Heh, I was getting ready to start again and decided to test some of the old caps before clearing them out:

This board has had a very traumatic experience holding onto those things, 🤣

I feel even better about not testing any of these beforehand. There was basically a huge short on the CPU power.

Lookin' Good!!

I'm going to strip the other one and get that one done too, so I can test them together. I 'm all out of 10V1000, but the old ones from this board weren't too far out-of-spec; only two of them were a bit off, so the other BE6 should fare even better, since ALL of them LOOK better. I can always go back and attack them later.

Got the other one done AND was able to get it cleaned.

A nice pair. Hope they BOTH work!

The CPU bracket doesn't close anymore, but that's NOT a big deal. The old capacitors were significantly shorter.

For whatever reason, I'm starting with the (1.01) board first. Just happened that way. I'm going to make dinner and leave this like this:

It's alive!

After setting the CMOS, I booted into DOS and ran Speedsys. I'll run windows later, to test properly, but initial test is GOOD.

Actually... I had the floppy cable plugged in wrong on the board side the first time I powered it on. My boot disk seems to have been damaged by that. Backup disk worked, so the drive wasn't damaged.

The fun! I was spent all last night trying to get into windows on the BE6-II. It was a variety of "problems" I just kept stacking on myself until I was able to isolate it. I started with my Bo0t-all, a Quantum TX that has booted dozens of systems. Very slow, but it has drivers for almost EVERYTHING and boots every board.

I plugged it and and booted. I waited and waited for installs to complete, then restarted. THEN it would blue screen after the Windows logo and go to a blank screen with a cursor. It would eventually freeze if I left it long enough. Pssh, I was figuring the drive was having issues/conflicts of sorts due to the motherboard count on this install. So, I plugged in another Quantum, that already has an install from a LX board.

It booted and made it into Windows. I then went about using the ABIT CD to install drivers. Only things it needed were Intel chipset drivers and drivers for the Highpoint HPT366. I did the Intel first and restarted. I would like to point out right now, I was USING the HPT366 with my Bigfoot and it was working normally. When it restarted, it installed drivers for thte HPT366, then wanted to restart again. I did. After that, it was giving my the EXACT SAME blue screen my other drive was! Not a drive issue! Or so I thought?

Yeah... After the bluescreen, it crashed hard. When it came to, it wanted a detailed scandisk.... I let it run, since I hadn't seen that in a while. Took Hour(s)? After finding 2 bad sectors, it restarted and... SAME blue screen. I was now suspecting the controller.

I moved the primary drive to the "onboard" IDE Primary (master) with the CD being moved to Primary (slave). Starts, as usual everything fine... until the blue screen. Now this is where the fiddle-faddling starts, because I think to install Windows 98 on a "NEW" drive. I had to format the thing, so this whole process has taken hours. I install windows and seems to work fine. As soon as the Highpoint driver hits, the thing falls on it's face. Well sh*t.

BUT, now this drive is PERFECTLY SCULPTED to run this board, let me test the OTHER BE6-II and not only see if it works, but find out the BIOS version and boot windows98. I plug the other board in, everything attached assuming it's just going to work. Power on.... and BAM.

Works just fine. Very old BIOS on this one (it is board V1.0, after all). I set the CMOS and let it boot! Skip the scan disk aaaaaaand... Bluescreen. Ugh. How has it come to this!? I wanted to get it working, so I tried what I could, if there is anything else I can do, I'd appreciate the guidance.

SO, what I did, was disable the Highpoint in the BIOS. The easy way out. And slow way. It does indeed boot normally and function like the other board. This next part I was stuck here 3 different times on the drives I was using, which is why I tried different installs: I loaded 3Dmark99 onto THIS one and tried running it... Crash, again. And when I tried opening it, it told me I needed a DirectX compatible video card. After a restart it would open again. This had me using two test video cards as well(on both boards), a GF2MX200 and GF2MX400, both with the same results. The MX200 in installed currently.

I FINALLY decided to use my directX 9 installer and then restarted. Pshoosh. There it's going right now! Board 1.0 with a GF2MX and 2x256MB PC133 ECC

Ope, more fiddle-faddling, 🤣 I want to share this blue-screen. After this run, I'll get that.

...

Looked clean and completed at default settings and 1280x1024.

Suppose I should check this other GF2 now and then switch back to the other board and disable the Highpoint, so it can run some tests, too. Going to take some time, since I really like putting some hours on before I call it good.

I'll boot the (1.1) with the Bigfoot, to confirm that it is working well still, too. It just needs directX 9 it seems.

Here's the blue screen. It's the same on both boards, with any drive. I don't even have anything plugged into it right now.

Awww... It was a drive issue as well. I've been using (1.1) with BigfootTS and it started "acting up". I was installing games from CD. Motocross Madness 2 was going at it when this happened:

It became very unresponsive and beepy after, so I restarted to this:

Damn.

I notice the BIOS doesn't even detect it anymore... I'll check it on a different PC at a later time, but it seems dead. I'm performing the exact same operations in the same order on the FireballEX and it's (of course) working much faster.

Ho ho HO! Well now! Using the BE6-II(1.1) with the latest BIOS already on it, had me wanting to try Coppermine CPU(s). I don't think my slotkets are capable of doing it, BUT I've had a native Slot1 Coppermine on my shelf, without the heatsink, looking cool. This led to another issue with the tall capacitors: the aftermarket brackets. Many are slim and work fine, but many also have metal parts sticking-out and hit the capacitors in a "no-way" fashion. I tested the fit on all my heatsinks that use that type of retaining mechanism and 4 of 8 are obstructive.

It's been a while since I've had such a premium Pentium 3 running. I also cleaned the GeForce2 MX400 and put that in place of the MX200.

Since I've had it in the system already, windows didn't need to give me the business and I could actually run everything perfectly. Actually, WAY better.

I had installed Battlefield 1942 v1.0 on it last night and played it a bit. Ran it at 800x600(low) and it was "playable". Very do-able now. Running it in a particular way; bots are different than the usual 3Ghz bots. Hard to explain, but they are the same level of stupid (with the aimbot), but it seems like it's "taking turns" giving any one bot any CPU time.

I finally cleaned all the coolers from those boards I got. It was quite a pile.

My favorite, though, is the CoolJag, because of the logo. That Jag looks confident he can kool that sh*t, 🤣

But for real, that Zalman is awesome and the Ultra is basically a mini-me version.

So far, the boards are all* good. Definitely a bonus to get so many heatsinks, too!

Going to resume working on the SD11 tomorrow.

*4 of 17

Oh! MMmmmMM! Yes! 😁 A thing of beauty now, this one! The Panasonic capacitors look good on this board; complete transformation. Its "glow-up" if you will.

The bracket is broken and I have a few, but I'm going to use this board as my dummy for 3D printing brackets. I want to make a bracket that uses the extended holes for the "ext." bracket, typically reserved for large coolers on SECC1 CPUs. Each bracket half will use the three holes. I'm thinking about an attachment for 120mm, since that is my fav and effective cooling power for slot systems. It's important to cool the chipset and voltage regulators, too. The footprint is pretty large, so I have a few ideas. I'll get them prototyped and see what will actually work.

All the old caps were pretty close to spec, with the exception of the small ones, which had high resistance. There was also one that had been replaced before and was the wrong value as well (2.2µF25V) I left the 2 Sanyo caps; I don't have lowESR 820µF4V caps. These are the ONLY instance of these caps existing, so I didn't order any. Since they are polymers, they are most likely fine, just old. Date codes on these are all from 08/99

I'm going to re-test the board in a bit, too. The drive still knows only this board, so it should boot right up (minus CMOS).

Oi, I hate it when I slack off a bit, some catch-up to do.

Over the weekend my brother scored a Socket3 board, and it works! As an added bonus, it also has VLB!!
QDI V4P895P3/SMT

It had Cyrix compatibility, so I wanted to test my Cyrix. We loaded in my DX2-66 and it worked perfectly! I hadn't tested the CPU, because I don't have a board for it, so it was AWESOME to test it and find it GOOD!

Later, I gave the SD11 I finished recapping a test-drive. Works great! Same as it was, but now has "brand-new" vibes, which makes it more stable 🤣

After that, I cleaned a ASUS M2N-SLI and inspected it. It has bulging caps, but not enough to keep it from working (I think). I'm going to test it (quickly) and recap it before doing anything else with it. I might upgrade my M2n-E with it, for the SLI factor (and soon-to-be new capacitors). Unfortunately, the only cards afoot I can SLI are 9500GTs, which even TWO are probably slow as turtle-fights compared to the GTX760 that's in that system (my work computer).

Setting that aside, my capacitors finally arrived and I sorted them out nicely.

I still need a few values, but importantly, I need to get 16V1500µF and 6.3V3300µF capacitors with a 8mm footprint. The 10mms don't fit several boards. While I can still use them on certain boards, two in particular will NOT like those huge tanks (BIO M7VIG and ECS L7VMM2). 16V capacitors are usually spaced pretty far, so those are not too much a problem, it's the 3300 chonkers that will not work. Luckily, I was anticipating this and only ordered a few, to check. I will be doing the boards I CAN do before worrying about that.

Last night, I finished recapping the MSI MS-6566 and got it set up.

I dropped in a known-good Celly (SL6V2) and my known-good test DDR. I grabbed an untested video card for this: a Matrox G550. I figured kill two birds, on stone, yeah? Indeed killed something with a stone, 🤣. It POSTed first try and then I took a break for dinner... Ope. While I was eating, I started hearing fan noises, didn't think too much of it, could've been from the other room... Nope it was the guy on my desk, turning ON and OFF... I noticed when the monitor responded. I jumped up and cut the power. It was violently powering on and off with a mix of some RESET action in there, tons of POST codes. OOooohhh, sh*t.

I powered it back on after I was done eating and POST game me "dd--". and NO beeps. Removed the video card and got "D314", still no beeps. Removed the memory (can't remember the codes past this) and I got beeps. Reseated the memory and got new beeps, video card beeps. So I installed good 'ol PCI Matrox and powered it on. Success! There must be something wrong with the video card, I'll test it again later. The memory socket is missing a clip, so that may have been what caused the other issue.

After setting the BIOS and letting it sit (to watch for phantom power-up) it seems like it's ready to play nice, so I installed windowsXP on a Seagate 7200.7 40GB.

Which brings us to the present. It's still sitting, ready for more testing. I'm going to install drivers (and a AGP video card) and get some benchmark runs with the rinky-dink Celeron before putting a 3.0P4 of some kind in it. I have a nice ABIT board, too (with 865 chipset) so I might save the CPU for that.

Like before, a few days of testing before moving to the next board. I haven't decided which one to do next, but I think it's going to be the ABIT(IS7), since the same drive will boot it nicely.

Very nice. I realized once I was installing some programs, WindowsXP already had drivers for everything. The video card I added was a Radeon 9600LE.

I have tested this card before and seem to end up in a sh*t-show after installing drivers. I decided to just roll with the Microsoft drivers this time and it works perfectly! The first successful run of ANYTHING on any test since I got it. Quake3 and UT99 are both completely smooth and look great.

Seems to work very well! I'm going to plug in a USB mouse and game for a bit!

Heh, curveball!

I ended up working on the PCchips K7S5A yesterday and got it completely recapped.

I just set it up and ready to test. Forgot the POST card, just plugged everything confidently and threw the switch. BAM! Another victory! It went straight for the floppy and booted DOS and ran SpeedSys properly(score 1113.26). I needed to move along, so I grabbed a drive with the intent of installing windows 98.

I connected the drive and it booted into a hella-fresh windowsXP install (don't know HOW I left it there, on the "first boot" screen). Lucky me. This saves some time. I'll install the sound card drivers and maybe a GF2, just to be able to actually run anything. This SIS 6326 is my test card for all-time (when applicable). Very reliable and "works", it's always good to have a guy like that around. Also sacrificial. Not a big loss if a board decides to blow-it-up.

I'll test for a while, then grab a few new contenders to look at. Got some new hardware to clean/repair!

So, I just HAD to look at this one:

Identifies as LuckyStar P4A845S. I saw the SDRAM slots and Pentium4 cooler and got confused. Based on the model number, I was guessing it was a 845 chipset, but I had no clue, it was possible to get a SDRAM variant. This is a weird board. It had a Pentium 4 SL5TK (1.7/256/400). Seems reasonable for such a slow-looking board. Well, actually... It's quite the non-operational-looking board:

The other board is a ASUS P5LD2.

It was hiding a Core2Duo SL9TA (1.86/2M/1066) and also some plague.

I'll bet both of these work, just need caps. Not sure when I'll get to that, but they are all values I have and are do-able.

Well. That was a quick turnaround. I did a partial recap of the P4A845S and am ready to test it.

Damn, well that's unfortunate. I powered it on to C1 00. Basically dead. I removed everything but the CPU and same. Removed CPU Got -- --, which is expected. I put in the Celeron I was using before and now I get E1 A0 with a constant beep until it powers itself off(about 5 seconds), and becomes unresponsive. I've tested it with and without the AUX power, doesn't make a difference. I might have a CPU compatibility problem. I will test the CPU in another board to confirm if it is dead (it just gets hot fast). If so, I don't have a CPU old enough to run this board... Booo.

Skip ahead:

I tested the CPU. It works. It indeed gets very hot, though. I have another issue, it seems.

It is a clue, the behavior change when I switch the CPU.

The C1 00 could also be a clue, since that CPU "works" (I'd need to run it in Windows to truly confirm)

Have you seen the bridge?

Seriously, though, what bridge and where? Could I have some physical damage somewhere?

Ugh. I hate when this happens. While at the same time: yay!

I setup the LuckyStar again and just hit the power and it beeped about a video card. So I put the Matrox in and it POSTed!

WHY?! Was it the POST card? I can't remember already if I tried without it before... Did the CPU powering up in the other board change it's mind?! 🤣 Whatever. Hopefully after I'm done typing this, it will boot still, 🤣

I ran SpeedSys quickly:

I'm ready to add a drive and CD. I think I'm going straight for XP on this one.

Ugh, these are the worst issues. The ones that go away randomly on their own. They can just as randomly occur again with no explanation >:-|