VOGONS


First post, by carlostex

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Unfortunately my retro rig is not operational. I think i damaged my PS/2 conector when once i dropped my keyboard and i guess it made to much pressure on the connector in a way that something has gone bad inside.

What bothers me the most is that i love my QDI Titanium IIB board, these are not easy boards to find and at this point i will try to find other alternatives such as the ASUS TX-97XE, and i also found that a DFI 586 ITOX would be an amazing board for me if somehow i could get a voltage regulator to make it support 2.0V

At this point i cannot even desolder the damn connector and replace by one from another board since i don't have the equipment for that. I'm sure it's not the keyboard because it works just normal as it always did with my main modern computer.
The QDI board does seem to support USB keyboards so i'm gonna try and get one to see what happens.

Here's a video because images are worth more than a thousand words:
https://youtu.be/wRtn9_3AL9U

Let me know what you think

Reply 1 of 4, by shock__

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Any chance of taking out the mainboard and posting a photo of the area where the PS/2 connector is soldered? May have happened that you broke the jack from the board (I've seen that a few times with [mini]-DIN connectors).
Does the machine show the same behaviour with no keyboard connected?
If all else fails, I can replace that connector for you, if you cover the postage (I'm located in Germany tho - probably better to find someone local).

Current Project: new GUS PnP compatible soundcard

[Z?]

Reply 2 of 4, by carlostex

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Actually without a keyboard connected the board doesn't even POST. Already tried a USB Keyboard, also does not POST.

And yeah i took out the motherboard already and checked the solder spots. I didn't take a picture at the time, but i saw myself that nothing was broke.

And thanks for your offer, i will definitely keep it in mind since i have no equipment here to do it myself, it would be a rather simple job i guess.

The board has started now to refuse to boot from anything, floppy or HDD, it just shuts down to POST again. I also left the board without being connected to power and it lost the BIOS settings despite having a new CR2032.

To make matters worse this board comes with a PLCC type soldered on board BIOS, which i suspect might be going bad and responsible for the boards odd behaviour.

I really liked this board, but seems i'd be better trying to find a replacement. And i'll check if postage fees are not too high maybe give this board a chance to get fixed. Although now i think the problem is deeper than just a bad PS/2 connector.

Reply 4 of 4, by carlostex

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bjt wrote:

Sorry to hear about this. Someone is selling that DFI board in a set here: http://www.amibay.com/showthread.php?71823-Co … -SB-16-with-OPL

Also might be worth considering Asus TXP4-X?

Cheers for the heads up! The Asus TXP4-X does seem to be a good alternative. The DFI board in that sale is not an ITOX but rather an ITXD. The ITOX is rather nice because it has 6!!! ISA slots and integrates S3 Trio 64V+ on board. Quite nice for DOS gaming, specially if you consider that you can throw a couple of Voodoo 2's to combine with the integrated S3, only losing one ISA slot in the process. One V2 would be enough for me and i could retain my 4 sound cards and probably put in my Innovation replica and i would even have an ISA slot left for something else 😀

There's also the ABit AX5 which also includes a CPU menu on BIOS, which i find nice, at least better than opening the computer case to change a jumper. It seems that it doesn't go any lower than 2.5V which would kill any K6+ CPU without an adapter. The adapter solution would only be worth for something like the DFI ITOX, honestly.

In other news i found a bundle on german eBay which comprises of:

ASUS TX97-XE Rev. 3.01
Intel Pentium 233MHz MMX CPU
128MB SD-RAM (PC-100)
Matrox Mystique 220 4MB PCI
ESS 1689F sound card

managed to bring down the bundle price from 55 Euros to only 45€ shipped. In my opinion it wasn't a bad deal.