VOGONS


Reply 10900 of 27182, by dionb

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Double-fail here yesterday...

I have this nice mid-period 486 board with EISA and VLB that unfortunately had a soldered Dallas RTC, which was of course completely dead.

So, after quite some desoldering I managed to remove the offending unit and (with rather less effort) added a socket to plop a replacement onto:

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Looks shiny - so why a fail?
Firstly, note the RTC - it's a DS1387, not a DS1287; something I should have seen before I started. That means it's "RAMified", i.e. it has 4k SRAM onboard - and that there is basically no like-for-like replacement available. I also lost two of its legs while trying to remove it, so even if I try to mod it, I'll have fun getting it hooked up again. That said, the way it was nestled down in between two other chips means that I couldn't have operated on it in-situ anyway, so this bit was inevitable.
Secondly, I think I killed the board. Previously it would boot with no more complaint than CMOS settings invalid. Now, it starts the very beginning of POST, but stops at 0d. Not good.

Two possibilities:
1) the board tries to access the SRAM on the DS1387 early in the POST and if it can't find it, stops there. In that case I could try to fix the DS1387's legs (the ones I killed are CS and OER, i.e. RAM output enable - so directly related to the SRAM) or get another one less mutilated.
2) the board would boot happily without the DS1387 and its SRAM, but I borked something else with my cack-handed soldering and it's total loss.

This is the first time I've worked on a system with a DS1387. Anyone who has handled them before know what expected behaviour is if you try to boot with the DS1387 removed or defective?

Reply 10901 of 27182, by eisapc

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The additional SRAM may be used to store the EISA configuration, but I only remember boards using a separate DALLAS DS1225 NVRAM chip for this purpose.

It should be possible to replace the included battery and add the two lost pins following this instruction:
http://www.mcamafia.de/mcapage0/dsrework.htm
BTW what board is this?

Reply 10902 of 27182, by dionb

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eisapc wrote:
The additional SRAM may be used to store the EISA configuration, but I only remember boards using a separate DALLAS DS1225 NVRAM […]
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The additional SRAM may be used to store the EISA configuration, but I only remember boards using a separate DALLAS DS1225 NVRAM chip for this purpose.

It should be possible to replace the included battery and add the two lost pins following this instruction:
http://www.mcamafia.de/mcapage0/dsrework.htm
BTW what board is this?

Yep, aware of that one. But only want to make that effort if there's a good chance of a working board afterwards.

It's a whitelabel (literally - I have it new in box with manual & disks and there's not a brand name anywhere) SL 486E, which I believe is an ECS board.

Reply 10903 of 27182, by bjwil1991

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Older Tandy systems, like the 1000SL, had a socket for an SRAM RTC module.

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Reply 10904 of 27182, by liqmat

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dionb wrote:
https://tweakers.net/ext/f/0jZZepHhGJXOAOdXHwFsxL8A/full.jpg […]
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full.jpg

Secondly, I think I killed the board. Previously it would boot with no more complaint than CMOS settings invalid. Now, it starts the very beginning of POST, but stops at 0d. Not good.

Two possibilities:
1) the board tries to access the SRAM on the DS1387 early in the POST and if it can't find it, stops there. In that case I could try to fix the DS1387's legs (the ones I killed are CS and OER, i.e. RAM output enable - so directly related to the SRAM) or get another one less mutilated.
2) the board would boot happily without the DS1387 and its SRAM, but I borked something else with my cack-handed soldering and it's total loss.

This is the first time I've worked on a system with a DS1387. Anyone who has handled them before know what expected behaviour is if you try to boot with the DS1387 removed or defective?

Can you show us the underbelly of where you soldered? Doesn't look too bad from the top.

Reply 10905 of 27182, by looking4awayout

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After a long search, I finally got my holy grail of high performance AGP cards: an ATI Radeon HD4670! It's the HIS version, with the oversized cooler. According to the description, the owner used it for a very short time before upgrading to a PCIe system (the card itself doesn't even have a single speck of dust), so it should be troublefree.

I mostly hope that I won't have the same issues I had with the infamous HD3850, but I think that the card was just defective, since now I've replaced my old 6800GT with another bridged card, a VisionTek X1950 Pro, and runs without issues.

Fingers crossed...

My Retro Daily Driver: Pentium !!!-S 1.7GHz | 3GB PC166 ECC SDRAM | Geforce 6800 Ultra 256MB | 128GB Lite-On SSD + 500GB WD Blue SSD | ESS Allegro PCI | Windows XP Professional SP3

Reply 10906 of 27182, by TheMobRules

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dionb wrote:

This is the first time I've worked on a system with a DS1387. Anyone who has handled them before know what expected behaviour is if you try to boot with the DS1387 removed or defective?

I don't know specifically about the DS1387, but none of my boards that use a DS12887 post without the RTC. If the RTC is there but the battery is dead, I get the "CMOS battery low" but the board is at least able to POST.

Reply 10907 of 27182, by LunarG

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Does swapping out the cheap China-model VGA switch I was using, with a nice new Aten CS84U KVM count as retro activity?
When you have 4 retro systems that you want hooked up to the same CRT monitor, and you don't really have space to have separate keyboards and mice for all, then a KVM comes in really handy.
I was lucky to hold of a brand new KVM at less than 1/3 of the in-store price, simply cause somebody had bought a few too many, and they'd just ended up sitting on a shelf.
Auto-sensing inputs, PS/2 mouse and keyboard, and USB as well should I need it. Pretty nifty 😁

WinXP : PIII 1.4GHz, 512MB RAM, 73GB SCSI HDD, Matrox Parhelia, SB Audigy 2.
Win98se : K6-3+ 500MHz, 256MB RAM, 80GB HDD, Matrox Millennium G400 MAX, Voodoo 2, SW1000XG.
DOS6.22 : Intel DX4, 64MB RAM, 1.6GB HDD, Diamond Stealth64 DRAM, GUS 1MB, SB16.

Reply 10908 of 27182, by liqmat

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So this may be my new desktop case. Inquiring with the Chinese manufacturer about the case specifics currently. I know, it's a rack, but my goodness it's a beauty. That flip down door!!! If I put four rubber feet at the bottom it's a damn desktop! No one can tell me different. 🤣 This will house my dual Pentium Pro build BTW.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Indust … .68fb6d69AHwbuj

I am hoping the final product does actually say "Industrial Computer" on it. Classic in my book.

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Reply 10909 of 27182, by wiretap

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liqmat wrote:

So this may be my new desktop case. Inquiring with the Chinese manufacturer about the case specifics currently. I know, it's a rack, but my goodness it's a beauty. That flip down door!!! If I put four rubber feet at the bottom it's a damn desktop! No one can tell me different. 🤣 This will house my dual Pentium Pro build BTW.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Indust … .68fb6d69AHwbuj

I am hoping the final product does actually say "Industrial Computer" on it. Classic in my book.

We use these cases all over at my work.. but we order them through Advantech. Protip: Don't press the reset button, because it gets stuck, then you have to try to get it unstuck for 20 minutes with a dental pick, or disassemble the button to release it. 😵

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Circuit Board Repair Manuals

Reply 10910 of 27182, by liqmat

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wiretap wrote:
liqmat wrote:

So this may be my new desktop case. Inquiring with the Chinese manufacturer about the case specifics currently. I know, it's a rack, but my goodness it's a beauty. That flip down door!!! If I put four rubber feet at the bottom it's a damn desktop! No one can tell me different. 🤣 This will house my dual Pentium Pro build BTW.

https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Indust … .68fb6d69AHwbuj

I am hoping the final product does actually say "Industrial Computer" on it. Classic in my book.

We use these cases all over at my work.. but we order them through Advantech. Protip: Don't press the reset button, because it gets stuck, then you have to try to get it unstuck for 20 minutes with a dental pick, or disassemble the button to release it. 😵

Hmmm... sounds like cheap build quality. Thanks. Think I'll skip then. Too bad as it has a very attractive look to it IMO.

Reply 10914 of 27182, by appiah4

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luckybob wrote:

It's made in China, it's cheap shit.

Welcome to 1990.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 10915 of 27182, by bakemono

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My toys are broken again. I tried to do something with my A2000 but the one bootable HDD I had is now dying. I connected it to a PC (a few of them actually, before I found one that would let me manually enter the CHS values and then boot without having a fit) and ran CheckIt which was showing many unreadable sectors. So it's basically bricked right now unless I can come up with a creative way to boot it. I'm thinking that IF any of the IDE drives I have laying around can work with the GVP IDE interface, then in theory I could create a bootable disk image on PC and write it to an HDD. So I am researching RDB and Amiga boot sectors. I'm assuming it can't boot from a SCSI CD-ROM since I can't find any info about this (but what about the CD32??)

While I was there I discovered that the IBM AT board I had setup has also died. Turning it on, it shows the video card's boot message and then does one of two things. It either shows the BIOS text briefly and then resets, or it says CMOS INOPERATIONAL SYSTEM HALTED. That's with the AMI BIOS. I tried reinstalling the IBM BIOS to see what it would do, but it does nothing at all. Disconnecting or swapping the external batteries for the CMOS has no effect. :p

Reply 10916 of 27182, by liqmat

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luckybob wrote:

It's made in China, it's cheap shit.

Bullshit, news flash, most things are made in China and I have gotten plenty from China that was made perfectly solid. Completely depends on a lot of factors.

Last edited by liqmat on 2019-01-16, 22:33. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 10917 of 27182, by dionb

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Pretty much everything is made in China (including a large number of things with prominent stars&stripes on them) - the distinction is rather that things like this are sold directly from China, rather than a non-Chinese company taking responsibility for quality control. That doesn't make it crap, it does mean it's your job as a buyer to find out whether it's crap. And if you don't, be prepared for crap. The upshot: no middlemen, so better prices for both buyer and manufacturer. If you are alert and make sure you know what you are getting before buying, you can get great stuff for great prices.

Reply 10918 of 27182, by bjwil1991

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wiretap wrote:

Protip: Don't press the reset button, because it gets stuck, then you have to try to get it unstuck for 20 minutes with a dental pick, or disassemble the button to release it. 😵

Speaking of stuck reset buttons, my Nintendo 64 and GameCube have 1 thing in common: the reset or eject button gets stuck. I also had a computer case that had a plaguing reset button that never worked.

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Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
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Reply 10919 of 27182, by liqmat

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detritus olentus wrote:

GX1s of the world's unite! Making my own little 99/00 computer lab.

oeuvre wrote:
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detritus olentus wrote:

GX1s of the world's unite! Making my own little 99/00 computer lab.

q9UzNn0.gif

What're you planning on doing with them?

I'm actually shocked oeuvre let you slide on this one. Maybe he favors Dell aficionados.

They have now been given the Delletor treatment.

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