I never had a single RAM chip failing on any of my hardware since 1996. Maybe I'm just lucky. 😉

If I ever had bad RAM, it was already bad when I got it. ESD damage most likely, as people tend to touch that stuff without any care.

Always underclock the RAM and GPU to test as well. If it still occurs, it is likely a bad chip, broken solder joint, or bent legs on chips.

The easiest quick fix (not long term) is to soak under the GPU BGA chip with liquid flux and reflow with a hot air pencil using a BGA/socket style square tip. If that doesn't solve it, replace the RAM since it should be pretty cheap.

Bought Mach32 Graphics Wonder ISA VGA.

I plan to challenge my soldering skills and upgrade it to 2MB. I hope it is just a matter of adding 8 DIP sockets and no other components are necessary. Anyone has successfully done this?

mpe wrote on 2020-04-03, 13:25:

Bought Mach32 Graphics Wonder ISA VGA.

I plan to challenge my soldering skills and upgrade it to 2MB. I hope it is just a matter of adding 8 DIP sockets and no other components are necessary. Anyone has successfully done this?

DSC_6068.jpeg

You might need another BIOS image also? You could try and find an owner of a 2MB card.

mpe wrote on 2020-04-03, 13:25:

Bought Mach32 Graphics Wonder ISA VGA.

I plan to challenge my soldering skills and upgrade it to 2MB. I hope it is just a matter of adding 8 DIP sockets and no other components are necessary. Anyone has successfully done this?

DSC_6068.jpeg

nice ^^

also timing, I bought a Mach32 Ultra Pro VLB just two days ago ^^

It's april now, and that means - it's time for mine retro hardware (or rather motherboards) pickup report.
And since we're living in difficult times (because COVID-19), i'm mostly staying at home, and i was able to test all of them.
Without further ado, let's go.

Socket 5 - BCM Advanced Research SQ588

First S5 mobo in my collection. Never heard of this company before (and no wonder why - they're mostly making industrial things as far as i understood).
Also it's awesome that they still have BIOS updates and manual on their site.

Socket 7 - A-Trend ATC-2000

Very useful mobo for me since it's only 430HX in my collection that can support Pentium MMX processors.

Socket 7 - ZIDA 5DXP

430FX mobos are getting kinda rare nowadays.
Also there's fancy WinBIOS.

Socket 7 - FIC PT-2003

Socket 7 - Chaintech 5TDM2

Socket 7 - ZIDA TX98

Another S7 mobo that was somewhat hard to find. No wonder though - i heard a lot of good things about that mobo.

Socket 7 - ZIDA TX100-3D

Unlike TX98, i heard a lot of bad things about that motherboard, but i can understand that - there's no L2-cache whatsoever.

Socket 7 - PC Chips (Elpina) M539

Welp. This is quite a rare occasion - i was looking for that PC Chips motherboard. Mostly because chipset (ALi M1521 Alladin III if i'm not mistaken).

Socket 7 - Chaintech 5SDA

Interesting mobo for me (because one-chip 5598 chipset with built-in video).

Super Socket 7 - Chaintech 5AGM2

Instead of DIN5 connector there's couple of PS/2 ones.

Super Socket 7 - Lucky Star 5MVP3

Super Socket 7 - Lucky Star 5MVP4

Another interesting pickup for me - SS7 mobo without AGP (because there's built-in video in the chipset, Trident CyberBlade i think).

Slot 1 - ABIT BF6

Quite nice late Slot 1 mobo.

Slot 1/Socket 370 - ECS Elitegroup P6BAT-B

Another ECS slotket mobo in my collection. This time it's in AT format, and... i feel some disturbance in the force...
...Why this mobo looks and feels like it was made by PC Chips? ("golden" AT PSU and keyboard connectors, V1.3 in the upper left corner)

Socket 370 - Gigabyte GA-6VXC7-4X

I want to finish my pickups report with a slightly changed quote from TES IV: Oblivion - Stay safe, citizens. These are dark times.
Stay healthy, guys. 😀

nice :3

I love those tiny 1/2 size babyAT boards, I wish I could fine some socket7/370 ones.

I bought a matched pair of hsf for my dual athlon xp (mod mp) mainboard. (Alpha s-pal8045f)

not all the capacitor is low enough 😁

overall

I have same heatsink, they are the best for socket 462 with four hole mounting. Not all motherboard have these holes.

But there are clip on heatsinks with copper forged in the base.

wiretap wrote on 2020-04-03, 12:48:

Always underclock the RAM and GPU to test as well. If it still occurs, it is likely a bad chip, broken solder joint, or bent legs on chips.

The easiest quick fix (not long term) is to soak under the GPU BGA chip with liquid flux and reflow with a hot air pencil using a BGA/socket style square tip. If that doesn't solve it, replace the RAM since it should be pretty cheap.

I think I will try tommorow if pinching the GPU from bottom and from top reveals anything and eventually I will try and bake it in the oven. I revived a dead AWE32 card that way and it works fine a year later so why not try it? I have neither any equipment for resoldering surface mounted components, not the still to do it anyway...

Today was a good day 😀

Three parcels:

#1 and 2:

Micronics 80486 ASIC EISA 50MHz and a CT2290 SB16. The motherboard is slightly less pristine than promised, the battery has clearly been removed - and not a moment too soon, there's nasty green residue on the nearest two components, though in such small volumes I'm not hugely concerned:

Hope to get round to firing this beast up tomorrow. And the CT2290 - well, probably the nicest SB16 - non-PnP, real OPL3, low self-noise and as few MIDI bugs as you're going to find on a SB16. It's a freebie from a friend I recently gave a dual Opteron server board. Do ut des 😉

#3:

This one is completely new and unused - an Acer Accufeel 6316 6312TW-4U with Acer Black switches - basically what you get if you put the top parts of an Alps clicky switch over a rubber membrane (similar idea to the IBM Model M, but far lighter). Looking forward to typing with this for a while, if only because it's ISO and I far prefer that to ANSI (or big-ass enter monstrosities).

After years of searching I finally got hold of the ASUS C-PKND cpu card for my P65UP5 board. It came fully boxed, just missing the brackets.

vetz wrote on 2020-04-03, 21:14:

After years of searching I finally got hold of the ASUS C-PKND cpu card for my P65UP5 board. It came fully boxed, just missing t […]
Show full quote

After years of searching I finally got hold of the ASUS C-PKND cpu card for my P65UP5 board. It came fully boxed, just missing the brackets.

IMG_20200403_230346.jpg
IMG_20200403_230501.jpg
IMG_20200403_230514.jpg

Circled that one on eBay .. Glad to see it in the hands of a collector 😀

dionb wrote on 2020-04-03, 20:53:

... and a CT2290 SB16.

Great card! The only complaint I have with this card is the proximity of the black CD-IN header to the wavetable header - it fouls a DB. Nice UAT Creative! Easy fixed though you can just yank the black plastic shroud off and still use both headers.

badmojo wrote on 2020-04-03, 21:23:

dionb wrote on 2020-04-03, 20:53:

... and a CT2290 SB16.

Great card! The only complaint I have with this card is the proximity of the black CD-IN header to the wavetable header - it fouls a DB. Nice UAT Creative! Easy fixed though you can just yank the black plastic shroud off and still use both headers.

Yep, sometimes you really wonder if anyone at Creative cared about quality during the SB16 era. Taken together the models after the original 1730 look like bunch of unfinished prototypes. Probably all the engineers did care, but the marketing department told them to shut up and deliver...

In any event I'm not worried about the header, I only have one DB and no way am I using it on any buggy SB16.

I also have a CT2290 SB16 and a Dreablaster S2 fits fine onto it. It's one of the least buggy SB16s, and to be fair I use an ES1868 instead of that in my 6x86 PC these days, I didn't run into any severe MIDI bugs while I used it.

Those S2's are teeny tiny though, I use big manly XR385's over here 🤣

@VETZ
Awesome! I saw that listing come and go. If I had the funds, I would have snagged it first. the P65UP8 is probably my favorite dual cpu board I have.

@nhattu1986

very nice! Those cpu coolers are hands down, the best coolers you can get for that socket. Only practical way to get colder cpu temperatures would be to go chilled water.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-03, 10:20:

derSammler wrote on 2020-04-03, 09:36:

while RAM chips are normally quite reliable.

Not in my experience.

True. Years ago, I had a PCI Tnesg ET4000w32i/p with one bit bad outside of typical memory requirement on windows 98se. I had extremely long bookmarks in firefox. One day I happened to scroll all the way toward bottom and was greeted with band of artifacts across whole width of monitor. I eventually replaced all the vram on this card and problem disappeared.

Cheers,

dionb wrote on 2020-04-03, 20:53:

Today was a good day :) […]
Show full quote

Today was a good day 😀

#3:
15859471007420.jpg
This one is completely new and unused - an Acer Accufeel 6316 with Acer Black switches - basically what you get if you put the top parts of an Alps clicky switch over a rubber membrane (similar idea to the IBM Model M, but far lighter). Looking forward to typing with this for a while, if only because it's ISO and I far prefer that to ANSI (or big-ass enter monstrosities).

What year was this made ? Does it work with both XT and AT ? I saw one for sale stating it did but no picture of a switch to change modes. Just curious if I passed on a good deal...