Re: 12V rail shorted on ISA card - damaged motherboard. Fixable...?

Posted on 2024-03-02, 15:03

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The power supply is an interesting aspect of this in fact: When I first plugged the culprit card into the board, the power supply I normally have in this PC just wouldn't start. It would nudge the fans but nothing else. Naturally, because it's old, I thought the power supply was dead. So I tried a …

---

Re: Athlon MP Dual CPU build. What case would I be in?

Posted on 2024-03-02, 14:45

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

the only thing that actually matters is airflow. +1 Socket A CPUs don't vary much in power consumption between idle and load states. As such, they tend to throw out quite a bit of heat, regardless of CPU load. So for two of them, I definitely suggest a case with lots of airflow - at least 1x 120 mm …

---

Re: PSU for P4B533

Posted on 2024-03-02, 14:27

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If the motherboard has a 4-pin 12V CPU connector, any modern PSU should be fine to use (given it has all of the peripheral connectors one needs for the rest of the system.) In regards to the Asus P4B533, it's Intel i845 Northbridge, which has a TDP of about 10-15 Watts tops. I didn't look too deeply …

---

Re: On PSUs for retro rigs

Posted on 2024-03-02, 14:08

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This PSU's filter caps had brown flaky residue around them Do you have a picture by chance? I've seen this quite frequently: people mistake glue that's usually used on bigger parts (like the filter caps) for electrolyte leakage. That's not to say I haven't also seen caps leak electrolyte from the …

---

Re: Dead Compaq Deskpro XE 450 AT PSU

Posted on 2024-03-02, 10:19

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My multimeter probes shorted give 0.2 ohms. I put that resistor back, but in-circuit it's reading 0.6 ohms. OK, I think we can give that a pass for now. Techincally, 0.2 Ohms from MM probes + 0.27 Ohms from the resistor should give about 0.5 Ohms... but at these low resistances, it's acceptable for …

---

Re: 12V rail shorted on ISA card - damaged motherboard. Fixable...?

Posted on 2024-03-01, 19:09

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

When I said the trace was already "damaged" before, I did not mean that the trace was completely broken (open circuit), but degraded due to corrosion or scratches, making it higher resistance at that point, which basically boils down the the same idea as "being some microns thinner", but due to …

---

Re: MSI 845PE Neo (MS-6580 VER 3.0) no post

Posted on 2024-03-01, 18:08

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you can get the motherboard to reliably move through (some) POST codes when you press on the CPU vs. the motherboard doing absolutely nothing when you don't press on the CPU, then, you may have cracked joints under the BGA CPU socket. Some stock Intel coolers are notorious for warping the board …

---

Re: Slot A issues

Posted on 2024-03-01, 17:42

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I suggest OP try another power supply, and if that fails consider a full recap. I second this suggestion. It seems that many people in the retro community are still unaware of the bad cap plague (be it on the motherboard or in the PSU) and crappy PSUs. A good deal of the retro hardware I've …

---

Re: 12V rail shorted on ISA card - damaged motherboard. Fixable...?

Posted on 2024-03-01, 17:29

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I see some original and probably not-so-great capacitor brands on the board, so I can only assume it's the same affair in the PSU if it's an old unit. If that's the case, have a look inside. Excessive ripple can sometimes damage tantalum caps, which is why it could have burned on that card. Or it …

---

Re: Super Dim Gateway EV910 - 120v VGA switchbox?

Posted on 2024-03-01, 16:33

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

If you can see the OSD, the monitor is probably fine and perhaps just not able to sync to the 486 output. And yeah, I second the notion of going with a 17" (or even a 15") with the 486. DOS -era stuff does look better on a sub-17" CRT IMO. 19" would indeed be more suitable for the P3. I actually use …

---

Re: What to do with a Core 2 system (...now that there's better stuff around)

Posted on 2024-03-01, 14:44

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

but I did recently acquire a Core 2 Quad Q9400 so I'm interested to see how much faster it is than the Q6600. Can I overclock it enough to beat the Phenom II X6 1090T in single core performance? I'm curious to find out... I'd be interested to see the results of that too. I have a Q9400 and a system …

---

Re: Super Dim Gateway EV910 - 120v VGA switchbox?

Posted on 2024-03-01, 14:28

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Sounds good, I'll try to keep an eye on this thread when you do. 😉

---

Re: Dead Compaq Deskpro XE 450 AT PSU

Posted on 2024-03-01, 14:20

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The color codes say that is supposed to be 0.21R / 5%. Looks like 0.27 Ohm to me (red =2, purple =7, silver = 0.01 multiplier, gold =5%)... not that 0.06 Ohm difference would matter here that much. This is very likely the Source-connected resistor for the switching MOSFET on the primary, as low …

---

Re: What could cause GPU incompatibility with a P4M900 motherboard?

Posted on 2024-02-29, 15:44

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If (native) VGA output is mandatory, forget about anything GTX 1000 series and newer or Radeon RX series and newer - all of these dealt away with the RAMDAC from their GPU as far as I know. And yes, I can confirm that the issue is likely due to the motherboard being PCI-E 1.0. That said, I can also …

---

Re: Quick question about reassembling a Samsung SyncMaster 753DFX CRT monitor

Posted on 2024-02-29, 14:39

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At this point in time, I want to go through a checklist. First reason why this might be happening is the ray not being able to recover fast enough after bright and dark pixels. That points to the high voltage power capacitors. That's what I thought about the 15" HP, but the high voltage caps on B+ …

---

Re: Would a cedar mill pentium 4 for overclocking be a good upgrade for a Optiplex GX620 for running UNIX?

Posted on 2024-02-29, 13:31

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As someone who also uses a Pentium 4 (Prescott 2.8 GHz, though in 32-bit & s478 flavor) on a daily basis for the web / daily driver, I find it hard to believe that you can watch 1080p @ 60 FPS and not get stutter. Even with MP4 / H.264 compression in MVK, I can't get 1080p @ 30 FPS without stutter. …

---

Re: Quick question about reassembling a Samsung SyncMaster 753DFX CRT monitor

Posted on 2024-02-29, 12:56

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've also ran into this before with two of the CRT monitors in my collection. One is a rather old Sony Trinitron from 1995 with likely high number of power-on hours. The other is a newer (2001) 15" HP with A TON of power-on hours (lots of burn-in on the screen and the tube takes forever to display a …

---

Re: Constant hard drive errors

Posted on 2024-02-29, 12:39

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have a look inside the power supply for visibly bad/bulging capacitors. Post a picture of it with the top removed too, if you could. PSU and random crashes / errors go hand-in-hand. That said, also look for bad caps on the motherboard too. These can wreak all kinds of random havok on data likes too. …

---

Re: Poll. How did you handle AGP to PCI Express stepover?

Posted on 2024-02-28, 18:17

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I was using older hardware so I didn't face that transition until after it was over for most people. Same here. I've pretty much always been far behind "the curve" on PC hardware. We had only one PC in the house: a Pentium II 400 MHz, 64 MB of RAM, 20 GB Maxtor HDD, and a S3 Savage 4 w/ 8MB (AGP, …

---

Re: Super Dim Gateway EV910 - 120v VGA switchbox?

Posted on 2024-02-28, 17:15

by

by momaka

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Kind of old post, but seeing that there are no replies... Try the monitor on several different computers. If image is still dim on all of them, then the issue is with the monitor and no switchbox or other external voo-doo magic will make the issue go away. What you need to do first is dig into the …

---