Chinese Gigabyte 6VTXE BIOS

Posted on 2021-02-13, 16:53

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello, I have here a Gigabyte 6VTXE with what seems like a buggy bios. No matter what you set it to it always run the memory at CAS 3. (and I know the modules I have are ok at CAS2). I see that the IMV694X-ISA board, its clone from China, has an entirely different BIOS, Award rather than AMI, which …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-01-27, 22:37

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Half of the dashboard of my car is coated in a soft touch finish. I'm frightened of the day it is starting to turn into glue. On the door panels it has already started... yuck. This soft touch madness is just a mere micrometer behind touch controls when it comes to the most stupid decisions in car …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-01-27, 22:19

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally today the 775 CPUs I had ordered arrived. Of these five CPUs, only one was used for NewPC-Linux. The CPUs are Pentium DUAL-CORE E2140 and E2160, CORE2 DUO 4300 and 4400 and 6320. The 4400 went to the place of a P.D.C. E2180, on an ECS P4M890T-M2 motherboard with 2GB DDR2 RAM, the chipset is …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-01-27, 21:32

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just repaired (again) a Frankenstein laptop that was bad when it was new and still is today. The issue was that the network card would only connect if manually set to 10Mbps. Auto and 100Mbps wouldn't negotiate a link. In the past I tried replacing the jack (MagJack) hoping it was just a dodgy …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-01-27, 20:58

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally today the 775 CPUs I had ordered arrived. Of these five CPUs, only one was used for NewPC-Linux. The CPUs are Pentium DUAL-CORE E2140 and E2160, CORE2 DUO 4300 and 4400 and 6320. The 4400 went to the place of a P.D.C. E2180, on an ECS P4M890T-M2 motherboard with 2GB DDR2 RAM, the chipset is …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-01-24, 13:08

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I replaced FW82439TX chip to Gigabyte GA-586T2 motherboard. Old chip had a lifted corner what occured as memory fault. Fortunately 3 pads were torn off from the BGA - not from the motherboard. NOS chip from AliExpress. Baked it for couple of hours @80-100°C. Table stove as bottom heater. …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-01-05, 08:43

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What about recelling the current battery? What's that ? Intriguing ! Does it involve opening it ? Yes, it's basically replacing the actual battery cells (99% of the time just regular 18650s) inside the battery pack. Anybody ever seen laptop LCD damage like this? There are a bunch of these spots …

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Re: When did you purchase your first 386 / 486 Computer? Availability vs the early 90's affordability norm.

Posted on 2021-01-04, 23:13

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, tell me about it! The memory prices were sky high until sometime in 1997 when they finally came back down to reasonable levels. I think DRAM price was probably one of the reasons I just skipped over the Pentium. I figured there was no point if I couldn't have at least 16MB of RAM (which cost …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-01-04, 22:35

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Very impressive and a really nice story. Congratulations ! :) I wish I had those skills. I have a Packard Bell Chroma laptop for which new batteries (or even old batteries) are impossible to find. It runs fine and I don't intend to use it outside or something, but I'm curious how it performed back …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2021-01-04, 22:07

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just repaired (again) a Frankenstein laptop that was bad when it was new and still is today. The issue was that the network card would only connect if manually set to 10Mbps. Auto and 100Mbps wouldn't negotiate a link. In the past I tried replacing the jack (MagJack) hoping it was just a dodgy …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-12-30, 11:33

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have my fingers crossed for you. Some S3 Virge cards have OK display output, others are totally blurry and crap. Ouch, really?? I'm hoping for a good display. Since I'm out of Blank CD and floppy disks, I cant' install it properly atm due lack of drivers. I bought a Gotek Floppy driver, once it …

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Re: Bodge wires

Posted on 2020-12-28, 17:46

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, thank you 😀. I agree that the wire was a bit thicker than what should be used, but was the only thing I had at home and shops were closed because of the government. And my "koptan" tape won't stick to anything reliably.

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Bodge wires

Posted on 2020-12-28, 15:56

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello, Not necessarily retro, but I feel like this this forum has the best audience to answer my question. I'm fixing up a garbage find but still good (1156 i7) PC to hopefully resell it. With a good used SSD and some extra eBay "Price + Shipping, lowest first" RAM it came up really nicely. It's an …

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Re: Fixing (rare?) 286 - Smith Corona & Acer PC 210 / 286 HD

Posted on 2020-12-24, 09:04

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Whoo71 wrote on 2020-12-24, 06:01: I did also remove capacitors where there was a huge concentration of the stuff: Ah no, that's just 100% capacitor. Clean the board, recap, and see what happens. Probably it'll start working.

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Re: Fixing (rare?) 286 - Smith Corona & Acer PC 210 / 286 HD

Posted on 2020-12-22, 09:43

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

IMG_20201221_235420.jpg That's a Delta, it means quality. Worth repairing imho. All resistors appear to be faulty, reading ohms well below what they're rated for Both diodes on the board appear to be shorted (~.6V in one direction, >2V in the other) Have you testing in circuit or out of circuit? In …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-12-13, 19:04

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Too bad it is not revision 2.00. It supports K6-2 CPUs. It wasn't easy to find out what revision it is (1.20 - I hope). It is not written anywhere on the board and every revision has different voltage settings! It may not be in the manual, but the VRM controller seems capable of providing K6-2 …

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Re: PlayStation One controller on windows98

Posted on 2020-12-04, 20:52

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Those adapters show up as HID joysticks, so they work with everything that supports HID devices.

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Re: UDMA 5 with DOM's & CF's

Posted on 2020-11-29, 12:48

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Using those male-male pins won't work, because you end up switching the odd and even pins. (E.g. DOM pin 1 ends up on pin 2 on the cable, pin1 cable to pin2 DOM...). For 80-wire detection you need to ground pin 34.

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Re: PCI Video card works in one PC, not in another

Posted on 2020-11-28, 22:17

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

douglar wrote on 2020-11-28, 22:08: Would it be possible to feed the voltage in through a card in another PCI slot? In my case the each slot had the 3.3v pins going nowhere, so no. If you don't want to touch the board I guess you could mod the card, injecting 3.3V on the appropriate point on the …

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Re: PCI Video card works in one PC, not in another

Posted on 2020-11-28, 17:50

by

by andrea

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd guess the problem is not PCI spec but rather the lack of 3.3v supply on older boards (Remember AT does not have a native 3.3V rail). Many newer graphics work off (at least partly) the 3v3 rail, I know for a fact the ubiquitous ebay Rage XL does. I have a 430TX board whose PCI slot only supply 5 …

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