Bought this on eBay for a 386 build, but it doesn’t work. There’s some factory rework but long story short doesn’t post in any of the computers I have (6 in total). Sucks because I ordered the ram chips to upgrade it so it double wasted my money.
Anything on this card worth desoldering before I throw it away?
Thanks,
Evan
Can't see anything real valuable there but if You have an eeprom burner try flashing the bios.
Atari 2600, TI994a, Vic20, c64, ZX Spectrum 128, Amstrad CPC464, Atari 65XE, Commodore Plus/4, Amiga 500
PC's from XT 8088, 486, Pentium MMX, K6, Athlon, P3, P4, 775, to current Ryzen 5600x.
Imperious wrote on 2023-07-10, 22:58:Can't see anything real valuable there but if You have an eeprom burner try flashing the bios.
I can’t seem to find any dumps of the bios or pictures of the card for that matter. Dos Days mentions that it exists but doesn’t have any more info on it.
It’s a bummer because I have a STB Powergraph X-24 and it doesn’t work either. All of the colors are slightly off. That’s why I bought the second one. I’ve included a picture of the color pallet from checkit in case anyone knows what’s wrong with the STB card.
aspiringnobody wrote on 2023-07-10, 23:12:I can’t seem to find any dumps of the bios
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/companies/ite … /345-s3-p86c801
Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...
Grzyb wrote on 2023-07-10, 23:17:aspiringnobody wrote on 2023-07-10, 23:12:I can’t seem to find any dumps of the bios
http://vgamuseum.info/index.php/companies/ite … /345-s3-p86c801
VGA Museum only has the bios for the SPEA variant. I would need the Focus branded one, unless they’re all the same, which is probably unlikely. The two examples I have use completely different eeprom configurations.
put your hand on the gpu and see what is getting warm , it may be a tranzistor or gpu , the hotter the higher the risk it's burned out something. You could fix if you have nerves.
C7 not looking so great , check it , is j7 and j4 correctly positioned?!
on the mitsubishi memory , second one down , last pin there is a resistence jamed in there? from where is that fallen off? it's not normal....
R18 is missing...(next to gpu/sticker)
ediflorianUS wrote on 2023-07-11, 11:06:put your hand on the gpu and see what is getting warm , it may be a tranzistor or gpu , the hotter the higher the risk it's burn […]
put your hand on the gpu and see what is getting warm , it may be a tranzistor or gpu , the hotter the higher the risk it's burned out something. You could fix if you have nerves.
C7 not looking so great , check it , is j7 and j4 correctly positioned?!
on the mitsubishi memory , second one down , last pin there is a resistence jamed in there? from where is that fallen off? it's not normal....
R18 is missing...(next to gpu/sticker)
I can’t find any pictures of this card to confirm if that resistor is a factory bodge or not. It’s between the last leg and one of the traces and looks to have been some very delicate soldering. There’s another resistor pack on the back side of the card bodged onto the feature connector pins as well.
All caps seem okay, but those bodges have me thinking it’s a factory second. It was supposedly “open-box” — but untested obviously.
Several pins on the S3 chip are loose so that’s definitely causing it not to work. But the bodges don’t inspire me. I’m not sure it’s worth messing with, I’m seeing if the seller wants it back.
Those bodges do not necessarily mean it’s a refurbished product, it was common back then to do that if they found errors on the PCB late in the production process.
Anyway, if the pins are loose on the main chip then that’s the problem. They are pretty easy to solder back on if you have some experience with an iron, or you can try to send the card back. But please don’t throw it away, ISA VGAs with that chipset are not terribly common these days.
Good news, everybody:
Got it to post by re-soldering the main S3 chip.
Bad news:
I’ve got terrible jail bars. Any suggestions where to start? No aluminum electrolytic caps on this card at all.
Are you in CRT jail or LCD jail? You can get in LCD jail on an intent to jaywalk ticket by walking too near to the curb, but CRT jail has to be real crime.
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
LCD jail. But my other S3 801 (the one with the bad colors) has the same AT&T RAMDAC and no jailbars.
I could actually deal with the jailbars in the above picture — it’s the wider color bars that really suck:
I had a cheap (Reveal brand) ISA video card with a CL chip when I was a kid that had jailbars when brand new, on a CRT.
Was your other card with no jailbars tested on the same LCD as this one?
Look for any other bad solder joints. I don't know if the bodges could cause this issue but it comes to mind.
If you have a pinout for the RAMDAC then I guess you could probe for voltages to see if it's getting the power it needs. Maybe adding a cap across it could help. If there's a datasheet for the chip maybe it calls for one - but presumably if it needed that then the card would have had it to begin with.
shamino wrote on 2023-07-12, 21:53:I had a cheap (Reveal brand) ISA video card with a CL chip when I was a kid that had jailbars when brand new, on a CRT. Was your […]
I had a cheap (Reveal brand) ISA video card with a CL chip when I was a kid that had jailbars when brand new, on a CRT.
Was your other card with no jailbars tested on the same LCD as this one?Look for any other bad solder joints. I don't know if the bodges could cause this issue but it comes to mind.
If you have a pinout for the RAMDAC then I guess you could probe for voltages to see if it's getting the power it needs. Maybe adding a cap across it could help. If there's a datasheet for the chip maybe it calls for one - but presumably if it needed that then the card would have had it to begin with.
There was a pin on the RAMDAC that said it’s supposed to have a .1uf cap between it and Vcc (pin 29 — “COMP”). On my working card (with bad colors) I read about 90nf between that pin and vcc. On my bad card I read 15uf!!! On both cards pins 28 (RSET - Reference Resistor) and pin 29 are in parallel and fed from an LM334 constant current source instead of a resistor. On my good card, it is a through hole LM334 — on the bad one it’s a surface mount (labeled Q1 in the picture).
I’d imagine that’s my problem. Adding a 4.7uf capacitor between Vcc and pins 28/29 seems to have brought the phase adjustment of my monitor from bottomed out to more in range, allowing some actual adjustment.
Jailbars are gone completely at high res and marginally better in lower resolutions. The color banding is now adjusted away by the auto-adjustment
Brilliant!
Cheers,
Great Northern aka Canada.
Yup well done, I was thinking "probably just needs a cap somewhere" but couldn't be very precise about what and where .
Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.
I have a "STB Systems S3 P86C801 Powergraph X-24 1MB MXB36" in the test catalog for CRT Terminator test battery. It is one of the more interesting cards, as I recall there were a number of oddball video DOS VGA BIOS resolutions that it provides. Has a good picture that adheres to VESA Feature Connector (VSVPC) standard, without need of any quirk settings. I can't recall though if it does any high color or true color modes.
aspiringnobody wrote on 2023-07-12, 00:57:Good news, everybody: […]
Good news, everybody:
Got it to post by re-soldering the main S3 chip.
Bad news:
I’ve got terrible jail bars. Any suggestions where to start? No aluminum electrolytic caps on this card at all.
I went on a workingspreee vacation and you fixed it , I'm impressed.! ( Now I'm entusiasmated to fix one of my PCI card's)
