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(Image credit: Bits und Bolts Youtube ) The 3Dfx Voodoo 2 and the Nvidia Riva TNT were the pinnacles of the early era of 3D graphics. Both were released in 1998, and while I owned the latter, the Voodoo 2 was the faster of the two, despite the inconvenience of requiring an existing 2D graphics card. The Voodoo 2 is naturally memorable, and it's a regular presence in retro PC builds. As the YouTube channel Bits und Bolts (Bits) found out , the cards' capacitors can and will fail in time due to the rarely discussed pyroelectric effect.
In a lengthy video, Bits diagnoses why one of his Voodoo 2 cards is intermittently failing with graphical corruption, with no apparent pattern other than the issues appearing after a short time of use. After much digging, he figures out that the problem seems related to the card's power-delivery circuitry by inspecting how resistance changed at the component that converts 5 V to 3.3 V.
Watch On That led him on to figuring out that one or more of the capacitors in the power circuitry was a bit off. The parts in question are the small rectangular capacitors that you see scattered by the hundreds in any modern PCB, and they are usually a pain in the neck to diagnose. After a quick inspection with a thermal camera, Bits spotted a few that lit up and replaced them.
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Key considerations
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Reference reading
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/SPONSORED_LINK_URL
- https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/vintage-3dfx-voodoo-2-cards-may-inevitably-fail-due-to-pyroelectric-capacitors-retrocomputing-channel-investigates-and-recommends-preventive-maintenance#main
- https://www.tomshardware.com
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