3dfx VooDoo / retro rig / capacitor thread

View attachment 17696 Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL "Golden Flame". Was the first nForce2 board to break 250-fsb. Building a retro rig around it. But that is another thread.

Nice. I love the "golden flame" color scheme and it had nice box art too. I have one in my collection but it needs to be recapped. My favorite nforce2 board is the MSI K7N2-L and variants thereof.

in the spirit of all things 3dfx, some pics of my voodoo rigs

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MSI were great too. Thanks for sharing the images. Is that DFI Lanparty board?

I have more pics.. I will try and dig them up. Yeah that's a DFI LanParty Pro875b board with a P4 on for the voodoo5500 rig. And some Corsair pc3200 xms pro modules with the indicator LEDs. I used to get that memory clocked with tight timings really nicely at 250ish mhz.. Ah the good ol days. :)
 
Im currently totally recapping a dfi lanparty nf2 board! That one was a serious overclocker that stsrted all the fame for dfi back when.. thanks to my discovery of it and the long thread i started on it back when.

Ive got another 3 newer lanparty boards that i plan on replacing caps for as well.
 
DFI/Diamond Flower. Very cool. Height of the enthusiast market. They recruited head of board design from Abit to develop the Lanparty series. Wanted that NFII board but it was out of my price range at the time.

Think I will finally get around to setting up a recap work station today. Wish me luck :)
 
This is a great thread, derailed or not :)

Those old DFI, Epox, Abit boards were what I always seemed to rotate through - my Epox 8K3A+ got me to something like 213fsb, and the DFI and Abit only built on that.... the good old days.

Can't wait to see your recap station and some results!!
 
Nice. I love the "golden flame" color scheme and it had nice box art too. I have one in my collection but it needs to be recapped. My favorite nforce2 board is the MSI K7N2-L and variants thereof.

in the spirit of all things 3dfx, some pics of my voodoo rigs

IMG_0245.jpg

IMG_0242.jpg

IMG_0246.jpg

IMG_0666_zpscc984f2f.jpg

v5pci.jpg

Was just checking the threads for updates and noticed your pics..

Is that lubic i see in the pics?? Trll me you still have a kit or 2 around!
 
Was just checking the threads for updates and noticed your pics..

Is that lubic i see in the pics?? Trll me you still have a kit or 2 around!

You mean the bench? I had to dig through the email for this.. MYOPENPC BENCH Master Transparent Clear Acrylic.. Was that what you meant?
 
I believe eclypse was referring to Lubic brand modular. That name took me back. Sort of the Erector set of PC cases that be re-configured in all sorts of non conventional shapes. Helicopter, truck, etc ...
 
Oh revenant, I have very fond memories of that aerocool HT-101 with a pair of Tornado fans on it, is what drove me to watercooling heh.
 
Oh revenant, I have very fond memories of that aerocool HT-101 with a pair of Tornado fans on it, is what drove me to watercooling heh.

lol. Yeah it's loud even with one fan. I cleaned the copper in a vinegar and salt bath a while back. It looked brand spanking new after that. I wish I had taken before and after pics.

I believe eclypse was referring to Lubic brand modular. That name took me back. Sort of the Erector set of PC cases that be re-configured in all sorts of non conventional shapes. Helicopter, truck, etc ...

Ah yeah I looked it up just now. Thanks for clarifying.
 
Want to thank all of you for convincing me not to trash the boards. :)

Finally set up a work area, grabbed a fresh cup of coffee, and got to it. All six bulging caps on the Abit kr7a are replaced. No fireworks or magic smoke - currently running stress tests without a hitch.

Had a couple derp moments. Got frustrated with the solder then discovered the 40w iron was not turned all the way up. Then the board would not post so spent about an hour re-checking things before realizing the RAM was in the wrong slot.

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The headband magnifier (10" focal length) made the job much easier. Used a couple alligator clips on the cap legs. One to hold it tight against the board, one on the other leg to act as a heat sink to prevent the cap absorbing too much heat. Next is recapping the Soltek SL-75drv4 Purple Ray and get that 3dfx rig put together.

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I love this thread and the work you're doing - it is *really* making me sad I don't have any of my old hardware laying around any longer, kudos to you for working to keep this stuff alive.
 
I cant wait to get enough free time to blow this thread up with some serious old school hardware pics! Might even toss in some boxed game collection pics while i'm at it! Wish i still had those boxes games right now.
 
Want to thank all of you for convincing me not to trash the boards. :)

Finally set up a work area, grabbed a fresh cup of coffee, and got to it. All six bulging caps on the Abit kr7a are replaced. No fireworks or magic smoke - currently running stress tests without a hitch.

Had a couple derp moments. Got frustrated with the solder then discovered the 40w iron was not turned all the way up. Then the board would not post so spent about an hour re-checking things before realizing the RAM was in the wrong slot.

View attachment 18020


The headband magnifier (10" focal length) made the job much easier. Used a couple alligator clips on the cap legs. One to hold it tight against the board, one on the other leg to act as a heat sink to prevent the cap absorbing too much heat. Next is recapping the Soltek SL-75drv4 Purple Ray and get that 3dfx rig put together.

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Nice job!! I seriously need one of those lenses! My eyes at 44 are showing there age.. im like using a 10x loop and a magnifying lense.. wven was so bad the 2nd night my wife told me to try her reading glasses which helped.. haha

10 years ago this crap was no big deal to me.
 
I have a pretty good collection of older boards and I should probably recap several of them. A Soyo Dragon Platinum and that Soltek Golden Flame for starters.. I have a soldering station, I should get to this.
 
Soyo. That is name I have not thought about in a long time. They made great boards. A shame they were so heavily aligned with VIA thus never had an nForce2 offering. Think that really hurt them back in the day.
 
speaking about "recapping"...most monitors fail because of a malfunction in the power supply...the wife and I each bought one of these Samsung Syncmaster 2493hm monitors in early 1998 (top shelf at the time) and after a lengthy run mine quit working , a short time later hers failed. They were in the garage for a good 6 years so I pulled one out out and weaseled it open and sure enough a capacitor in the power section was bulged. I ordered 5 of them form Amazon and replaced it....viola!...it fired right up. I then checked out the wife's and as you may have guessed , the same exact cap was bulged. I replaced it and it fired up...they now do duty in our garage on both sides of a wall with a htcp 'puter running them...recycling!

now back to the regularly scheduled forum thread topic.....

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I remember Voodoo Cards. I had 2 with an ATI All-In-Wonder setup. Playing Diablo, and Everquest pretty nice back then.
 
Ouch! Never had any explode, fortunately.

Nice OC and recap job on that board. You mean fastest on OC basis? Because I seem to remember the KT7a being SDRAM and ata-100. Whereas these KR7a are DDR and ata-133. Main reason I like them with these older vid cards. More speed yet still compatible.

KR7A doesn't have an ISA slot.

I do have a MSI KT3 Ultra on the way. I am going to try to switch over to no ISA, but only IF I can get a card that accurately emulates a SB16. Not actually seeing anything that does that.

I also have an old PCI to ISA bus extender box (PCI card goes in main system, ISA card goes in backplane setup). The only problem is that it doesn't support DMA in the available drivers even though the tech docs for the chips used on the cards say that it is supported.

My other idea is to write program that intercepts calls to specified addresses and have it send the data to a secondary computer with ISA slots. Not sure if that is even possible.. but it should be. Also not sure if it would introduce any type of noticeable delay.

I do have a Sound Blaster Live! I haven't tried setting up the DOS drivers for it.. but I am pretty sure it does SB16 emulation in DOS.

Edit: And ATA-100 vs ATA-133 makes no difference as I have a SATA card that actually works to boot to from DOS and also has drivers for Windows 98SE.

I actually have a couple of them, but they should be pretty easy to find on eBay as it is a common chipset.
 
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Soyo. That is name I have not thought about in a long time. They made great boards. A shame they were so heavily aligned with VIA thus never had an nForce2 offering. Think that really hurt them back in the day.

They apparently also had crummy setups on their KT333 boards. much like a bunch of other mfgs and didn't offer a 1/5 PCI divider on their super high end boards.
 
KR7A doesn't have an ISA slot.

I do have a MSI KT3 Ultra on the way. I am going to try to switch over to no ISA, but only IF I can get a card that accurately emulates a SB16. Not actually seeing anything that does that.

I also have an old PCI to ISA bus extender box (PCI card goes in main system, ISA card goes in backplane setup). The only problem is that it doesn't support DMA in the available drivers even though the tech docs for the chips used on the cards say that it is supported.

My other idea is to write program that intercepts calls to specified addresses and have it send the data to a secondary computer with ISA slots. Not sure if that is even possible.. but it should be. Also not sure if it would introduce any type of noticeable delay.

I do have a Sound Blaster Live! I haven't tried setting up the DOS drivers for it.. but I am pretty sure it does SB16 emulation in DOS.

Edit: And ATA-100 vs ATA-133 makes no difference as I have a SATA card that actually works to boot to from DOS and also has drivers for Windows 98SE.

I actually have a couple of them, but they should be pretty easy to find on eBay as it is a common chipset.

Yes the sound blaster live card works just fine in win98se emulating sb16 in dos. Ive read one needs the original driver disk.. thats the only release thst has the dos drivers.

Thankfully i do and it does work just fine!
 
Soyo. That is name I have not thought about in a long time. They made great boards. A shame they were so heavily aligned with VIA thus never had an nForce2 offering. Think that really hurt them back in the day.

Yep.. they use VIA chipsets and were slow as hell.. The dragon platinum was one sexy looking board for the day though.
 
Yep.. they use VIA chipsets and were slow as hell.. The dragon platinum was one sexy looking board for the day though.

When comparing the VIA single channel DDR to the DUAL channel DDR of Nforce 2, of course they were going to be "slow".

Before the Nforce2 chipset came out though, they were basically the top dog.

Had to look up a few things since it has been so long.

The Via KT880 added dual channel support and was supposed to be just as good as the Nforce2 chipset in terms of speed.

But that doesn't really matter at all for my purposes as I need AGP 2x support for my Voodoo 5-5500 and the latest chipset to support that is the KT333. Sis had a chipset, the 645, but from what I could find, none of the boards have the 1/5 PCI divider and possibly will not work with DOS sound for most cards because of lack of DDMA support.
 
I feel compelled to post pics of my SLI voodoo2 rig..

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Asus P3B-F, PIII 500, 768MB PC133, Riva TNT2 Ultra 32MB, 2x12MB Voodoo2 (SLI), Windows 98SE

The Voodoo2 cards are different models, but they are both 12MB, one seems to have higher density memory chips.

I just fired this up the other day and had some UT Tournament Glide action.
 
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When comparing the VIA single channel DDR to the DUAL channel DDR of Nforce 2, of course they were going to be "slow".

Before the Nforce2 chipset came out though, they were basically the top dog.

Had to look up a few things since it has been so long.

The Via KT880 added dual channel support and was supposed to be just as good as the Nforce2 chipset in terms of speed.

But that doesn't really matter at all for my purposes as I need AGP 2x support for my Voodoo 5-5500 and the latest chipset to support that is the KT333. Sis had a chipset, the 645, but from what I could find, none of the boards have the 1/5 PCI divider and possibly will not work with DOS sound for most cards because of lack of DDMA support.

Yeah I kind of regretted saying that after posting it. VIA did release some faster ones KT600 and KT800 had some better performance. The KT333 vs nforce2 is not a fair comparison. I just remember building a retro system with that dragon board and the KT333 and it posted sooo slowly.. I was kind of shocked by how slow it was - thought it wasn't posting at all at first.
 
I feel compelled to post pics of my SLI voodoo2 rig..

View attachment 18226View attachment 18223View attachment 18224 View attachment 18227View attachment 18222 View attachment 18228View attachment 18229

Asus P3B-F, PIII 500, 768MB PC133, Riva TNT2 Ultra 32MB, 2x12MB Voodoo2 (SLI), Windows 98SE

The Voodoo2 cards are different models, but they are both 12MB, one seems to have higher density memory chips.

I just fired this up the other day and had some UT Tournament Glide action.
Cool. Great set up. Been playing some UT in Glide and Win98se too. Custom player skins & weapon mods in maps I made myself - 17 years ago.
Recapped board still kicking it.

Retro is king :D
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UT has pretty vivid colors in Glide , I don't think DirectX has the same pop...Quake 2 and Grand Prix Legends also look better...good job overall
 
I just found another box of stuff with another Abit VP6 in it ...wouldn't fire up so I looked for a notorious bulger cap...none found...but a closer proctal exam indentified the culprit...not sure what electrical component it is but I assume a resister...right between tabs where the heat sink would attach , probably got knocked off putting on a heat sink stoned some years ago!...no fixing that at your solder station!...haha

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I just found another box of stuff with another Abit VP6 in it ...wouldn't fire up so I looked for a notorious bulger cap...none found...but a closer proctal exam indentified the culprit...not sure what electrical component it is but I assume a resister...right between tabs where the heat sink would attach , probably got knocked off putting on a heat sink stoned some years ago!...no fixing that at your solder station!...haha

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Im sure one can fix that.. hell i've soldered one of those before in the past on a mb and a graphics card. Just need to find someone that has the same board to tell you what the resister is.. even if a pad is ripped off its prob doable.
 
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Oh.. doh. Dual cpu board so lucky you the same resister should be on the other cpu socket.. so get out a multimeter and take a ohms reading of that resister.. hit the net and buy a new one or 2 just encase.

May be tuff to get an accurate reading as the other resistor is installed.. so maybe using a pot soldered to the pads of the broken resister and adjust it to match would be best.
 
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I just found another box of stuff with another Abit VP6 in it ...wouldn't fire up so I looked for a notorious bulger cap...none found...but a closer proctal exam indentified the culprit...not sure what electrical component it is but I assume a resister...right between tabs where the heat sink would attach , probably got knocked off putting on a heat sink stoned some years ago!...no fixing that at your solder station!...haha

IMG_5135.jpg


IMG_5138.jpg


IMG_5145.jpg

Easily fixable. Even with a plain old soldering iron.

Not only do I have to fix stuff like that every once in a while now days.. in fact I even resoldered a smc resistor back on a MSI KT3 Ultra last night that was just about ripped all the way off right next to the north bridge. I used my soldering station with a hot air blower to do that one, but that was because I wanted to see how well it worked compared to just using an iron.

Way back in the day, I purchased a super socket 7 board from the store I worked at that somebody had slipped and ran a screwdriver across the board when trying to either install or remove the heatsink. Not only did it obliterate a few surface mount components, but it also broke a few traces on the board. It took me all of about 20 minutes to fix that mess and saved me about $100. That was about 17 years ago and I used a really crappy soldering iron.
 
Oh.. doh. Dual cpu board so lucky you the same resister should be on the other cpu socket.. so get out a multimeter and take a ohms reading of that resister.. hit the net and buy a new one or 2 just encase.

May be tuff to get an accurate reading as the other resistor is installed.. so maybe using a pot soldered to the pads of the broken resister and adjust it to match would be best.

I am betting it is actually a capacitor. The tan ones are capacitors. If it is a resistor it will be black.

Just take a look at the other socket. Super easy fix as you will not even need a reading if it is a capacitor. Just find one the same size off of something else that is broken and use it.

I've never once had to order any surface mount resistors or capacitors. Always try to keep some broken electronics around for spare parts.
 
Wow. I remember those old dual CPU boards. Cannot see the slots well enough. Does the Abit VP6 do DDR? Can't remember when the change over was.

The colors in Glide do really pop. Seemed rather dark at first so upped the brightness. May add to the vivid appearance.

Great repair stories. Makes me regret tossing out all those devices over the years. Many see electronics as disposable. Myself included. Time to re-access that mindset.

Screwdriver mishaps were the demise of many good boards. Getting back into this retro hardware, realized I needed the cheap screwdriver I modified for working with those pesky heat sink retaining clips. In the 10 or so years being away from this stuff it migrated it's way to the bottom drawer in my big rolling toolbox. Now changing CPU and sinks is again a snap.
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hell I have the one I posted running so this will probably go to the back burner...but it is fun to open some of the boxes of "crap" I have and find some good "crap"

oh ...Sdram memory...2 gig max...also have to run XP or Win 2000 to get dual cpu support , may need to throw a partition on and load Win98 or SE and run 1 cpu for comparison , hmmm thought I did a lot of benching when I got the VP6 back running but I don't remember testing 98...
 
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We're moving and this is the only pc left at the old house. Voodoo2 SLI and Quake 2 makes a good distraction between cleaning and packing. Going to play Unreal later.
 
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