Hello, first of all I would like to greet everybody, my name is Nick and I'm an avid 3Dfx fan. :)

Now here's the thing. I bought a Voodoo 5 5500 AGP for my Retro PC a few weeks ago and it refuses to work.
The system won't power up at all if I connect the extra power connector, as I see the fans of my CPU and Voodoo 5 trying to spin for a fraction of a second and then just stopping.
If I disconnect the extra power connector, the system powers up but doesn't POST, I've been told this is normal though.

My Mainboard is a DFI board based on the Via Apollo 133, so it supports AGP2x, which is required for the V5, normally. It doesn't have any onboard graphics card.

By this point I was and still am that the problem is with some capacitor on the board or possibly something else in the power supply area of the board. However I was told in another forum that the bios may be badly flashed and I should try a program called PCI.exe to check whether or not it finds the card on section 121ha or something(hope that helps). So I installed my Matrox Millennium 2 PCI card and set my bios setting for INIT First to PCI instead of AGP and then installed my Voodoo 5 with power connector unplugged. Unfortunately the results are the same and I cannot get the system to POST.

Any suggestions and advice would be welcomed :(.

Maybe it's the PSU which can't power the card. What kind of PSU do you use, and what other hardware is in the system?
Do you have an other AGP2x-card which you can test? Maybe the AGP-port sort of doesn't like the V5 or is defective.
In addition to that you could try the V5 in an other PC if possible.

Tried all of these. 3 different mainboards and 3 different PSUs

Then it is pretty clear that the card is defective.

And I can't do anything about it right :(?

f2bnp wrote on 21.08.10 at 15:51:48:

...my name is Nick and I'm an avid 3Dfx fan. :).

You are an aavid 3dfx fan?  :o Something like this  http://www.cwc-group.com/40babecofan.html ? :P

That aside ;), I also think the card is dead - what you could do is to check out the components of the card to see if you can find something burned or defective and then replace it. But the question is of course, is it worth it... V5 5500 AGP is a pretty common card and you can find it easily.

Check the card with PCI.exe; install a secondary vga (PCI adaptor I guess), then launch the executable trough a floppy disk. In the utility interface keep attention to the devices listing that will pop up and look for an ID Vendor 121A, that is the common vendor id for the 3dfx adaptors...

If you do not see anything like that, sadly, you can say goodbye to the card. If not, then the card is alive, but probably has some hardware issue that need a technic investigation...

Problem is, the PC doesn´t even post when the Voodoo5 is in. So I guess the card is dead.

Rolo01 wrote on 23.08.10 at 13:12:36:

Problem is, the PC doesn´t even post when the Voodoo5 is in. So I guess the card is dead.

Me too. But if pci.exe shows a 3dfx adaptor in the list, then f2bnp can try to fix the card searching for a bad caps or whatever...

Have you tried changing CPUs? Have you actually had the system up and running before?

I got a new card with the refund I got from the seller. I threw the card it really pissed me off. I did get the system to power up with the extra connector not plugged, by powering the system without the card and then pushing it gently into the slot. Dangerous but I was desperate. I tried PCI.exe and it showed a bunch of devices none of which was the wanted 121A. Tim nice suggestions but really don't you think I would have tried those things if I had went through the trouble of changing psus and motherboards?

Anyway I threw the card in the garbage bin, the hell with it.
I was hoping for a Voodoo 5500 this summer and it pissed me off. School is starting next week and the following 2 years will be very demanding so this summer was my last chance. Oh well.

f2bnp wrote on 30.08.10 at 19:38:33:

I got a new card with the refund I got from the seller. I threw the card it really pissed me off. I did get the system to power up with the extra connector not plugged, by powering the system without the card and then pushing it gently into the slot. Dangerous but I was desperate. I tried PCI.exe and it showed a bunch of devices none of which was the wanted 121A. Tim nice suggestions but really don't you think I would have tried those things if I had went through the trouble of changing psus and motherboards? Anyway I threw the card in the garbage bin, the hell with it. I was hoping for a Voodoo 5500 this summer and it pissed me off. School is starting next week and the following 2 years will be very demanding so this summer was my last chance. Oh well.

Well it didn't hurt asking I thought? (when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth)   ;D

You might not have had an extra CPU. :)

Anyway, shame to see it thrown away. Some high resolution shots could have helped indentify some pcb problems, if present.