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Packard Bell Axcel 2005

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First post, by shoggoth80

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Hey all. Dug out my 486. Kind of a time machine. Got my work cut out for me though. When I last had it, it booted up fine, into DOS, and could start Windows 3.11. No issues. It's been stored for some time now though. It has a Crystal ISA sound card in it, I'll have to pull the board number in a bit. I've gotta tear it down anyway. It's not posting at the moment. It powers up, hard drive spools, but never gets to POST, and no hard drive activity light. The guts are mostly clean. Still has the original spec hard drive in it. Cirrus Logic GPU, but for all I know it's still running as-built specs. I never got around to playing with it much, and it's been many years. While powering up, I get a growl like sound. repeatedly. It doesn't sound like it is coming from the drive, almost more like close to the CPU, which doesn't make a lot of sense, as the fan spins up without issue. Maybe power issues, or perhaps a dead CMOS might cause it to not POST?

Other thoughts.... the riser on it is all ISA. I have some PCI goodies that I wouldn't mind adding... is it possible to put a riser, with PCI in the machine, even though (I think) the riser is connected through an ISA slot? I didn't mess with the guts of the machines back in the day, and interfaces seem a bit more distilled down now.

Reply 1 of 5, by shoggoth80

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Ok, tore it down to the bare case. Man, that was easier than I recall. The stock CPU spec is an Intel 486SX25, but I can't tell... I didn't think the slower 486s had coolers on them?

Also, my CMOS battery leaked, and it's one of those barrel types. Think it may have screwed some traces up. Think I need a new board?

Reply 2 of 5, by gdjacobs

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Desolder the battery and start cleaning it up with some mild cleaning solution (vinegar, dilute baking soda, or weak IPA for instance). It's hard to tell how much damage there is just from the surface, although it appears some traces may have failed. This is fairly easily repaired using fine wire to bridge between vias, but it's up to you whether you want to undertake the project.

All hail the Great Capacitor Brand Finder

Reply 3 of 5, by lowlytech

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Shame about the battery. Hope you decide to fix it and get it running again. The PCI bus would be a pipe dream, as you would have to have the proper chipset on the mainboard to support it. Our first family computer back in early 94 looked to be this same system. Had 486sx-25, 4mb ram, 210MB HDD, and from the back picture you posted, looked just like that. Same soundcard too. You don't have a front pic of the system, but ours had the 2x panasonic cdrom instead of the 5.25". My dad kept that machine til sometime in the early to mid 2000's and finally tossed it. I am kicking myself for not taking that machine now. Logged a ton of hours on that thing tinkering.

Reply 4 of 5, by TheMobRules

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That CPU is not a 486SX-25, it's a Pentium Overdrive (the 63MHz version if I'm not mistaken).

Reply 5 of 5, by lowlytech

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Correct, his had been upgraded at some point, but he mentioned it came stock with a SX-25