Hello

I have been doing more work on my Macintosh Quadra 700.
Last time I did change the power supply, the hard-disk, installed a led connector on the disk, then reinstall MacOS 7.1 using an old rusty floppy drive because the one in the Quadra was not working.

But I could not let this Quadra without a working floppy disk drive, and then I did repair it

Here is the floppy disk drive:

The drive would not let me insert floppy disk in so I started to disassemble it because there was an obvious mechanical problem:

Once the top part was removed, I could confirm something was wrong in this because the disk could not be inserted:

And I finally found it was not working due to old grease dry which made the system block the retention mechanism.
After a big cleanup, I could insert floppy disks:

Then I did disassemble the bottom part too to do the same cleaning and add new grease:

Then I did cleanup the heads with Acetone and Isopropyl alcohol. But I also took a look à the eject motor stuck in a bad position:

No missing tooth on gears.

So I assembled the drive back and made a test, and it did read the floppy disk on the first attempt:

But the drive would not eject the floppy disk when asked 🙁

So I took the drive out once again and took a look at the eject mechanism again and found the contact was not working:

I spent quite a lot of time fixing this but when I reassembled the floppy disk drive, if would not work better, if was reading fine but not ejecting.
In fact, the motor had no reaction at all. Then I did cleanup the eject mechanism of another very rusty drive to swap them out.

Finally I had a working drive ejecting floppy disk properly when I throw them in the trashcan:

And this last fix granted me with a fully working Quadra 700 (except the missing buttons).
Full video fully English subtitled can be found here: https://youtu.be/4WDX6auE0ZA

Rodrik

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-04-25, 06:40:

IThe issue is that regardless of how much solder and braid I use, the damn RoHS solder (which is close to the hole on the board and not that easy to get to) doesn't seem to get picked up, and I don't want to throw a massive amount of heat (400 C) just to brute force my way through. I think the bottom of the electrolytic capacitor broke (thought I heard a hiss) with me trying to wiggle it free (even though it already bulged/vented at the top).

I've never had much success using braid or suckers on holes connected to a power plane. What I've found works is making a big blob of molten solder on top of the hole, and then (carefully) pushing/wiggling a grey syringe needle (16 G) through. Then once the needle is through leave it there, if needed clean up the other side (there might be spurs of solder around the needle), and then once the solder has solidified wiggle the needle out.

As they're made of inox steel the solder won't stick to them.

As always use Rossmann quantities of flux.

Today I tested some old hardware I have since a long time.
Good news: 4 video cards I thought were nothing but scrap, worked fine after a through cleaning of their contacts. Yay!
Bad news: the video cards are just:

2x 32MB nvidia TNT2 M64 AGP
1x 1MB trident 9440 PCI
1x 1MB ATi Mach32 GraphicsWonder PCI. This one is interesting because it has sockets to expand it upto 2MB, but hwinfo reports it has no VESA compatibility, so...it's crap, I guess?

Well, I guess that's better than nothing, 🤣.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-25, 16:02:

Today I tested some old hardware I have since a long time. Good news: 4 video cards I thought were nothing but scrap, worked fi […]
Show full quote

Today I tested some old hardware I have since a long time.
Good news: 4 video cards I thought were nothing but scrap, worked fine after a through cleaning of their contacts. Yay!
Bad news: the video cards are just:

2x 32MB nvidia TNT2 M64 AGP
1x 1MB trident 9440 PCI
1x 1MB ATi Mach32 GraphicsWonder PCI. This one is interesting because it has sockets to expand it upto 2MB, but hwinfo reports it has no VESA compatibility, so...it's crap, I guess?

Well, I guess that's better than nothing, 🤣.

Pretty sure Mach32 is supported by univbe

Today I pulled from the "box of free PC stuff for trash" I got recently a MSI MS-694T Pro mobo with Celeron 900MHz to play around. I soldered fan headers to it (previous owner desoldered them for some reason), fitted a new fan to the heatsink and tested it. It works nicely. I installed Windows ME (the more I use it the more I like it), then I decided to benchmark few GPUs I have to see how they compare in this system. To my surprise TNT2 Pro fell short.

Typical. TNT2 series even the strongest one usually manage 286 texels per second and that's Pro. Low end Geforce2 starts at 350 and up on other models of Geforce2 series.

Still, I'm curious about what need for TNT2 even Pro for what? I'm talking about how much of games that is not speed sensitive on a PII or PIII with TNT2 AGP card? How compatible with Geforce2? Even Geforce4 MX440?
I'm referring to late DOS games

Cheers,

TNT can use earlier drivers which will be faster, especially at lower resolutions.

Hell yeah the Rage 128 Pro is a kickass card.

I wish you could test the Rage 128 (non-Pro) and regular TNT.

The TNT2 M64 is a secret retrogaming hero too.

Haha, I found a piece of software that emulates CGA on a Hercules card among my pile of 5.25 disks that I almost never use, and it still works. It's called HGCIBM.exe - there's a bit of shadowing, so I can't really play frogger on it, but it has opened the door a bit to further enjoy this system. I've spent hours tinkering with this thing, and it is bringing back a ton of very early PC memories. The nostalgia is strong, and so is the realization about how unfriendly early PCs were. Menus. Utilities. Shells. Basically having to customize your software to do what you need. I was a bit spoiled in the DOS5-Win 3.1 era on a 386, which is when I really got into PCs, so it's an interesting step back to just one generation of PCs prior, not like going from a 3rd gen i3 to a Core2 would be now.

That and I just realized that the hard drive in this thing is almost 40 years old. Man, does it vibrate the desk its on!

I upgraded my Budget 1997 Build from a Cyrix 6x86MX-PR233 to a Pentium MMX-200 after finding out how cheap the MMX-200 got in late 1997, putting it basically in the same ballpark as the fastest 6x86MX (the PR200) and K6 (233MHz) available at the time. If I built this PC at the time I would have gone for the K6-233 most likely, but I did not have that CPU at hand, and the way an MMX-200 lends itself to SETMUL just makes my life a lot easier and this build a lot more flexible.

I also did a lot of testing with both the 6x86MX and MMX-200 and I will be making some graphs for those as well. I'll post them on that build's own thread, a long with some final build photos. I am somewhat impressed with what a simple ATI 3D Rage Pro PCI can pull off with a Pentium MMX-200 to be honest. It's also a very good graphics card for DOS as well, with very bright and crisp VGA output.

darry wrote on 2020-04-25, 16:07:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-25, 16:02:

Today I tested some old hardware I have since a long time. Good news: 4 video cards I thought were nothing but scrap, worked fi […]
Show full quote

Today I tested some old hardware I have since a long time.
Good news: 4 video cards I thought were nothing but scrap, worked fine after a through cleaning of their contacts. Yay!
Bad news: the video cards are just:

2x 32MB nvidia TNT2 M64 AGP
1x 1MB trident 9440 PCI
1x 1MB ATi Mach32 GraphicsWonder PCI. This one is interesting because it has sockets to expand it upto 2MB, but hwinfo reports it has no VESA compatibility, so...it's crap, I guess?

Well, I guess that's better than nothing, 🤣.

Pretty sure Mach32 is supported by univbe

Good to know that, thanks. I'll have to test that, however with only 1MB, I think it's more adequate for a 486 build than a Pentium MMX build (which is the slowest desktop machine I have right now)...but hey, we're here to learn and have a hobby, right?

I've been tinkering with my 486 DOS-machine, setting IRQs and loading drivers to make sure the soundcard and the network card both load. Preparing for DOS TCP networking support, with SFTP, and possibly SMB.

computerguy08 wrote on 2020-04-23, 10:25:

I made this today: […]
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I made this today:

you can find more details here

..nice, is that your camping backslash bug out PC? I would have pegged that a possible fire hazard but, you know...still nice, erm, in its own way i mean.

I gave my breadbin (250407) a VIC-II cooler. The chip have a heatsink on it as well, making it an effective cooling solution.

brostenen wrote on 2020-04-26, 18:39:

I gave my breadbin (250407) a VIC-II cooler. The chip have a heatsink on it as well, making it an effective cooling solution.

C64-Cooling.jpg

That looks cool.
Is the next step a water or mineral oil cooled C64? 😉

EDIT: maybe with an overclocked SuperCPU .

darry wrote on 2020-04-26, 18:43:

That looks cool. Is the next step a water or mineral oil cooled C64? 😉 […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2020-04-26, 18:39:

I gave my breadbin (250407) a VIC-II cooler. The chip have a heatsink on it as well, making it an effective cooling solution.

C64-Cooling.jpg

That looks cool.
Is the next step a water or mineral oil cooled C64? 😉

EDIT: maybe with an overclocked SuperCPU .

Thanks. Yes, it does look cool, and it extends the life of my 6569-R5 chip. I have a near perfect image from this machine now. As I have recapped it, heatsinked chips that gets hot and I am using a high quality Video cable. And no. No need for oil or water cooling. The board is working perfect now, and I hate the thought of liquid inside a computer.

brostenen wrote on 2020-04-26, 18:56:

darry wrote on 2020-04-26, 18:43:

That looks cool. Is the next step a water or mineral oil cooled C64? 😉 […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2020-04-26, 18:39:

I gave my breadbin (250407) a VIC-II cooler. The chip have a heatsink on it as well, making it an effective cooling solution.

C64-Cooling.jpg

That looks cool.
Is the next step a water or mineral oil cooled C64? 😉

EDIT: maybe with an overclocked SuperCPU .

Thanks. Yes, it does look cool, and it extends the life of my 6569-R5 chip. I have a near perfect image from this machine now. As I have recapped it, heatsinked chips that gets hot and I am using a high quality Video cable. And no. No need for oil or water cooling. The board is working perfect now, and I hate the thought of liquid inside a computer.

I agree with the no liquids part in a PC, I was just joking . I also agree with good and even overkill cooling, especially when dealing with parts that are getting harder and harder to source . Heat is the enemy .

darry wrote on 2020-04-26, 20:18:

I also agree with good and even overkill cooling, especially when dealing with parts that are getting harder and harder to source . Heat is the enemy .

So true... So true. That is why I have done overkill cooling in my Amiga600 as well.

My Amiga600 on my blog

brostenen wrote on 2020-04-26, 18:56:

Thanks. Yes, it does look cool, and it extends the life of my 6569-R5 chip. I have a near perfect image from this machine now. As I have recapped it, heatsinked chips that gets hot and I am using a high quality Video cable. And no. No need for oil or water cooling. The board is working perfect now, and I hate the thought of liquid inside a computer.

Liquid cooling is why I'll probably never have a quad-core G5 Powermac. The sad thing is, if you get hold of one, apparently you can switch to air cooling and it works *fine*.