Re: Repair log: Gemlight GMB-386UN 386 Motherboard

Posted on 2022-01-13, 19:01

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Success! After fitting a new 82C206 the motherboard now POSTs without needing me to press the Reset button repeatedly. I'd call that a success. Also the four replacement SIMM slots are working fine. I get 8MB when I insert eight 1MB sticks. One quirk about this board though: it only seems to want to …

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Re: Try to fix old 786 ACIO VESA 386/486 Motherboard

Posted on 2022-01-12, 17:47

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also make sure you didn't put the POST probe card into a slot that has corroded pins. Varta bombs (and GP leakers) love to demolish nearby ISA slots. I suspect that 'USA' chipset is an OPTi of some kind. It's got a very similar look to it, right down to the Toshiba-style fab markings. (Toshiba …

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Re: Repair log: Gemlight GMB-386UN 386 Motherboard

Posted on 2022-01-11, 00:55

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sockets finally arrived; fitted one to the exposed solder pads. Kind of aping Shoestring on Jammarcade.net for the method of soldering a 'slightly' modified surface mount socket, but this is all I can do with just a soldering iron (and lots of flux). PLCC Puke.jpg Now all that's left to do, is find …

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Re: Repair log: Gemlight GMB-386UN 386 Motherboard

Posted on 2022-01-07, 07:04

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

After the mild disappointment of the otherwise now quite-well working Morse M3 386DX board that cannot reliably handle 40MHz, I decided to revisit this board. Still waiting for the PLCC surface mount socket and 82C206 to arrive, but in the meantime I fixed those broken SIMM slots. The 82C206 was …

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Re: Good caps for recapping sound cards

Posted on 2022-01-06, 07:58

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

You could throw money into the fire on "audio grade" caps if you wanted, but you'll get much the same results from some halfway decent quality new caps in general. I find audio-grade caps to be pretty much a gimmick: to my ears, Nichicon's 'cheap' VP/UVP generic bi-polarized caps sound all but …

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Re: SB 16 Vibra vs. BTC 1820 Mozart for Midi

Posted on 2022-01-05, 01:25

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Probably the ViBRA, though mainly due to the fact that Creative's drivers tend to be much better (and far less fuss-prone) than Oak's. AWE32 will buy you a "wavetable", but is otherwise just a fancy SB16. AWE64 is for the most part more of the same, but tends to be a little less buggy than earlier …

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Re: ASUS PCI/I-486SP3G Onboard IDE Problem

Posted on 2022-01-04, 16:24

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One possible work-around would be to put a boot loader on a cheap, low-capacity memory card in an IDE to SD/CompactFlash adapter, which then properly redirects the boot sequence to the SCSI hard drive. Something like GAG ought to work. http://gag.sourceforge.net/

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Re: CL-GD5430 is good for a 486?

Posted on 2022-01-04, 16:12

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That 1st gen. Pentium CPU Destroyed the computer Market back in 1990’s It was so Dominate Intel was the Jewel of Silicon Valley. The 1st gen. Pentium CPU put allot of computers out of business When I was a lad growing up not too far from Puyallup, Washington, I fondly recall the most major strip …

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Re: CL-GD5430 is good for a 486?

Posted on 2022-01-04, 15:36

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

With a word that hardware geeks aren't just hyperbolic when they describe performance differences It depends. Negligible difference applies mostly to typical VGA mode. But 542x/5430/54M30 cards are not good with VESA or high res modes, which are playable on DX4 in some 2D games. GUI acceleration is …

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Re: Octek Hippo 15 stuck on C5 code

Posted on 2022-01-03, 21:23

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

D'ohhh!!!! Been there, done that too. 🤣 Glad it wasn't a more major failure!

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Re: Octek Hippo 15 stuck on C5 code

Posted on 2022-01-03, 18:08

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you tried squirting contact cleaner into the CPU socket and DRAM slots? I've ran into a few boards that acted extremely erratically, that a few spritzes of QD Electronic Cleaner magically made them behave.

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Re: CL-GD5430 is good for a 486?

Posted on 2022-01-03, 05:14

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be honest, a GD5430 would be right in that awkward area where it's not the fastest video card out there, yet trying to find a faster card simply wouldn't be worth the money, especially at today's eBay prices. The 5430 isn't "slow" under DOS at least. Yeah yeah, the S3 Trio64+, Tseng ET4000/W32p …

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Re: Morse M3 V3.00 386DX motherboard repair log

Posted on 2021-12-30, 05:34

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another minor update... seems the board didn't really take as well to the MR BIOS I picked as I thought, weird graphical glitches started creeping in here and there in Windows, and Windows'd occasionally stop reading the mouse. So I put it back on the original AMI BIOS, and am re-testing. This one …

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Re: Morse M3 V3.00 386DX motherboard repair log

Posted on 2021-12-30, 04:29

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks! After replacing the rodent "effect" damaged 8-bit ISA slot, I've got it all put together and running. So far it seems to be running okay, but there's one thing I noticed about this board: the ISA bus divider seems fixed at CLK2IN/3, and there's no way to change it in either AMI or MR BIOS. …

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Re: Unresponsive 486 board, help?

Posted on 2021-12-29, 23:09

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My Trident 8900Ds take personal exception to that 'they are all so slow' statement. :P All kidding aside, Tridents have the knack of coming in really handy as they are some of the *least* picky ISA VGA cards you can find, and they're still relatively plentiful as far as vintage PC hardware goes. …

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Re: Morse M3 V3.00 386DX motherboard repair log

Posted on 2021-12-29, 21:34

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

OK, fitted a new KS83C206 chip. One of the pads lifted, but *luckily* it makes contact with the pin. I don't think I really want to mess with the chip any further at this point. After powering it up... '-- --'. ... after the dust settles, I take a good look at the chip. Found some microscopic …

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Re: Morse M3 V3.00 386DX motherboard repair log

Posted on 2021-12-26, 20:53

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Aaand it broke. Looks like the 82C206 (Morse 91A206, aka. OPTi/Samsung KS83C206) gave out. I'm really starting to detest these '206 chips... While I'm waiting for the replacements to arrive (pray that they're good!), I fixed the nasty flying wire in the meantime.

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Re: Repair log: Gemlight GMB-386UN 386 Motherboard

Posted on 2021-12-24, 17:44

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Re-visiting this board AGAIN... inconsistent POST issues *persist*! Issue is, the board often comes up stone dead ('-- --' on the POST probe) and will stay that way until I whack the reset button a couple of times. After replacing almost everything else pertinent except the U4800 chipset, 14.3MHz …

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Re: Evergreen 486 SuperChip - settings for DIP switch?

Posted on 2021-12-24, 17:33

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Try re-testing the Tseng card with the 0WS jumper set to 'Disabled' (bottom two pins). Beneficial as 0WS mode is, it doesn't always work on all old motherboards, and sometimes causes weirdness like that to occur.

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Re: Switched motherboards, now screen garbled on old game!

Posted on 2021-12-24, 17:28

by

by Eep386

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is kind of a reach, but did you check the mono/color jumper on the motherboard? If it has one, try setting it the other way.

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