Local recycling keeps selling good stuff year after year. This was in storage as they didn't have enough space to put it for sale. They had filled the shelves with 20e C2D machines instead. 😵

sf78 wrote:

Local recycling keeps selling good stuff year after year. This was in storage as they didn't have enough space to put it for sale. They had filled the shelves with 20e C2D machines instead. 😵

Nice machine! Stil working? Probably an empty batterij Dallas RTC?

Picked up a 5162 XT 286 and a 5154 EGA monitor. The monitor is super dim, i'm worried that the CRT is shot. I was super surprised to see SIMMs inside the machine, considering my newer 5170 doesn't have them. I had forgotten the XT286 even existed. Came with an intel aboveboard with 512k on it (+ the 640k on board), 1.2MB HD floppy, some AST clock/IO card , and a MISSING HARD DRIVE. argh.

Seller was some kid who probably tried to get it working, but couldn't. Sold it as "untested" when in actuality, most of it wasn't functional.

For starters, the PSU was dead. Need to re-cap it, but in the meantime plugged in a small AT one i had laying around.

I powered it up and it gave 1 long beep and 2 short beeps. Took out the graphics card and saw this:

now why the heck would someone have an MDA hooked up to an EGA monitor? Swapped in a spare CGA board and got display working. Note how dim it is.

30 years old to the month!

Stojke wrote:

Too bad you didn't get the battery with it, you could have repacked it with new cells.

I don't know if that is possible, I once tried to dismantle the battery from my Libretto 70CT and it was essentially potted with epoxy and you couldn't dismantle the battery without destroying it, I don't know if all Toshiba batteries are like that but that was my experience with the 70CT, also the 70CT didn't use 18650s it use 17670s and I had an 18650 laying around and it would not fit in the shell.

Today I got my first working non-VIA 133MHz P3 board. It appears to come from a HP Vectra VL400. Replaced the 733MHz CPU with a 1GHz Coppermine and the stock cooler with a Thermaltake one (needs less force, no reason to chip the chip hehe). Will be building a i815-based P3 gaming rig around this, 256MB of SDRAM, a HIS Radeon 9600Pro/256 and two V2's as SLI. It has an ATA-66 controller and I can't decide whether I'll populate the third PCI slot with a SoundBlaster Live for EAX (no Aureal card yet 🙁 ) or choose to use the on-board sound chip and go for a FastTrak2000 ATA133 controller or a SATA card. For networking, the motherboard appears to have a 3Com/Broadcom chip, let's hope that it'll be supported under Windows 98.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Nice machine! Stil working? Probably an empty batterij Dallas RTC?

Yes, working with empty HDD's inside. It has a normal CR2032 in it with 2.77V left so I'll take my chances. 😀

appiah4 wrote:

Also the drying thing really irks me.. There are a lot of things on electronics that can leak water into them. Some people resolve this issue by apparently putting their electronics into an oven and baking them (at around 70C or so..) but to that I go wtf.. I can't think of any particular component that will go bad because of 70C temperature but I'm sure a lot of them are not meant to get that hot..

I've seen people who have been handling and fixing electronics for a long long time do these, and they are very reputable people. My engineering knowledge screams NO to me though..

If you were truly an engineer you would know there is a difference in operating temperatures and non-operating temperatures. Also motherboards and video cards all were, at one point in time, subject to.. I don't remember what the term is but oven baking basically at the factory. They laid all the components on the board, bits of solder near the relevant points and then put it through a reflow oven where the temps reach high enough to melt solder (183c) and then everything melts in place and it's done. Video cards go even hotter than that, the gpu cores go around 400c sometimes one-time during the production process. The problem with heat though is you of course can't reach those temps while the components are energized and running or it would fry em. Usually max operating temps of most components are like 90c or less. Except modern GPU cores and modern (Intel) CPU's today usually have a max temp of about 105c before they trigger failsafes and shut off.

So heating up things, video cards, motherboards, etc, to 70c or 100c even while off and not powered, and allowing to cool before powering won't hurt anything.

DaveJustDave wrote:

Picked up a 5162 XT 286 and a 5154 EGA monitor. The monitor is super dim, i'm worried that the CRT is shot. I was super surpri […]
Show full quote

Picked up a 5162 XT 286 and a 5154 EGA monitor. The monitor is super dim, i'm worried that the CRT is shot. I was super surprised to see SIMMs inside the machine, considering my newer 5170 doesn't have them. I had forgotten the XT286 even existed. Came with an intel aboveboard with 512k on it (+ the 640k on board), 1.2MB HD floppy, some AST clock/IO card , and a MISSING HARD DRIVE. argh.

Seller was some kid who probably tried to get it working, but couldn't. Sold it as "untested" when in actuality, most of it wasn't functional.

For starters, the PSU was dead. Need to re-cap it, but in the meantime plugged in a small AT one i had laying around.

I powered it up and it gave 1 long beep and 2 short beeps. Took out the graphics card and saw this:

now why the heck would someone have an MDA hooked up to an EGA monitor? Swapped in a spare CGA board and got display working. Note how dim it is.

30 years old to the month!

EGA CRTs are not my area of expertise but perhaps the kid messed up the internal brightness on the CRT?

Atleast it works, even if dim which means all the boards are most likely good.

Some old goodies came in the mail today.

An SB16 CT1740 with YMF-262 chip and a WaveBlaster II card as well. An IRC friend sent it to me.

A Cnet ISA network card, NE2000 clone.

Number Nine Imagine 128 Series II 4MB PCI card with a Cirrus Logic CL-GD5424 chip on the other side for MS-DOS. I put some more memory in it on that bottom right memory slot on the front side.

kithylin wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Also the drying thing really irks me.. There are a lot of things on electronics that can leak water into them. Some people resolve this issue by apparently putting their electronics into an oven and baking them (at around 70C or so..) but to that I go wtf.. I can't think of any particular component that will go bad because of 70C temperature but I'm sure a lot of them are not meant to get that hot..

I've seen people who have been handling and fixing electronics for a long long time do these, and they are very reputable people. My engineering knowledge screams NO to me though..

If you were truly an engineer you would know there is a difference in operating temperatures and non-operating temperatures. Also motherboards and video cards all were, at one point in time, subject to.. I don't remember what the term is but oven baking basically at the factory. They laid all the components on the board, bits of solder near the relevant points and then put it through a reflow oven where the temps reach high enough to melt solder (183c) and then everything melts in place and it's done. Video cards go even hotter than that, the gpu cores go around 400c sometimes one-time during the production process. The problem with heat though is you of course can't reach those temps while the components are energized and running or it would fry em. Usually max operating temps of most components are like 90c or less. Except modern GPU cores and modern (Intel) CPU's today usually have a max temp of about 105c before they trigger failsafes and shut off.

So heating up things, video cards, motherboards, etc, to 70c or 100c even while off and not powered, and allowing to cool before powering won't hurt anything.

In reference to most consumer electronic computer items that have aluminum electrolytic capacitors installed HEAT in any form wither from being powered up or from external sources is not good for them. Heat and time are their worst enemy. They have a finite life and heat will do bad things to the electrolyte, water based or not. Take into account that most of them are nearing the end of their designed life so the chemicals at best are marginal by the time we get them. Heat will not prolong the life of them. that said clean stuff with water but dry at room temp with plenty of forced air like a fan allowing time for drying under caps and chips.

kithylin wrote:

So heating up things, video cards, motherboards, etc, to 70c or 100c even while off and not powered, and allowing to cool before powering won't hurt anything.

Maybe. Heat profiles for solder processes (such as wave soldering or reflow soldering) are designed and validated for the device being manufactured. The temperatures mentioned are substantially lower than those used for soldering, but there could be adhesives or wrappings added afterwords which could be damaged with moderate temperatures like this. Plus, as Bonez mentioned, heat will negatively impact the lifetime of electrolytic capacitors.

Using IPA is almost always going to be a better option as it will dry evaporatively.

gdjacobs wrote:

kithylin wrote:

So heating up things, video cards, motherboards, etc, to 70c or 100c even while off and not powered, and allowing to cool before powering won't hurt anything.

Maybe. Heat profiles for solder processes (such as wave soldering or reflow soldering) are designed and validated for the device being manufactured. The temperatures mentioned are substantially lower than those used for soldering, but there could be adhesives or wrappings added afterwords which could be damaged with moderate temperatures like this. Plus, as Bonez mentioned, heat will negatively impact the lifetime of electrolytic capacitors.

Using IPA is almost always going to be a better option as it will dry evaporatively.

Personally I've "washed" things before.. I had a PC from the trash once that literally had mounds of physical dirt inside and a rat had lived in it and live spiders inside by the time I found it. But it was a special motherboard that took both 386 and 486 chips. I took the case off outside and sprayed down the insides with a garden hose and got all the dirt and insect crap out of it and then scrubbed it with a horse-hair brush and soap in the bathroom, then hung it up on a wire in my storage room in the back yard for 4 weeks in the texas summer (evaporative heating) and it was fine afterwards. Ended up trading it to a real life friend but still. Didn't hurt it at all.

Horse hair brush + warm water + soap + a good scrubbing ... Just like your mama used to clean you.

Drying cards with a hairdryer from a close distance for a couple of seconds to get the condensation out and letting them dry on their own on room temperature. Make sure you blow all the water out of small holes and such. Tin won't corrode. Storage temperatures up to 100 degrees Celsius wont harm components in a prolonged time period, but will shorten electrolytic capacitors life.
Chips can survive multiple heating to 225 degrees and when they break its the interconnects between the silicon and the carrier that breaks not the chip it self. And sensors that read chip temperatures are below the chip, who knows whats the actual temperature in the core of things.

Got a Key Tronic ergoforce keyboard from my youngest brother for free, a very good non mechanical keyboard. 😀

Tested this BFG GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB AGP. Needed 2x Molex connectors. Had to fiddle with it, as BIOS had trouble booting. It did NOT like my SATA power -> Molex adapter I use for every other video card.

Next up is a Dell Socket 4 motherboard, Intel Premiere PCI/Batman but with PS/2 mouse/keyboard instead of AT. Can anyone confirm it uses standard AT power adapters? I really don't want to burn this guy out...

@DEXVX

Take a simple multimeter and set it to continuity, put black lead on one of the pads, check all the power pins. If all the grounds match, you should be just fine. IIRC, its only the ATX boards that had bastard power supplies.

On the 5154, one of the knobs can be pulled out and turned. I think it's the brightness knob.

@LuckyBob
Thanks for advice, I'll do that. I don't have a multimeter at home (maybe if I could find my college set). I'm in the process of shopping around for a solder/desolder station.

On another note....

At the local recycler, I also saw a 486 desktop system, looks like an Asus ISA-486SV2 with a 486SX chip (I assume it's upgradeable to DX variants). Some Diamond Stealth 24 VLB, some other VLB IO card, some 16bit ISA IO card, a longish 16 bit ISA sound card (I forgot what it was now, had Pro in the name, not Creative/Aztech/GUS/Yamaha/Ensoniq). Looks like the PSU fan spins up, but system does not POST.

Board itself and internals look very clean, although one of the drive cages was loose. The CMOS battery is a barrel with some leakage, but I didn't see any board damage on initial inspection. Do you guys think it is worth picking up? (I have to pay money for it).

dexvx wrote:

@LuckyBob
Thanks for advice, I'll do that. I don't have a multimeter at home (maybe if I could find my college set). I'm in the process of shopping around for a solder/desolder station.

Equally as important as the station you choose is availability of solder tips.

dexvx wrote:

At the local recycler, I also saw a 486 desktop system, looks like an Asus ISA-486SV2 with a 486SX chip (I assume it's upgradeable to DX variants). Some Diamond Stealth 24 VLB, some other VLB IO card, some 16bit ISA IO card, a longish 16 bit ISA sound card (I forgot what it was now, had Pro in the name, not Creative/Aztech/GUS/Yamaha/Ensoniq). Looks like the PSU fan spins up, but system does not POST.

Board itself and internals look very clean, although one of the drive cages was loose. The CMOS battery is a barrel with some leakage, but I didn't see any board damage on initial inspection. Do you guys think it is worth picking up? (I have to pay money for it).

It depends on how much you have to pay. If it has a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 on board, for instance, it's worth quite a bit for the sound card alone.

Stojke wrote:

Horse hair brush + warm water + soap + a good scrubbing ... Just like your mama used to clean you.

Drying cards with a hairdryer from a close distance for a couple of seconds to get the condensation out and letting them dry on their own on room temperature. Make sure you blow all the water out of small holes and such. Tin won't corrode. Storage temperatures up to 100 degrees Celsius wont harm components in a prolonged time period, but will shorten electrolytic capacitors life.
Chips can survive multiple heating to 225 degrees and when they break its the interconnects between the silicon and the carrier that breaks not the chip it self. And sensors that read chip temperatures are below the chip, who knows whats the actual temperature in the core of things.

Well, yes, the chips will likely be fine. Any other plastic components, especially ones that are made from plastics not designed to be reheated to excess temperatures, may suffer if you don't remove them beforehand. They may melt, or (more likely) turn brittle as the plasticizers evaporate. They can spontaneously crack or otherwise deteriorate. The same applies to damage from exposure to sunlight.

But just to take another "harmless" cleaning procedure often recommended on these forums: whitening a case using H2O2. Depending on the plastic (flexible ones are more affected), this process may turn the plastic extremely brittle to the point it can't stand a mechanical load without breaking. It will sometimes outright destroy certain types of nylon. So if you ever had the impression that your whitened cases are more susceptible to damage than non-whitened cases, you're probably right.

BTW, sudden excessive heating of water droplets located under chips may cause them to explosively turn into vapor with enough force to literally rip chips off a PCB. I personally wouldn't use a hair dryer to dry stuff from close by the way your describe, also because a hairdryer's heat is not exactly easy to regulate (just like a heat gun). In general, exposure to heat-cold cycles will cause materials to expand and shrink repeatedly, increasing the chance of micro-fissures developing into much larger damage*.

* Ever seen a rock with clear fissures in it that slowly falls apart as cracks widen? There are two driving forces that cause that: 1) water that infiltrates and freezes in the cracks (solid water takes more room than liquid water, unlike all other solid materials), and 2) water that infiltrates and gets heated by the sun until it evaporates (and therefore expands). Pure physics.