I have 1 board that never wants to POST at all and might be either the CPU is bad or the caps are bad. I'd flash another BIOS on there, but, my EEPROM programming tool broke on me (cheap crap).

I also had a PowerMac G3 that never booted at all. Kept the ATI Rage 128 PCI card, RAM, CD-ROM drive, HDD, ZIP drive, IDE cables, and the SCSI card. Also, my Socket 370 build was having issues starting with 3 sticks of RAM installed and worked with only 1 stick, but after carefully cleaning the contacts and reflowing the solder on some of the pins (felt cold in a couple of spots), I can officially boot Windows 98SE with 768MB RAM.

All I need is a Socket 370 Tualatin adapter for my PIII-S 1.4/512/133/1.45V SL5XL so that I can use it in the system or find a Slotket adapter that supports the CPU for my P2B-F motherboard or for a future Slot 1 build (possibly an AT board).

Forgot to add something retro-y activity: I attempted to run Chimp after installing the files from Rocky5's extras DVD, however, it won't boot at all and I believe it's because it requires the 1.6-1.6b systems to get it to run, and this is on my 1.0 system, so when I get home, I'm going to FTP the files to the E partition from my laptop and run it from there and see what happens.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Which issue is your board facing?

BTW, this is (was) my motherboard:
https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/S/S … SY-25M-N-P.html

Yes, I was a very happy owner, but now I realize how ephemeral this vintage hardware is. I might have lots more junk instead of happily working old computer bits.

Was there an old Ni-Cd battery on there during storage or was that removed?

Also, finally got my Original Xbox 1.0 HDD cloned to the 160GB Western Digital (thank you, Rocky5 for the tip of using the composite cable over the HDTV/Component cables).

bjwil1991 wrote:

Was there an old Ni-Cd battery on there during storage or was that removed?

Also, finally got my Original Xbox 1.0 HDD cloned to the 160GB Western Digital (thank you, Rocky5 for the tip of using the composite cable over the HDTV/Component cables).

I remove those shits immediately when I get a motherboard and replace with a lithium battery holder. So this motherboard was, likewise, stored without the evil container of alkaline poison.

Continued troubleshooting my Tulip AT Compact 3's motherboard (286 NEAT chipset). Has memory issues, there was substantial acid damage from the batteries but I cleaned it all up.

I wanted to try a Landmark/Supersoft diagnostic ROM and used the one found here: http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/supersoft_lan … 0IBM%205170.htm

After trying to find the right MDA video adapter and jumper setting, it actually worked, even with no memory in the board (but how?)!

Isn't that memory installed at bank 0 in the lower left of the board in the picture? Although it looks like you're getting memory errors from some dead/damaged chips.

Here's the technical training manual: http://www.oldcomputercollection.com/docs/tul … al_training.pdf

If you look in the manual, it says this should be 512K * 1 bit = 1MB.

wiretap wrote:

Isn't that memory installed at bank 0 in the lower left of the board in the picture? Although it looks like you're getting memory errors from some dead/damaged chips.

Here's the technical training manual: http://www.oldcomputercollection.com/docs/tul … al_training.pdf

If you look in the manual, it says this should be 512K * 1 bit = 1MB.

Yeah, I ran it with the memory and without. All these memory chips work fine in another board (I have two identical systems).

EDIT: with known working chips this is the error on the 'faulty board'. There should be a way to pinpoint the problem area, not yet sure how though. Time is up for now 🙁

Just straightened about 10 pins on a Mendocino that had a rough ride through the post. It was packaged in an old CD case, stradling the inner hub so you can imagine the damage to the inner row of pins! Slotted it on the board and the poor old thing seems to have survived 😀

Today was time to replace the broken membrane keyboard on my Sinclair ZX81. Opened it all up and removed the old ribbon cable remnants from the sockets:

Peeled off the old keyboard with relative ease:

Then cleaned up all the old adhesive gunk left behind, plus some spot cleaning on the case itself and fitted the brand new keyboard:

When I next get a chance I'm going to repaint the ZX81 lettering on the case, as it's red paint has completely worn away. Then all I need to do is figure out how to load games on to this thing, just need to try and get it to play nice with my thin client's audio output.

Flashed my VIA Epia with the latest BIOS, it still doesn't want to POST with GeForce 2MX PCI. Borrowed an S3 Savage4 PCI - doesn't POST either. POSTs with a Trio 64. Very bizarre.

The only thing GeForce 2MX and Savage4 have in common is that they're initially AGP chips and there's some sort of logic sitting between the GPU and the PCI bus. S3 Trio 64 is a PCI card and the main chip is directly connected to the PCI bus.

Trying to determine what this 8088 clone board is.. can't really find anything that matches up with it on Tularc. It only has one jumper (JP0 -- memory or turbo related?) near the 24MHz oscillator, and one 8-DIP switch.. says it supports 256k RAM using 4164's, but that seems a little odd since it is a clone board with 8MHz support. I was hoping to put 256k chips in here too. Has NEC 080880-2 installed. Since there's no turbo switch header, I'm guessing it is software controlled. No real significant markings on the board to determine manufacturer. Anyone know what this board is?

It seems to most closely match the layout of an Excel-Turbo: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/U/U … XCEL-TURBO.html
or DTK Turbo 640, but not 640..? 🤣: https://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/D/D … -TURBO-640.html

Does the board have AGP on it or is it PCI and ISA only?

bjwil1991 wrote:

Does the board have AGP on it or is it PCI and ISA only?

If you're asking about the Epia, then it's a Mini-ITX board and it has only one PCI slot.

Ah.

ShovelKnight wrote:

Flashed my VIA Epia with the latest BIOS, it still doesn't want to POST with GeForce 2MX PCI. Borrowed an S3 Savage4 PCI - doesn't POST either. POSTs with a Trio 64. Very bizarre.

The only thing GeForce 2MX and Savage4 have in common is that they're initially AGP chips and there's some sort of logic sitting between the GPU and the PCI bus. S3 Trio 64 is a PCI card and the main chip is directly connected to the PCI bus.

The other possibility is that the GF2 and Savage4 draw more power than what the mITX board can deliver on its PCI bus.

appiah4 wrote:

ShovelKnight wrote:

Flashed my VIA Epia with the latest BIOS, it still doesn't want to POST with GeForce 2MX PCI. Borrowed an S3 Savage4 PCI - doesn't POST either. POSTs with a Trio 64. Very bizarre.

The only thing GeForce 2MX and Savage4 have in common is that they're initially AGP chips and there's some sort of logic sitting between the GPU and the PCI bus. S3 Trio 64 is a PCI card and the main chip is directly connected to the PCI bus.

The other possibility is that the GF2 and Savage4 draw more power than what the mITX board can deliver on its PCI bus.

I guess this is also possible. Although I was pretty sure GeForce 2MX was basically a die-shrunk GeForce 256 and quite power efficient. I've also read here on Vogons that some people are running their Epias with Voodoo3 PCI, which (at least in theory) should draw more power than both GF2MX and Savage4.

Successfully repaired a Toshiba T4900CT laptop which had the usual battery damage. 😎

Thankfully the corrosion did not spread through the board, only destroying a couple of traces and some 10 ohm resistors that connect the video chip to what I think is the northbridge. Some soldering later and we have a working laptop again, which is great since I bought this as a working laptop. The seller even refunded me a few quid once I told them that they'd sold this as working but the label on the laptop clearly said it wasn't working.

Here it is with one of its relatives:

I think I now have pretty much all types of the Toshiba laptops from the mid 90s now, everything from the Pentium 75 (Libretto 50CT and T4900CT) onwards, up to early Pentium II (Toshiba Tecra 8000), each one functioning and saved from further corrosion damage. I should start a museum.

Today I got an untested 386sx motherboard. Of course I tested it and this is the aftermath after power on 😢

The capacitor blew in my face... the green piece on the desk was blown to my forehead 😲 This was the most scary "explosion" of the cap in my history 😲

Check shorts between GND and other rails. Chances are many tantalum caps are bad. But once you've swapped all of them, it should work !

Most probably yes. This would be a future project as I don't have the time to try the repair now. It will go into "repair" box 🤣