Recently I was scouring classifieds for old hardware to update my “Classic gaming rig” project. What do I see? An ad for a Voodoo 3! It didn’t look bad from the picture so I contacted the seller about the condition of the card. He had no idea if was functioning since it was pretty old and he found it in an office that was being cleaned out. He didn’t notice any damage to the board. I was stoked when he agreed to ship it to me for 25 since he was unable to test it.
Fast forward a couple days and the package comes well wrapped and in a sturdy box. I take the precious to my Classic Rig with 3.3v AGP slot, plug it in, connect the VGA cable and press the power button.
No love…no video signal…
No post beep errors either.
Weird.
Being a bit disappointed from the lack of instant gratification, I start checking the B-side for suspicious or broken traces by probing the vias on the trace. Loosely stored hardware can end up with a diced trace pretty easily and cause all sorts of problems and isn’t usually a nightmare to fix.
Everything that looked odd tested fine with a continuity tester. My issue was elsewhere. So I examine the A-side; that’s when I notice some botched capacitors by the memory.
I wasn’t totally sure if this was the issue, but those looked pretty bad. Honestly, I’m not sure if that’s normal capacitor failure, or just negligence. Notice the cap on the left looks like a bloated marshmallow.
Off with the old crummy caps! On with some Nichicon capacitors I had on hand!
I will likely replace these through-hole caps with actual surface mount caps later. Regardless…
I eagerly plugged it in for testing!
Hallelujah, Image!
I looked up the model number printed on the PCB and used the drivers so graciously listed on the 3DFX Archive website. The drivers downloaded and installed fine. As a result, the card acts like a 3DFX Voodoo Should!
Stay tuned for my upcoming post where I run a few tests on this puppy!
I hope this post helps someone else in the future figure out what might be ailing their card. Thanks for checking this out!
-Toby