So my dad bought me a Voodoo 2 8MB back when they first came out. A creative Blaster model and it arrived DOA brand new. This makes me wonder if the 8MB cards in particular had some sort of manufacturing defects. I was beyond gutted. At that time the mail order place we got it from sent out a replacement next day and it was a 12MB as way of an appology. If you weren't there back then words can not describe how mind-blowing a step forward it was for PC gaming back then. Still have a boxed and working 12MB card and the nostalgia feels for it are off the charts for me.
I remeber advert : Diamon Monster x2 = Mega Monster :) Yes, it brings memories, but S3 Virge 3D is "the one" for me. P60 + S3 Virge in MDK benchmark faster than P200 MMX O.o Monster truck madness + Descent... mind blowing graphics and frame rates xD
Voodoo2 was my first 3d Accelerator. My father never saw the need for one until my brother showed him Quake II on an original Voodoo. 3DFX changed gaming forever for us.
I went to Orchid in my home town Basingstoke in the UK in 1997/8, cannot remember the exact year?They where kind enough to demo their new Orchid Riotous 2 Voodoo 2 running Quake II before it was released. I will never forget being absolutely blown away. I had never seen a pc game look that good before, absolute game changer at the time. I still have my Orchid Voodoo 2 cards in an SLI setup with a Pentium 233 MMX.
wow, thats fantastic. The industry I'm in used some of those cards in production level arcade games. Many of those cards are failing now and NO ONE will touch them. I now have a new weapon in my arsenal thanks to your video!.
I worked for an importer of Voodoo cards in 1997/8. I will never forget seeing Quake running for the first time via the Voodoo on a 60MHz Pentium so smoothly and how much better the graphics were - the Pentium MMX 166 without the card was an absolute dog in comparison! It was a great year and a half there testing every possible hardware config with all the latest games. I had friends buy the cards and "report bugs" with games that I wanted to be paid to play! I do remember having to change out some caps and resistors on the boards due to some issue - 25 years later I can't recall specifically where or why... I'm glad this popped up in my feed and brought back some memories. Thanks!
I gave away my Voodoo2 many years ago. Still have a Voodoo3 in a Pentium III box in my basement that I booted up for the first time in a long time to play UT ‘99 last night after watching several of these videos. Nice attention to detail here. I would have just bodged a single 22-ohm through-hole resistor over the open-circuit one and called it good enough!
I’ve been watching your back catalog here on RUclips and I’ve been very impressed by the depth you manage to get into while still being a reasonable time investment. Really enjoying it so far!
Very true. The more modern stuff is intimidating to me. Way more complex and the miniaturization just makes everything harder. The introduction of more BGA components also made things a lot less accessible for the average hobbyist.
I really need one of those microscopes. This video shows just how accessible fine repairs like this are to any of us if we have the kit, the confidence, and the information needed to investigate. Great job finding the fault and truly amazing that we have such a great community to help with such things. Huge congrats!
Thanks very much! Yeah, these microscopes are an excellent investment if you do even occasional electronics repair. I don't have the best eye sight to begin with and using a magnifying glass can be frustrating. I got this one as a gift last Christmas but seems they are becoming much more affordable these days. Totally agree about the retro community - so many helpful folks out there willing to share their expertise and time. Thanks again.
Awesome work! I bought a pair of Voodoo 2 cards on a forum in the late 2000's, they were well outdated but I just liked the idea of two video cards 😅. A friend had to help with drivers and such to get them working. A couple years back I tried them again and only one of them was working. I spent some time making sure the tiny pins weren't shorted on the chips, they had a rough life in storage and some did look bent. Maybe the PC bug will bite again and I'll make another attempt. It was awesome to follow along with the repair, great job on the video! Best of luck with the train wreck version 😀
Whoa! that made me super excited. I have a non working Voodoo 2 by diamond sitting on the top of my shelf for at least 22(+ 2 years). And i just watched this, as a hobby solder skills made me think i can look up the problem maybe with your videos dude! Awesome! Thanks! :)
Awesome repair! While I never owned a V2 I did have a Voodoo Banshee which was awesome in both 2D and 3D back in the day! Also, I always love to see the original Unreal intro. Brings back good memories! I've been playing Digital Extreme's current game Warframe for over 7 years now!
Great video! I bought one of these off eBay back in high school that behaved exactly like the one you have. If only I was more knowledgeable at the time...went back and forth with the seller, spent days troubleshooting drivers, etc. And to think it could have been just a pesky DOA resistor...
My first ever PC had this card and i will always remember it. I spent so much time playing Unreal and UT99 on it, it was great. Voodoo 2 gave me a proper taste of 3D gaming, all i had before was Sega Genesis.
i bought one 12mb 6 months ago that was damaged, fixed it and i felt in love with it, its my 1st ever voodoo card, i cant believe how well it runs on my pentium od 180 mmx, gta2 and tomb raider 2 is smooth as butter, much better than the playstation ports
Awsome video. I think I still have my old Diamond Voodoo 2 lying somewhere in the adict. Remember borrowing a friends Creative card and they worked right of the bat together in sli. if I remember right it could run Everquest in 1024x768 in 80Hz with 2 cards in sli. Was pretty awsome on my Phillips 21" CRT that needed half of the desk size, tugged all the way in the corner to have room for mouse and keyboard... those things was HUGE compared to todays flat screens. 😊Was a big fan of Diamond cards back then. Remember having a rather pricy Diamond Viper 2Mb 2d Card because of the high quality Ramdac's used. Not completely sure why those things ment so much for the quality of the picture back then. Today you never hear about Ramdac's anymore.
Thank you. Today I got an InnoVision Voodoo 2 with perfect looking condition behaving the same way (not detected after driver install). I hope I can narrow down the source of failure and having something similar fixable issue. One day I will report back but I am glad I found your video. :)
I have sent it to guy who has equipment and experience with soldering (and microscope). TMU legs were simply deattaching when tested soldering, so he re-soldered the legs. Now it gives picture but freezes the PC under load. Quake 2 timedemo runs without issue, but only that, 3DMark and other game freezes after 1-2 seconds...No clue. Mojo gives proper data reporting TMUs, memory...
Very nice job there!!! So rewarding my friend, that voodoo2 still working! Mine also makes some glitches, so I will use all the info you provided. Thanks a lot!
Thanks very much for these informative repair videos. It gave me the info I needed to have a crack at solving the problem my faulty Diamond Monster voodoo 1 has got. I've so far narrowed it down to bad ram attached to the FBI chip as reducing it to 1MB got Tomb raider Dos working although with occasional glitching. I have put a post on Vogons in the video section.
Excellent repair! I have recently picked up a 12MB Monster 3D II that's not working, so will be an interesting troubleshoot I think! Thanks for highlighting Phil's Voodoo2 benchmarks in your previous video as well - I was originally thinking of pairing it with a P233 MMX but now I might shoot a bit higher!
Best of luck with your Monster 3D II. Let me know how it goes! .. Yeah I was pretty surprised just how drastic the difference can be with more CPU power available. Even a 400MHz K6-3 is quite bottlenecked in SLI. I've heard that V2 cards will get quite a bit hotter with faster CPUs too, so cooling is important. Cheers.
Nice work Mike, those debugging variables for the 3Dfx are good to know, thanks. You are a wizard at this now btw, your troubleshooting skills with this old tech are fantastic, great video again. Putting in the time on amazing resources like VOGONS is how the craft is mastered, and you have put your time in sir. If only we had all these resources back then.
Thanks very much for the kind words, I really appreciate it! I definitely don't consider myself an expert as I'm still learning as I go. But with the right tools, information and especially determination - it's amazing what you can accomplish :) .. so true about Vogons. It is a huge wealth of knowledge on the subject, that's for sure.
@@vswitchzero You are modest though, the engineers like yourself usually are (I almost said old there ;) Your bench skills say many years of experience and you wield an iron on PCB like a surgeon. I've learned some great tricks watching your honestly impeccable work.
Very nice! Yeah, those thin-film resistors do have failure-modes like that. If thermal cycles build up mechanical stress, the ceramic can get microcracks, cutting the conductive film in the process.
Thanks! Yeah, RA40 is quite close to the frame buffer, which can get beyond 75'C at load. It definitely makes sense that it could be related to thermal cycling (especially considering that this card is in pristine condition.) Cheers!
Thanks very much! I forgot about that actually, good tip! Btw, I subscribed to your channel recently - love seeing all the gaming footage from those days! :)
I think it's better to test with Quake 1. Quake 2 and Unreal are sometime quite sensitive to the driver version you use, or whatever hardware you have for no known reason. Quake1 is much more reliable.
Bloody love your content. Brings back the nostalgia of when I built my First system. Love to see you using some of the components I had in my collection when I was cutting my teeth in pc building/gaming. Keep it up mate
Great fault finding and fix as usual, I like that you show your process, it goes to show patience, determination and good knowledge and research and we can fix anything (well almost😁), really enjoy your videos, keep em coming. 👍
Thank you, this is exactly what I needed. I've got a Voodoo2 that detects correctly but displays Black and blue bars. I'm going to try that mojo tool. Excellent info.
Nice fix! valuable information too, every little fix that people share on RUclips undoubtedly helps others. Important to keep these cards going so good job! sad I lost all my old hardware long ago, would have liked to play with some of that stuff again.
This is good news. Been trying to get a hold of a decent voodoo 2 card for my win98 pc, without paying for it in blood. I may attempt a repair on a broken one instead for cheap.
Dude i wached your channel a couple days ago because i wanted to see if you made any more gpu repairs. Thank god i did that becuase youtube realised i like these and put this in my reccomended.
I really enjoyed the video. I particularly liked the in depth repair and soldering. I would like to learn to solder like that! I might pick up some of the flux you mentioned.
Thanks very much! It wasn't very long ago that I knew next to nothing about soldering. Getting lots of practice is the key. They sell practice kits on Amazon for very cheap that include a PCB and lots of SMD components, which is a great way to learn. Using scrap boards for desoldering practice is also great too. And of course, good quality flux is also important. Cheers!
Well thanks to you, I figured out that my "arcade" Obsidian2 90-2440 reports framebuffer = 0 MB when I put it in a Win98 machine. Since it's a weird 10MB card, I believe I have also identified which are the framebuffer RAM chips: the ones without memory on the back. The 2 other memory banks are doubled from the back so 4 512K chips on each side = 4MB each. Chips on only one side = the missing 2 MB of framebuffer. On the arcade, the output is inverted and mirrored, displaying only text in orange. also, I tested for a monster 2 8MB and the game does work, but is missing 2MB so there are some grfx artefacts. Not wanting to boost the memory card count to 12 MB yet, since your video talks about checking the microscopic resistor arrays, I'm looking into buying a microscope for soldering now. I think I am ready and at that stage! Hopefully I'll be as lucky as you and find something bad...
Thanks for your comment! Happy to hear that the video was helpful for troubleshooting. That's really interesting that it's a 10MB card. I've never run into an arcade board like that one before. Best of luck getting it repaired.
Just finished watching this one and the trainwreck repair, good work! I have a slightly sick STB Systems Voodoo 2 I'll be looking at over the next few days. It runs but there's noise/flicker in some of the textures, it changes and sometimes goes away with a tap of a finger on the card. Pretty sure all of the SMT electrolytics need replaced, one fell off when I removed the card for PCI connector cleaning and has the characteristic white crust under it -- not much, so I suspect they're just starting to go. Figure it's worth hacking on, it was a $1 MIT Flea find from a decade ago :P
Thanks very much! Best of luck getting your STB card repaired. Replacing the electrolytics is definitely a great place to start. Keep an eye out for corrosion on any of the other pins or pads too as it'll sometimes hide loose or flaky solder joints. Let me know how it goes.
@@vswitchzero Will do! Got the caps off this morning, almost every one had leakage crust under it. Found a few loose pins on the second texture unit, which would make sense with the symptoms I was seeing.
Before: ruclips.net/video/dNtZAnR8wnM/видео.html After: ruclips.net/video/i1Kidowe1lo/видео.html Going to need a few hours of fragging to verify fixed :P
Not so common to see a fault like that. I think SMD resistors and caps on lower-current data lines maybe tend to fail more due to physical stress of the PCB bending etc. But I guess even the thermal stress over the years of the card getting warmer and colder many many times could cause this, too. Good to know it's something to look out for, and another nice repair job. ;)
Thanks very much! Yeah, I can't say I've ever seen one fail that wasn't damaged in some way. RA40 is very close to the FB chip, which gets >75'C without active cooling, so the thermal stress could definitely make sense.
nice!!! i just wish i knew how to use my multimeter LOL. i have 2 voodoo 2s that i got a few years ago hoping to repair because i could see some bent legs on the fbis, but i ended up breaking some pins on one, but the other has a very similar set of symptoms - shows as a device but gets the same windows errors. i'll definitely have to try out the debug tool and maybe i can bring one of mine back to life too :) thanks again for the great info
you will see the tuning they did to get it to work without what I just said and be amazed how fixed architectures do get faster or slower with correct tuning
I've watched most of your videos by now haha. Love your channel/work. I doubt i'll get anywhere on it, but I have two failed Voodoo2 cards. One of them, the 8mb Creative card, i've had for a long time. It has a weird glitch where the Number TMUs value is the same as the line above it with some 4/5 digit number when using Mojo. The 2nd one, i'm more annoyed about as it's a 12mb card i planned on using in SLI with a working 12mb card I also have. That one does Passthrough, but that's it. If anything tries to access its capabilities, it hangs. Mojo just freezes in DOS/Win95, Display Properties window in Windows doesn't even come up for a minute or so and when it does, the 3dfx tab is missing. Of course everything works fine with my known good 12mb card. So anyway, I'm mainly worried about the 12mb card. I've never seen one have passthrough working but then fail completely using Mojo. Nothing visible damaged on the board, nothing missing, no scratches, etc... If anyone's bored and has an idea where to start, e.g. what starts up first or is expected to respond when Mojo or anythign else is ran. I can try to trace it down. i've got all the typical electronic tools. Oscilloscope, Multimeter, etc... but i've not dug into these before.
I figured I would just update you. There was one bad resistor array(220) on the back of the card that would be towards the upper left portion of the FBI chip on the front. So now I have a good 12 MB card again
Thanks very much! Sorry for the very slow reply on this. In my experience, it's actually not all that uncommon to have working passthrough capabilities since it doesn't require the FB/TMU chips to be functional. Did you have any luck getting MOJO to display anything via the debug logging output to a file? If everything physically looks good on the card, I would take a close look at all the FB/TMU chip pins under magnification and check to ensure none are loose. Also, the resistor arrays should definitely be checked too. One other reason a card may fail early in the initialization process is the DAC. If you check out my other video on the "train wreck voodoo 2" you'll see more on what I did to repair that one. Best of luck! Let me know how it goes.
@@vswitchzero I sent a follow up right before you replied. It was a resistor array on the back of the card. That one resistor fixed everything. I did borrow the resistor from the 8 MB card that I have that doesn’t work. And I just had replacements show up from China. So I’ll put that back on the 8 MB card and then try to diagnose the 8 megabyte one at some point. Thanks for the reply! Keep up the great work. I really do love the Content
@@brianb6653 Awesome! Really happy to hear that you got it going again. I've heard many people with similar stories with resistor arrays now. Seems to be a fairly common failure reason for these cards. Best of luck with your 8MB card!
Indeed! Can't say I've ever paid much attention to RAs before this card :) .. the microscope is the Tomlov 7 inch model, but it appears to be a generic design offered by several manufacturers on Amazon. The Tomlov one seems to be a lot more expensive now for some reason, but you can find a similar model like this one for $139CAD, which isn't bad: www.amazon.ca/Digital-Microscope-50-1200X-Maginfication-Soldering/dp/B089DXDGW4 It's been a real game changer for me for electronics repair projects and well worth the investment.
I have 2 of the exact same card stored in a closet. One of them works, the other doesn't. I don't think I still own hardware that I can stick them in to see if they are still working. Any way, my intention is to frame those cards and having them decorate my gaming room. I still remember the shock when I saw quake 2 running with colored lighting and bilinear filtering in 640x480 at 60hz. Going from software 320x240 to that was such a jump in quality that you had to be there yo understand it.
Thanks very much! At this time I’m not taking on any repairs. I’m still learning and don’t really feel comfortable working on other people’s hardware. Plus it’s really hard to find any spare time to work on things these days. Sorry about that. Best of luck getting your Obsidian 2 working again. The Quantum3D cards are really nice 👍
Thanks very much! It's a track called "Prelude to Space" by Bertrand Guegan. He composed it specifically for the channel using an old-school adlib tracker. You can find the full track at his soundcloud page here: soundcloud.com/bertrandguegan/prelude-to-space
Great video. I also used to have a voodoo 2 card with a burnt resistor array! Unfortunately the card had so many ripped pads on the FBI chip that was much worse than just the resistors.. ended up passing it away
Thanks! Was there any visible damage to the RA on your card or just failed open like mine? Yeah, the frame buffer is really hard to work with because of the fine pitch, unfortunately. Cheers!
@@vswitchzero on mine there was physical damage but the resistor array got fully burnt! So I guess after stopped working they just tossed it away for years and came back after being damaged in al ways possible... Sad... But again it's always to know what can fail in a card :)
I'd really like to see a video on upgrading the memory of a voodoo2 from 90 or 100mhz to 110 or 125mhz and see if that expands the overclocking potential. Especially if the main processing chips are actively cooled and have heatsinks.
So my dad bought me a Voodoo 2 8MB back when they first came out. A creative Blaster model and it arrived DOA brand new. This makes me wonder if the 8MB cards in particular had some sort of manufacturing defects. I was beyond gutted. At that time the mail order place we got it from sent out a replacement next day and it was a 12MB as way of an appology. If you weren't there back then words can not describe how mind-blowing a step forward it was for PC gaming back then. Still have a boxed and working 12MB card and the nostalgia feels for it are off the charts for me.
That's awesome that you got a 12MB replacement! Thanks for sharing :)
@@vswitchzero thanks for the video it’s seriously helpful in troubleshooting some of my dead cards 👍
11:17 for a quick test you can "strum" the pins a dodgy solder joint will sound different.
I remeber advert : Diamon Monster x2 = Mega Monster :)
Yes, it brings memories, but S3 Virge 3D is "the one" for me. P60 + S3 Virge in MDK benchmark faster than P200 MMX O.o
Monster truck madness + Descent... mind blowing graphics and frame rates xD
Voodoo2 was my first 3d Accelerator. My father never saw the need for one until my brother showed him Quake II on an original Voodoo. 3DFX changed gaming forever for us.
I went to Orchid in my home town Basingstoke in the UK in 1997/8, cannot remember the exact year?They where kind enough to demo their new Orchid Riotous 2 Voodoo 2 running Quake II before it was released. I will never forget being absolutely blown away. I had never seen a pc game look that good before, absolute game changer at the time. I still have my Orchid Voodoo 2 cards in an SLI setup with a Pentium 233 MMX.
when the voodoo banshee came out I was immediately in. :)
And that dood carried me for a long time
Quake1 i think the map was DM4. In the Wather you could see with the Voodoo the enemys in multiplay. that was a must have!!
wow, thats fantastic. The industry I'm in used some of those cards in production level arcade games. Many of those cards are failing now and NO ONE will touch them. I now have a new weapon in my arsenal thanks to your video!.
Awesome work. Nice to see a beautiful 3dfx get fixed instead of ending up in a landfill.
Thanks!
it's really nice to see people still care about this nice old legacy hardware!
An absolute BEAST in its day. I am fortunate to be old enough to remember the birth of 3d acceleration in PC's. Excellent nostalgic content.
Thanks very much! 🙂
Reading this "Old enough to see birth of 3D acceleration" makes me feel old af. Time to start browsing coffinbrochures.
I worked for an importer of Voodoo cards in 1997/8. I will never forget seeing Quake running for the first time via the Voodoo on a 60MHz Pentium so smoothly and how much better the graphics were - the Pentium MMX 166 without the card was an absolute dog in comparison!
It was a great year and a half there testing every possible hardware config with all the latest games. I had friends buy the cards and "report bugs" with games that I wanted to be paid to play!
I do remember having to change out some caps and resistors on the boards due to some issue - 25 years later I can't recall specifically where or why...
I'm glad this popped up in my feed and brought back some memories. Thanks!
Thanks very much for sharing! Always love hearing these first hand experiences from back in the day.
Awesome stuff! Very satisfying. Thanks for taking the time to make a video for the repair.
Thanks! It's always an amazing feeling when you see it working for the first time after a repair, that's for sure :)
I gave away my Voodoo2 many years ago. Still have a Voodoo3 in a Pentium III box in my basement that I booted up for the first time in a long time to play UT ‘99 last night after watching several of these videos.
Nice attention to detail here. I would have just bodged a single 22-ohm through-hole resistor over the open-circuit one and called it good enough!
I’ve been watching your back catalog here on RUclips and I’ve been very impressed by the depth you manage to get into while still being a reasonable time investment. Really enjoying it so far!
Thanks so much! 🙂👍
I really appreciate how repairable old electronics seem to be! You get debug tools, schematics, relatively simple board components, just fantastic.
Very true. The more modern stuff is intimidating to me. Way more complex and the miniaturization just makes everything harder. The introduction of more BGA components also made things a lot less accessible for the average hobbyist.
One word -. Suscribed. Thanks youtube algorithm.
Thanks very much 🙂👍
I really need one of those microscopes. This video shows just how accessible fine repairs like this are to any of us if we have the kit, the confidence, and the information needed to investigate. Great job finding the fault and truly amazing that we have such a great community to help with such things. Huge congrats!
Thanks very much! Yeah, these microscopes are an excellent investment if you do even occasional electronics repair. I don't have the best eye sight to begin with and using a magnifying glass can be frustrating. I got this one as a gift last Christmas but seems they are becoming much more affordable these days. Totally agree about the retro community - so many helpful folks out there willing to share their expertise and time. Thanks again.
Even a cheap 30$ one helps a LOT !
That was my first 3d card used with S3 Virge. Quake, UT, Turok and Tomb Rider on Voodoo2 if I remeber, then Riva TNT, good old memorys :)
It's always good to see a 3Dfx card not go to waste.
Awesome work! I bought a pair of Voodoo 2 cards on a forum in the late 2000's, they were well outdated but I just liked the idea of two video cards 😅. A friend had to help with drivers and such to get them working. A couple years back I tried them again and only one of them was working. I spent some time making sure the tiny pins weren't shorted on the chips, they had a rough life in storage and some did look bent. Maybe the PC bug will bite again and I'll make another attempt. It was awesome to follow along with the repair, great job on the video! Best of luck with the train wreck version 😀
Thanks very much! I appreciate it 🙂 .. best of luck getting your second card to work. Please let me know how it goes 👍
I ran 2 voodoo2 in SLI mode (in combo with an ATI Mach32) on my 486DX2-66. The combo allowed my old 486 to outperform Pentiums for years.
Strange.
I tried a Voodoo 1 on a 486 100 Mhz, and even with Quake 1 the fps with really slow.
Whoa! that made me super excited. I have a non working Voodoo 2 by diamond sitting on the top of my shelf for at least 22(+ 2 years). And i just watched this, as a hobby solder skills made me think i can look up the problem maybe with your videos dude! Awesome! Thanks! :)
Thanks! I hope you are able to repair your Voodoo 2! Best of luck to you and be sure to let me know how it goes :)
Awesome video, it's so satisfying to narrow down and fix a problem like this. I love the Voodoo 2, such a legendary card.
Thanks so much! It really is. That moment when you finally see a broken card launch a 3D game is just awesome :)
one of the best troubleshooting video I've ever seen
Thanks so much! :)
Awesome repair! While I never owned a V2 I did have a Voodoo Banshee which was awesome in both 2D and 3D back in the day!
Also, I always love to see the original Unreal intro. Brings back good memories! I've been playing Digital Extreme's current game Warframe for over 7 years now!
Thanks! 👍 The Banshee was a great card too. Very underrated in my opinion. I hope to do a video on it one day soon
Happy ending! That is the exact card I had for Quake 2 along with a pentium 200mmx. Happy memories from those days. 👍
Really good detective work and a lot of useful info here that might come in handy for me in the future, and definitely for others.
Hey, Nathan! Eagerly awaiting more content from you as well!
Thanks very much, I appreciate it! :)
Great video. That was the first accelerator I bought. Still have the card, the games and the IBM Stealth. Thank you.
Great video, very nostagic. OMG you have all the greatest Glide games on the PC!!
Great video. Love to see success like that and thanks for going through the voodoo sdk tools and how you worked through it.
looking forward to seeing the fix on the train wreck one, glad this one was such an easy fix
Great video! I bought one of these off eBay back in high school that behaved exactly like the one you have. If only I was more knowledgeable at the time...went back and forth with the seller, spent days troubleshooting drivers, etc. And to think it could have been just a pesky DOA resistor...
Awesome troubleshooting and amazing explanation and detail of the process. Loved the cable through the hole.
Thank you very much! 🙂👍
Excellent outcome, well done!
Thank you! :)
My first ever PC had this card and i will always remember it.
I spent so much time playing Unreal and UT99 on it, it was great. Voodoo 2 gave me a proper taste of 3D gaming, all i had before was Sega Genesis.
i bought one 12mb 6 months ago that was damaged, fixed it and i felt in love with it, its my 1st ever voodoo card, i cant believe how well it runs on my pentium od 180 mmx, gta2 and tomb raider 2 is smooth as butter, much better than the playstation ports
Great video and great repair! Absolutely love it!
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! :)
playing starsiege tribes on a 3dfx voodoo graphics card. take me back man, this current era is absolute balls.
Superb investigation and fix, Always nice to see anything regardless of what it is been brought back to life and full working order, Subbed :)
Thanks very much! :)
Awsome video. I think I still have my old Diamond Voodoo 2 lying somewhere in the adict. Remember borrowing a friends Creative card and they worked right of the bat together in sli. if I remember right it could run Everquest in 1024x768 in 80Hz with 2 cards in sli. Was pretty awsome on my Phillips 21" CRT that needed half of the desk size, tugged all the way in the corner to have room for mouse and keyboard... those things was HUGE compared to todays flat screens. 😊Was a big fan of Diamond cards back then. Remember having a rather pricy Diamond Viper 2Mb 2d Card because of the high quality Ramdac's used. Not completely sure why those things ment so much for the quality of the picture back then. Today you never hear about Ramdac's anymore.
I remember The Game Turok with a Vodoo card back in the 90's...Mindblowing for the time
One of my favourite early 3D accelerated games from back in those days!
I had a rough day and needed a good video like this. Thank you and keep'em coming! =)
You and I both.
Nice repair. I would never suspect low power resistor to fail like that.
Thank you. Today I got an InnoVision Voodoo 2 with perfect looking condition behaving the same way (not detected after driver install). I hope I can narrow down the source of failure and having something similar fixable issue. One day I will report back but I am glad I found your video. :)
I have sent it to guy who has equipment and experience with soldering (and microscope). TMU legs were simply deattaching when tested soldering, so he re-soldered the legs. Now it gives picture but freezes the PC under load. Quake 2 timedemo runs without issue, but only that, 3DMark and other game freezes after 1-2 seconds...No clue. Mojo gives proper data reporting TMUs, memory...
This video helped me repair a dead A-Trend Voodoo2 12MB! Thank you!
Awesome! Really happy to hear it 👍 .. what was the issue with your card in the end?
@@vswitchzero Just loose pins on the FBI and TMU chips. But the tools you highlighted clued me in to that.
Very nice job there!!! So rewarding my friend, that voodoo2 still working! Mine also makes some glitches, so I will use all the info you provided. Thanks a lot!
Thanks very much for these informative repair videos. It gave me the info I needed to have a crack at solving the problem my faulty Diamond Monster voodoo 1 has got. I've so far narrowed it down to bad ram attached to the FBI chip as reducing it to 1MB got Tomb raider Dos working although with occasional glitching. I have put a post on Vogons in the video section.
Best of luck with your Diamond Monster 3D!
Fantastic video, what a great job you did on the repair! I learned something too, now I know what resistor arrays are. 👍👍
Thanks very much! 🙂
Really useful video!
I have a pair of 12mb Voodoo 2's that I never had any luck getting working, this gives some great places to start.
Thanks! Best of luck to you with your 12MB cards. Let me know how it goes :)
Excellent repair! I have recently picked up a 12MB Monster 3D II that's not working, so will be an interesting troubleshoot I think! Thanks for highlighting Phil's Voodoo2 benchmarks in your previous video as well - I was originally thinking of pairing it with a P233 MMX but now I might shoot a bit higher!
Best of luck with your Monster 3D II. Let me know how it goes! .. Yeah I was pretty surprised just how drastic the difference can be with more CPU power available. Even a 400MHz K6-3 is quite bottlenecked in SLI. I've heard that V2 cards will get quite a bit hotter with faster CPUs too, so cooling is important. Cheers.
Another valuable video, thanks!
Its great another VooDoo 2 card is alive
Nice work Mike, those debugging variables for the 3Dfx are good to know, thanks. You are a wizard at this now btw, your troubleshooting skills with this old tech are fantastic, great video again. Putting in the time on amazing resources like VOGONS is how the craft is mastered, and you have put your time in sir.
If only we had all these resources back then.
Thanks very much for the kind words, I really appreciate it! I definitely don't consider myself an expert as I'm still learning as I go. But with the right tools, information and especially determination - it's amazing what you can accomplish :) .. so true about Vogons. It is a huge wealth of knowledge on the subject, that's for sure.
@@vswitchzero You are modest though, the engineers like yourself usually are (I almost said old there ;)
Your bench skills say many years of experience and you wield an iron on PCB like a surgeon. I've learned some great tricks watching your honestly impeccable work.
Great job. Really think the problem solving is super cool. Wish I had the patience for doing that.
Thanks! :)
Loved the Voodoo2, I had a 12MB Creative Labs version and I wish I'd never gotten rid of it.
Thx a lot for sharing the experience. Now I also have one more information when testing my damaged 3dfx cards :)
Very nice!
Yeah, those thin-film resistors do have failure-modes like that. If thermal cycles build up mechanical stress, the ceramic can get microcracks, cutting the conductive film in the process.
Thanks! Yeah, RA40 is quite close to the frame buffer, which can get beyond 75'C at load. It definitely makes sense that it could be related to thermal cycling (especially considering that this card is in pristine condition.) Cheers!
In Quake 2 and 3 engine games if you press ~ you can see how many TMUs are working / active. Most probably you already know that :). Excellent video!
Thanks very much! I forgot about that actually, good tip! Btw, I subscribed to your channel recently - love seeing all the gaming footage from those days! :)
@@vswitchzero Thank you, nice to see that there still are many retro-enthusiasts who did not forget those great times :)
I think it's better to test with Quake 1.
Quake 2 and Unreal are sometime quite sensitive to the driver version you use, or whatever hardware you have for no known reason.
Quake1 is much more reliable.
The trouble is, how will you launch Quake 2 or 3 to get the TMU data if the Voodoo card won't initialise in the first place?
Bloody love your content. Brings back the nostalgia of when I built my
First system. Love to see you using some of the components I had in my collection when I was cutting my teeth in pc building/gaming. Keep it up mate
Thanks very much, I really appreciate it! :)
Perfect fault detection and fix. 👌
Thanks very much! :)
Great fault finding and fix as usual, I like that you show your process, it goes to show patience, determination and good knowledge and research and we can fix anything (well almost😁), really enjoy your videos, keep em coming. 👍
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it! :)
Thanx so much Remeber the day playing outlaws with the voodoo 2
Thank you, this is exactly what I needed. I've got a Voodoo2 that detects correctly but displays Black and blue bars. I'm going to try that mojo tool. Excellent info.
Best of luck! Let me know how it goes.
Nice fix! valuable information too, every little fix that people share on RUclips undoubtedly helps others.
Important to keep these cards going so good job! sad I lost all my old hardware long ago, would have liked to play with some of that stuff again.
Thanks very much! :)
Amazing work! Now I have some ideas for repairing my own Voodoo2 cards!
This is good news. Been trying to get a hold of a decent voodoo 2 card for my win98 pc, without paying for it in blood. I may attempt a repair on a broken one instead for cheap.
Dude i wached your channel a couple days ago because i wanted to see if you made any more gpu repairs. Thank god i did that becuase youtube realised i like these and put this in my reccomended.
Beautiful work Mike!
Thanks so much! :)
I really enjoyed the video. I particularly liked the in depth repair and soldering. I would like to learn to solder like that! I might pick up some of the flux you mentioned.
Thanks very much! It wasn't very long ago that I knew next to nothing about soldering. Getting lots of practice is the key. They sell practice kits on Amazon for very cheap that include a PCB and lots of SMD components, which is a great way to learn. Using scrap boards for desoldering practice is also great too. And of course, good quality flux is also important. Cheers!
Great video, the trouble shooting was very informative.
Thanks very much! :)
Very cool. Voodoo 2 live again
great work, video and troubleshoting
Well thanks to you, I figured out that my "arcade" Obsidian2 90-2440 reports framebuffer = 0 MB when I put it in a Win98 machine. Since it's a weird 10MB card, I believe I have also identified which are the framebuffer RAM chips: the ones without memory on the back. The 2 other memory banks are doubled from the back so 4 512K chips on each side = 4MB each. Chips on only one side = the missing 2 MB of framebuffer. On the arcade, the output is inverted and mirrored, displaying only text in orange. also, I tested for a monster 2 8MB and the game does work, but is missing 2MB so there are some grfx artefacts. Not wanting to boost the memory card count to 12 MB yet, since your video talks about checking the microscopic resistor arrays, I'm looking into buying a microscope for soldering now. I think I am ready and at that stage! Hopefully I'll be as lucky as you and find something bad...
Thanks for your comment! Happy to hear that the video was helpful for troubleshooting. That's really interesting that it's a 10MB card. I've never run into an arcade board like that one before. Best of luck getting it repaired.
@@vswitchzero I think I've identified a RA that looks broken! it's in my digikey basket... it's pretty darn small though but I have nothing to loose!
Very good material
I also invite you to compare Voodoo 2 8MB vs 12MB vs SLI (English subtitles)
Still can't believe I sold my boxed Diamond Monster Voodoo 2, luckily saved my Voodoo 3 and using it to this day
Lovely video, looking forward to see how train wreck goes, good luck!
Thanks so much! Working on that video now actually, stay tuned! :)
+1 for the sticker under the screen :)). Also, very nice troubleshooting job with the card
Haha thanks! Courtesy of Geekenspiel (geekenspiel.com/collections)
Excellent video!!
Thanks very much! :)
Just finished watching this one and the trainwreck repair, good work! I have a slightly sick STB Systems Voodoo 2 I'll be looking at over the next few days. It runs but there's noise/flicker in some of the textures, it changes and sometimes goes away with a tap of a finger on the card. Pretty sure all of the SMT electrolytics need replaced, one fell off when I removed the card for PCI connector cleaning and has the characteristic white crust under it -- not much, so I suspect they're just starting to go.
Figure it's worth hacking on, it was a $1 MIT Flea find from a decade ago :P
Thanks very much! Best of luck getting your STB card repaired. Replacing the electrolytics is definitely a great place to start. Keep an eye out for corrosion on any of the other pins or pads too as it'll sometimes hide loose or flaky solder joints. Let me know how it goes.
@@vswitchzero Will do! Got the caps off this morning, almost every one had leakage crust under it. Found a few loose pins on the second texture unit, which would make sense with the symptoms I was seeing.
Before: ruclips.net/video/dNtZAnR8wnM/видео.html
After: ruclips.net/video/i1Kidowe1lo/видео.html
Going to need a few hours of fragging to verify fixed :P
@@glitchwrks Awesome work! 🙂👍
3dfx videos are my the best !
Not so common to see a fault like that. I think SMD resistors and caps on lower-current data lines maybe tend to fail more due to physical stress of the PCB bending etc.
But I guess even the thermal stress over the years of the card getting warmer and colder many many times could cause this, too.
Good to know it's something to look out for, and another nice repair job. ;)
Thanks very much! Yeah, I can't say I've ever seen one fail that wasn't damaged in some way. RA40 is very close to the FB chip, which gets >75'C without active cooling, so the thermal stress could definitely make sense.
Great video! Great cards! I have three of them, I love them!
Nice fix! Enjoyed the video :)
Welcome back, buddy. Keep that memory upgrade promise, yeah?
I’m going to need to test my Voodoo 2 cards from Creative Labs soon. I have 4 12MB cards, plus an Obsidian 24x that uses just one pci slot
Superb work well done!
Thanks a lot! :)
nice!!! i just wish i knew how to use my multimeter LOL. i have 2 voodoo 2s that i got a few years ago hoping to repair because i could see some bent legs on the fbis, but i ended up breaking some pins on one, but the other has a very similar set of symptoms - shows as a device but gets the same windows errors. i'll definitely have to try out the debug tool and maybe i can bring one of mine back to life too :) thanks again for the great info
Thanks very much! Yeah the FB chip is especially fragile. The pins are really fine pitch and difficult to straighten out. Best of luck!
you will see the tuning they did to get it to work without what I just said and be amazed how fixed architectures do get faster or slower with correct tuning
Very interesting video, like!
Thanks very much! :)
So satisfying
Wow! Really enjoyed the video
Great vid. Lots of useful info here.
Thanks very much! :)
I've watched most of your videos by now haha. Love your channel/work. I doubt i'll get anywhere on it, but I have two failed Voodoo2 cards. One of them, the 8mb Creative card, i've had for a long time. It has a weird glitch where the Number TMUs value is the same as the line above it with some 4/5 digit number when using Mojo. The 2nd one, i'm more annoyed about as it's a 12mb card i planned on using in SLI with a working 12mb card I also have. That one does Passthrough, but that's it. If anything tries to access its capabilities, it hangs. Mojo just freezes in DOS/Win95, Display Properties window in Windows doesn't even come up for a minute or so and when it does, the 3dfx tab is missing. Of course everything works fine with my known good 12mb card.
So anyway, I'm mainly worried about the 12mb card. I've never seen one have passthrough working but then fail completely using Mojo. Nothing visible damaged on the board, nothing missing, no scratches, etc...
If anyone's bored and has an idea where to start, e.g. what starts up first or is expected to respond when Mojo or anythign else is ran. I can try to trace it down. i've got all the typical electronic tools. Oscilloscope, Multimeter, etc... but i've not dug into these before.
I figured I would just update you. There was one bad resistor array(220) on the back of the card that would be towards the upper left portion of the FBI chip on the front. So now I have a good 12 MB card again
Thanks very much! Sorry for the very slow reply on this. In my experience, it's actually not all that uncommon to have working passthrough capabilities since it doesn't require the FB/TMU chips to be functional. Did you have any luck getting MOJO to display anything via the debug logging output to a file? If everything physically looks good on the card, I would take a close look at all the FB/TMU chip pins under magnification and check to ensure none are loose. Also, the resistor arrays should definitely be checked too. One other reason a card may fail early in the initialization process is the DAC. If you check out my other video on the "train wreck voodoo 2" you'll see more on what I did to repair that one. Best of luck! Let me know how it goes.
@@vswitchzero I sent a follow up right before you replied. It was a resistor array on the back of the card. That one resistor fixed everything. I did borrow the resistor from the 8 MB card that I have that doesn’t work. And I just had replacements show up from China. So I’ll put that back on the 8 MB card and then try to diagnose the 8 megabyte one at some point.
Thanks for the reply! Keep up the great work. I really do love the Content
@@brianb6653 Awesome! Really happy to hear that you got it going again. I've heard many people with similar stories with resistor arrays now. Seems to be a fairly common failure reason for these cards. Best of luck with your 8MB card!
I seem to remember people upgrading these to the 12 MB version. I had 2x Diamond Monster 3D 2's 12mb in SLI back in the days... :)
It's definitely possible to upgrade an 8MB card to 12MB with most PCB revisions. May give this a try in the future, stay tuned :)
What a find. Resistors aren't normally the thing you expect to break.
What is your microscope? It looks excellent.
Indeed! Can't say I've ever paid much attention to RAs before this card :) .. the microscope is the Tomlov 7 inch model, but it appears to be a generic design offered by several manufacturers on Amazon. The Tomlov one seems to be a lot more expensive now for some reason, but you can find a similar model like this one for $139CAD, which isn't bad: www.amazon.ca/Digital-Microscope-50-1200X-Maginfication-Soldering/dp/B089DXDGW4
It's been a real game changer for me for electronics repair projects and well worth the investment.
So Great.I love Voodoo2
I have 2 of the exact same card stored in a closet. One of them works, the other doesn't. I don't think I still own hardware that I can stick them in to see if they are still working. Any way, my intention is to frame those cards and having them decorate my gaming room.
I still remember the shock when I saw quake 2 running with colored lighting and bilinear filtering in 640x480 at 60hz. Going from software 320x240 to that was such a jump in quality that you had to be there yo understand it.
Great repair video. I have a obsidian 2 card that isn’t operating at the moment. You don’t happen to take in repairs do you? Thank
Thanks very much! At this time I’m not taking on any repairs. I’m still learning and don’t really feel comfortable working on other people’s hardware. Plus it’s really hard to find any spare time to work on things these days. Sorry about that. Best of luck getting your Obsidian 2 working again. The Quantum3D cards are really nice 👍
Great video as always! What's that music at the end?
Thanks very much! It's a track called "Prelude to Space" by Bertrand Guegan. He composed it specifically for the channel using an old-school adlib tracker. You can find the full track at his soundcloud page here: soundcloud.com/bertrandguegan/prelude-to-space
Great video. I also used to have a voodoo 2 card with a burnt resistor array! Unfortunately the card had so many ripped pads on the FBI chip that was much worse than just the resistors.. ended up passing it away
Thanks! Was there any visible damage to the RA on your card or just failed open like mine? Yeah, the frame buffer is really hard to work with because of the fine pitch, unfortunately. Cheers!
@@vswitchzero on mine there was physical damage but the resistor array got fully burnt! So I guess after stopped working they just tossed it away for years and came back after being damaged in al ways possible... Sad... But again it's always to know what can fail in a card :)
I'd really like to see a video on upgrading the memory of a voodoo2 from 90 or 100mhz to 110 or 125mhz and see if that expands the overclocking potential. Especially if the main processing chips are actively cooled and have heatsinks.
This would be very interesting to try! 100MHz SOJ40 EDO is pretty easy to find, but I haven't seen faster chips recently.
Good job, that was entertaining!
Thanks very much! :)