This mad man just ran Tomb Raider on a 3D accelerator with no texture memory... and it worked. Blew my mind, that TMU is just blindly writing/reading to open traces, and it could care less! Makes sense but I would have never thought to try it
6:30 I'm more impressed by the fact that the card is still stable despite not having _any_ texture memory. I have a Voodoo3 1000 that I'm excited to finally test during my time off class and hopefully it isn't broken.
I soldered thousands of fine pitch IC's in my lifetime at ISO9001x and even Mil-spec and you did just as good as I would have or anyone I've seen. So great work with the equipment that you had!
Had a reference voodoo 1 as a kid. Epoxied heatsinks on the main CPUs because it would lock up and I noticed the chips were hot. After that blind mod, it ran perfectly. The visual difference was incredible. Hardware interpolation made a huge visual difference. Acceleration allowed old PCs to run quake and unreal 1 which were absolutely mind blowing compared to doom and wolfenstein.
Wow, this was fantastic! I'm a fan of old hardware, especially old Voodoo cards, and it was really empowering to see you repairing step by step and old Voodoo card. Made my day better! :)
Nice to see one of the most coveted cards from my youth up and running! Can't remember how long I wanted to get one, and finally got it. It was a gaming bliss.
You could take the RAM sockets from (for example) an old PCI graphics card that has an upgradable RAM option…or just get some RAM sockets. Then create a Voodoo “test” board that has replaceable RAM that can be inserted or removed from the sockets…just an idea…
I use to run an Intel740 and Voodoo hooked together. That combination blew the first run of Nvidia 32's out of the water. All of the 3dfx games around that time were crude by today's standards but back then they were great. Monster Truck, Warzone2100, Need for speed 3 and Unreal were really fun to play. It was just a shame that the Voodoo's graphics memory couldn't be used for general applications.
Yep, I still remember for the first time seeing GLQuake running on a 3Dfx Voodoo in some computer shop. It really looked like magic, blew my freaking mind. Right then and there I knew I needed this in my life. lol Little else compares to the feeling of having the 3DFX Voodoo card in your PC in 1997.
Damn I toss so many broken PC hardware that might got fixed with knowledge you provide😥 I'm very interested in repairing stuff like this and definitely will train my solder skills.
I've soldered chips with this pin pitch and count. I respect the nice work you did. It's not difficult if you have the experience, however for most people it's scary difficult. Flux flux flux is all I can say.
Cool! I'm wanting to try this for myself for some time now on two very crippled V2 cards I own. Bought a few Bruce (TMU), Chuck (FBI) chips and some RAM for them on UTsource at the start of this "human malware" we're experiencing. I've already tried replacing the RAM, RAMDAC, VGA output switch IC and watch the debug logs while starting up a glide demo. RAMDAC seems to initialize, RAM is being detected but glide apps simply freeze up and have to ALT+TAB and kill them. There's no output in the monitor. With some apps one card sometimes output a brief frame and then blackness or that frame stucks. The debug logs are somewhat cryptic, but a modified old linux voodoo2 kernel module can be recompiled with a lot more customly written debug output. Maybe. I'm not very good at visual C++ SDK that Windows uses and this can be already very time consuming. Even measured the oscillator clock on a scope, checked voltages. All fine. (The V2 seems to idle at a standby speed of 50MHz, jumping to the target clock speed (~90MHz) after initializing and running an app. The only thing left is to play around with the TMUs and the FBI and hope they are not fake. After watching your video I'll try reflowing the pins first, then go on with replacing them. I've already successfully resurrected another card missing the green color output by a simple RAMDAC and switch IC replacement. That working card has a fine working "brother" too to run in SLI with, a thing I was missing as a kid. :) One of the two working cards was 8Megs originally, but became 12megs with a little soldering.
I had a diamond monster II 3d 12 Mb if I remember right it was a full length or pretty close. That card blew my mind to little bits absolutely incredible.
I don't think so :D The first 64MB 3Dfx card was Voodoo5, which was released in 2000. In the year 1998 it was more likely Banshee with maximum of 16MB or Voodoo2 with 12MB.
hey man, fantastic video? quick question, do you still have that bracket 3d model for the v1? i'm thinking of fixing a card with memory issues and no bracket sadly haha.
Hi, congratulations for repair! But i have seen at minute 11:18 on U2 memory a pin not soldered in the middle of ic. When you have time please check. Possible to be a cold soldering that will fail in the future.
2 years old but I have an idea. Take one of the working Voodoo cards, remove the memory, and replace the memory with a socket. You can use it as a tester for video RAM.
Hi! Thanks. I designed a template some time ago and the first version was 3mm thick. Since this is not metal, I wanted it to have as thick as possible for stability reasons. However 3mm was a very tight fit and I had to reduce it to 2mm. It is still stable enough and now it fits at least into all standard AT cases, which I have at hand. However, I guess, there are still cases out there, where even 2mm could be a problem. Furthermore, I had to make the holes for the screws slightly deeper as well, because they are a little bit too high otherwise. I already have couple of 3D brackets models for soundcards and now, for 3dfx. I can open source them, if there is interest...
@@necro_ware First, great video, I have to try to fix a V2 card which had a damaged Fb chip (chip was removed and damaged two pads on board). It would be great to have the brackets available!!! I'm missing one on a voodoo 2 card :)
I have Voodoos 1, 2, and 3, and still probably cherish (yeesh) them more than almost any other video cards I've had. My 2, though, has always had these red blotchy artifacts when playing multitextured games (q1 looks great, q2 has some artifacting). They always played just fine otherwise, but it has bugged me and I haven't used it in a retro machine because of the artifacts. Now I wonder if it could be something as simple as sloppy solder. That would be crazy. I kind of want to dig it out and take a look! I just assumed it was bad RAM, but I'm thinking it's the TMU itself. I should have warrantied it right away, but I hated to be without it :)
I have 2 two Voodoo 2 and booth are artifacting one is slightly better it can run couple of Quake 2 benchmark. Always nice to see Voodoo raised from dead or any other card especially old cards .
At 11:17 when you show the texture buffer memory chips pin 5 from the left edge of the screen appears not to be soldered correctly. This style of package can be particularly difficult to hand solder correctly. Speaking from experience.
I have a 110MHz (memory) Voodoo2 card with damaged legs on a corner of the frame buffer chip. Sadly, eBay shipping damage. Actually I have two such cards but one is damaged and the other is perfect. I'd love to try and fix the damaged one some day because the good one runs great overclocked to 110MHz and I've wanted for years now to have a 110MHz Voodoo2 SLI setup. I would need a donor FBI chip, which I don't currently have without sacrificing a working card. I've also never done surface-mount soldering at this level so I think practice would be needed first! For now my pair of Diamond Voodoo2's runs quite well at 100MHz.
@@NVMDSTEvil Actually that's exactly what I tried when I received the thing. The damage was too extensive though, a bunch of pins at one of the chip's corners were mashed together and in my effort to separate them one of the legs broke off - not all the way up, so there's still something to grab onto but it would need a bodge to reattach it to the board. At that point I packed it away, as about four additional pins were still mashed together into a single mess. I suspect the best way to fix it would be removing the entire chip from the board with hot air, cleaning up any remaining mess on the board, straightening the legs as much as possible in the open-air, and then marrying the two back together attaching what can be attached and using bodge connections for whatever cannot be restored to original positions. The other option would be to cut all the damaged pins half-way-up, remove just those pins and their solder from the board, and try to bodge connect each one back to the board with a super-tiny wire. I might have the skill set and tools to do the second option now but it would be risky. The pins are just so small and close together!
@@angieandretti I have the same damage on card, PCI S3 Trio64 DX. Only about 4 pins are damage on the main chips this way, but it is pity to throw it out. I've tried to repair it with needle, but also no sucess, they are quite hard to move with them, even when they are so thin. I dont want to use force, or I'm sure I will make them loose! I also dont know to solder. I would love to be so good at soldering as Necroware
if you use a logic analyzer you could test it in-situ; look for stuck bits, etc. Just clip onto the ic and run the device watching its data in/out, etc.
@@necro_ware ahh, I see what you mean. Not sure if the original SDK is available, but a simple set of textures to buffer (to fill full buffer) then read it back? Similar thing could be used to test the rest I would think.... But overall, a chip clip and looking for stuck bits seems to be the go-to for efficiency.
I laughed like crazy, when he started game without texture VRAM. I will be sure to store this useful information right next to my collection of hair, fingernail clippings, and chicken bones. Chickiebonez! Yahma-yahma, yahma-yahma, YAHMA!
Funny. I repaired a Voodoo showing all white textures last year. I noticed that when I would slide my fingers across the upper RAM IC legs, colored textures would appear. It turned out that a zero Ohms resistor in the RAS line of the upper RAM ICs was totally open. No visual defects on the resistor could be seen. I wonder how that could happen, especially with the tiny currents in the RAS line.
I had one sound card, which was visually as good as new, but didn't work though. As I tested the datalines, I realized, that one signal is not going through. Turned out to be a micro crack in the SMD resistor. It was not visible at all, but as soon, as I desoldered it, the resistor fell in two parts right in my hand. I guess, may be there was slight hit on it in the past and with your 3Dfx may be there was something similar.... who knows :)
@@necro_ware I've used old S3 Trio/Virge cards to test these kind of memory chips before because a lot of these S3 based cards came with sockets to expand the memory from 1MB to 2MB (Trio32/64 usually) or 2MB to 4MB (Virge). Only downside is that these cards run the memory a lot slower than the Voodoos do AFAIK, but if it's artifacting immediately there's no need to test those chips at higher speeds
well, in those times, every year was new generation of accelerators. Often with +50% to +100% boost. They made them the way, so they survive 2-3 years, then they will be unusable. So probably didnt care. Also as far as I know, in early 1998, none graphic card used heatsink, people used to like them as very plain cards with naked chips. Heatsink looked weird, so they started to use it, where it was really obligation, so card will not malfuction within 2 years. Even Matrox G100 didnt have heatsink as far as I know.
Thank you! Gosh, this is a really long story. I got into the whole thing about 30 years ago and it never let me go :) I was already messing around with soft- and hardware a lot as I was a child, so there was no magical moment, where I suddenly could do such things. I made it step by step and with a strong opinion, that a day where I didn't learn something was a bad day :D
It depends on what you want to do. I studied computer science and electronics. A lot of my theoretical knowledge is from there. My practical knowledge is based on what I can recall from the time, where I was a kid and built my own computers. In regards of this video, in the 90s I implemented computer graphics with glide API and 3Dfx, so I more or less know, how the voodoo cards work. And soldering, well, this is just practice, practice, practice. If you want to understand the technology, you have to pick up old parts and build your own computers, run into various issues, read and try again to find a solution. If you want to get better in soldering, well build your own DIY devices, get an old part and try to desolder and solder back some parts. You can also buy soldering practice kits, whatsoever. Long story short, there is no "how to start" answer. You must know, what you want to do and find a way to do so....
@@necro_ware Thanks a lot for your engagement. Your video series on reviving the HP laptop got me started because I had it and therefore got the confidence to take it apart and successfully restore it to a degree. Your channel is a great resource and inspiration. Regards!
6:08 - What's differance between those capacitors between memory area? There are four capacitors. C104 C105 C102 and C107. I have card, where I have them soldered in different spots. I mean, like those yellow ones are instead of round ones. Do they have same attributes and can be switched? What is better one? They are on S3 Rage IIC AGP. I have two same looking cards. Both cards are working and have same PCB, just have different types of capacitors. I don't know, what kind of card should I keep... with yellow one small capactiros, or with larger cylindric ones.
There is a difference between the caps and sometimes this difference is important and sometimes not. The yellow caps are usually tantalum capacitors, they are smaller, they don't get leaky over the years, but they are more expensive, than the round ones, which are electrolytic caps. Which can leak and are bigger. However that's not all, the caps have also differences in electrical behavior. In some cases they are interchangeable, but in others not. Sometimes it's better to use electrolytic caps and in others you can go for tantalum. Just search for tantalum vs electrolytic on the internet.
My dad says that in the RMA departments of 3DFX they had all sorts of Chip testing things. Wherever that went is where you will find those chip testers.
If I desolder the ICs it's not hard to test them, but the question is if there is some software which can be used to test the memory without desoldering it. May be it is somehow possible to write unto the 3dfx memory and read it back to check out if there was any data corruption.
@@necro_ware again I don't have access to these things myself but I do have proof that they exist and that helps significantly trust me I've been through software hunting
Question, is it possible to solder sockets to the chips instead of soldering, to avoid putting too much stress in case of maintenance? or would the heat of use strain the chip anyways?
I'm not a hardware guy, it seems strange that you can remove the texture memory chips and it doesn't crash, it just keeps running without any textures instead
To save on costs, all the geometry was done on the Pentium CPU. This was the "magic" that allowed 3DFX to make a consumer-level texture-mapped 3D graphics on PC in the mid 1990s. It wasn't until Voodoo2 that they started to move some of this math onto the GPU.
Hi my friend! Very nice video! You can use the RAM's of cheapo S3 Virge PCI RAM's to replace bad IC RAM's of Voodoo1. Replacing caps it is also a good measure to extend Voodoo live. Lara Croft continues a really hot girl :)
Hi Jorge! Thank you very much. The RAM ICs are actually quite common, not only S3, but also ATI 3D Rage and others used the same chips. I even have some of them, but I just don't want to destroy one working card just may be to repair another one. My retro heart would not allow that ;) In regards of caps, you are probably right for the Diamond Monster 3D, but the one I've been talking the most in this video about, thankfully has no electrolytic caps at all. And with proper textures everything looks hot, not only Lara ;)
@@necro_ware Maybe you can take a video card with RAM expansion sockets an put 2 chips in these sockets each time and test ? ^^ Great video by the way.
Thank you Deksor! Yes, I also thought about that, but all I can do then is to turn on the pc and look if the screen is corrupted or not. It is a way indeed, but I thought, may be there is some software available, where I can write directly into the memory of the voodoo card and see if it works. This way, may be, it would be possible to address and find a broken memory chip directly?! Just in the way it was made with the dead test cartridge on C64, you know?!
@@necro_ware I actually thought of this ! I even thought that maybe there's a way to identify the potentially bad chip ! As for the VGA card test, I guess you could look how to program the ram directly and do some read/write testing ?
@@Dxceor2486 Yes, probably in a VGA card it is may be easier, I guess. Also, if I'll find some time, I'll take a look at 3dfx glide API, may be there is something about it.
Hi, thank you. I have one, yes, you can see it in some other videos, but the cheap oscilloscopes are not good enough for such frequencies. My cost about 80€ back then and is reliable for up to 35-38MHz, despite, that it advertises 100MHz.... At that frequencies you already need something beefier, than that. But for older 286-486 mainboards my device works quite good.
@@necro_ware mine actually does go to advertised freq i guess i got lucky sorry i am a new sub so haven't seen alot of your vids yes but looking forward to binge on your vids they are great!
@@necro_ware They're pretty easy to hand-solder since the pins you solder to the board are exposed within the socket. Haven't tried hot air yet though cause that seems like a bad idea from the start on plastic sockets :P The main issue with these sockets is actually finding them...
3:11- Hello. I have the same board GA-6BXC. I want to ask you, if you have same problem, that is mentioned in THW review, that it automaticaly power on, as long power supply is powered on (switch at back of the PSU is set from 0 to 1) I have same problem, and it is pretty annyoing.
I don't have that board anymore, but I don't remember to have that problem. You also can usually setup such things in BIOS, in the power management section. Search for "restore state on power on" or something similar.
This mad man just ran Tomb Raider on a 3D accelerator with no texture memory... and it worked. Blew my mind, that TMU is just blindly writing/reading to open traces, and it could care less! Makes sense but I would have never thought to try it
Exactly what I thought. This is absolutely mindblowing ^^
Indeed that was UNEXPECTED...
I thought exactly the same, it works even without memory!! :-]
6:30 I'm more impressed by the fact that the card is still stable despite not having _any_ texture memory. I have a Voodoo3 1000 that I'm excited to finally test during my time off class and hopefully it isn't broken.
was it dead?
Great video! Your solder skills are really stunning. Keep on your great work.
Thank you very much, but I think my skills are mediocre. Just enough to replace a 3Dfx IC.... :)
@@necro_ware If I can learn to solder SMD components half as well as your "mediocre" effort, then I'll be happy about it.
I soldered thousands of fine pitch IC's in my lifetime at ISO9001x and even Mil-spec and you did just as good as I would have or anyone I've seen. So great work with the equipment that you had!
Had a reference voodoo 1 as a kid. Epoxied heatsinks on the main CPUs because it would lock up and I noticed the chips were hot. After that blind mod, it ran perfectly. The visual difference was incredible. Hardware interpolation made a huge visual difference. Acceleration allowed old PCs to run quake and unreal 1 which were absolutely mind blowing compared to doom and wolfenstein.
successfully desoldering and re-soldering a large surface mount IC with more legs than a millipede - that's some serious retro computing restoration
What brilliant work, such a pleasure to what your repair work - it's a real inspiration.
Wow, this was fantastic! I'm a fan of old hardware, especially old Voodoo cards, and it was really empowering to see you repairing step by step and old Voodoo card. Made my day better! :)
This is just amazing work :) Great video, as always! Cheers!
Your channel is by far the most favorite one for me into hardware repairs! Alles gute und vielen dank! I will subscribe on an instant!
Nice to see one of the most coveted cards from my youth up and running! Can't remember how long I wanted to get one, and finally got it. It was a gaming bliss.
love your videos! I've leared so much from them thank you so much!
Excellent work, i enjoyed this vídeo so much, the intro is fantastic 👍
Really enjoying these videos! Thank you :)
Epic repair. Fantastic video, and subject matter.
Excellent work! I still have a bunch of Voodoo's that I kept from back when they were current hardware. All still work fine. Fun times.
What a suitable intro for the "Voodoo Master"! Great work!
Thanks S.! ;)
just my kind of youtube channel! Keep up the good work!
Well done! Congrats! 🙂👍👍👍👍
Well done really enjoyed this video!
Awesome work!
6:31 LOLOL XD Nice :D
i love this tecnical in to the hardware :D
Love the Voodoo 1. Just something about the way the card looks is very pleasing. And its great for early 3d gaming as well.
the voodoo 5 9000000......
Discovered this late... Enjoyed the repair!
Love the videos!
Nice job! Very nice soldering.
You could take the RAM sockets from (for example) an old PCI graphics card that has an upgradable RAM option…or just get some RAM sockets.
Then create a Voodoo “test” board that has replaceable RAM that can be inserted or removed from the sockets…just an idea…
Excellent video and great work!
Thank you!
I use to run an Intel740 and Voodoo hooked together. That combination blew the first run of Nvidia 32's out of the water.
All of the 3dfx games around that time were crude by today's standards but back then they were great. Monster Truck, Warzone2100, Need for speed 3 and Unreal were really fun to play. It was just a shame that the Voodoo's graphics memory couldn't be used for general applications.
Yep, I still remember for the first time seeing GLQuake running on a 3Dfx Voodoo in some computer shop. It really looked like magic, blew my freaking mind. Right then and there I knew I needed this in my life. lol Little else compares to the feeling of having the 3DFX Voodoo card in your PC in 1997.
Damn I toss so many broken PC hardware that might got fixed with knowledge you provide😥 I'm very interested in repairing stuff like this and definitely will train my solder skills.
Great Job !!!!
Excellent video, I enjoyed it and I really liked. I own a voodoo 2 in a vegetative state, but I don't have spare parts to exchange
Great work.
I've soldered chips with this pin pitch and count. I respect the nice work you did. It's not difficult if you have the experience, however for most people it's scary difficult. Flux flux flux is all I can say.
Great project!
Cool! I'm wanting to try this for myself for some time now on two very crippled V2 cards I own. Bought a few Bruce (TMU), Chuck (FBI) chips and some RAM for them on UTsource at the start of this "human malware" we're experiencing. I've already tried replacing the RAM, RAMDAC, VGA output switch IC and watch the debug logs while starting up a glide demo. RAMDAC seems to initialize, RAM is being detected but glide apps simply freeze up and have to ALT+TAB and kill them. There's no output in the monitor. With some apps one card sometimes output a brief frame and then blackness or that frame stucks. The debug logs are somewhat cryptic, but a modified old linux voodoo2 kernel module can be recompiled with a lot more customly written debug output. Maybe. I'm not very good at visual C++ SDK that Windows uses and this can be already very time consuming. Even measured the oscillator clock on a scope, checked voltages. All fine. (The V2 seems to idle at a standby speed of 50MHz, jumping to the target clock speed (~90MHz) after initializing and running an app. The only thing left is to play around with the TMUs and the FBI and hope they are not fake. After watching your video I'll try reflowing the pins first, then go on with replacing them. I've already successfully resurrected another card missing the green color output by a simple RAMDAC and switch IC replacement. That working card has a fine working "brother" too to run in SLI with, a thing I was missing as a kid. :) One of the two working cards was 8Megs originally, but became 12megs with a little soldering.
"Fucking Voodoo Magic Man!!!" Well done!!!
Thanks! for video!
Very well done! Great work \o/
Thank you Tobias! Repairing this card was probably even more fun, then to use it :D
good work on saving good old 3d accelerator
Nice work!
Awsome tips on soldering
I had a diamond monster II 3d 12 Mb if I remember right it was a full length or pretty close. That card blew my mind to little bits absolutely incredible.
Excellent video!
Thank you very much! :)
Tomb Raider 2020: Here king, have some polygons.
Nice job !
To desoldering ICs that does not have pads underneath it is a great help to use low melting point solder like bismuth alloy (for example Chip Quick).
Please keep up the good work
Respect. Good guy! 3Dfx rulez!
well done!
I am having exactly the same problem with my Diamond 3dfX. Hope to revive it with this technique, thanks very much !
No problem. I wish you a lot of success! :D
I used to have a Voodoo 64mg graphics card back in 1998, and a creative soundblaster sound card. Great machine.
I don't think so :D The first 64MB 3Dfx card was Voodoo5, which was released in 2000. In the year 1998 it was more likely Banshee with maximum of 16MB or Voodoo2 with 12MB.
@@necro_ware Damn. You must be right.
So Great!.i like Voodoo1
WAOOO Excelente.
Would have been really cool if you also only put 1 or 2 of the memory modules back on to see what happens.
that was really a Voodoo magic!!
First this is astonishing work so patient, for testing you may use S3 Trio64V2/DX is useing exacly this same memory only you need version with sockets
hey man, fantastic video? quick question, do you still have that bracket 3d model for the v1? i'm thinking of fixing a card with memory issues and no bracket sadly haha.
nice work broo
Remember my brother asking me, "Is it a good thing to buy one of those........ Zombie II cards?"
Lovely rework that takes skill
Nice Clip
Hi, congratulations for repair! But i have seen at minute 11:18 on U2 memory a pin not soldered in the middle of ic. When you have time please check. Possible to be a cold soldering that will fail in the future.
I just saw this and I must say, good catch!
Bravo bravo 👏
2 years old but I have an idea. Take one of the working Voodoo cards, remove the memory, and replace the memory with a socket. You can use it as a tester for video RAM.
6:00 early version Diamond Monster 3D from 1996, this and Orchid Righteous 3D was first on the market, nice
Nice intro!
How does the 3D printed bracket card fit into a normal case (since it's a little bit thicker than metal) ?
Hi! Thanks. I designed a template some time ago and the first version was 3mm thick. Since this is not metal, I wanted it to have as thick as possible for stability reasons. However 3mm was a very tight fit and I had to reduce it to 2mm. It is still stable enough and now it fits at least into all standard AT cases, which I have at hand. However, I guess, there are still cases out there, where even 2mm could be a problem. Furthermore, I had to make the holes for the screws slightly deeper as well, because they are a little bit too high otherwise. I already have couple of 3D brackets models for soundcards and now, for 3dfx. I can open source them, if there is interest...
@@necro_ware First, great video, I have to try to fix a V2 card which had a damaged Fb chip (chip was removed and damaged two pads on board). It would be great to have the brackets available!!! I'm missing one on a voodoo 2 card :)
I have Voodoos 1, 2, and 3, and still probably cherish (yeesh) them more than almost any other video cards I've had. My 2, though, has always had these red blotchy artifacts when playing multitextured games (q1 looks great, q2 has some artifacting). They always played just fine otherwise, but it has bugged me and I haven't used it in a retro machine because of the artifacts. Now I wonder if it could be something as simple as sloppy solder. That would be crazy. I kind of want to dig it out and take a look! I just assumed it was bad RAM, but I'm thinking it's the TMU itself.
I should have warrantied it right away, but I hated to be without it :)
No heatsink? YA! Use the girlfriends feet...those things could even cool a Nuclear Reactor in winter times..
You should put heatsinks on gpu chip and ram chips defo ! Good job on soldering 🙏
I have 2 two Voodoo 2 and booth are artifacting one is slightly better it can run couple of Quake 2 benchmark.
Always nice to see Voodoo raised from dead or any other card especially old cards .
Thanks for pinup and greetings from Bosnia.
Nice
6:31 lol, I was thinking the same
At 11:17 when you show the texture buffer memory chips pin 5 from the left edge of the screen appears not to be soldered correctly.
This style of package can be particularly difficult to hand solder correctly. Speaking from experience.
I have a 110MHz (memory) Voodoo2 card with damaged legs on a corner of the frame buffer chip. Sadly, eBay shipping damage. Actually I have two such cards but one is damaged and the other is perfect. I'd love to try and fix the damaged one some day because the good one runs great overclocked to 110MHz and I've wanted for years now to have a 110MHz Voodoo2 SLI setup. I would need a donor FBI chip, which I don't currently have without sacrificing a working card. I've also never done surface-mount soldering at this level so I think practice would be needed first! For now my pair of Diamond Voodoo2's runs quite well at 100MHz.
If the legs are just bent you can use a needle or pin to straighten them.
@@NVMDSTEvil Actually that's exactly what I tried when I received the thing. The damage was too extensive though, a bunch of pins at one of the chip's corners were mashed together and in my effort to separate them one of the legs broke off - not all the way up, so there's still something to grab onto but it would need a bodge to reattach it to the board. At that point I packed it away, as about four additional pins were still mashed together into a single mess. I suspect the best way to fix it would be removing the entire chip from the board with hot air, cleaning up any remaining mess on the board, straightening the legs as much as possible in the open-air, and then marrying the two back together attaching what can be attached and using bodge connections for whatever cannot be restored to original positions. The other option would be to cut all the damaged pins half-way-up, remove just those pins and their solder from the board, and try to bodge connect each one back to the board with a super-tiny wire. I might have the skill set and tools to do the second option now but it would be risky. The pins are just so small and close together!
@@angieandretti yeah sounds like a pain in the butt thats for sure
@@angieandretti I have the same damage on card, PCI S3 Trio64 DX. Only about 4 pins are damage on the main chips this way, but it is pity to throw it out. I've tried to repair it with needle, but also no sucess, they are quite hard to move with them, even when they are so thin.
I dont want to use force, or I'm sure I will make them loose! I also dont know to solder. I would love to be so good at soldering as Necroware
Wow. That was magic.
if you solder a spacer in for the rams you can just pop them out if they go bad and replace them easy
if you use a logic analyzer you could test it in-situ; look for stuck bits, etc. Just clip onto the ic and run the device watching its data in/out, etc.
My question was more in the direction of software and if there is a tool, which can test the memory on a 3Dfx.
@@necro_ware ahh, I see what you mean.
Not sure if the original SDK is available, but a simple set of textures to buffer (to fill full buffer) then read it back? Similar thing could be used to test the rest I would think....
But overall, a chip clip and looking for stuck bits seems to be the go-to for efficiency.
I don't know if u know but u should still be able to find the ic's available so those could theoretically be brought back
I'll ask my father he worked at 3DFX and managed to bring home a rare voodoo 5
I laughed like crazy, when he started game without texture VRAM. I will be sure to store this useful information right next to my collection of hair, fingernail clippings, and chicken bones. Chickiebonez! Yahma-yahma, yahma-yahma, YAHMA!
The Intergraph VooDoo was my start with OpenGL, then I went with the The Pro Intergraph Wildcat Cards..
Dual voodoo man! SLI them up!
This is a normal Voodoo 1. Only Voodoo 2 was SLI capable (well some modded aftermarket V1 recreations too, but this is a normal V1)
Funny. I repaired a Voodoo showing all white textures last year. I noticed that when I would slide my fingers across the upper RAM IC legs, colored textures would appear. It turned out that a zero Ohms resistor in the RAS line of the upper RAM ICs was totally open. No visual defects on the resistor could be seen. I wonder how that could happen, especially with the tiny currents in the RAS line.
I had one sound card, which was visually as good as new, but didn't work though. As I tested the datalines, I realized, that one signal is not going through. Turned out to be a micro crack in the SMD resistor. It was not visible at all, but as soon, as I desoldered it, the resistor fell in two parts right in my hand. I guess, may be there was slight hit on it in the past and with your 3Dfx may be there was something similar.... who knows :)
Maybe you could solder memory sockets to one of your voodoo cards, that way at least you could rapidly test memory.
Thought about that as well already. I honestly never soldered the sockets for such memory, I guess I have to practice a little bit first.
@@necro_ware I've used old S3 Trio/Virge cards to test these kind of memory chips before because a lot of these S3 based cards came with sockets to expand the memory from 1MB to 2MB (Trio32/64 usually) or 2MB to 4MB (Virge). Only downside is that these cards run the memory a lot slower than the Voodoos do AFAIK, but if it's artifacting immediately there's no need to test those chips at higher speeds
They really should have had cooling on these cards.
Too many died due to the heat issues.
well, in those times, every year was new generation of accelerators. Often with +50% to +100% boost.
They made them the way, so they survive 2-3 years, then they will be unusable. So probably didnt care.
Also as far as I know, in early 1998, none graphic card used heatsink, people used to like them as very plain cards with naked chips. Heatsink looked weird, so they started to use it, where it was really obligation, so card will not malfuction within 2 years. Even Matrox G100 didnt have heatsink as far as I know.
Hi there great video !
btw can you please tell me how you got started into this field of work and how you advanced
regards
Thank you! Gosh, this is a really long story. I got into the whole thing about 30 years ago and it never let me go :) I was already messing around with soft- and hardware a lot as I was a child, so there was no magical moment, where I suddenly could do such things. I made it step by step and with a strong opinion, that a day where I didn't learn something was a bad day :D
@@necro_ware thank you so much for taking the time to reply. If one was to start, what is a good place to do so?
It depends on what you want to do. I studied computer science and electronics. A lot of my theoretical knowledge is from there. My practical knowledge is based on what I can recall from the time, where I was a kid and built my own computers. In regards of this video, in the 90s I implemented computer graphics with glide API and 3Dfx, so I more or less know, how the voodoo cards work. And soldering, well, this is just practice, practice, practice. If you want to understand the technology, you have to pick up old parts and build your own computers, run into various issues, read and try again to find a solution. If you want to get better in soldering, well build your own DIY devices, get an old part and try to desolder and solder back some parts. You can also buy soldering practice kits, whatsoever. Long story short, there is no "how to start" answer. You must know, what you want to do and find a way to do so....
@@necro_ware Thanks a lot for your engagement. Your video series on reviving the HP laptop got me started because I had it and therefore got the confidence to take it apart and successfully restore it to a degree. Your channel is a great resource and inspiration.
Regards!
Thank you! I wish you a lot of success with your plans.
6:08 - What's differance between those capacitors between memory area? There are four capacitors. C104 C105 C102 and C107.
I have card, where I have them soldered in different spots. I mean, like those yellow ones are instead of round ones.
Do they have same attributes and can be switched? What is better one?
They are on S3 Rage IIC AGP. I have two same looking cards. Both cards are working and have same PCB, just have different types of capacitors. I don't know, what kind of card should I keep... with yellow one small capactiros, or with larger cylindric ones.
There is a difference between the caps and sometimes this difference is important and sometimes not. The yellow caps are usually tantalum capacitors, they are smaller, they don't get leaky over the years, but they are more expensive, than the round ones, which are electrolytic caps. Which can leak and are bigger. However that's not all, the caps have also differences in electrical behavior. In some cases they are interchangeable, but in others not. Sometimes it's better to use electrolytic caps and in others you can go for tantalum. Just search for tantalum vs electrolytic on the internet.
My dad says that in the RMA departments of 3DFX they had all sorts of Chip testing things. Wherever that went is where you will find those chip testers.
If I desolder the ICs it's not hard to test them, but the question is if there is some software which can be used to test the memory without desoldering it. May be it is somehow possible to write unto the 3dfx memory and read it back to check out if there was any data corruption.
@@necro_ware yeah I can ask him if there were software tools for testing
@@necro_ware again I don't have access to these things myself but I do have proof that they exist and that helps significantly trust me I've been through software hunting
i got one of them 3dfx chips inthe motherbord i used to build my windws 2000 pc
Question, is it possible to solder sockets to the chips instead of soldering, to avoid putting too much stress in case of maintenance? or would the heat of use strain the chip anyways?
You mean memory chips? Yes, sure it is possible. I just didn't have any at hand.
@@necro_ware I mean, not just the memory chips, but the texture and model chips that you soldered as well
What flux are you using?
08/15 Stannol Lötfett von Conrad.
I'm not a hardware guy, it seems strange that you can remove the texture memory chips and it doesn't crash, it just keeps running without any textures instead
Yeah, that was cool :D I was also curious what happens, if I do that.
To save on costs, all the geometry was done on the Pentium CPU. This was the "magic" that allowed 3DFX to make a consumer-level texture-mapped 3D graphics on PC in the mid 1990s. It wasn't until Voodoo2 that they started to move some of this math onto the GPU.
Good old days where you could swap memory chips with a solder iron. These days it's a painful job when you have to swap a GDDR6 chip :)
Yes, that would be a tedious job to do.
Hi my friend! Very nice video! You can use the RAM's of cheapo S3 Virge PCI RAM's to replace bad IC RAM's of Voodoo1. Replacing caps it is also a good measure to extend Voodoo live. Lara Croft continues a really hot girl :)
Hi Jorge! Thank you very much. The RAM ICs are actually quite common, not only S3, but also ATI 3D Rage and others used the same chips. I even have some of them, but I just don't want to destroy one working card just may be to repair another one. My retro heart would not allow that ;) In regards of caps, you are probably right for the Diamond Monster 3D, but the one I've been talking the most in this video about, thankfully has no electrolytic caps at all. And with proper textures everything looks hot, not only Lara ;)
@@necro_ware Maybe you can take a video card with RAM expansion sockets an put 2 chips in these sockets each time and test ? ^^
Great video by the way.
Thank you Deksor! Yes, I also thought about that, but all I can do then is to turn on the pc and look if the screen is corrupted or not. It is a way indeed, but I thought, may be there is some software available, where I can write directly into the memory of the voodoo card and see if it works. This way, may be, it would be possible to address and find a broken memory chip directly?! Just in the way it was made with the dead test cartridge on C64, you know?!
@@necro_ware I actually thought of this !
I even thought that maybe there's a way to identify the potentially bad chip !
As for the VGA card test, I guess you could look how to program the ram directly and do some read/write testing ?
@@Dxceor2486 Yes, probably in a VGA card it is may be easier, I guess. Also, if I'll find some time, I'll take a look at 3dfx glide API, may be there is something about it.
Have you tried a o- scope there are cheap ones that work well either diy or assembled for under 50 dollars. Great video keep it up!
Hi, thank you. I have one, yes, you can see it in some other videos, but the cheap oscilloscopes are not good enough for such frequencies. My cost about 80€ back then and is reliable for up to 35-38MHz, despite, that it advertises 100MHz.... At that frequencies you already need something beefier, than that. But for older 286-486 mainboards my device works quite good.
@@necro_ware mine actually does go to advertised freq i guess i got lucky sorry i am a new sub so haven't seen alot of your vids yes but looking forward to binge on your vids they are great!
There are pads for more DRAM on the back. You could have an 8MB card.
No there aren't. It's voodoo 1 and not 2.
you can solder some sockets for the ram on the card :) on many S3 9xx pci cards i saw this sockets
I thought about that, but I have no experience in soldering such sockets yet. I guess, I'll have to gain some practice in that first ;)
@@necro_ware They're pretty easy to hand-solder since the pins you solder to the board are exposed within the socket. Haven't tried hot air yet though cause that seems like a bad idea from the start on plastic sockets :P The main issue with these sockets is actually finding them...
I came. ROFL. On a serious note, definitely apply some basic heatsinks on everything. Make it last forever.
3:11- Hello. I have the same board GA-6BXC. I want to ask you, if you have same problem, that is mentioned in THW review, that it automaticaly power on, as long power supply is powered on (switch at back of the PSU is set from 0 to 1)
I have same problem, and it is pretty annyoing.
I don't have that board anymore, but I don't remember to have that problem. You also can usually setup such things in BIOS, in the power management section. Search for "restore state on power on" or something similar.
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