Alright, first post here, bear with me....

Since school was closed yesterday I spent plenty of time using my main retro rig, mostly playing SiN and Half-Life. SiN is a great game and if you haven't played it, go play it. It runs really well on it. Half-Life is good too, but at times the frame rate just gets caved in with an aluminum baseball bat. I was on that part with that tentacle-creature thing and the framerate feels like it got halved, same thing if there are a lot of HECU in a level during combat. My best guess is the game's animation is the main reason, since I heard that's one of two reasons the game can perform lower than it should (the other being sound).

I probably should play Interstate '76 asap, same thing for getting back into Hardwar. Hardwar's soundtrack, just so good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl7ysc0IlM4

looking4awayout wrote:

Basically if you turn it on after it cooled down, picture is all jittery, especially horizontally (it's mostly bad in the corners), and once it warms up, it stabilizes and becomes steady.

Sounds like a capacitor issue to me!

There are certainly other components that can go bad, but CRT recapping after issues such as those are generally quite successful.

I use my Retro system as my daily driver. So I have to get creative to do things others take for granted. My most recent success was getting some type of Youtube support on my box. By using Retrozilla 2.1, VLC 0.8.6d, and some registry hacking I've managed to get YouTube's mobile site to open videos in VLC. Details are over on MSFN

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/174987-retroz … comment=1149189

System is a Thinkpad A22m (P3-M 1GHz, 512MB PC100, 60GB HDD, Ati Rage Mobility-M1, Dual Sound Cards Intel AC97 & Crystal Soundfusion 4624). The OS is a heavily patched Windows 98SE (98lite Sleek Install, NUSB 3.3, USP 3.57, 98SE2ME, SH95UPD, Kernelex, and 98MP10)

AdrenalinCDA wrote:

Alright, first post here, bear with me....

Since school was closed yesterday I spent plenty of time using my main retro rig, mostly playing SiN and Half-Life. SiN is a great game and if you haven't played it, go play it. It runs really well on it. Half-Life is good too, but at times the frame rate just gets caved in with an aluminum baseball bat. I was on that part with that tentacle-creature thing and the framerate feels like it got halved, same thing if there are a lot of HECU in a level during combat. My best guess is the game's animation is the main reason, since I heard that's one of two reasons the game can perform lower than it should (the other being sound).

I probably should play Interstate '76 asap, same thing for getting back into Hardwar. Hardwar's soundtrack, just so good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl7ysc0IlM4

Welcome aboard! I humbly request making a new post and showcasing your retro build

AdrenalinCDA wrote:

I probably should play Interstate '76 asap, same thing for getting back into Hardwar. Hardwar's soundtrack, just so good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl7ysc0IlM4

I forgot about Interstate 76 I loved that game as a kid.

CkRtech wrote:

Sounds like a capacitor issue to me!

There are certainly other components that can go bad, but CRT recapping after issues such as those are generally quite successful.

Yes, it's what I thought even though I'm by no means an expert in messing with CRTs. While I'm using the SAM*TRON as a temporary monitor, I am quite curious to see the picture quality if I hook my Commodore 64 monitor to the P3 via composite. If it's readable enough or has even the same legibility of the Crystal (which means not too sharp but not too fuzzy either, a good balance), I could use that monitor until my funds are enough to afford a recapping done by a professional.

jholt5638 wrote:

cut

That is awesome! I'm another "retro daily driver" user, except my system is a desktop with higher specs, being a P3-S 1.4Ghz with 1,2GB of RAM, two 300GB WD Velociraptor hard drives and a Geforce 6800GT, Windows XP Home SP3. To browse the web I use Firefox 28 Beta 9 which supports all the modern sites I browse, and a series of plugins to make navigation more secure and lean, including a custom hosts file.

To watch Youtube videos I use a Firefox plugin called YouTube 2 Player that automatically opens VLC when I click on a YouTube video. So far I never had compatibility problems with websites except for one, that was quickly fixed by simply changing the user agent.

Was trying to figure out why my Voodoo SLI setup was artifacting and crashing. At one point I was scared that one of the NOS cards bit the dust prematurely. Turns out it was the SLI cable.

The fragile plastic on the cable broke as I was making it years ago, but it was working fine so I ignored it. A month or so ago I decided to fix it with some glue. That "fix" was causing a connection to short and ruined the cable...

Munx wrote:

Was trying to figure out why my Voodoo SLI setup was artifacting and crashing. At one point I was scared that one of the NOS cards bit the dust prematurely. Turns out it was the SLI cable.

The fragile plastic on the cable broke as I was making it years ago, but it was working fine so I ignored it. A month or so ago I decided to fix it with some glue. That "fix" was causing a connection to short and ruined the cable...

I had the exact same thing happen with my DIY cable, I had sealed one end of the cable with superglue because the plastic broke while closing it, and it worked slightly odd for a while (redish hue in 800x600 for some reason) before completely biting the dust all of a sudden (SLI not detected).

I made a new one not long ago, I'll give it a try when I have the time.

Superglue and ribbon cables are a no no it seems.

appiah4 wrote:

I had the exact same thing happen with my DIY cable, I had sealed one end of the cable with superglue because the plastic broke […]
Show full quote

Munx wrote:

Was trying to figure out why my Voodoo SLI setup was artifacting and crashing. At one point I was scared that one of the NOS cards bit the dust prematurely. Turns out it was the SLI cable.

The fragile plastic on the cable broke as I was making it years ago, but it was working fine so I ignored it. A month or so ago I decided to fix it with some glue. That "fix" was causing a connection to short and ruined the cable...

I had the exact same thing happen with my DIY cable, I had sealed one end of the cable with superglue because the plastic broke while closing it, and it worked slightly odd for a while (redish hue in 800x600 for some reason) before completely biting the dust all of a sudden (SLI not detected).

I made a new one not long ago, I'll give it a try when I have the time.

Superglue and ribbon cables are a no no it seems.

This is why I opened the sealed pack of accessories from my Diamond Monster 3D II several years ago. I wanted a real, functional SLI cable and had trouble with the one I cobbled together. I couldn't see the point in leaving the package sealed and then ordering something online when I was holding one in my hands already. Years later, big surprise, it still doesn't matter that I opened it, and I've actually been able to experience SLI since then. 🤣

I will say, I bought an IDC cable crimp tool and intended to make and resell proper SLI cables, but never got around to it. Should be able to get some ends and try it out some time this year.

Ohgg... this is sad.

I've had three amazing lots of stuff come to me this week, and one of them had a bunch of old boards and CPUs. Among them was this really interesting Evergreen AMD 486 DX4-120 CPU upgrade. These seem fairly uncommon. The heatsink is easily the most interesting design I've ever seen. The center of it is actually threaded and screws into the part that slides over the CPU. This way, you tighten it against the CPU by turning it. Really cool.

Sadly... it had several bent pins and apparently Evergreen used some garbage metal for the pins. I can't even remember the last time I broke a CPU pin, and I've straightened many... but with this chip they snap off almost immediately when I try to straighten them. Its rare enough that I'd attempt to fix it if its remotely possible (I have good soldering tools) but I'm not sure how that'd go. Either way, its really sad... its likely that every pin that is bent will break when straightened.

Anyone have any tips? I don't even want to touch it again without a plan for how to fix the broken pins.

First, look for a scheme of the socket 3 and look what these pins do, maybe they're useless ?

Deksor wrote:

First, look for a scheme of the socket 3 and look what these pins do, maybe they're useless ?

This is apparently a "Socket 1" adapter since it only has 3 rows of pins. Is that right?
http://www.pcguide.com/ref/cpu/char/socketSocket1-c.html

If so, this doesn't look good:

http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/images/chap3_0 … nks/03fig13.gif

The key is on the corner that is missing a pin (right side), and if I'm reading it correctly, the missing pins are A1, 10, 11, 12, 13. That's D20, Vss, NC, NC and FERR (not sure what this is).

The NC and Vss are probably no problem, but the others... not so good. And there are many more bent pins that will likely break unless there's some trick I'm not aware of. Maybe heating them up will make them more flexible, but I kind of doubt it.

Well, I've been back at it again, long overdue....this is all spanning the last month or two.....

Just put the NEC MultiSync II monitor on the 486 and fine-tuned the focus and the voltage - by god I got that thing crisp! 31 years old and it still looks like new now. Actually, the 486 has been upgraded completley and is pretty much done....

- Upgraded to AMD 486 DX4-100 SV8 Processor with WriteBack Cache
- All 4 RH17 HDD caddies are populated and have OS loaded on them as follows...

- - 15GB - MS-DOS 6.22/Windows For Workgroups 3.11
- - 20GB - Windows 95 OSR2 with all the latest updates
- - 40GB - Windows 98 SE w/ all the latest updates
- - 80GB - Windows 2000 Professional SP4 with all updates applied.....

And the Windows 2000 install is quite interesting to say the least. SP3 gave me the login service timeout error - I forget the specific message - but now that I got it all down - I don't really care. I also got the last version of Firefox that runs on Windows 2000 on there and lo and behold we have a 486 (very slowly) surfing the modern internet and managing to render and show about 95% of the content....well...uh....I guess it works. Found I have to use one of my Microsoft Dove Bar mice with 2000 though because my PC-TRAC trackball does not register as a Microsoft Compatible mouse, hehe. Also, no high speed VLB drivers either for my hard disk controller, as expected.

Of all those I've been using Windows 95 and Windows For Workgroups/DOS the most - Windows 95 because I designed and built a Fuzz Pedal and I've found the 486 is bloody awesome for making gerber files for PCBs of my own design. Windows for Workgroups I've been practically daily-ing as I'm still working on the artwork and programming for 4 games. Went to England in November and showed off my work to some pals, they were quite impressed.

But currently now is figuring out if I still want to hold onto the 286 and 8088 I have. I'm moving, with my wife, hopefully by May at the latest (NV), and I'm not so sure dragging 2 other x86 PC I hardly even use as of late with me is the answer. The 286 has been in the closet all year, still runs, still works, just never feel like using it, and the Tandy 1000/8088 I enjoy playing every so often but we'll see on that one. On one hand, I enjoy Tandy, but on the other hand, it's not as sentimental to me as the 486 era is. Plus the 486 has been a really good all-arounder retro-machine...but it could always share it's monitor with the Tandy (that monitor takes 9 pin and 15 pin connections, Digital and analog). I've still got the Pentium 100 and Pentium 4, those are going no matter what, just have not had time to bring the P4 down to Seattle and have not had time to really figure out weather I want to put the P100 on E-bay modified or stock.

Right now I'm just waiting for about 30GB of Data to move to the 1TB Drive in this computer, some of that stuff I've stored for my vintage machines.

Tested out an ASUS P5A v1.04 which appears to be dead. I get no power whatsoever. No beep codes, no fan spinning. 😢

Tried with 2 different known good CPUs. One of them was a K6-2 500 that I spent forever straightening the pins out on.

All other hardware is known working on another motherboard. Even tried without anything installed on the motherboard at all just to see if I could get the CPU fan to spin.

Finished restoring the Promise FT440BX mainboard from the scrap pile today. Last part was the missing CPU bracket and installing a DOM. Also had to replace some caps, and straighten many bent pins as well as the whole AGP slot, which was about 30° bent towards the PCI slot.

seems... promising!

cyclone3d wrote:

Tested out an ASUS P5A v1.04 which appears to be dead. I get no power whatsoever. No beep codes, no fan spinning. 😢

Tried with 2 different known good CPUs. One of them was a K6-2 500 that I spent forever straightening the pins out on.

All other hardware is known working on another motherboard. Even tried without anything installed on the motherboard at all just to see if I could get the CPU fan to spin.

Kind of unusual to have board be THAT dead. Are you running the board outside of a case? I've seen boards do things like that when the board or an attached accessory was creating a short or a bad ground. I actually fixed a PC a few months ago that suffered a PSU failure and then wouldn't power on even after the PSU was replaced... turned out the old USB mouse had fried in such a way that it was creating a short and would prevent the system from powering on at all as long as it was plugged in.

Aside from things like this, any dead boards I've ever seen would at least power on with no display.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Tested out an ASUS P5A v1.04 which appears to be dead. I get no power whatsoever. No beep codes, no fan spinning. 😢

Tried with 2 different known good CPUs. One of them was a K6-2 500 that I spent forever straightening the pins out on.

All other hardware is known working on another motherboard. Even tried without anything installed on the motherboard at all just to see if I could get the CPU fan to spin.

Kind of unusual to have board be THAT dead. Are you running the board outside of a case? I've seen boards do things like that when the board or an attached accessory was creating a short or a bad ground. I actually fixed a PC a few months ago that suffered a PSU failure and then wouldn't power on even after the PSU was replaced... turned out the old USB mouse had fried in such a way that it was creating a short and would prevent the system from powering on at all as long as it was plugged in.

Aside from things like this, any dead boards I've ever seen would at least power on with no display.

Yeah.. just have it sitting on a wooden table. I could try mounting it in a case but I really doubt that would change anything.

cyclone3d wrote:

Ozzuneoj wrote:

cyclone3d wrote:

Tested out an ASUS P5A v1.04 which appears to be dead. I get no power whatsoever. No beep codes, no fan spinning. 😢

Tried with 2 different known good CPUs. One of them was a K6-2 500 that I spent forever straightening the pins out on.

All other hardware is known working on another motherboard. Even tried without anything installed on the motherboard at all just to see if I could get the CPU fan to spin.

Kind of unusual to have board be THAT dead. Are you running the board outside of a case? I've seen boards do things like that when the board or an attached accessory was creating a short or a bad ground. I actually fixed a PC a few months ago that suffered a PSU failure and then wouldn't power on even after the PSU was replaced... turned out the old USB mouse had fried in such a way that it was creating a short and would prevent the system from powering on at all as long as it was plugged in.

Aside from things like this, any dead boards I've ever seen would at least power on with no display.

Yeah.. just have it sitting on a wooden table. I could try mounting it in a case but I really doubt that would change anything.

No, I doubt that would do anything either, its usually the other way around.

Have you tried it with JUST the board and power supply? No RAM, CPU, video card, etc?

Also, check the CMOS reset jumper and the battery. I have seen boards that do not power on at all if the jumper is set to reset, and once I saw this with a dead CR2032 (very strange).

Ozzuneoj wrote:

No, I doubt that would do anything either, its usually the other way around.

Have you tried it with JUST the board and power supply? No RAM, CPU, video card, etc?

Also, check the CMOS reset jumper and the battery. I have seen boards that do not power on at all if the jumper is set to reset, and once I saw this with a dead CR2032 (very strange).

Yeah, I have tried with just the board and power supply.

The P5A doesn't actually have a CMOS clear jumper. It is just 2 solder pads that you are supposed to short with a screwdriver or whatever in order to clear the CMOS.

I also replaced the CMOS battery with a new one.