MarkP wrote on 2022-11-25, 21:15:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-25, 20:59:

If tap water's good enough for the likes of necroware and other highly respected repairers, then it's good enough for me. It's d […]
Show full quote

MarkP wrote on 2022-11-25, 11:35:

Tap water is usually contaminated with impurities. The people in Flint will confirm that.

Demineralised water is far far better.

If tap water's good enough for the likes of necroware and other highly respected repairers, then it's good enough for me. It's difficult to get "far far better" than a 100% success rate using tap water in the cleaning of boards over many years.

But I understand that you may make the same claim about dousing circuit boards in WD-40, if you wish. So you do you, man. WD-40 or contact-cleaner up all your stuff as much as you like. Yay planet.

Cosmic wrote on 2022-11-25, 18:17:

There's all this talk of WD-40 for cleaning electronics here... how about Deoxit? Some retro YouTubers seem to swear by it. "Deoxit that socket!" - Adrian's Digital Basement

Exactly. A socket is a moving contact. Where two separate surfaces move in and out of contact with each other. That's what contact cleaner is for. Not for general dousings of circuit boards, as though it were some magical improver or protector for electronics in general.

What Adrian (and other experts) are most certainly not saying, is "as a general rule, you should douse all your circuit boards all over in WD-40 or contact cleaner".

Don't be stupid and over sensitive dude.

Facts don't care about feelings.

Aaaaand you've jumped the shark. Nice one! 😀 Later dude, see you round.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-25, 21:22:

MarkP wrote on 2022-11-25, 21:15:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-25, 20:59:

If tap water's good enough for the likes of necroware and other highly respected repairers, then it's good enough for me. It's d […]
Show full quote

If tap water's good enough for the likes of necroware and other highly respected repairers, then it's good enough for me. It's difficult to get "far far better" than a 100% success rate using tap water in the cleaning of boards over many years.

But I understand that you may make the same claim about dousing circuit boards in WD-40, if you wish. So you do you, man. WD-40 or contact-cleaner up all your stuff as much as you like. Yay planet.

Exactly. A socket is a moving contact. Where two separate surfaces move in and out of contact with each other. That's what contact cleaner is for. Not for general dousings of circuit boards, as though it were some magical improver or protector for electronics in general.

What Adrian (and other experts) are most certainly not saying, is "as a general rule, you should douse all your circuit boards all over in WD-40 or contact cleaner".

Don't be stupid and over sensitive dude.

Facts don't care about feelings.

Aaaaand you've jumped the shark. Nice one! 😀 Later dude, see you round.

Good luck.

Did you know the ozone layer repaired itself and not by humans banning most BCF fire extinguishers.. It's still used in aviation to extinguish fires in jet/turbo jet aircraft engines and elsewhere....

I also use tap water and dish soap. I don't think any minerals in water should be an issue when all you're doing is rinsing it in the sink.

Use a method you are comfortable with and don't knock what other members use to clean their computer related boards. Especially if you have absolutely no clue of the capabilities of the product those members use to clean their computer related boards. For example "IPA causes rust". What a load of tommy rot. There are various grades of IPA. There is definitely more than on way to skin a cat in this respect.

Personally I use CRC brake cleaner, horse hair brush and water filtered compressor. It work and doesn't explode or damaged any computer boards I've used this method on. Never ever needed to use tap water and I've used this method in over 3 decades.

As you were....

Ideally, don't use a type of brake cleaner which contains tetrachloroethylene. It may vary by country, but some say the CRC red cans have it, while others may not.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-26, 04:50:

Ideally, don't use a type of brake cleaner which contains tetrachloroethylene. It may vary by country, but some say the CRC red cans have it, while others may not.

So what?

I use various crc products ALL the time. A number of crc product have red cans so what one specifically are you actually referring too....?

I thought geeks were ment to be intelligent folk? Maybe, but those that have post complete rubbish regarding cleaning computer boards are not smart or have any common sense or interpersonal communication skills.

You will need to do your own research to determine which particular brake cleaner products contain tetrachloroethylene, if you consider it's dangers worthy of avoidance.

People who value good health (of themselves, their families, and the environment) will tend to avoid the indiscriminate long term usage of tetrachloroethylene products, based upon scientific consensus, such as that I posted directly above in links.

I hope you haven't been unknowingly using tetrachloroethylene products all this time, Mark P. But it sounds as though I'm unlikely to convince you about anything at this stage, so my warnings about the substance are primarily for the community's sake.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-26, 06:48:

You will need to do your own research to determine which particular brake cleaner products contain tetrachloroethylene, if you consider it's dangers worthy of avoidance.

People who value good health (of themselves, their families, and the environment) will tend to avoid the indiscriminate long term usage of tetrachloroethylene products, based upon scientific consensus, such as that I posted directly above in links.

I hope you haven't been unknowingly using tetrachloroethylene products all this time, Mark P. But it sounds as though I'm unlikely to convince you about anything at this stage, so my warnings about the substance are primarily for the community's sake.

You really really are on a different planet dude. Go hug a tree.

Most members here can make up there own own minds what to use to clean their computer related boards.

Yes, my belief in not routinely spraying my computer boards with carcinogenic brake cleaner sure does make me a "extreme greeny tree hugger". 🤣 🤣

Back on topic you lot..

Got myself a gas less mig welder and am repairing/adapting an early '70 Honda 500/4 to fit on my new project motorbike, a 1983 GS550M Katana. A fairly easy job really. It uses that terrible stuff called petrol for it's 4 stroke engine to propel it forward. Neat ah?

You can drink it and sniff it but it wont do your health any good and most likely will die eventually. It's toxic, combustible and very very easy to set alight. Yes I live dangerously.\

Trees can kill you if you hit one at speed. I suggest cutting down all the trees to prevent this from happening to you or the ones you love.

This is a community safety notice bought to you by the letters D,U and M and the number 1.
This post was proudly sponsored my garden gnomes.

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

goal's to eventually get the garage holding most of the machines and larger items like power supplies, while the loose cards/laptop stuff are at my apartment. the garage currently holds about 40% of what I own by volume.

probably 2/3 of this is stuff accumulated from e-waste.

Did some testing on the Kalok KL-330 hard drive. No bad sectors, no defects, and it has a pretty damn great interleave at 1:1, which means it takes 1 cycle to read 1 track. Plus, its track-to-track time is 9.13ms, which is pretty damn fast for an RLL drive.

I parked the drive and it'll go to a new home once I get materials to protect the drive, the controller card, and the cables.

libby wrote on 2022-11-26, 08:29:

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

That looks like heaven to me 😀 Very nice collection you have there. Will keep you busy tinkering with old systems for quite some time.

libby wrote on 2022-11-26, 08:29:

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

goal's to eventually get the garage holding most of the machines and larger items like power supplies, while the loose cards/laptop stuff are at my apartment. the garage currently holds about 40% of what I own by volume.

probably 2/3 of this is stuff accumulated from e-waste.

That would be fun to explore but not necessarily to own. This is like peer support in a way because my "collection" no more looks as bad as yesterday.

I've been working in totally different scale. Now planning to buy a real microscope.

Built a Socket 7 Pentium VRM today. It uses some prototype board, a 15+15 RA connector and a Chinese special '20A' Buck Converter. I think 20A is wildly optimistic, but it should be find for what the motherboard (GA-586ATM/P 66Mhz FSB) can handle. Had to go with a 12V input as the chip/circuit they used on the buck converter gets a little weird if the Input/Output differential is too small.

Early testing is good, computer boots and is stable. Longer testing is required though to see how it performs with other CPUs. End goal I suppose is to get a K6-2 running in this board, 2.0/6.0 multi at 66 FSB.

If nothing else it keeps me busy 😁

GigAHerZ wrote on 2022-04-23, 14:45:

Got this!

External SCSI SyQuest 230MB 3.5" drive. Full set, will archive the floppies unless they are already archived.

For whatever reason, it also seems to include coincidentally 230MB MO disk. I have an internal 650MB MO drive - i wonder, if it would work with that?

At last i got to it to check if it actually works as i had the bench computer with SCSI controller up and running... and it does!
My first experience with "removable hdd platter storage medium"! 😁 It even sounds like an HDD!

I have one disk and it seems to be okay.

Turbo -> wrote on 2022-11-26, 11:59:

libby wrote on 2022-11-26, 08:29:

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

That looks like heaven to me 😀 Very nice collection you have there. Will keep you busy tinkering with old systems for quite some time.

haha yeah I have enough stuff to last about three or more years full time at this point, but it's grown to a degree where it's entering "hoarders" TV show range, so I am more cautious about buying large lots of stuff now.

Upgraded my 'Ultimate' Windows XP build with this Asus P8Z68-V Pro/Gen 3 motherboard, i7-3770k CPU, and 2x2GB DDR3 RAM.

Based on the performance gains so far, I'm finally making better use of the 980 Ti I have installed in this machine. 😁

Hippo486 wrote on 2022-11-26, 15:54:

Built a Socket 7 Pentium VRM today. It uses some prototype board, a 15+15 RA connector and a Chinese special '20A' Buck Converter. I think 20A is wildly optimistic, but it should be find for what the motherboard (GA-586ATM/P 66Mhz FSB) can handle. Had to go with a 12V input as the chip/circuit they used on the buck converter gets a little weird if the Input/Output differential is too small.

Early testing is good, computer boots and is stable. Longer testing is required though to see how it performs with other CPUs. End goal I suppose is to get a K6-2 running in this board, 2.0/6.0 multi at 66 FSB.

If nothing else it keeps me busy 😁

Further testing, I've had both a K6-2 and K6-3 running in this board now, thanks to the VRM. (6 x 66Mhz / 400Mhz, using a 2x multi on the board), with the K6-3 being the better performer.

The BIOS for the board has absolutely no clue what the CPU is (to be expected) and amusingly reports the CPU to be a 486DX2-66 😁 so the K6 Dos tools/drivers may help me eek a little more performance still.

Quite pleased considering I started with a Pentium 100 on this board, then a Pentium MMX overdrive @ 200Mhz and now with the new VRM a K6-3 @ 400Mhz.

Hippo486 wrote on 2022-11-26, 20:16:

Further testing, I've had both a K6-2 and K6-3 running in this board now, thanks to the VRM. (6 x 66Mhz / 400Mhz, using a 2x mul […]
Show full quote

Hippo486 wrote on 2022-11-26, 15:54:

Built a Socket 7 Pentium VRM today. It uses some prototype board, a 15+15 RA connector and a Chinese special '20A' Buck Converter. I think 20A is wildly optimistic, but it should be find for what the motherboard (GA-586ATM/P 66Mhz FSB) can handle. Had to go with a 12V input as the chip/circuit they used on the buck converter gets a little weird if the Input/Output differential is too small.

Early testing is good, computer boots and is stable. Longer testing is required though to see how it performs with other CPUs. End goal I suppose is to get a K6-2 running in this board, 2.0/6.0 multi at 66 FSB.

If nothing else it keeps me busy 😁

Further testing, I've had both a K6-2 and K6-3 running in this board now, thanks to the VRM. (6 x 66Mhz / 400Mhz, using a 2x multi on the board), with the K6-3 being the better performer.

The BIOS for the board has absolutely no clue what the CPU is (to be expected) and amusingly reports the CPU to be a 486DX2-66 😁 so the K6 Dos tools/drivers may help me eek a little more performance still.

Quite pleased considering I started with a Pentium 100 on this board, then a Pentium MMX overdrive @ 200Mhz and now with the new VRM a K6-3 @ 400Mhz.

Good stuff!