More adventures of the broken Voodoo3 capacitor

[Citadel535]

I posted earlier about my Voodoo3 having a capacitor broken off of it. It is still working though and i haven't purchased a new graphics card yet. I was wondering if anyone can explain how this was held on. If you look at the back of the Voodoo3 2000 PCI there are three small capacitors alongside the memory chips. I was pulling an IDE cable off my hard drive behind the card and the cable shot out quickly, banging (and gouging my hand btw) against the Voodoo3. I saw something roll in the case and saw it was the capacitor (i know about capacitor basics from my brief stint at RadioShack). It looks like a clean cut though and I can't figure out if it was soldered or just held in there but it wont take. Any advice on how to get that sucka back on? My display looks a teeny bit wobbly since it broke off and is more noticeable on lower resolutions.

Voodoo3 Image for Reference - note tiny capacitors on rear of card

 

[Jeff7]

Those are called Surface Mount Devices. They can be hard as heck to solder by hand. To attach it, some Krazy glue, super glue, or maybe even plain Elmer's should do the trick. Once that dries, then do the soldering. Just be careful with the polarity of those capacitors; they're electrolytic, and can explode if installed backwards.

 

[Doomer]

I dunno, they don't look like SMD's to me. Hard to tell from the pic.

You might want to look at it with a magnifying glass. Sounds like you may have sheared it off clean. If so then you'll have to get a replacement and break out the soldering iron.

Could have been worst.

 

[Jeff7]

Yeah, the little silver ones are SMD. They're just not the standard itty-bitty flat things. They don't have leads that go through the board.