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Gold AGP Card contacts...can you fix them?

L

LikeLinus

Lifer
Hey guys. I've got an older Geforce 2 that i want to throw in my moms computer that i was building for her. I ran into a slight problem though! It appears that part of the gold contacts (part that you insert into the agp slot) are rubbed down and when you start it up you get bars acrss the screen. Apparently it's not making good contact. Is there any way to fix those connectors?? Or is the card basically useless now? I'd be interested in trying to fix it though.
 
Are you sure its rubbed down and not just dirty? Unless you have inserted it and removed it hundreds of time I cant see how its been worn down. Try some alchohol and clean the contacts. You may be able to apply some solder if you are steady with a soldering iron. Try to get the lowest lead content solder or the solder will just corrode over time.
 
Yeah i've totally cleaned it with Isopropyl Alcohol. Didnt change anything. I'm starting to think maybe its something wrong with the core or memory. It shows lines or red dashes going down the screen on bootup...then it changes to white dashes once it changes screens.

EDIT: It gets weirder. When you boot totally into windows, it looks perfect! I turned on Castle Wolfenstein and it ran just fine? But when you boot and see the bios and the HD's loading, it has bars up and down the screen. I've tried it in two different computers...same results. How odd.

I have no clue whats wrong with it. I'm just trying to figure it out 😀
 
You can buy conductive gold and/or silver paint. I've seen my brother use it before to fix the contacts in a TV and DVD remote. You'd have to be extremely careful with your vid card and tape off the neighbouring contacts until you were 100% the paint was dry because you don't want to connect them (left right) on accident and then fry your card and/or motherboard. Look at Radio Shack or other electronics stores.

Thorin
 
Gold looking contacts are copper that is plated a few molecules thick to supply some corrosion protection and to look fancy. Underneath there is substantial copper foil that will do the job just fine. Clean the connector contacts with a rubber pencil eraser. Unless the cannibals have been at your computer it is highly unlikely that there is sufficient wear to cause a problem. Look for your problem somewhere else.
 
I had a similar problem with a card a couple of years ago. It was bad memory. If the vertical lines get closer together at higher resolutions then I would definitely say that you have a flakey memory chip.

The card I had (rage fury 128) worked perfectly with 2d but when in 3d it had dashed vertical lines that were generally red but occasionally would be white. The bad memory chip caused about every 16th drawn pixel to possibly be drawn wrong. That is why the check at higher resolutions should have the lines closer together.

Edit:

It gets weirder. When you boot totally into windows, it looks perfect! I turned on Castle Wolfenstein and it ran just fine? But when you boot and see the bios and the HD's loading, it has bars up and down the screen. I've tried it in two different computers...same results. How odd.

This is probably because the boot screen is at so low a resolution that you can see the errors. At higher resolutions it was harder for me to see the lines too.
 


<< Gold looking contacts are copper that is plated a few molecules thick >>


Who would want to plate something with copper? Copper oxide isn't the best of conductors.

😉
 
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