I was too curious...

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-01-26, 00:22:

I was too curious...

I picked it up NOS in box so the VRM came with it, I have tested it with and without a terminator card and it works fine.

I originally grabbed it as saw dual slot 1 and the opl4 chip on it and was interested in how that sounds. It wasn't until I received it that I realized it was FX chipset and had to find 168 pin EDO modules. Luckily this was a number of years ago and I found 4 cheap 128 Mb Dimms, I 1st bought and tried a single 256 Mb EDO Dimm and then realized its buffered. I never found any 168 EDO Dimms over 128 MB that were not buffered frankly 512 Mb is over kill on that board anyway.

Worked on moving drives and other parts between computers.

My Gigabyte GA-686LX ("The LX") needed the floppy and HDD removed. I replaced the floppy because this one was OG to my ZEOS 486 (It's finally going home) and I recently got a few "new" floppy drives. One Teac, same model and a Toshiba. The Toshiba matches the beige of the other drives/case, so I used it. I also want to be able to test this Ecrix VXA-1i someday, so I installed it in here. This computer doesn't get too much use, so it'll be safe in there, looking cool. I'll randomly google my boards sometimes and OUCH, I would never be able to own one of these... Jeez. So glad I hoard this stuff

With that though, I needed SCSI. I used Adaptec 29160N for the job.

I booted it last night and the Adaptec BIOS recognized the tape drive (I set it to ID0, only one connector+terminator on cable), but it isn't seen in Windows 98 with SCSI explorer. Not a big issue at the moment, as I don't have tape for this. I have cartridges in the same form factor, but they are not right, far too "new". I also don't have the manual yet, so I'm fairly ignorant about it, 🤣
Going to sort-out the fan issues here and it should be ready for action. I also will find out what windows XP has to say. I haven't started it in XP yet.

I've been playing with the LX for a while now, since I got these AWE64 Value Cards, I needed to test them properly.

Both work! Man, it was a hassle to get them to function in windows AND DOS. Sometimes working in one broke the other. Problem was in my DOS driver. I run UNISOUND and it works perfectly. I have to admit though, it sounds pretty UGLY in some games/MIDIs. Duke3d is my go-to for a quick audio test and it sounds aweful with the "AWE32" setting. "Sound Blaster" setting sounds like "normal".

I still need to test THIS thing:

Major Jackyl wrote on 2025-02-06, 01:04:

I still need to test THIS thing:

The attachment 20250205_183948.jpg is no longer available

SB Awe32 Upgrade Card - Goldfinch! CT1920 I have one of those as well but I put it in a HP Vectra VL 5/133 that has a CT2970 with the 8 pin goldfinch connector.

I was working on my TrinityKT computer, but now I got a big job coming up on an ATARI Table Top system.

I got it all back together, so I have space to work.

I originally opened it to add a SCSI card and test some more video cards. I confirmed all the cards I thought were broke, ARE broke. A couple of them don't cause beeping though, so they may need BIOS flashing? I'll keep them in the "fixable" pile for now. Anyways, I opened the thing up and noticed it wasn't clean as some of the ones I've been doing lately, so "Off with it's parts" polish that PC-7Plus and re-assemble. I swapped the FP USB panel out for a more basic one (with only 2 USB) and removed the 1394 controller. It was just there to have something to plug into. The CPU fan header doesn't work. I almost forgot, but of course, started it with the panel off and observed this failure. Can't have that now, this is a 1Ghz T-Bird! Hot boy!

So much better. I'm still figuring out a video situation. The GF2GTS I had in mind was still "untested" until it tested bad... I got a shit-box 5200 in there when I left off last night and everything was working, too. Probably going to leave it there for now.

Oi. Get this thing out of my shop, 🤣
I was working on the Atari Cocktail version of Asteroids Deluxe last night (and now) and got some interesting happenings.

I unplugged the gameboard and monitor to check the +5Vreg and it was 6.22V. It was able to adjust to range and then I plugged in the gameboard and adjusted the voltage to be 5V on the gameboard (with no more than .75V spread between the Vreg board and gameboard. The difference is only .2, so I'm looking cherry. Thing is.... I plugged the gameboard back in and turned it on (using the safety switch for power) still nothing but amplifier hum. At some point, I got distracted and closed the top and was done for the night.

Oh boy. I left the monitor and gameboard unplugged, at least. It was on ALL NIGHT and DAY until now, when I went to move it. Noticed it was still plugged in... shit. It wasn't buzzing much, if at all. No lights or anything going on to even tell it was on. Gah. Fuuu. I just opened the top and heard the amplifier pop (turning off) then plugged the gameboard in and closed it. Pop... AND THEN beep-beep- boom. Crash, beep, etc., etc. WTF!? The game was booted and RUNNING!! I plugged in the monitor real quick and it came to!! There it was! What even happened?

There is some work to do here, for sure. I found some VERY ugly soldier joints and what may be a bad diode, but I haven't gotten to taking anything off the board yet.

The monitor has weird behavior, which could be the diode. It is on the video amplifier portion of the board. What happens is, a trace forms a straight beam, which I have seen EASILY "burn" a hole in the screen.

When no input, the whole screen just glows, so I think the monitor assembly itself is GOOD. I'll probably do more when my brother comes over.

Ah yes, back to some "regular" computer activities. I recently got a large stack of 5.25" drives, so I've been testing them. They are INDEED, all "broken" A few of them seem like dirty heads, one had a broken latch, and the hardest to fix (maybe easiest?) spins way too fast.

I've also tested "installing" DOS 7.1 on a drive. I wanted this Seagate ST1280N to boot DOS, so I can use it when I'm testing SCSI cards. I "formated" it in windows 98 and selected "copy system files only", then made a "DOS" folder and filled it with .\WINDOWS\COMMAND contents and a few other drivers and voila! Bare-bones DOS 7.1. If you make a AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS, they load regularly and leaves the system very functional.

I used my floppy version of EZSCSI to install SCSI devices and get the CD working. When I installed ISA soundcard, the computer wouldn't boot anymore. It froze loading the sound, with every card I tried. Of course, it was resources, but where? I manually changed the address of the SCSI card (AHA1542CF) to 334h and still no. I then opened the BIOS and saw it was trying to use DMA5, which ALL of the sound cards want. It was "default" setting too, why would the default be 5? Options were 0 5,6,7, so I picked 6, as I don't think I've ever seen 6 used by anything. Booted right up after that AND had sound. Installed a few CD games and played ROTT for quite a while before going to Quake, to make sure CD music was working (it is). Now I got a solid foundation to quickly be able to test some SCSI devices I recently acquired. I got a MO drive and a "Optical Disk Jukebox", which is one of the most bad-ass, heavy son-of-a-bi%^H piece of computer equipment I've ever had.

It has been cleaned a bit, but was pretty much NEW, no signs of wear whatsoever. I'm scared to look it up, because I feel like the fun will end there, as I won't be able to find drivers/programs associated with it. I really want to see/hear this thing work! It's so cool on the inside!

Whelp, I found this while working on the Atari:

The game was running properly, so I disassembled it, finally, to clean it and noticed the cracks. I'm going to connect the video output to a scope (not here yet) to see how the game looks on a functional screen. The monitor could be the only real damage here. I've read that leaked-out tubes can also cascade into other failed electronics, so the whole board might be kaput. I'll be retrofitting a 15" CRT for this (if I can find one), not sure exactly the process on this, but my brother is an expert. I'll share more when I get to it, but this project is on halt again (after it's back together)

I was working on the Atari again and got the game to boot every time by resoldering several chips and redoing the sockets that were somewhat botch'd. I still have the weird trace on the screen, so that issue must be in the video amplifier portion. Strangely, the +15V regulator gets pretty hot while the -15V regulator seems pretty "normal" There are a few other chips that get a little hotter than the surrounding ones, but they're not socketed, so I'll have to install sockets on any suspect chips. I might be able to get my hands on a parts board (which would be AWESOME) to steal the chips.
Here is what it displays now (excuse the 50s scope):

The sound is also messed up, but it does play ALL the proper sound effects. Seems like an amplifier problem; it stops buzzing so aggressively when in "test mode". It beeps, but it is quiet and garbled. Back to "play mode" it buzzes like an un-grounded amplifier with the audio in the background.

I'm ordering some capacitors and will start with that. My brother has the 5V regulator/audio amplifier board and is going to "modernize" it and also fix a previous bad soldier job that I hadn't done yet. Someone welded a new resistor, but the soldier is on the wrong side of the board, 🤣. The thing has full length leads, too. The resistor itself has a hot-spot, so it DOES indeed work hard, but not with that sh*t-t weld.

I'm going to be switching gears now and cleaning a few computers I got over the weekend.

It was a mystery trio, now revealed to be two dells and a "custom" AT computer with AMD K6-2/450AFX. I feel like this CPU is too much for this board. I haven't searched the board yet, but I'll get it cleaned here and then research a bit.

How would a "period correct" build look with this board? Pretty much how it came apart? S3Virge, Yamaha YMF719E, Samsung VG33402, NEC FD1231H, 2x32+2x8 (probably removing the 8s, they match another two I have, so I could do 4x8). I intend for it to be a DOS/3.11 PC, but haven't done W95 in a while, so that's also on the table. I'm hoping to use SCSI CDROM, too, since I got this bad-ass NEC Multispin 6X (It had an Acer 6x2x2 burner #6206A, looks really clean, too). I found a note inside that speaks of IDE problems, but I bet there is no problem, just no CDROM support from the IDE controller. I'll find out more when I look it up in a few. (or one of you knows something)

This is the board you have. It's rebranded by "Full Yes":

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/soyo-sy-5eas

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-03, 23:25:

This is the board you have. It's rebranded by "Full Yes":

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/soyo-sy-5eas

"Full YES" OMG, love it, 🤣. Thank you! I was just getting to look it up. The board itself says MTI M549, which DOES have a different listing:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/m-tech-mti-ris-m549
Looking at the overview, the only difference is that the M-Tech has ALADDIN IV, and the SOYO has a VIA (of some sort). The screen-printing on-board says it'll do 50 to 75Mhz FSB and it looks more tweakable than SOYO, but there is no manual quickly available for M549 (or the SOYO for that matter). Just looking at how the jumpers behave, they seem identical.

All the parts are clean, just need to pop the PSU, but I ran out of time to use the blower (wife streaming: [https://www.twitch.tv/joslyn_schmitt] she does art, very chill). I'll still open it, but I won't be able to clean it until tomorrow. I'll at least find out if I need to replace anything (probably yes)

On a side note, when I get a computer, I usually, log all it's guts (on paper) then make a folder (digital) to hold the manual and pictures. It is in this moment I get to name the computer (optional). Without looking it up, I named the folder "Aladdin". Kinda freaky.

TRW has got it wrong though - the M549 uses VIA VPX, not Aladdin 4. Even more so as Aladdin 4 is BGA, not pin based. So your chipset is actually the same as the Soyo board - VIA Apollo VPX.

Actual Aladdin IV chipset:
https://theretroweb.com/chipsets/179

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-04, 08:51:

TRW has got it wrong though - the M549 uses VIA VPX, not Aladdin 4. Even more so as Aladdin 4 is BGA, not pin based. So your chipset is actually the same as the Soyo board - VIA Apollo VPX.

Actual Aladdin IV chipset:
https://theretroweb.com/chipsets/179

Interesting! I should've noticed the different package, I looked at that yesterday and it went right by me. This info will help if it has issues, thanks!

I'm almost ready to try powering it on. PSU looked/smelled all good, so I cleaned it and got it installed. Putting this together was unlike ANY of the more "modern" or larger units. Definitely had fun trying to manage the cables in such a cramped space. Looks pretty good!

The note said "some kind of HDD error, don't know how to fix" so I'm 100% assuming this time, that it will work. I have a pic of the drive, in case I need the data and I noticed something: The Samsung drive has Adaptec chips on the board. Quite noticeable when I flipped it, pretty cool.

If it powers up fine, I'll stuff a battery in and a SCSI card, so I can have CD. I did put the NEC in there along with a 5.25. I kinda wanted this thing to SCREAM "AT COMPUTER" so large floppy was a must. The CD drive has uniqueness, too with it's removable tray and screen. I haven't tested the 5.25 (Teac 55GFR), but I'll leave it even if it doesn't work, just for aesthetics. I plan to de-yellow it, since it is the only white/beige Teac I've ever seen. Most are AT-color or black. It is also interesting in the fact that it has white/blue circuit board and alternate (card edge) power connector. None of my other ones are like that. The power connecter DID have broken contacts, but I resoldered that already, so I'm hoping that's what was wrong.

It's GOOD!! The Teac is bad, but the whole thing works fine. It has auto-detect and native CDROM, so I don't know how this was "unfixable"

Even after the battery had been removed, it saved HDD information? or maybe it autofilled when going to "user" mode? Eitherway, the LZ was on 6590, (with 6591 cyl). A drive this new should have cyl=LZ, no? I did that and it booted from floppy and revealed a 500M partition on the drive. I did this old-school and FDISK'd it away and made a full-size partition, then formatted in DOS. It's doing that now. I LOVE the BIOS on this computer. MANY color options to choose from and VERY tweakable options.

I got this Viewsonic E771 for free the other day. Pretty good shape, just missing the stand. Tape said it was missing blue, but blue was there when I finally tested it. I opened it and wiggled the main board and there it went. No blue.

The hardest part about resoldering the socket, was removing the cage. My iron is pretty small and the ground tabs large. I just assumed this must be the problem after adjusting the "blue" pin on the tube. It indeed works well now. That was the only thing wrong with it, the picture is great! It doesn't squeal or anything, either. Total win.

I've encountered this problem in the past (more around when they were new) but didn't have the ability to fix, just wedge/pry something against the board and hope it lasts.

I started cleaning the Dimension L733R today. It had the original 733Mhz Coppermine in it and two sticks of 100mhz SDRAM. It also had a modem and CDROM drive (LG CRD-8482B). The button for the floppy has the hole, like it was made for LS120, but sadly, no LS120, only floppy (Teac FD235HG).

Pretty happy the original HDD cable is in there. I don't have any that short OR with a single drive on it. The only non-OE part is the HDD (from 2004) and has no dell P/N.

The case indeed looks like it could house a standard mATX board. The FP is way easier to break-out than say, the Dim4100, which has a ribbon for the FP. The button and lights are individually wired, but have a singe connector. All a person would need to do is remove the pins from the connector and put the 2-pin style on. If this board doesn't work, I may try that.

If it works, I might add a 5200FX PCI (only model I have that's somewhat appropriate) and SB Live!, because it has the UGLY Creative/Ensoniq (ES1373)on-board... Changing CPU changes the model number in these era Dells, so I'm going to keep it the same. I'll soon have a P3 system of every speed built at this point, 🤣 (have 500,550,600,650,800,833,866,933, 1000, and 1133)

Got it all cleaned. Going to power it up tomorrow, though.

This one was a bit easier than some of the more heavily armored plastic Dells that came later (smaller size helped, too). The back side comes off when you pull up two tabs with two prybars. I opened the CD/floppy, too and got those clean. Pretty crispy looking now!

I powered the L733 on and it just sat there, power on. I immediately felt a memory problem, so I yoinked it and then it did a memory beep(s) when powered on. I used a stick I had laying around (133) because the OG one was dirty still (and 100Mhz). I cleaned it and installed it and it booted right up!

Hold on, though. There is a box I've been saving for a special occasion such as this:

I knew I would eventually get one, so I grabbed the box of stuff from the free shelf a while back and haven't really explored the contents. I can install the thing to factory-spec now! Even got me 100 free hours of AOL!!

I've been working on the Dell Optiplex 300GX for the last couple of days. I got it all stripped-down, cleaned, and re-assembled. I tested the PSU and it was making a horrible squealing sound. It was better with a load on it. All the voltages were good, so I tried powering it on yesterday. It just comes on. Yellow power light, no beeps.

I'll check voltages again with the motherboard powered on, but it was doing the same thing even with the CPU/Memory and dummies removed.

I had to take a break from the GX to re-arrange my computers and parts collection. I was running out of room again. I recently got this bad-ass 1980s file cabinet to hold more parts. It's one of the most heavy-duty cabinets I've ever seen. Got the bottom drawer filled with ALL (mostly?) of my 5.25" drives.

The top drawer is filled with wires and connectors. Also, most excitingly, motherboards (yes, full size ATX, too) fit a legal-size file folder. Safest way I've ever stored boards.

The other cabinet only holds 3.5" drives in the bottom drawer now. Actual files in the top.

I'm going to have to pick up another shelf later as I still have a mountain of computers blocking my work area. I don't like stacking too much, because it makes it harder to pull one out. I can NEVER stack them good enough to have the one I want to use on top, 🤣