Soldering looks fine to me, but my standards for a lot of things aren't sky-high. The secret to pretty soldering is to use a little bit of flux to make the solder adhere more readily, and to heat the element (the lead of the component) instead of the solder. Also, be sure to clean, or even sand the tip of your iron, and tin it with solder so it doesn't get all corroded and become a mess to use. Practice makes perfect, but only after study. There are a billion excellent soldering guides on Youtube.

On my end, I've just been dragging my feet on ordering low-profile CR2032 sockets for NES games with dead batteries, hunting for things that could use new icons in Windows 3, and looking for means of producing neon-futuristic imagery without doing it the hard (manual) way. I don't want to spend 20 hours gradient-filling cones and spheres to make more Trapper-Keeper style wallpapers. The last two I did took forever as they kept crashing PSP.

Happened to me too many times. Almost gave up on soldering and my soldering isn't good at all, but, it's getting better.

Looks decent from this side. Xiado is right, having a clean work piece is a big part of the job. You can do this by board prep ahead of time and by using flux judiciously. You'll notice when flux is necessary as your solder won't flow properly.

Hershey kiss is a good description of what you're looking for. You want enough solder to flow over the pad or through hole and up the legs of your part while leaving a nice concave fillet. Too much solder will look like a blob over the leg. It's not necessarily a problem structurally or electrically (as long as solder heat was correct and you're not leaving cold joints), but it's inefficient and unsightly.

My solders are mostly ok then I guess. There isnt any solder on the component side on some and the solder is a bit too convex on some but overall Im happy with my soldering.. 😀

appiah4 wrote:

My solders are mostly ok then I guess. There isnt any solder on the component side on some and the solder is a bit too convex on some but overall Im happy with my soldering.. 😀

You will get better by practice. 😀 The Adlib was also my first major soldering project. I started with some perfboards and some simple blinking LED kits and then ramped up to the Adlib. You will do just fine!

Two hints: use a good temperature. In the beginning I worked too cold. 350°C
Is usually good. Also: clean the tip regularly! Dirty iron tips make bad solder joints. Use brass wool rather than wet sponge, due to thermic stresses.

Unfortunately I just have a cheap 30w soldering pen that isnt temperature controlled as the initial investment for a temperature controlled one was a bit too much; Im feeling kind of confident with what I have now so I would get a desoldering station before I get one I feel.. Or maybe Im just dumb.

Don't be afraid to use more solder than you expect either.

I did the XT-IDE kit a little while back. I had undersoldered a whole pile of pins on ICs, leading to bad connections. So it didn't work at first.

Going over it carefully, fixing bad connections and adding more solder fixed it up nicely. A little too much solder is better for through-hole connections then not enough it seems.

Edit: Some of the solder is actually flux, so that you end up with less volume then you actually melt, keep that in mind too.

appiah4 wrote:

Unfortunately I just have a cheap 30w soldering pen that isnt temperature controlled as the initial investment for a temperature controlled one was a bit too much; Im feeling kind of confident with what I have now so I would get a desoldering station before I get one I feel.. Or maybe Im just dumb.

You don't have to get fancy with Pace or Metcal gear these days. I'm a big fan of Chinese T15 irons. They can be had for <100 CAD (< 70 USD).

First post of actual retro activity in a long time as I have burned out on the "retro scene".

I wanted to make a XP PC to play NOLF. I had a MX440 128bit 64Mb and FX5500 ???bit 128Mb. I wasn't sure which was faster so I benchmarked them.

3DMark 2001
MX 6790 | FX 5032

3DMark 2003
MX 349 | FX 1113 (MX could only run the first game test... DX8 only?)

Aquamark 3
MX 1035 | FX 885

Morrowind
MX 43 | FX 34 (View from intro ship deck)

Return to Castle Wolfenstein
MX 46 | FX 28 (first shot of the prison from the ceiling after intro cutscene)

No One Lives Forever
MX 38 | FX 21 (intro cutscene showing van)

Slightly surprised that the FX is so much slower in games. After all that I'll make a fast, quiet but boring S775 PC *yawn*

Had the Acorp 5VX32 with a Dallas bios chip converted to a coin cell battery.

Searching around the internet, i found the same board's picture with coin cell and some other optional components filled on the board. So i filled those empty places myself as well!
In total: Coin cell holder, socket to replace the Dallas chip, one crystal and DS12885 to replace the old dallas chip, and the board works great now!

And while at it, i also soldered a PS/2 mouse socket on it, as it had empty spot there too. Working well!

So basically, i think i upgraded this board to a notch higher level model. 😀

It took quite a lot of time as the first DS12885 was not working correctly. Ordered a second one from a second seller, and this one works.

Slightly surprised that the FX is so much slower in games

No doubt the 5500 is a slow 64-bit version

Almoststew1990 wrote:

First post of actual retro activity in a long time as I have burned out on the "retro scene". […]
Show full quote

First post of actual retro activity in a long time as I have burned out on the "retro scene".

I wanted to make a XP PC to play NOLF. I had a MX440 128bit 64Mb and FX5500 ???bit 128Mb. I wasn't sure which was faster so I benchmarked them.

3DMark 2001
MX 6790 | FX 5032

3DMark 2003
MX 349 | FX 1113 (MX could only run the first game test... DX8 only?)

Aquamark 3
MX 1035 | FX 885

Morrowind
MX 43 | FX 34 (View from intro ship deck)

Return to Castle Wolfenstein
MX 46 | FX 28 (first shot of the prison from the ceiling after intro cutscene)

No One Lives Forever
MX 38 | FX 21 (intro cutscene showing van)

Slightly surprised that the FX is so much slower in games. After all that I'll make a fast, quiet but boring S775 PC *yawn*

With a release date of 2000 wouldn't a GeForce2 Ultra on a Tualatin be an era appropriate build? Maybe even a GeForce 256 depending on how early in 2000 that game was released.

Feeling a bit nauseous and a bit dizzy from all the smoke (Note to self: Don't forget ventilation ever again!) but it's done.

The pot is not the right one, but I couldn't get hold of a Bourns profile pot and for now this will do, I can replace it later.

I'm quite proud of myself, to be frank 😀

Looks pretty good.

Just set up a Pentium 133MHz machine, complete with sound card and everything from my spare parts. Going to sell it as i'm not really a collector, but want few specific machines to work. But often, when i find a deal, i get more than i really need.

Looking spiffy. I recommend watching Voultar's videos on his soldering projects. The man is a wizard with an iron.
Also, the reason why smoke gets in your face is because the air in front of you is basically a negative pressure area, as everything else around you is flowing. Basically, the air between you and the smoke isn't moving, but everything around you is, and this basically pushes the smoke into you. A tiny desk fan blowing away from you, near the work might help, but don't have it blowing directly across the board, or you'll keep cooling everything you're trying to heat.

My soldering equipment is basically a ?W iron with a stand so light, the weight of the iron's cord likes to pull it off of the table, a little tub of flux, a couple spools of Radio Shack solder, a spring-loaded solder vacuum, a couple feet of de-soldering braid, and a small magnifying lens with articulated alligator clips. Oh, and I bought a soldering gun from a car parts shop as I has having issues with bigger soldering projects, like removing the massive heat sink of an RF modulator from my Atari 7800 (composite video mod), and re-attaching the power clip on my Crown Victoria's rear window defogger. The silly thing is, I have an electronic engineering degree, but I don't have a soldering station, desoldering gun, hot air unit, anti-static mat, articulated lights, large magnifying lenses, macro cameras, or a proper workstation with ventilation. I've made $0.00 with my degree, so never saw fit to put more money into it.

Mister Xiado wrote:

Looking spiffy. I recommend watching Voultar's videos on his soldering projects. The man is a wizard with an iron.
Also, the reason why smoke gets in your face is because the air in front of you is basically a negative pressure area, as everything else around you is flowing. Basically, the air between you and the smoke isn't moving, but everything around you is, and this basically pushes the smoke into you. A tiny desk fan blowing away from you, near the work might help, but don't have it blowing directly across the board, or you'll keep cooling everything you're trying to heat.

My soldering equipment is basically a ?W iron with a stand so light, the weight of the iron's cord likes to pull it off of the table, a little tub of flux, a couple spools of Radio Shack solder, a spring-loaded solder vacuum, a couple feet of de-soldering braid, and a small magnifying lens with articulated alligator clips. Oh, and I bought a soldering gun from a car parts shop as I has having issues with bigger soldering projects, like removing the massive heat sink of an RF modulator from my Atari 7800 (composite video mod), and re-attaching the power clip on my Crown Victoria's rear window defogger. The silly thing is, I have an electronic engineering degree, but I don't have a soldering station, desoldering gun, hot air unit, anti-static mat, articulated lights, large magnifying lenses, macro cameras, or a proper workstation with ventilation. I've made $0.00 with my degree, so never saw fit to put more money into it.

How do you not make use of a degree like that in this day and age? Any I.T. degree should really be future proof.

At any rate, this is why I'm going the experience and certifications route with my I.T. carear, and staying the freak away from college and it's associated debt.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

At any rate, this is why I'm going the experience and certifications route with my I.T. carear, and staying the freak away from college and it's associated debt.

This is what I am doing. Guess we'll see how it turns out...

appiah4 wrote:

Feeling a bit nauseous and a bit dizzy from all the smoke (Note to self: Don't forget ventilation ever again!) but it's done.

The pot is not the right one, but I couldn't get hold of a Bourns profile pot and for now this will do, I can replace it later.

I'm quite proud of myself, to be frank 😀

Very nice, i did make an homemade Adlib completely from scratch, long ago,by etching a double sided pcb from Malinov's website. It was a nightmare to make but it costed only about 20 eur in components,including enough spares to make another one.

Yours seems a really faithful replica of the original.

Can i ask where did you get/how did you make that PCB? I might assemble one too, if the price is fair.

Discovered that, at least as far as version 0.58, D1X/D2X Rebirth (the Descent source port) supports 320x240 & 320x200 modes with the original bitmap assets and all the eye candy turned on. This is a legit 70Hz line-doubled VGA mode according to my monitor info & not some kind of upscaled emulation.

A any rate, it works on my WinXP/GMA X3100 box. Oddly enough, on my "more retro" Win98 machine running D1X 0.56 on a GF3, I don't see the low-res options & am limited to 640x480. Not sure if this was added back in or if it's to do with the graphic drivers.

Playing this way is a kind of surreal experience - the chunky low-res with heavy filtering, plus colored lighting & transparency effects everywhere make it seem like a hypothetical PS2 or Dreamcast port of the game would have looked like. I like it.

^^ actual screenshots were 320x240, I upscaled them myself for better viewing