God I miss those days. Way back when I got my hands on a Voodoo 3 2000 for Christmas. My first ever 3D accelerator card. It was such a mind blowing experience! Years of gaming with software rendering suddenly going to glide? Oh man... such nostalgia. That Voodoo3 2000 was such a trooper too. I played with it all the way until I was playing HL Counter Strike before my friend gave me his old GeForce2 MX card. Wasn't a massive upgrade but it played Counter Strike just fine and better than the Voodoo so I was happy. I still had that card all the way up until 5 years ago when I lost everything in a house fire. Ah well... good times and good memories. Those I cant lose.
So sorry to hear about the fire! The V3 was a fantastic card. I used mine for quite a while too until I eventually upgraded to a Geforce 3 Ti200. I have many great memories of it too.
Not surprised about the dirty contacts on the 2nd card, I had a similar problem with a ASUS 370 DL slotket. I cleaned the contacts twice with ipa and it didnt work, cleaned it with contact cleaner and still didnt work, I finally grabbed a good art eraser and used it to clean the contacts and the card came to life and worked perfectly after that. An art eraser has improved many a card.
Thanks for the tip! I’ve heard of people using those art erasers with a lot of success on problematic NES cartridges in the past as well. I’ll have to give it a try sometime 👍
Just found your channel! Man, I would have killed for one of these in middle school. Seeing the adverts in PC Gamer and all the cool games, oof, good times.🎉
Voodoo 3 AGP was my first 3D graphics card. I was stoked when I finally got a computer with a 3D accelerator as we called it back in the day. Games ran SO smooth with it. I am really happy you were able to save these.
Nicely Done! A 12MB voodoo 2 would be awesome. Imagine doing SLI with x2 12MB Voodoo 2's? Gotta Love the Voodoo 3's though. Great all around card for 1999-2000 games!
Sli was overrated. I managed to pair 2 voodoo2 once wasn't worth the effort. About 30pc of direct 3d app would blue screen it lol. Voodoo 3 3000 was the pinacle of 3dfx.imho.
Congratulations on resurrecting all 3 cars! I was a VooDoo2 & VooDoo3 fan when they were new. I wasn't able to afford a VooDoo4 and before I knew it 3dfx was no more. I mourned the death of 3Dfx and right or wrong still occasionally think about what an amazing graphics landscape we would have if they had not failed. Again, congratulations on 3 working cards! I hope the other 2 found great homes!
very nice troubleshooting there, I actually reacted when you did not get any beep codes on the first card so it was a brilliant idea to use a second card. I actually got one of these cards myself along with a Voodoo 3 PCI, a Voodoo1 and one Voodoo 2 card as well. I like these too
Omg. That is my first ever dedicated gaming GPU that I ever bought. Great memories. Had to deal with figuring out drivers shortly after the company collapsed in 2001. Running GTA 3 was a nightmare. Was the only reason I had to switch. to an Nvidia.
Oooo these were high end, like $250. I could not afford that, I could only buy the 2000 for $100 in the day. Great card, smoked my ATI Rage 3D. Scary I still remember that but not what I had for breakfast yesterday.
Wow, I've been doing these kinds of repairs on Voodoo3, Banshee and other cards like these for the last ~7 years. So awesome to see someone else doing this! It looks like we use a lot of the same methods... but some of yours are definitely better! I have probably revived 50+ dead or defective cards, but after watching just a few of your videos I have definitely learned some things. Also, I catch myself fist-pumping when you have success, because I have been there and it feels so awesome to bring something back from the dead like that. Keep it up! :)
Great job as usual! I would keep them all, but I'm a Storage Engineer, I can't escape the "more copies you have of something unreplicable, the better" mindset 😄
really ? I run like 48 disks in my apartment, and will grow to 4 times that, ofcourse, all SAS, and most hgst. I even run a sas controller in my still older AM3 desktop, with hdd's spinning at 15000rpm, need to put a blower in front, to keep them cool . Not talking the 2.5 discs in the server chassis.😂
I'd like to file an official complaint. I came here for some vintage card repair and now I'm finding myself jittering from 3 cups of coffee I wasn't planning on having! :D
Great imagination (plus a good luck). I remember a decade ago I saw a new/boxed Voodoo 5 for around $300, but I passed on. Why would I pay that much for a GF2 MX level.... Recently an STB black Voodoo 2 12mb, new/open box, was sold for $165.
Thanks for the vid, i´m having 7 Voodoos sitting in a Showcase for half an eternity and i tested them all today....ami bios on all cards: 1x long 8x short and i hope its just the bios, they worked fine as i tested them the last time... (no optical anomalies visible) PS: one subscriber +
Excellent video. I have a Voodoo 3 and if I ever have problems with it this video has given me the confidence to attempt to diagnose it. Your channel; deserves to grow very quickly- very professional.
Wow, nice haul dude! First time viewer here and now subscribed. I fancy myself as a PC guy but I confess I would have never have tried the fixes you came up with. Very cool
I went with the Geforce 256 SDRAM model instead. GLide was on its way out, and I was playing Unreal Tournament competitively, and dipping my feet in Q3A. Love your channel man, punches me in the feels and kicks me in the nostalgia.
That's awesome, three out of three!! I've got a 12MB Voodoo 2 with 110MHz RAM that I've tried to fix repeatedly. It's got damaged pins on the FBI chip so realistically it needs that chip removed and replaced but the pitch is so fine! It's scary.
So true! The V2’s frame buffer chip is a royal pain because of the pitch. One of my broken V2s had a ton of bent pins and straightening them out was really difficult. That particular card was really beat up when I got it. I replaced a bunch of missing components and corrected shorts on all three chips, fixed broken traces but no luck. I suspect the fbi chip needs to be replaced as well. My other 8MB V2 doesn’t detect any memory on one of the TMUs but is in good physical condition otherwise. I have more hope to get that one fixed one of these days 🙂
Always a rock solid glide3 card really good at most 3d actually. There was one that got passed around my extended family for YEARS. It had about 20 owners. No exaggerating. Everytime someone built a PC we always asked the same question.. "are you on the voodoo 3?" 'the' voodoo 3 😂 Great card. It actually lies about it's true mem though 16 cards are actually 14.5!?!
Thanks for your comment! Haha that V3 definitely did it’s service that’s for sure! Interesting about the 14.5MB.. I’ve never heard of that before, will have to look into it.
This vid helped me bring back a Geforce2 GTS. I got that card in a box of junk. It seemed to POST fine (good beep and boot to Windows), but without a VGA signal at all, not even during POST. With an additional PCI VGA, I could see the card showing up in WinXPs device manager with the correct name, but showing error 10 "device failed to start". I saved the cards BIOS, which opened fine in a bios editor. The version shown exactly matched the stickers one on the flash rom. So I don't think it had ever been overwritten. With very little hope left, I flashed an older bios version with nvflash. And what do you know, it started working perfectly. So the cards bios data must have been damaged in a way that did not trip the bios option rom checksum verification.
I got a 3dfx Voodoo³ 3000 AGP at launch and it had a strange misprinted Unreal disc (Unreal Tournament art) and some beta UnrealEd assets on the disc. The card died months later with vertical lines in the screen… can’t recall if they were blue or red but I think it was one of those two. I RMA’d it with 3dfx and the replacement came in a full retail box with a proper Unreal disc.
Wow, what a fantastic outcome! Fantastic to see three iconic 3dfx cards being given a new lease of life You do a great job and filming and narrating your videos in a natural way. Keep it coming, you’ve got a bright future ahead of you on TH-cam
Thanks very much! Very true, I was just about convinced that the Atmel BIOS chip was bad and needed to be replaced on card three. I even ordered a replacement 😁
even tho i never used one of those i can only imagine the joy they brought to people that used, getting one of those at the time i imagine it is like you having a gtx 1050 and getting a rtx 3050, just a big change in what you can play!
Great stuff! Luckily I got my hands on a V3 3000 for 65€ and a 2000 for 50€ recently, I think it was in 2021. Having had a 3000 like you back in the day, I really had to have one for my Windows98 Retro machine.
You have a great coffee machine Mike! Great content dude, glad I remembered to stop by here, this is a great retro GPU resource. The V3 3000 is one of my all time favorite cards. Well done btw, you are a wizard with these old cards.
Thanks so much for the kind words! I used to go out for coffee a lot in the mornings and I think the fancy coffee machine paid for itself in a matter of a few months :)
all three back to life! well done. and you should always clean the connections of any used hardware before you put it in your stuff, you dont know where it has been.
Thanks! So true. If things look dirty I clean them first but this whole experience has definitely taught me to clean them whether they look clean or not! 👍
Out of all the video cards I've owned over the last 25+ years, my old Voodoo 3 3000 was always my favourite. Bought a working one a couple of years ago, which was a good thing as prices have jumped up a notch since then. I must resist the urge to check the version number of its bios...
Definitely one of my favourites too! I used it for quite a while before feeling the need to upgrade. I don’t think there were any real drastic changes in the bios updates aside from some VESA video mode fixes, but I could be wrong 🙂
I was able to recover a rare / old Supertek V3000-16 (Voodoo 3 - 3000/16gb AGP) that would not output any video at boot originally using this process, thanks! I am planning to pair it with a matching black Creative Labs Blaster BX chipset slot-1 Board (m003) in a reverse sleeper build using a modern Fractal Focus-G case with 5.25" drive bays .. it would have been a huge bummer if the card didn't end up working so this bit of knowledge was clutch.
I remember being super chuffed when I sold my old Voodo3 that had been sat in my drawer for like 18 years for £45 when I saw how much they were going for... just checked again and they're like £130.
Hello. I really enjoy your videos, very awesome work. I am wondering what brand desoldering gun you use? I am interested in your soldering setup. If you can point me in the right direction, I will be so grateful. Keep up the great work/videos. Thanks again.
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it! My desoldering gun is the Hakko FR301 and my soldering station is the Hakko 888D. I really like Hakko products. They are not cheap but the quality is excellent. The FR301 was especially pricy, but after having used it for a few months I don’t regret the purchase at all. It’s an excellent product. Just a tip if you are looking to buy Hakko products - be sure to buy from a reputable seller. There are pretty convincing knock-offs and fakes out there. Not just for irons either, even tips and accessories. I bought mine direct from Digi-Key. Thanks again!
@@vswitchzero Thanks brother for the info. Seems like a worthwhile investment. I have clicked on the notification bell so I will know when you post new videos. Thanks again for your help.
Wow 3 Voodoo 3 cards for the price of one! I wish I had a PCI version of the 3000 to combine with an nVidia AGP card and have the best of two worlds in one single retro machine, instead of having several cards over several retro computers.
Voodoo 3 3000 is great retro card to play on :D i have the Compaq version i think more than 1 too actually i think all of them was from compaq systems :D
I remember this was one of the hottest running cards I've ever come across. 3dfx could have just slapped a cheap fan on it. I had jury rig one using a PCI bracket to cool mine.
4:30 I have an old A7V non 133 motherboard, 100MHz front-side bus. Did you ever try to max out that motherboard or the A7V133? I think that motherboard would take up to a mobile Barton and I had my T-bred B running at just under 2.5GHz (104MHz by 24x multiplier) like 16 years ago, can't even remember how long ago it was. Might make for an interesting video or two!
@@vswitchzero I had to look up the product name. Athlon XP-M 2600+, the chip for laptops. I hear it overclocked to the moon back in the day. Me, I had watercooling, voltage mod, thermal diode mod, fun times!
I used to have a voodoo 3 3000 PCI. No idea what happened to it unfortunately. I recently found the box with everything in it. Now to find a deal on a PCI card to match the box.
I have seen these video cards used in many video arcade games. My Arctic Thunder has one. Golden tee also had a PCI version. I may have a dead PCI one here I could send you.
Thanks for the comment! Very cool! Yes, 3dfx has its roots in the arcade industry and their parts can be found in quite a few cabinets. Thanks for the offer of the PCI card, but will have to pass for now. It has been really hard to find the time to do repairs lately and I'm hoping to take a break from it for a bit. That said, even dead 3dfx cards have quite a bit of value these days (both for collectors and people looking to repair them). You should consider putting it up for sale. I'm sure someone would definitely be interested in it. Cheers!
@@vswitchzero thank you for your reply. I understand having limited time, If you change your mind let me know the card will probably be here along with other stuff. I saw in one video you were looking for an A7A266 I used to have many of those and they were good boards. I went with the Ali chipsets back then because I had a good experience with the old Asus P5A.
Great video! I have a voodoo banshee pci the diamond monster fusion that doesn't work,when i put another vga pci or agp i can see it get recognised on the task manager but when i try to update the bios through diamond update utility i get a message that the card is not found.
I have a defective V3 1000 that I might try to repair some day, as it’s the only 3dfx card I own and it’s a shame it doesn’t work properly It’s defective in that it does boot and install drivers, but it shows artifacting in win98se and 3d applications freeze the pc when they start, so I’m assuming vram failure
Yeah, most likely. Try to squeeze the chips while in windows to see if the artifacting changes at all. Sometimes its just a simple flaky solder joint on one of the chips. Best of luck!
Did all Voodoo 3000s have the big aluminum heatsink? Sometimes you see them with the dark small one. I wonder if those are flashed 2000s. Nice job, btw. You better go play the lottery haha.
As far as I'm aware, all the voodoo 3 3000's had this heat sink. The 2000's had the smaller black one. You're probably right about them being flashed 2000's as I had a 2000 with 5.5ns RAM and it OC'd nicely to 166mhz with no issues. I know people have removed heatsinks from the 3000 and added their own custom one with built in fan. I removed mine for troubleshooting, cleaned it up and just used thermal paste to replace the old pad/glue with no issues. I have x2 40mm fans mounted to mine.
@@sly_botts1189 about the heatsink models, the newer 2000´s used a "aluminum color" heatsink like the 3000s but on the same size of the black ones, the format of them was a bit different.
Great video, do you by chance want to sell one of your working cards for a decent price , I have a golden tee completed that needs a new card mins is starting to go 😢
Depend on luck.. Some times i find that, dead cards, that have no signal, will work just fine, after cleaning their slot with isopropyl alcohol 95% usually works great for me.. For example last time i did test number of my 3Dfx cards, one of my Banshee cards did have no signal... And after cleaning its AGP slot, did post fine..
Most likely bit rot in the vbios due to the graphic unable to post through the VGA port only seen a few behave like that in newer graphic cards usually reflashing the vbios fixes it and some cases it the GPU core that failed Got a question are you using a Weller Soldering Station as it looks similar to mine as it looks like using magistat tips
@@vswitchzero I'm using old school Weller WTCP-S with magistat tips different sizes. Still have to track down the full list of all the tips from different shapes and temperature range. My late father gave me that Weller and it works like a treat with no fuss in messing around with temperature as it done by magistat ingenious
I recently got a voodoo 3 3000 AGP off of ebay, i took a gamble since it was sold as is, I think it may be broken, it will boot up, however no matter what driver I install it has horrible artifacting and under settings it will only display 256 colors and 640x480 those are the only options under settings, does this sound like a destroyed card to you? When games actually would launch the textures were awful and I was getting single digit frame rates.
Ah sorry to hear it. It's possible it could be bad memory, but that sounds really severe. I'd be concerned that it could be a BGA connectivity issue or something else. If there are no missing or damaged surface mount components or traces, give the squeeze test a try on the core and each memory chip and see if the artifacting changes at all.
Hello. I got a voodoo 3 recently and the display on the screen was cut off like alternate vertical black stripes. I did notice that one resistor R65 is broken (above the main chip). Could this be a reason for the issue?
Thanks for your comment! I would definitely replace R65 if it’s broken off. Missing capacitors are sometimes less critical but a broken/missing resistor will sever a trace and most likely cause a problem. Hope you get it working again! Cheers 👍
OMG, there is a flash from my first one on 3dfx! Hahahaha 😆 ( it was made engineering from the banshee. Somebody must have copied the script to a real software)
Interesting.. Texture corruption like this is often due to memory problems. It is possible that at least one EDO chip has gone bad or has a damaged trace or flaky solder joint somewhere. Is the card otherwise stable?
я бы не советовал так выкусывать конденсаторы, некоторые платы очень нежные и при не аккуратном движении можно легко оторвать контактные площадки))) а так конечно классно что все три заработали, старое железо гораздо надежнее современного и подобный риск часто оправдывается))))
Thanks for your comment! Yeah, I think using hot air would probably be the safest method. There is definitely some risk cutting the capacitor cans, but in my experience it is a bit safer than trying to use an iron and bending them up or using the twist-off method. I’ve never tried this on newer more delicate hardware before though. That could definitely be a lot more risky and a different story. Thanks again for the tip.
@@vswitchzero этот совет скорее адресован тем кто захочет это повторить не имея опыта, в этом случае лучше использовать более безопасный метод, для вас же более предпочтителен тот метод с которым вы имеете опыт и хороший инструмент для этого метода, это будет для вас наиболее безопасно
Haven't seen or heard of any new community V3 drivers for a long time, unfortunately. Thankfully, the last release of the 3dfx drivers from ~2000 work quite well in my experience.
Good question. I found a component map for a V2 and a V5 before but don’t think I’ve seen one for the V3. I’d recommend starting a thread on the vogons forum. I’m sure someone there may be able to point you in the right direction 👍
A bought a fully working one of these a couple of years ago when the prices weren’t stupid. Very pleased with it
Wow that's lucky! I've gotten lucky in the past but it's quite something to have 100% success.
God I miss those days. Way back when I got my hands on a Voodoo 3 2000 for Christmas. My first ever 3D accelerator card. It was such a mind blowing experience! Years of gaming with software rendering suddenly going to glide? Oh man... such nostalgia. That Voodoo3 2000 was such a trooper too. I played with it all the way until I was playing HL Counter Strike before my friend gave me his old GeForce2 MX card. Wasn't a massive upgrade but it played Counter Strike just fine and better than the Voodoo so I was happy. I still had that card all the way up until 5 years ago when I lost everything in a house fire. Ah well... good times and good memories. Those I cant lose.
So sorry to hear about the fire! The V3 was a fantastic card. I used mine for quite a while too until I eventually upgraded to a Geforce 3 Ti200. I have many great memories of it too.
never to late to start a search for that retro build again. the hunt is half the fun.
I remember when these Compaq/Dell 3dfx cards were like 14.99 on eBay. Guy was selling like 300 of them. Imagine the price right now 😂
Oh man. I used to love my Voodoo 3 card. Was running on that for a long time.
Not surprised about the dirty contacts on the 2nd card, I had a similar problem with a ASUS 370 DL slotket. I cleaned the contacts twice with ipa and it didnt work, cleaned it with contact cleaner and still didnt work, I finally grabbed a good art eraser and used it to clean the contacts and the card came to life and worked perfectly after that.
An art eraser has improved many a card.
Thanks for the tip! I’ve heard of people using those art erasers with a lot of success on problematic NES cartridges in the past as well. I’ll have to give it a try sometime 👍
I kept my voodoo3 3000 I bought in 1999 :) Still have it in my original P3 computer :)
The cardinal rule for all those doing electronic repair/servicing work.....always make sure you have a good supply of quality coffee on hand.
Always! :)
Just found your channel! Man, I would have killed for one of these in middle school. Seeing the adverts in PC Gamer and all the cool games, oof, good times.🎉
Very interesting hint with two monitor support! Thanks!
Voodoo 3 AGP was my first 3D graphics card. I was stoked when I finally got a computer with a 3D accelerator as we called it back in the day. Games ran SO smooth with it. I am really happy you were able to save these.
Nicely Done! A 12MB voodoo 2 would be awesome. Imagine doing SLI with x2 12MB Voodoo 2's? Gotta Love the Voodoo 3's though. Great all around card for 1999-2000 games!
Thanks very much! And thanks again for the BIOS file 👍
Sli was overrated. I managed to pair 2 voodoo2 once wasn't worth the effort.
About 30pc of direct 3d app would blue screen it lol.
Voodoo 3 3000 was the pinacle of 3dfx.imho.
Congratulations on resurrecting all 3 cars! I was a VooDoo2 & VooDoo3 fan when they were new. I wasn't able to afford a VooDoo4 and before I knew it 3dfx was no more. I mourned the death of 3Dfx and right or wrong still occasionally think about what an amazing graphics landscape we would have if they had not failed. Again, congratulations on 3 working cards! I hope the other 2 found great homes!
Good old Days! 1999 i got my Voodoo 3 3000......awesome feeling with mit 12years :D
very nice troubleshooting there, I actually reacted when you did not get any beep codes on the first card so it was a brilliant idea to use a second card. I actually got one of these cards myself along with a Voodoo 3 PCI, a Voodoo1 and one Voodoo 2 card as well. I like these too
Omg. That is my first ever dedicated gaming GPU that I ever bought. Great memories. Had to deal with figuring out drivers shortly after the company collapsed in 2001. Running GTA 3 was a nightmare. Was the only reason I had to switch. to an Nvidia.
Oh that unforgettable PATA hard drive sound!
Oooo these were high end, like $250. I could not afford that, I could only buy the 2000 for $100 in the day. Great card, smoked my ATI Rage 3D. Scary I still remember that but not what I had for breakfast yesterday.
Wow, I've been doing these kinds of repairs on Voodoo3, Banshee and other cards like these for the last ~7 years. So awesome to see someone else doing this! It looks like we use a lot of the same methods... but some of yours are definitely better! I have probably revived 50+ dead or defective cards, but after watching just a few of your videos I have definitely learned some things. Also, I catch myself fist-pumping when you have success, because I have been there and it feels so awesome to bring something back from the dead like that.
Keep it up! :)
Thanks very much! Indeed! There is nothing quite like that feeling when you see something broken come back to life like that 🙂
My all time favorite graphics card was my Voodoo 3 3000 AGP. This video was like a trip down memory lane for me. Good job!
Thanks so much, Jeff! The Voodoo 3 was definitely one of the greats in the history of 3D gaming, that’s for sure 👍
I'd love to get a voodoo 3 for my 98 build they are so expensive to get nowadays.
Great job as usual! I would keep them all, but I'm a Storage Engineer, I can't escape the "more copies you have of something unreplicable, the better" mindset 😄
Thanks very much! Haha yeah I can understand 😁
really ? I run like 48 disks in my apartment, and will grow to 4 times that, ofcourse, all SAS, and most hgst.
I even run a sas controller in my still older AM3 desktop, with hdd's spinning at 15000rpm, need to put a blower in front, to keep them cool .
Not talking the 2.5 discs in the server chassis.😂
I'd like to file an official complaint. I came here for some vintage card repair and now I'm finding myself jittering from 3 cups of coffee I wasn't planning on having! :D
very nice troubleshooting methodology, nice to see a triple win!
Thanks! :)
Excellent video! Three Voodoo3s revived which would´ve otherwise most likely get scrapped, love it!
Thank you very much!
Great imagination (plus a good luck).
I remember a decade ago I saw a new/boxed Voodoo 5 for around $300, but I passed on. Why would I pay that much for a GF2 MX level....
Recently an STB black Voodoo 2 12mb, new/open box, was sold for $165.
Thanks for the vid, i´m having 7 Voodoos sitting in a Showcase for half an eternity and i tested them all today....ami bios on all cards: 1x long 8x short and i hope its just the bios, they worked fine as i tested them the last time... (no optical anomalies visible)
PS: one subscriber +
Excellent video. I have a Voodoo 3 and if I ever have problems with it this video has given me the confidence to attempt to diagnose it. Your channel; deserves to grow very quickly- very professional.
Thanks so much for the kind words, it means a lot! 🙂
Wow, nice haul dude! First time viewer here and now subscribed. I fancy myself as a PC guy but I confess I would have never have tried the fixes you came up with. Very cool
Thanks very much! :)
I went with the Geforce 256 SDRAM model instead. GLide was on its way out, and I was playing Unreal Tournament competitively, and dipping my feet in Q3A. Love your channel man, punches me in the feels and kicks me in the nostalgia.
Thanks very much! 🙂
That's awesome, three out of three!! I've got a 12MB Voodoo 2 with 110MHz RAM that I've tried to fix repeatedly. It's got damaged pins on the FBI chip so realistically it needs that chip removed and replaced but the pitch is so fine! It's scary.
So true! The V2’s frame buffer chip is a royal pain because of the pitch. One of my broken V2s had a ton of bent pins and straightening them out was really difficult. That particular card was really beat up when I got it. I replaced a bunch of missing components and corrected shorts on all three chips, fixed broken traces but no luck. I suspect the fbi chip needs to be replaced as well. My other 8MB V2 doesn’t detect any memory on one of the TMUs but is in good physical condition otherwise. I have more hope to get that one fixed one of these days 🙂
Always a rock solid glide3 card really good at most 3d actually.
There was one that got passed around my extended family for YEARS.
It had about 20 owners. No exaggerating.
Everytime someone built a PC we always asked the same question.. "are you on the voodoo 3?"
'the' voodoo 3 😂
Great card.
It actually lies about it's true mem though 16 cards are actually 14.5!?!
Thanks for your comment! Haha that V3 definitely did it’s service that’s for sure! Interesting about the 14.5MB.. I’ve never heard of that before, will have to look into it.
@@vswitchzero yeah it runs gta3 for 30 seconds then crashes for that reason.
What a nice little video, really enjoyed watching you go about fixing each card. I like the laid back style and the little coffee montages in between!
Thanks so much, I really appreciate it!👍🙂
Still remember my original Voodoo card with it’s pass through setup. Was so cool at the time.
This vid helped me bring back a Geforce2 GTS. I got that card in a box of junk. It seemed to POST fine (good beep and boot to Windows), but without a VGA signal at all, not even during POST. With an additional PCI VGA, I could see the card showing up in WinXPs device manager with the correct name, but showing error 10 "device failed to start". I saved the cards BIOS, which opened fine in a bios editor. The version shown exactly matched the stickers one on the flash rom. So I don't think it had ever been overwritten. With very little hope left, I flashed an older bios version with nvflash. And what do you know, it started working perfectly. So the cards bios data must have been damaged in a way that did not trip the bios option rom checksum verification.
Thanks for your comment. Really happy to hear that you got your Geforce 2 back up and running!
Excellent work, thank you for passing on some knowledge on repair methods!
I got a 3dfx Voodoo³ 3000 AGP at launch and it had a strange misprinted Unreal disc (Unreal Tournament art) and some beta UnrealEd assets on the disc. The card died months later with vertical lines in the screen… can’t recall if they were blue or red but I think it was one of those two. I RMA’d it with 3dfx and the replacement came in a full retail box with a proper Unreal disc.
Great job saving these three incredible pieces of history!
Thanks so much! 🙂
Wow, what a fantastic outcome! Fantastic to see three iconic 3dfx cards being given a new lease of life
You do a great job and filming and narrating your videos in a natural way. Keep it coming, you’ve got a bright future ahead of you on TH-cam
Thanks so much for the kind words and encouragement! I really appreciate it :)
Excellent video, great job !
Another great video, nice work on the fixes. The Dell card behaving like that was very strange, nicely figured out!
Thanks very much! Very true, I was just about convinced that the Atmel BIOS chip was bad and needed to be replaced on card three. I even ordered a replacement 😁
nice video, so much to see in just 20 minutes!
Thanks very much! :)
even tho i never used one of those i can only imagine the joy they brought to people that used, getting one of those at the time i imagine it is like you having a gtx 1050 and getting a rtx 3050, just a big change in what you can play!
Great stuff! Luckily I got my hands on a V3 3000 for 65€ and a 2000 for 50€ recently, I think it was in 2021. Having had a 3000 like you back in the day, I really had to have one for my Windows98 Retro machine.
First 3dfx card I got was a voodoo. Just to play kingpin. Why on earth are they still selling for crazy prices? Regret losing mine now 😄
That's really awesome that you got all three cards working. Love the video and great job.
Thanks very much! :)
You have a great coffee machine Mike! Great content dude, glad I remembered to stop by here, this is a great retro GPU resource. The V3 3000 is one of my all time favorite cards.
Well done btw, you are a wizard with these old cards.
Thanks so much for the kind words! I used to go out for coffee a lot in the mornings and I think the fancy coffee machine paid for itself in a matter of a few months :)
all three back to life! well done. and you should always clean the connections of any used hardware before you put it in your stuff, you dont know where it has been.
Thanks! So true. If things look dirty I clean them first but this whole experience has definitely taught me to clean them whether they look clean or not! 👍
Wow! I thought I bricked my V3 by doing a BIOS flash. I need to bust it out and see if it still works with another card in a PCI slot. TY!!!!!!!!!
Best of luck! I hope the reflash works. Let me know how it works out :)
Out of all the video cards I've owned over the last 25+ years, my old Voodoo 3 3000 was always my favourite. Bought a working one a couple of years ago, which was a good thing as prices have jumped up a notch since then. I must resist the urge to check the version number of its bios...
Definitely one of my favourites too! I used it for quite a while before feeling the need to upgrade. I don’t think there were any real drastic changes in the bios updates aside from some VESA video mode fixes, but I could be wrong 🙂
Nice videos, I like the way you explain all the things!!! Thanks
Thanks very much! :)
I was able to recover a rare / old Supertek V3000-16 (Voodoo 3 - 3000/16gb AGP) that would not output any video at boot originally using this process, thanks!
I am planning to pair it with a matching black Creative Labs Blaster BX chipset slot-1 Board (m003) in a reverse sleeper build using a modern Fractal Focus-G case with 5.25" drive bays .. it would have been a huge bummer if the card didn't end up working so this bit of knowledge was clutch.
Awesome! Glad the video was helpful and that you got your V3 working again!
Brilliant video, excellent results!!!
Thank you very much! :)
Awesome work, Mike! Love your dedication!
Amazing work! Glad you fixed all of them! 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻
I remember being super chuffed when I sold my old Voodo3 that had been sat in my drawer for like 18 years for £45 when I saw how much they were going for... just checked again and they're like £130.
I also have one with the 1.0 GPU BIOS version. We could say it's one of the first ones.
Congrats! And thanks for sharing your knowledge. This sure will help others to rescue their cards.
Thanks so much for the kind words! 👍
Hello. I really enjoy your videos, very awesome work. I am wondering what brand desoldering gun you use? I am interested in your soldering setup. If you can point me in the right direction, I will be so grateful. Keep up the great work/videos. Thanks again.
Thanks for the kind words, I really appreciate it! My desoldering gun is the Hakko FR301 and my soldering station is the Hakko 888D. I really like Hakko products. They are not cheap but the quality is excellent. The FR301 was especially pricy, but after having used it for a few months I don’t regret the purchase at all. It’s an excellent product. Just a tip if you are looking to buy Hakko products - be sure to buy from a reputable seller. There are pretty convincing knock-offs and fakes out there. Not just for irons either, even tips and accessories. I bought mine direct from Digi-Key. Thanks again!
@@vswitchzero Thanks brother for the info. Seems like a worthwhile investment. I have clicked on the notification bell so I will know when you post new videos. Thanks again for your help.
Very nice. I'm thinking of doing some video memory repair myself but I not sure where to reliably source for those memory modules.
Thanks! You can find winbond replacement chips for the V3 on Mouser. Check out my newer V3 memory replacement video for detail.
Good old days 😍
Thank you for a very informative video.
Wow 3 Voodoo 3 cards for the price of one! I wish I had a PCI version of the 3000 to combine with an nVidia AGP card and have the best of two worlds in one single retro machine, instead of having several cards over several retro computers.
The PCI versions are harder to find. I bid on a couple of them over the last few months but they always went way beyond what I was willing to spend.
I see we have the same SMT electrolytic removal method!
Voodoo 3 3000 is great retro card to play on :D i have the Compaq version i think more than 1 too actually i think all of them was from compaq systems :D
Fantastic work! Love your vids and narration. Sometimes it's the simple things. Btw, 2 vids in now, you've convinced me to sub!
Awesome, thank you! :)
I remember this was one of the hottest running cards I've ever come across. 3dfx could have just slapped a cheap fan on it. I had jury rig one using a PCI bracket to cool mine.
Indeed! Way too hot running. Even a very small amount of airflow makes a huge difference. I don’t like to run any V3 cards without a case fan nearby.
Just saw a basket case one on eBay sell for $65, would have bought it but the middle rear capacitor (or where it was) had a torn trace.
I have a P3 733 that would love a voodoo card if you're ever feeling charitable!
4:30 I have an old A7V non 133 motherboard, 100MHz front-side bus. Did you ever try to max out that motherboard or the A7V133?
I think that motherboard would take up to a mobile Barton and I had my T-bred B running at just under 2.5GHz (104MHz by 24x multiplier) like 16 years ago, can't even remember how long ago it was. Might make for an interesting video or two!
Haven't tried pushing it yet as I don't really have any socket 462 CPUs that are good overclockers. Hopefully one day soon :)
@@vswitchzero I had to look up the product name. Athlon XP-M 2600+, the chip for laptops. I hear it overclocked to the moon back in the day. Me, I had watercooling, voltage mod, thermal diode mod, fun times!
@@Rack979 I lived that times haha I still have a Barton XP-M 2200+ 35W, very good CPU
I used to have a voodoo 3 3000 PCI. No idea what happened to it unfortunately. I recently found the box with everything in it. Now to find a deal on a PCI card to match the box.
Great work 👌👍
I have seen these video cards used in many video arcade games. My Arctic Thunder has one. Golden tee also had a PCI version. I may have a dead PCI one here I could send you.
Thanks for the comment! Very cool! Yes, 3dfx has its roots in the arcade industry and their parts can be found in quite a few cabinets. Thanks for the offer of the PCI card, but will have to pass for now. It has been really hard to find the time to do repairs lately and I'm hoping to take a break from it for a bit. That said, even dead 3dfx cards have quite a bit of value these days (both for collectors and people looking to repair them). You should consider putting it up for sale. I'm sure someone would definitely be interested in it. Cheers!
@@vswitchzero thank you for your reply. I understand having limited time, If you change your mind let me know the card will probably be here along with other stuff. I saw in one video you were looking for an A7A266 I used to have many of those and they were good boards. I went with the Ali chipsets back then because I had a good experience with the old Asus P5A.
Always keep two, 2nd one as backup.
I still have two voodoo 3 2000 in my stash of old tech :)
Great video! I have a voodoo banshee pci the diamond monster fusion that doesn't work,when i put another vga pci or agp i can see it get recognised on the task manager but when i try to update the bios through diamond update utility i get a message that the card is not found.
Like ! Wow this video was just like a drama movie with a happy end :)))
I have a defective V3 1000 that I might try to repair some day, as it’s the only 3dfx card I own and it’s a shame it doesn’t work properly
It’s defective in that it does boot and install drivers, but it shows artifacting in win98se and 3d applications freeze the pc when they start, so I’m assuming vram failure
Yeah, most likely. Try to squeeze the chips while in windows to see if the artifacting changes at all. Sometimes its just a simple flaky solder joint on one of the chips. Best of luck!
Nice video, just one comment/observation, wiggling the vga cable like that might not be the best thing for the card or the cable
Did all Voodoo 3000s have the big aluminum heatsink? Sometimes you see them with the dark small one. I wonder if those are flashed 2000s.
Nice job, btw. You better go play the lottery haha.
As far as I'm aware, all the voodoo 3 3000's had this heat sink. The 2000's had the smaller black one. You're probably right about them being flashed 2000's as I had a 2000 with 5.5ns RAM and it OC'd nicely to 166mhz with no issues. I know people have removed heatsinks from the 3000 and added their own custom one with built in fan. I removed mine for troubleshooting, cleaned it up and just used thermal paste to replace the old pad/glue with no issues. I have x2 40mm fans mounted to mine.
@@sly_botts1189 Thanks for the info! I'm not an expert on the old stuff.
@@sly_botts1189 about the heatsink models, the newer 2000´s used a "aluminum color" heatsink like the 3000s but on the same size of the black ones, the format of them was a bit different.
I chucked mine in the bin years ago as I knew I would never use it again, so regret it now......
Great video, do you by chance want to sell one of your working cards for a decent price , I have a golden tee completed that needs a new card mins is starting to go 😢
Thanks for your comment! I ended up keeping one of the cards and sold the others a while back. Best of luck finding a V3 for golden tee!
I was with you all the way up until you decided to go with decaf. ;)
Depend on luck.. Some times i find that, dead cards, that have no signal, will work just fine, after cleaning their slot with isopropyl alcohol 95% usually works great for me.. For example last time i did test number of my 3Dfx cards, one of my Banshee cards did have no signal... And after cleaning its AGP slot, did post fine..
Most likely bit rot in the vbios due to the graphic unable to post through the VGA port only seen a few behave like that in newer graphic cards usually reflashing the vbios fixes it and some cases it the GPU core that failed
Got a question are you using a Weller Soldering Station as it looks similar to mine as it looks like using magistat tips
It's actually a Hakko 888d soldering station. Weller makes some great stuff too.
@@vswitchzero I'm using old school Weller WTCP-S with magistat tips different sizes. Still have to track down the full list of all the tips from different shapes and temperature range.
My late father gave me that Weller and it works like a treat with no fuss in messing around with temperature as it done by magistat ingenious
I have the first voodoo and the second voodoo. Gotta admit I didn't even know till recent times there were more.
I still have my Voodoo 3 2000 PCI card I bought back in 99.
Nice! I really wish I had kept my gear from back then. Every time I'd upgrade, I'd sell parts to help fund the new stuff.
I unfortunatelly sold both PCI Voodoos I´ve had with their boxes, a V3 2000 and a V5 5500.
I recently got a voodoo 3 3000 AGP off of ebay, i took a gamble since it was sold as is, I think it may be broken, it will boot up, however no matter what driver I install it has horrible artifacting and under settings it will only display 256 colors and 640x480 those are the only options under settings, does this sound like a destroyed card to you? When games actually would launch the textures were awful and I was getting single digit frame rates.
Ah sorry to hear it. It's possible it could be bad memory, but that sounds really severe. I'd be concerned that it could be a BGA connectivity issue or something else. If there are no missing or damaged surface mount components or traces, give the squeeze test a try on the core and each memory chip and see if the artifacting changes at all.
You’re lucky, man!
You lucky so & so :-O
Nice repair vid :-)
"i went and did what any reasonable person would do" lmao
love the video btw!
I almost forgot I had a system like this.
Hello. I got a voodoo 3 recently and the display on the screen was cut off like alternate vertical black stripes. I did notice that one resistor R65 is broken (above the main chip). Could this be a reason for the issue?
Thanks for your comment! I would definitely replace R65 if it’s broken off. Missing capacitors are sometimes less critical but a broken/missing resistor will sever a trace and most likely cause a problem. Hope you get it working again! Cheers 👍
I have a bunch of voodoo 3 too o ly all of mine works. Once of them was made by Creative. How odd is that. Creative labs video card heheh
OMG, there is a flash from my first one on 3dfx! Hahahaha 😆 ( it was made engineering from the banshee. Somebody must have copied the script to a real software)
I have a Voodoo 2 12MB that puts this strange red static on some textures. Any idea what that could be?
Interesting.. Texture corruption like this is often due to memory problems. It is possible that at least one EDO chip has gone bad or has a damaged trace or flaky solder joint somewhere. Is the card otherwise stable?
Rumor is those cards where use to mine. 3dfx mining bios.
я бы не советовал так выкусывать конденсаторы, некоторые платы очень нежные и при не аккуратном движении можно легко оторвать контактные площадки))) а так конечно классно что все три заработали, старое железо гораздо надежнее современного и подобный риск часто оправдывается))))
Thanks for your comment! Yeah, I think using hot air would probably be the safest method. There is definitely some risk cutting the capacitor cans, but in my experience it is a bit safer than trying to use an iron and bending them up or using the twist-off method. I’ve never tried this on newer more delicate hardware before though. That could definitely be a lot more risky and a different story. Thanks again for the tip.
@@vswitchzero этот совет скорее адресован тем кто захочет это повторить не имея опыта, в этом случае лучше использовать более безопасный метод, для вас же более предпочтителен тот метод с которым вы имеете опыт и хороший инструмент для этого метода, это будет для вас наиболее безопасно
I'm pretty sure I've still got a few lying around
Im still whaiting for new voodoo 3 3000 drivers, any news?
Haven't seen or heard of any new community V3 drivers for a long time, unfortunately. Thankfully, the last release of the 3dfx drivers from ~2000 work quite well in my experience.
i have a 3500 with some caps and ic missed ,where i can find blueprint to get the componenet i need?
Good question. I found a component map for a V2 and a V5 before but don’t think I’ve seen one for the V3. I’d recommend starting a thread on the vogons forum. I’m sure someone there may be able to point you in the right direction 👍
@@vswitchzero i make a post and never get any info