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How far do you go to fix commodity PC boards?

Unknown_K

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I have a nice Abit P4 motherboard that died on me (southbridge blew). Since I liked the board (Ran WinME on it and used SATA HD), I just stuck it on the shelf and recently pulled the chip off using a hot air rework station.

Anyway, I looked the chip up and found some on ebay tested and reballed from China for $8-10 shipped and decided to try putting a new one on (should get the chip this month).

Anybody ever try repairs like this at home?


20230103_162807.jpg
 
Definitely going to need some flux/braid to wick that solder off first!
 
A BGA solder stencil would probably also be a good idea. Personally, I'd toss the board after scavenging parts. P4 boards aren't exactly rare.
 
I already cleaned up the board. The picture just shows the back of the blown chip I removed with some of the balls still attacked.

A BGA stencil would be needed to reball the chip, but the chip I am getting has that done already. I just need to put some flux on the board and solder the new chip in when I get it.

Sure, P4 boards are not exactly rare but I am using this to see if I can fix it (if not its dead anyway).
 
I've seen it done before with older video cards. 3DFX cards especially over the past few years if it's been roasted there a few people who have either reballed or completely replaced the GPU. I guess the value there is people going for native GLide support but there's an unusually large number of trays of unused chips still available 25 years later that are not counterfeit and the technology to do it has gone a long way from what we had during the days of the G5 macs and the Xbox 360.
 
Gravis Ultrasound has also reached that point :cautious:
If you are into the demo scene they are useful, but a soundblaster is a better card for games. I have a 1MB Ultrasound and the PNP model that came NIB from ebay ages ago for little money.
 
It will be quite an accomplishment to recover the board, for sure. Good challenge. But there are lots of ways for this to go wrong too. Hope it all works out!
 
These are the AGP ones? Didn't know they were worth anything.
The PCI voodoo2 are worth a lot, and the AGP voodoo 4 and 5 are worth a lot, the pci or agp voodoo3 that came in dells and things like that are still affordable, last I checked. But someone asked recently if there are any games that use GLIDE that benefit from the faster than voodoo3 cards? Because if they don't use glide there is no reason to pay a premium for the 4 and 5, since there are better performing cards for cheaper, if you can use other standards. I don't know the answer, but it's an interesting question.

I don't play games much really so I'm not too invested.
 
Hmm, interesting. I've got at least one Voodoo AGP and I've avoided it as being a bit quirky. Maybe someone has nice PCI-X card they want to swap?
 
The only PCI-X graphics cards I know about are either medical use ones or the rare Matrox Parhelia model.
 
That should be easy enough. Which 3dfx card do you have?

Back on topic looks like a few pads are gone from that motherboard which will make repairs more of a pain.
 
I don't bother with them since I'm everyone's computer dumpster receptacle anyway. I just get a stack, build em' up, use em for 5-10 more years, then either recycle or make them into a "retro rig" if I can't run that period's software on my current ones.
 
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