config as I see). The other 486 compatible I have is an AMD 486DX2-66 but of course the primary interest is the Am5x86. I still need to check them with the DX2s to make sure.
the PentiumMMX is also not working, no post, but i will see it latter
Any help will be very appreciated.
The addiction I never knew I had; watching 3Dfx repairs! Great work!
Haha awesome. Glad you enjoy it! :)
Getting an EEPROM from a random source and found identical data in it is simply insane.
It really is. I had to double check that I had the right chip in the programmer!
5:30 as Louis Rossmann said, “the bigger the glob, the better the job”
Haha, I whole heartedly agree! :D
Pre-heating absolutely makes a huge difference. You'll get more bulk heat soaked into the board meaning you don't need to dwell as long with the hot air station.
Yay more voodoo repairs!
A disconnected pin is floating - it won't necessarily be at 0v and won't necessarily behave as if it was
Makes a lot of sense! I was thinking of it too much in "on/off" terms. There is clearly more to it than that. Thanks for your comment.
Excellent work. 25:35 it would be really interesting to see if the Voodoo 3 is able to run at over 200 mhz with 5ns or even faster memory. Apparently the fastest Voodoo 3 ever released was made by Falcon Northwest runnung at 200 mhz, but I never saw one on the internet and I wonder if such a card even exists.
Very interesting about the Falcon Northwest Voodoo 3. I've never heard of that one before. I'm definitely going to try to get this card past 200MHz, stay tuned :)
Congratulations on 11K and a nice repair! Those tiny traces are really easy to miss. Especially on those cards where it's quite busy with SMDs everywhere.
Thanks very much! Very true - I spent a lot more time checking the back because of all the scratches all over but those are all easier to spot since there are no SMDs anywhere :)
Flux is needed to clean surfaces from oxides during soldering. But when you desolder with a hot air station, it only interferes - you do not see the moment when the solder becomes shiny, completely melted. The flux evaporates rapidly, as the temperature of the hot air station is too high for it, and produces too much smoke, which makes the desoldering process more difficult. So there is a chance to tear off pads. But for soldering components back or cleaning pads - there is not such thing as too much flux.
No such thing as too much flux.
And a preheater works wonderfully for surface mount components, highly recommend.
Agreed! :) .. thanks for the tip.
I actually saw a voodoo 3 on another channel that had vbios issues. So he flashed it. It worked. He examined the old rom. Only a few changed bytes. 9 in total. So he reflashed the original. Still worked perfectly. lol It's so bizzare.
It is very strange indeed. I had a similar experience with a socket A motherboard a while back. The BIOS was bricked/corrupted and the system wouldn't post. I pulled the image off via my external programmer, and its checksum matched the one I downloaded from the ASUS site exactly. Flashed it back and it worked just fine. I suspect the external programmers do a better job of reading "borderline" cells that don't have enough charge left in them than the board/card does. I remember hearing that it can take too long to read those cells too, which can be an issue. So the image pulled by the programmer is good, but the card/board doesn't pull the same data when it tries to read it. Flashing it again restores all those flaky cells. If I find another EEPROM in this kind of state, I'd like to do more tests on this.
@@vswitchzero yeah that was my guess as well. That it was marginal and just not fast enough to POST. But flashing I guess doesn't care about speed? /shrug
I really enjoy your videos, the way you describe your techniques and logical troubleshooting is really interesting to follow. You explain things clearly and your filming quality is absolutely top notch. Thanks for these interesting adventures you bring us on!
Thanks so much for the kind words! Really appreciate it 😁👍
I love videos like this... the voodoo3 was my first love that allowed me to play quake3arena natively under Linux back in the late 90's.
You are absolutely right about using flux, never ever do fine soldering (micro/smd) without proper amount of flux, or as Alex @ northridgefix would say, flux helps with the flow of solder.
Nice Job. It appearance to me that you have the right approach fixing it. I had that same model once. I still have fond memories of this card. I really miss 3dfx :*(
I haven't done significant soldering in a while, but I did a lot of small electronics repair for my father's business back in the mid 00's, similar SMC sizes to these. Anyway, we always used a flux impregnated solder and it worked fantastically. It was also lead based I'm pretty sure, and at least back then, the non-lead based solders were crap and required much higher temps.
Thanks for your comment and for sharing! I have never tried lead-free solder before (since most of what I repair is from before that era) but I've heard its much harder to work with.
@@vswitchzero They had a certain brand they loved with the flux in it and stock piled it. The business went under (tech they fixed basically went obsolete), but he still has some somewhere in his garage. But because it was flux impregnated, we never needed extra flux and would just melt a little extra solder if you needed to and then wick away the excess.
Awesome job and great sleuthing, now you have another eeprom chip
Thanks! Yep, might come in handy one of these days :)
Addictive videos - I had voodoos back in the day. I had 2 V2's, a Voodoo Banshee and then a Voodoo 5 5500. Finally threw the box out in 2010.
This really is invaluable information. I have a Banshee that also pops up with the same error message when flashing, but it doesn't show up under device manager sooo. Who knows.
The board heater is a game-changer, definitely recommend. I have an older Hakko 853, works great.
I love that sense of joy at the end! "YES!" After you've been through all of that, just seeing a post and vbios message is such a rush lol 😂
Haha its so true - nothing beats that feeling especially after working on such a stubborn one :)
15:45 When plugging in a USB cable, the open side (where you can see through the two square holes) ON THE CABLE always faces away from the PCB. That almost always means that the open side will face up on a laptop, or to the left on a desktop PC when reaching around the back.
There are some exceptions to this, like most notably two IKEA items I have, a charger and a battery bank where the USB ports are upside down from the norm, with the "open" side facing down from the top.
If you haven't under preheater - better to mix the solder of chip with the rose alloy by a soldering iron, and then unsolder it hot air gun. Rose alloy has a much lower temperature of melting and it's hardens with muuuuch more time that ordinary solder, that is why unsolder chips with it much easier
You're becoming quite an expert on Voodoos. I have a V2 that has seen better days, no clue what happened with it, but it won't even be detected by OS or bios.
Best of luck with your V2! If it isn't detected - take a closer look at the frame buffer chip (the middle one near the slot). If there are any shorted pins, that could do it. Also make sure the regulator is providing the correct voltage output. Could also be failed resistor arrays, which I've seen before too.
@@vswitchzero Yeah, it's in a box of "things to look at sometime". Luckily I have a pair of Monster 3D II for a nice SLI working in a K7 700 :)
Your videos are just the bees knees, man. Content, writing, editing, narration. It's just a very agreeable experience. Great work on another repair!
Wow, thanks so much! That really means a lot, I really appreciate it :-)
your videos brings me back to the days where i didnt know anything and figured out while doing :D and still find out how i could have done more
I scrapped so many of these sorts of things in the early 00s. Basically I was buying each generation as they came out from the first Voodoos for developing on. It turned into a giant pile of stuff... that eventually went for recycling. I carefully archived all the 80s 8-bit kit I had, but never thought anyone would collect PC video cards. I'm sorry!!
I never would have imagined back then either. I always sold off my aging hardware to fund the next upgrade, or just gave stuff away when it was too old to be useful. Hard to think that people may be trying to collect GTX 1080s and cards like that in the future :D
Hurrah! Nice work. I really appreciate the style of your videos they're really chill, great narration and nice editing, good work! Oh and correct 3 attempt insertion of USB plug 😂
Thanks so much for the kind words, it really means a lot! Glad you like them! Haha I couldn't resist adding the USB 3-attempt bit :D
Looking forward to #10!
Congratulations on 11K and another Voodoo fixed!
Thank you! :)
Great work 👌 👏.Preheating is necessary when there is a bga ICs on the board .Preheating before removing the IC and after soldering the IC. It must be go from room temperature to soldering and de-soldering temperature in gradual manner. Because the thermal shock may not affect the removed BGA IC, but affects another BGA IC adjacent to it, and breakage occurs at the BGA solder points.
Thanks very much! And thanks for the info. I'm hoping that one of these days I'll be able to attempt some BGA work. That's one area I've never ventured into yet.
@@vswitchzero good luck
I remember walking into Futureshop and buying my Voodoo 3 2000 in early 2000. The only piece of hardware that I'm not sure what I did with when I had to upgrade. I should track down one someday.
I have so many fond memories of going to Futureshop back in the 90s. I still remember going there to buy my first modem, and again later on to buy my first 3dfx Voodoo card too. Was always an exciting place to visit :-)
for that solder patch i'd recommend using a fiberglass pen to scrap off the solder mask
Thanks for the tip. I've been meaning to pick one of those up.
Fantastic, another one saved and with a pretty tricky fix :) Great work!
Thank you! Cheers! :)
Congrats for the milestone, very well deserved! Nice video and I have a feeling the seller where you found the card is the same I source some of my stuff from 🙂 Preheating is a must. Someone might say ‘I’ve never used it and it’s always worked for me’ but just blasting silly temps to an IC is not good for either the component nor the pcb. For the broken trace, I’d say the pin would be floating and not low all the time - so it would probably be seen low and high at random by the chip. Anyways, I enjoyed the video and well done!
Thanks so much Tony, I really appreciate it! Congratulations on all of the success on your channel as well. I really enjoy watching your repair videos and have learnt a lot from you :) .. Thanks for the tip on preheating. I will look into picking one up. If you have any recommendations, it would be appreciated! .. also great point on the pin "floating".. I automatically assumed it would just behave as low when disconnected but there is clearly more to it! Thanks again.
In my experience preheating doesn't help remove chips but it does help reduce stress damage caused by rapid heating of a small area.
Not sure if you have a 3D printer or not, but the heated bed can work as a pre-heater. Most can do a 100c and some go higher.
Great tip! I hadn't thought of that.
Love your enthusiasm when the system finally POSTs! Beautiful work!
Thanks very much! It's always such an exciting feeling to get something working (especially after numerous failed attemptes).. that "aha" moment is priceless :D
People subscribed because of 3dfx repair videos !!!
Will definitely try to keep the repair videos coming! I really enjoy doing them :)
Looking forward to another 3dfx repair video, 3dfx is the best retro PC video brand
Definitely time for another repair video soon! Been too long 🙂
The success rate inspires me to give reattaching the elements on my Viper V770 a try 😊
Hi, yes a multi plane PCB certainly needs a pre heat, it will make desoldering much easier, less tracks and pads pulled off, Small boards you can pre heat the underneath with your hot air gun before doing the yop. Bob. UK
Thanks very much for the info!
Thank you for the thorough explanations, really learning a lot here.
That was the best one yet, learned a lot today. I love the way you troubleshoot these cards and explain every step so well, you're very intelligent. Congrats on the milestone man looking forward to more!
Thank you so much for the kind words, I really appreciate it! Really glad you enjoy the videos!
Thanks for this video! I'm trying to troubleshoot a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI that isn't displaying, but the system will POST with it in, and found your vid. I'm very impressed with your troubleshooting skills, I wish I had that familiarity with soldering and circuitry.
I'm more than happy to become your Patreon. Your videos are always joy to watch.
Thank you so much for supporting me on Patreon! It is really appreciated. I'm really glad you have been enjoying the videos. All the best!
What a great video. Excellent camera work. Well done! 🏆
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks very much 🙂👍
Well donne, nice job. Always good to also understand the reasons of the malfunction!
Great work, nice to see this back to life. Appreciate the shares with the mistakes and all, this is reality after all!
Thanks very much! :)
Love those videos, congrats on another rescue 🙂👍
Glad you like them! Thanks so much :)
Great investigation and repair. Thanks for sharing 😁
Thanks! :)
Digital inputs are very high impedance. Not connected does not mean 0V or "low", it means "floating" and that's undefined.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of it in too much of an "on/off" situation and there is clearly more to it than that. Appreciate the comment!
4:58, if the repairathon video has three cards, is this more of a repairasprint?
Congrats on 11k subs, keep making quality content like this and you'll be 100k in no time. Thoroughly enjoyed this one.
Thanks very much! :)
Not being connected is not the same as having a grounded pin or a "low" applied. The pin might actually be floating as it's called. Basically it's level is undefined as the datasheet specifies what happens if the pin is properly connected not when it's not. It might have a defined level if there are internal pullups or pulldowns. ( And they are activated). But I would not expect them to be there on a flash chip.
Thanks very much for your comment! That makes a lot of sense.
Enjoyed it. Great example of working the problem.
Thanks very much! 👍
It's nice to see one more back to life. One day I have my own voodoo
Thanks for the videos, it's always nice to see your repairs
Thanks so much! :)
Don't feel bad about the false start on troubleshooting. When you have to magnify the board to that level, it's so easy to miss some damage like the kind you eventually found.
You're inspiring me! Thanks! Nice job!
Awesome, thanks very much! :)
11K subcribers is pretty good for a channel that "niche" 😉 Good job
The pin was likely defaulted to high, the busted trace stopped it being pulled low (to ground). It's the only situation that fits the data sheet. Congrats on 11k 👍
Thanks for your comment! Yes, I'm pretty sure you are right about that. I assumed that a disconnected pin would be 0V, but I checked the pin again with the system powered up and during normal operation it measures 3.3V. So I think you are right that the trace pulls it low instead of the other way around.
@@vswitchzero you can see that CS, OE and WE pins all have "bars" over their text names. This means that they are active low signals, i.e. must be pulled low to be considered active (asserted). When they are high the signals are inactive (negated).
For many types of ROMs and RAMs you need to assert both CS and OE to read from the device, or CS and WE to write to it. In some cases, OE can be permanently tied to ground, and reads are effected simply by asserting CS, or writes can be made by assessing both CS and WE, where WE effectively overrides OE. This can save a little bit of circuitry during design.
I don't know if I've ever come across a datasheet which indicated whether an unconnected pin on one of these devices would be pulled high or low by default (I've certainly never noticed it if it was mentioned), but since they are very likely based on CMOS manufacturing processes, an unconnected pin will float to some random state and could thus result in unpredictable behaviour. What value it floats to could be influenced by noise from neighbouring circuitry, or by simply moving your hand or some test instrument near it. And this can even change from moment to moment, which can lead to very confusing behaviour during troubleshooting.
Given they are active low signals it would make more sense for them to be pulled high if unconnected, to make sure the device is disabled and wouldn't interfere with any others that are fully functional. But I suspect they aren't pulled in either direction and are expected to be connected to something that sets their state.
I would also suggest that "output disable" mode can't really be broken. That mode simply means that, since OE is negated, the ROM won't ever drive the data bus if CS is asserted.
Great work!
Top work as always, I can only aspire to be as good as you at this kind of stuff! Ive modded a few retro consoles but my skills aren't anywhere near good enough to attempt such small work as you do.
Well done :) You have a new Patron in me, thats for sure.
Wow, thanks so much for becoming a Patron! I really appreciate your support! I had almost zero soldering skill only a couple of years ago. It just takes practice, patience and some decent quality tools. If I can do this, anyone can, that's for sure :) .. thanks again!
Big congratz for the milestone and another repaired card of course! Found your channel a while back and have been enjoying it since and learning myself while I do!
Awesome! Thank you! :)
Amazing video. Again I learned so much from this. Super valuable information that I will definitely come back to if any of my Voodoo 3 cards stop working.
Thanks so much! :)
Nice catch. Congrats
Need to go find my Voodoo 3 now, build a relevant machine around it, the Voodoo 1 and 2 are great, but the 3 was just that little bit more capable.
KEEP EM COMING BABY
Good efforts man, thanks for sharing
Man in older times we had lots of display/video card choice
now there be just AMD versus Nvidia with Intel as 3rd choice
Intel jumped all the way from i740 to Arc gpus 380, 750 & 770 but never the 580 it was cancelled :/
There's no such thing as too much flux, in soldering flux is your friend, after the job it comes off easily when cleaning with some IPA.
Love your videos, you’re a nice guy!
Thanks so much, I appreciate it! :)
I love it. Thank you.
Great content as always! Congratulations on the 11k subscribers, well deserved ❤
Much appreciated! :)
very nice and interresting video! learned a lot watching your videos!
Thanks very much!
Good job. maybe i should consider to return to this kind of shit. it was fun 20 years ago :)
Really loved the repair
( You have got a new subscriber;)
Thanks so much 🙂👍
23:53 if there isn't a pull-down or pull-up on the pin, disconnecting would leave it floating.
it was a data line for manufactured validate the chips basically couldn't validate the eeprom
Awesome! 👍
i repaired an old nvidia gpu by taking a smd cap off of an old hdd, that was all it needed was a cap the original cap on the card was gone
nice video👍
You can never have too much flux
looks like a ceramic cap C100 is missing too
Not sure why, but 3dfx never populated the pads at C100, so it's always empty 👍
Really want to see it upgraded and faster speed mod
I think this will definitely be in this card's future.. stay tuned :)
Lol I was watching that one hope u get it to work
yeah! boost it!
Definitely in this card's future.. stay tuned! :)
Concerning the BIOS EEPROM... Have you thought about creating a riser to put a socket onto it??
Something like that would be really useful! I did look around for something of that sort came up empty. Probably wouldn't be too complicated to design but not my area of strength unfortunately.
open(unconnected) input pins are usually high .. so ..
This is the case with TTL families due to the way the gates are constructed, but absolutely not the case with CMOS families (which this ROM and indeed near on everything else on the board are manufactured in.)
Those atmels have a 20 year guaranteed life span. They die not long after that. I had e same problem with my nomad jukebox. Replacing it and flashing a new chip fixed it
"overpriced 3dfx market"
Me: **looking horrified at ABIT mainboard prices**
Great repair. I have a Voodoo 3 2000 PCI that I don't use because it locks up Windows 98, usually when exiting Windows DOS prompt or a DOS game. No clue what is wrong with it..
Yoooo i had that mouse!!!!
One of the best early optical mice! Love it.
Have you tried No-Clean Flux? More expensive for sure.
Thanks for the tip. Haven't tried no-clean stuff yet, but the flux I use is really easy to get off without much effort. I used some cheap flux paste in the past that required a lot more work to remove.
I have the same model card that hasn't worked since I bought it (system wouldn't post). Thanks to this video I tried the switcheroo trick with a PCI card, but my system still won't post, so I get no video output at all. Any ideas on what could be wrong?
Edit: tested on a different system...it's completely dead
Thanks for your comment! If the card isn't detected at all, it could be power related (check the regulator for the correct voltage output and test the ferrite beads/filters to the left of the 3dfx chip to make sure there is near zero impedance across them). Unfortunately, some of these types of issues are due to BGA contact issues, which can be much more difficult to fix. I have a V3 here that I believe that is the issue on. One of these days I'll need to learn how to do BGA rework.
@@vswitchzero Thanks for the tips! Voltage looks good, card is getting power. Unfortunately I think it is an issue with BGA contacts.
A 'bob' is five pence, so 'ten bob' is fifty pence. You're welcome ;-)
Haha thanks for the clarification! I'm a fan of many british TV shows and am always confused by the many different terms used for currency :)
DANG IT! & (Anti)BOOH! I'm almost sad that my(Yup Thé one an' only owner - since 1998!) Creative Voodoo² 12MB - Is still running 😲
A "bob" is 5 pence, so 35 bob is £1.75 :)
Haha I was way off on that one! Would certainly be nice to get a Voodoo 3 (even a broken one) for £1.75 :D
Hi,
What external programmer are you using ( @ 13:31 ) ? Is it EZP2019 ? 🤔😕
Thanks !
Best Regards,
The programmer is a TL866 II. Great unit with a lot of useful functions beyond just EEPROM programming.
subscribed! what's the name of the tune at the end?
Awesome thanks! The song at the end was a custom track composed for the channel by Bertrand Gagan and is called "Prelude to Space". He does some amazing work! You can find more of his stuff here: ruclips.net/channel/UCMrG-4sGyKJriiKIpFeuz5Q
@@vswitchzero amazing work indeed