Is anyone else beginning to have alot of trouble with hardware? I realize alot of my stuff is pushing 15-20 years old, but it seems over the last three years, I've been losing alot of stuff. Motherboards, harddrives, soundcards... ect.
Is it just me?
/end rant
So far not much that a good clean up and capacitor change did not handle.
FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run.
I've considered doing it on a MOBO, but SMD devices are a challange. :p
I would not bother trying to solder SMD electrolytic caps without a hot air station. Most of the solder is underneath. I think its easier to use regular leaded caps and make small L shapes in the legs with tweezers.
Last month I fully recapped my X68000 compact and almost all the electrolytic caps are SMD. Almost 70 of em. Biggest recap job i ever made.
You can see work log and pictures here:
http://nfggames.com/forum2/index.php?topic=4931.0
FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run.
SMD soldering isn't hard once you get the hang of it, I once had to repair a 8800gtx a few years back that had lost all but two of its caps. If you want something that will intimidate even the experienced pros then a yamaha cs-80 will make them crap their pants. The trick is to not let the board and components get to hot while you are trying to solder. Hot air works when doing chips but a simple iron will work for caps.
On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.
wrote:Is anyone else beginning to have alot of trouble with hardware? I realize alot of my stuff is pushing 15-20 years old, but it seems over the last three years, I've been losing alot of stuff. Motherboards, harddrives, soundcards... ect.
Is it just me?
/end rant
I have things that are 30+ years old which have original parts and still work fine (I'm sure they will need some sort of servicing at some point: probably power supply capacitors).
I've never had a hard drive fail on me, and I own loads of them. The only computers which I owned that failed, were... thinkpads! T40s and T60s. It's sad because they're nice to use.
wrote:SMD soldering isn't hard once you get the hang of it, I once had to repair a 8800gtx a few years back that had lost all but two of its caps. If you want something that will intimidate even the experienced pros then a yamaha cs-80 will make them crap their pants. The trick is to not let the board and components get to hot while you are trying to solder. Hot air works when doing chips but a simple iron will work for caps.
A CS-80 has surface mount capacitors?! CS-80s, Polymoogs, Chromas, OB-Xas, etc... not many like to work on those.
wrote:I have things that are 30+ years old which have original parts and still work fine (I'm sure they will need some sort of servici […]
wrote:Is anyone else beginning to have alot of trouble with hardware? I realize alot of my stuff is pushing 15-20 years old, but it seems over the last three years, I've been losing alot of stuff. Motherboards, harddrives, soundcards... ect.
Is it just me?
/end rant
I have things that are 30+ years old which have original parts and still work fine (I'm sure they will need some sort of servicing at some point: probably power supply capacitors).
I've never had a hard drive fail on me, and I own loads of them. The only computers which I owned that failed, were... thinkpads! T40s and T60s. It's sad because they're nice to use.
wrote:SMD soldering isn't hard once you get the hang of it, I once had to repair a 8800gtx a few years back that had lost all but two of its caps. If you want something that will intimidate even the experienced pros then a yamaha cs-80 will make them crap their pants. The trick is to not let the board and components get to hot while you are trying to solder. Hot air works when doing chips but a simple iron will work for caps.
A CS-80 has surface mount capacitors?! CS-80s, Polymoogs, Chromas, OB-Xas, etc... not many like to work on those.
No but the sheer amount of caps, turn pots, and other tweaking including the replacing of rare ic chips make it a project only for the dedicated few to rebuild one of these rare machines but is totally worth it.
On a far away planet reading your posts in the year 10,191.
wrote:Is anyone else beginning to have alot of trouble with hardware? I realize alot of my stuff is pushing 15-20 years old, but it seems over the last three years, I've been losing alot of stuff. Motherboards, harddrives, soundcards... ect.
My gear is stored in my crawlspace which is a light-free cool dry place, so that has helped. It may get dirty but so far everything still works. In fact, the only thing that has died in a decade is a RGB TTL monitor where the intensity pin pathway isn't working, so it only displays the first 8 colors. Probably a simple repair.
I have a 5160 with both a CGA and MDA monitor connected to it and all three are still working after 30 years, no discoloration or burn-in. However, the 5160 gets turned on a few times a week, so I think that regular use of it has kept it going. I think if you have a machine in storage for a decade and then power it on without letting it warm up to room temperature (at least let the hard drive thermally recalibrate), you might find trouble when you flip the switch.
A couple of years ago I went through my batch of small IDE hard drives and kept the working ones in a box. About two months ago when I needed some I found out that they have all gone bad except for a 2 GB Quantum Bigfoot.
Recently i started putting my gear for storage in sealed plastic containers along with Silica gel bags. In the hope that they do not deteriorate ( too much ).
FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run.
Within the past year or so I lost a Conner 1270 MB drive, as well as some old Creative 4x and 8X CD-Rom drives...
Plastic is pretty staticy. Use anti-static bags or paper.
I had a similar experience with my small IDE drives. Out of 8 in the 1-10GB range, 1 worked. Moving parts... Thank god for IDE to CF adaptors.
wrote:Plastic is pretty staticy. Use anti-static bags or paper.
I had a similar experience with my small IDE drives. Out of 8 in the 1-10GB range, 1 worked. Moving parts... Thank god for IDE to CF adaptors.
All my parts are in anti static bags and or cardboard boxes before i put them in the containers.
FM sound card comparison on a Grand Scale!!
The Grand OPL3 Comparison Run.
wrote:Is anyone else beginning to have alot of trouble with hardware? I realize alot of my stuff is pushing 15-20 years old, but it seems over the last three years, I've been losing alot of stuff. Motherboards, harddrives, soundcards... ect.
Is it just me?
/end rant
Solar flares man. Mercury in retrograde! Planned obsolescence! /tinfoil hat 🤣
