Thanks very much! :)

two of my favorite youtubers! i love seeing the retro community connect!

@@vswitchzero greetings vswitch. Watching this video, in which you use an S3 Virge DX, I ask you a question for help. I have an S3 Virge DX card (AOpen PT 75), which I had never used before (so dont know its previous state). after a good cleaning and soldering a capacitor that had come loose. I tried it and it did not give an image, the PC emitted several beeps. After an additional review and more cleaning, it managed to show the vbios report, but then it goes dark. Reviewing it more in depth I saw that it had a position where another capacitor seemed to go and in the images that I looked for I saw that yes, it was missing another capacitor (those are the two on both sides of the PCI connector i this card). In the images I cannot see the data of the capacitor, but visually it is the same as the one that I soldered before. So I matched this capacitor and put it on, but the card remains the same, it shows the information from the vbios, and that's it, it doesn't give an image. during boot up i keep touching the chip and i feel it getting hotter than i think it should, so i turn off the pc. Can you give me any advice on this? also I have two AOpen VI15G motherboards , the revision with support for 3.3v CPUs (it has the power regulator). They are part of some PCs (the other is a Pentium) that I had at the end of the 90s or the beginning of this century and all the parts and pieces were stored in working conditions almost 20 years ago. A few months ago nostalgia assaulted me and I am reassembling them. All the parts needed a lot of cleaning, from the PSU to the cards, due to the dust accumulated even inside the boxes, in addition to some slight oxidation. Everything was pristine after cleaning. one of the two psu need some repair but the other ones is working flawlessly. I have some 486 but the best one is an Am5x86. I didn't remember if the jumpers were set for use that one (i think they were, but not sure at all, 20 years bro), so I looked for the documentation and I found two documents, one original from the first version of the motherboard, which only supports 5v, and another with jumper settings updated for the revision with 3V support). I configured the motherboard as an Intel 486DX4, also as an AMD DX4 (the board is from 2 years before the 5x86), based on some recommendations I read around. both are 3.3/3.45 volt processors, but when measuring the voltages on the socket pins and on the regulator output, it's always 5V no matter the configuration. It happens equally on both motherboards, I don't think the regulator is defective in both cases. I would appreciate if you help me with the correct configuration to be able to use the Am5x86 (or 486DX4 from Intel or AMD, as a valid config as I see). The other 486 compatible I have is an AMD 486DX2-66 but of course the primary interest is the Am5x86. I still need to check them with the DX2s to make sure. the PentiumMMX is also not working, no post, but i will see it latter Any help will be very appreciated.

Haha, I whole heartedly agree! :D

Haha awesome. Glad you enjoy it! :)

It really is. I had to double check that I had the right chip in the programmer!

Makes a lot of sense! I was thinking of it too much in "on/off" terms. There is clearly more to it than that. Thanks for your comment.

Very interesting about the Falcon Northwest Voodoo 3. I've never heard of that one before. I'm definitely going to try to get this card past 200MHz, stay tuned :)

Thanks very much! Very true - I spent a lot more time checking the back because of all the scratches all over but those are all easier to spot since there are no SMDs anywhere :)

Agreed! :) .. thanks for the tip.

It is very strange indeed. I had a similar experience with a socket A motherboard a while back. The BIOS was bricked/corrupted and the system wouldn't post. I pulled the image off via my external programmer, and its checksum matched the one I downloaded from the ASUS site exactly. Flashed it back and it worked just fine. I suspect the external programmers do a better job of reading "borderline" cells that don't have enough charge left in them than the board/card does. I remember hearing that it can take too long to read those cells too, which can be an issue. So the image pulled by the programmer is good, but the card/board doesn't pull the same data when it tries to read it. Flashing it again restores all those flaky cells. If I find another EEPROM in this kind of state, I'd like to do more tests on this.

@@vswitchzero yeah that was my guess as well. That it was marginal and just not fast enough to POST. But flashing I guess doesn't care about speed? /shrug

Thanks so much for the kind words! Really appreciate it 😁👍

Thanks! Yep, might come in handy one of these days :)

Best of luck with your V2! If it isn't detected - take a closer look at the frame buffer chip (the middle one near the slot). If there are any shorted pins, that could do it. Also make sure the regulator is providing the correct voltage output. Could also be failed resistor arrays, which I've seen before too.

@@vswitchzero Yeah, it's in a box of "things to look at sometime". Luckily I have a pair of Monster 3D II for a nice SLI working in a K7 700 :)

Thanks for your comment and for sharing! I have never tried lead-free solder before (since most of what I repair is from before that era) but I've heard its much harder to work with.

@@vswitchzero They had a certain brand they loved with the flux in it and stock piled it. The business went under (tech they fixed basically went obsolete), but he still has some somewhere in his garage. But because it was flux impregnated, we never needed extra flux and would just melt a little extra solder if you needed to and then wick away the excess.

Thanks so much for the kind words, it really means a lot! Glad you like them! Haha I couldn't resist adding the USB 3-attempt bit :D

Thanks very much! And thanks for the info. I'm hoping that one of these days I'll be able to attempt some BGA work. That's one area I've never ventured into yet.

@@vswitchzero good luck

Thanks for the tip. I've been meaning to pick one of those up.

Great tip! I hadn't thought of that.

I never would have imagined back then either. I always sold off my aging hardware to fund the next upgrade, or just gave stuff away when it was too old to be useful. Hard to think that people may be trying to collect GTX 1080s and cards like that in the future :D

I have so many fond memories of going to Futureshop back in the 90s. I still remember going there to buy my first modem, and again later on to buy my first 3dfx Voodoo card too. Was always an exciting place to visit :-)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I was thinking of it in too much of an "on/off" situation and there is clearly more to it than that. Appreciate the comment!

Will definitely try to keep the repair videos coming! I really enjoy doing them :)

Thanks so much Tony, I really appreciate it! Congratulations on all of the success on your channel as well. I really enjoy watching your repair videos and have learnt a lot from you :) .. Thanks for the tip on preheating. I will look into picking one up. If you have any recommendations, it would be appreciated! .. also great point on the pin "floating".. I automatically assumed it would just behave as low when disconnected but there is clearly more to it! Thanks again.

Wow, thanks so much! That really means a lot, I really appreciate it :-)

Thank you! Cheers! :)

Definitely time for another repair video soon! Been too long 🙂

Thanks very much for your comment! That makes a lot of sense.

Thank you! :)

Haha its so true - nothing beats that feeling especially after working on such a stubborn one :)

Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks very much 🙂👍

Glad you like them! Thanks so much :)

Thanks! :)

Thanks very much! It's always such an exciting feeling to get something working (especially after numerous failed attemptes).. that "aha" moment is priceless :D

Thanks very much for the info!

Awesome, thanks very much! :)

Thanks very much! :)

Thank you so much for the kind words, I really appreciate it! Really glad you enjoy the videos!

Thank you so much for supporting me on Patreon! It is really appreciated. I'm really glad you have been enjoying the videos. All the best!

Thanks very much! 👍

Thanks very much! :)

Wow, thanks so much for becoming a Patron! I really appreciate your support! I had almost zero soldering skill only a couple of years ago. It just takes practice, patience and some decent quality tools. If I can do this, anyone can, that's for sure :) .. thanks again!

Thanks so much, I appreciate it! :)

Thanks for your comment! Yes, I'm pretty sure you are right about that. I assumed that a disconnected pin would be 0V, but I checked the pin again with the system powered up and during normal operation it measures 3.3V. So I think you are right that the trace pulls it low instead of the other way around.

​​​​@@vswitchzero you can see that CS, OE and WE pins all have "bars" over their text names. This means that they are active low signals, i.e. must be pulled low to be considered active (asserted). When they are high the signals are inactive (negated). For many types of ROMs and RAMs you need to assert both CS and OE to read from the device, or CS and WE to write to it. In some cases, OE can be permanently tied to ground, and reads are effected simply by asserting CS, or writes can be made by assessing both CS and WE, where WE effectively overrides OE. This can save a little bit of circuitry during design. I don't know if I've ever come across a datasheet which indicated whether an unconnected pin on one of these devices would be pulled high or low by default (I've certainly never noticed it if it was mentioned), but since they are very likely based on CMOS manufacturing processes, an unconnected pin will float to some random state and could thus result in unpredictable behaviour. What value it floats to could be influenced by noise from neighbouring circuitry, or by simply moving your hand or some test instrument near it. And this can even change from moment to moment, which can lead to very confusing behaviour during troubleshooting. Given they are active low signals it would make more sense for them to be pulled high if unconnected, to make sure the device is disabled and wouldn't interfere with any others that are fully functional. But I suspect they aren't pulled in either direction and are expected to be connected to something that sets their state. I would also suggest that "output disable" mode can't really be broken. That mode simply means that, since OE is negated, the ROM won't ever drive the data bus if CS is asserted.

Thanks so much! :)

Awesome! Thank you! :)

Thanks so much! :)

Thanks so much 🙂👍

Much appreciated! :)

Not sure why, but 3dfx never populated the pads at C100, so it's always empty 👍

Thanks very much!

I think this will definitely be in this card's future.. stay tuned :)

This is the case with TTL families due to the way the gates are constructed, but absolutely not the case with CMOS families (which this ROM and indeed near on everything else on the board are manufactured in.)

Definitely in this card's future.. stay tuned! :)

Something like that would be really useful! I did look around for something of that sort came up empty. Probably wouldn't be too complicated to design but not my area of strength unfortunately.

One of the best early optical mice! Love it.

Haha thanks for the clarification! I'm a fan of many british TV shows and am always confused by the many different terms used for currency :)

The programmer is a TL866 II. Great unit with a lot of useful functions beyond just EEPROM programming.

Thanks for your comment! If the card isn't detected at all, it could be power related (check the regulator for the correct voltage output and test the ferrite beads/filters to the left of the 3dfx chip to make sure there is near zero impedance across them). Unfortunately, some of these types of issues are due to BGA contact issues, which can be much more difficult to fix. I have a V3 here that I believe that is the issue on. One of these days I'll need to learn how to do BGA rework.

@@vswitchzero Thanks for the tips! Voltage looks good, card is getting power. Unfortunately I think it is an issue with BGA contacts.

Haha I was way off on that one! Would certainly be nice to get a Voodoo 3 (even a broken one) for £1.75 :D

Thanks for the tip. Haven't tried no-clean stuff yet, but the flux I use is really easy to get off without much effort. I used some cheap flux paste in the past that required a lot more work to remove.