Repairing a Packard Bell 800AU today. […]
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Repairing a Packard Bell 800AU today.
Specs:
Pentium 3 Coppermine - 800mhz
MS-6168 V2 motherboard
128meg (shipped size 64meg, but upgraded)
Onboard Voodoo 3-2000 8meg graphics.
20gig hard drive
PCI modem (winmodem anyone)
1.44meg floppy drive
CD-RW drive.
Repairs done:
* The entire case/motherboard/cards washed/dried completely. Was extremely dusty and dirty.
* Inspected PSU, has the normal arrangement of extremely dodgy capacitors, but they looked ok, so I just oiled the fan (it was rattling and noisy on original testing.
* Replaced 2 faulty capacitors on the motherboard, the big ones next to the power connector. Replaced a 10V 1500uF capacitor with nichicon 10V 2200uF capacitor, and 6.3V 2700uF capacitor with nichicon 6.3V 3300uF capacitor.
* Popped off the old heatsink and fan off the voodoo 3 chip ... they always go. Put a slightly larger passive heatsink on it ... going to see if it runs ok like this.
* The maxtor 20gig hard drive, it would have been cool to keep this, but being a maxtor drive, it is both noisy and dying, so I just can't use it 🙁
Repairs to be done.
* Will put in a seagate 250gig hard drive, as the only quiet drives I have that are large enough. Otherwise I'd have to put in a smaller quantum drive, and they all sound as bad as the maxtor.
* Glue new heatsink onto the voodoo 3 chip, once I have tested that the one I have selected will work ok.
* Put everything into case.
* Change the 2x64meg SDRAM chips with a single 128meg SDRAM chip. I can use the smaller ram chips on pentium motherboards!