TechieDude wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:07:

austinham wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:00:

I know what its like to work with elcheapo parts. That beating sad the if the cards PBC was not damaged or the pad defective then the pad should have not came off unless if you applied to much heat or scarped the PCB/pad.

How much heat is too much?

400 degrees is definitely too hot if that's in Celsius. I'm not going to be as rude as DerSammler, but I do agree that the torn pads weren't completely the board's fault if you were using that much heat. I often use between 295C and 325C for PCBs with leaded solder, to overcome heat dissipation, and that might already be a bit much. Also, the patch wires aren't particularly pretty, you want to strip the part of the wire you want to solder first, twist the wires together, and tin it, as it looks like you might have just put the wire where you wanted it, then just molten off the insulation while soldering it on. The result is the ugly molten insulation, and loose pieces of copper wire sticking out. An ALS100 is nothing valuable, but maybe practicing some more before getting to more valuable hardware would be a good idea. We all have to start off somewhere, you don't want to see my first attempts!

Daniël Oosterhuis wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:28:

400 degrees is definitely too hot if that's in Celsius. I'm not going to be as rude as DerSammler, but I do agree that the torn pads weren't completely the board's fault if you were using that much heat. I often use between 295C and 325C for PCBs with leaded solder, to overcome heat dissipation, and that might already be a bit much. Also, the patch wires aren't particularly pretty, you want to strip the part of the wire you want to solder first, twist the wires together, and tin it, as it looks like you might have just put the wire where you wanted it, then just molten off the insulation while soldering it on. The result is the ugly molten insulation, and loose pieces of copper wire sticking out. An ALS100 is nothing valuable, but maybe practicing some more before getting to more valuable hardware would be a good idea. We all have to start off somewhere, you don't want to see my first attempts!

Shit, and I used it at 399C. That explains it... As for the patch wires, I DID in fact strip them, but the insulation melted anyway. Also, they're aluminium wires. Next time I work on the card, I'll replace them with copper ones and I'll keep in mind to twist them and tin them, so it will definitely look better. It really isn't my first soldering attempt though. I've worked on motherboards and graphics cards (much newer too) with no issues at 399C, so I really was surprised with what happened with the ALS100, and thought it was the cheap-ass card, but now I know better. Thank you for your feedback.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-05-18, 01:29:

Made a dual BIOS for my M912 V1.7 board with Award BIOS (found one that is Y2K compliant, but detects the CPU as a DX4-120 and stuck at write-thru mode for the CPU) and AMI WinBIOS to do some benchmarking and see which one works better of the two.

I didn't know you can just swap BIOS like that. Is that true for any 486 motherboard? As in, can I just take a motherboard with a SIS chipset and AMI BIOS and swap it for an Award BIOS from another SIS-based model?

Redid the patch wires on my ALS100. This time following Daniël Oosterhuis' advice, I used copper wires instead, and properly trimmed, twisted and tinned them. I also lowered the temperature to 325C. Still looks a bit charred and molten, but it's an improvement.

As for the sound, it sounds slightly better than before recapping, (not surprising considering one of the old caps had started leaking) but it still sounds a bit muffled and noisy. I wonder, what else can be done to improve the sound on it? Other than just printing a high quality board and installing the sound chipset there. 😀

Tonight I finished the build on my dx4 100 system.

ga-486vs
amd dx4 100
16mb ram.
Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Stereo pro.
VLB I/O controller that I repaired from this thread: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Cirrus Logic CLVGA542XVL/H VLB VGA
1gb CF.

The top CDRom is broken and just for show. I dont have any plates to blank off the gap.

Finished the build underneath it on friday

Jetway 994AN-L
P3 850 @ 952mhz
512mb ram
Voodoo 3 3000 @ 180mhz
Soundblaster AWE32
16gb CF

The Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro is one of the best cards out there.

Fixed the power issue on my Packard Bell as the SSD, CD drive, and CPU heatsink lost power and moved some cables around and got my drive bracket installed all the way this time. Also did a benchmark on the machine with Speedsys and it's pretty good.

I finally started cataloguing my sound cards with a spreadsheet. Decided to start with Creative ISA cards. Thirty of those and counting...

boxpressed wrote on 2020-05-20, 05:39:

I finally started cataloguing my sound cards with a spreadsheet. Decided to start with Creative ISA cards. Thirty of those and counting...

I love a good hardware spreadsheet - very cathartic to put together and curate. It also allows me to put comments in like where I got it which is great; my memory is pretty shocking.

boxpressed wrote on 2020-05-20, 05:39:

I finally started cataloguing my sound cards with a spreadsheet. Decided to start with Creative ISA cards. Thirty of those and counting...

That's a lot of Creative cards. I should start cataloguing too . I have about 8 ISA Creative cards and about as many PCI ones. I only have one PCI Express one that I bought used .

I stopped buying Creative cards when they stopped making decent front panels . The SB0250 was the Pinnacle of the "live drive", IMHO . Everything after that kinda sucks, IMHO .

EDIT: I still use a PCI X-FI Platinum in a PCI Express slot using a PLX bridge under Windows 10 .

I had a misbehaving 3 1/2 floppy drive (write errors) that I cleaned and lubed ro no avail . I set it aside for eventual full disassembly .

The first spare I tried blew the magic smoke after its motor started spinning like crazy on first seek .

The second spare I tried worked fine . I now only have 2 spares left, plus the flaky drive .

The flaky drive is a Panasonic, are any of those known for bad caps ? Are Panasonic drives typically direct drive or belt driven (maybe it needs a new one of those).

boxpressed wrote on 2020-05-20, 05:39:

I finally started cataloguing my sound cards with a spreadsheet. Decided to start with Creative ISA cards. Thirty of those and counting...

I also have one of these.. and too many sound cards.. I also have about 30+ Creative cards I believe..

I had a chance to test out my Dell 2001fp in 15khz mode. It is before mid-2005, so it is working perfect with both C64 and native Amiga-RGB signal. I have a small video up on my Youtube channel, were I have it running on my Amiga600.

EDIT:
If I turn off the monitor, it will not remember the image and screen position settings. (15khz signal settings only, not 31khz) However, having those written down on a piece of paper, makes it easy to set it up again. It is only pixel clock, phase, horisontal/vertical-position and aspect-ratio that I have to set. It is working perfect for Amiga and C64. If I use the scandoubler that are in my Amiga600, then there are absolutely no issues. It remembers all setting's then. Now I have to test the monitor, to see how it behaves on AT system's. That is if it works with my ISA, VLB and PCI vga cards. If tested working, then this is as close to the "holy grail" in LCD monitors for vintage computers, that you can get. If only it remembered the settings, then it would be the absolute best of all. VGA, DVI, Composit and S-Video input. I am pleased with this monitor so far.

For people asking what model it is. Then it is an Dell 2001fp from Feb. 2004. Models of this monitor, made after the middle of 2005 (june or july) are not working with 15khz input.

TechieDude wrote on 2020-05-19, 13:48:

Shit, and I used it at 399C. That explains it... As for the patch wires, I DID in fact strip them, but the insulation melted anyway. Also, they're aluminium wires. Next time I work on the card, I'll replace them with copper ones and I'll keep in mind to twist them and tin them, so it will definitely look better. It really isn't my first soldering attempt though. I've worked on motherboards and graphics cards (much newer too) with no issues at 399C, so I really was surprised with what happened with the ALS100, and thought it was the cheap-ass card, but now I know better. Thank you for your feedback.

You may actually have tinned copper wires, not aluminum. You can find that out by scraping one of the ends with a knife, the copper's specific color should appear. Either way, both of them are shit and I avoid them as much as possible. I always use pure copper wires.

As for the bodge job, as long as it makes good contact between the points and it doesn't touch other metal things nearby, I consider it a success (having done such job myself on other stuff I own). It's not like you're fixing rockets, it's just a cheap sound card.

Unless you are dealing with thick power rails, you don't usually need 400.C on your soldering station. You can get around this by adding fresh leaded solder to the parts in question, it will lower the melting point of the solder.

Today (and the last few days) I have mainly been messing about with my Samsung UMPC:

Now that I have the Tablet Edition of Windows XP on it, the plan is to put FUSE on it and relive my youth by playing some old ZX Spectrum games on it! It's about the same size as the Nintendo Switch and the battery still holds a couple of hours of charge so perfect for handheld gaming, assuming I can get on with the keyboard that is!

If anyone's interested, Ive even done a quick YouTube video on using the restore disc which was 'interesting' as despite me selecting English UK during the setup, it ended up being in Russian so I spent nearly and hour trying to work out how to change it to English UK! I'm assuming I must be able to edit the answer file within the ISO I got from the Internet Archive and change the language settings from Russian to UK - just need time to look in to that!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRbTFJp0m-M

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-05-20, 02:40:

The Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro is one of the best cards out there.

Fixed the power issue on my Packard Bell as the SSD, CD drive, and CPU heatsink lost power and moved some cables around and got my drive bracket installed all the way this time. Also did a benchmark on the machine with Speedsys and it's pretty good.

I was very surprised as I had read it would be very noisy. My experience is the opposite. It is the cleanest sounding ISA soundcard I have and I am very happy with it.

+1, I just recently picked up an Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro 16 and it is an awesome card.

Aztec Soundcards - now there’s a blast from the past! My Escom PC had one of those in it and it always sounded great to me 😀

appiah4 wrote on 2020-05-20, 06:56:

boxpressed wrote on 2020-05-20, 05:39:

I finally started cataloguing my sound cards with a spreadsheet. Decided to start with Creative ISA cards. Thirty of those and counting...

I also have one of these.. and too many sound cards.. I also have about 30+ Creative cards I believe..

making lists is tedious... but fun :3

it also prevents you from "accidentally" buying something twice x3... trust me.

Swapped out the E5200 Pentium Dual Core in my XP box for a full-fat E8400. . . they cost pennies now. Currently doing some old-school overclocking on the cheapest motherboard (G31M-ES2L) because I could never afford to be in the 4GHz club back in those days - maybe today.

brostenen wrote on 2020-05-20, 07:49:

For people asking what model it is. Then it is an Dell 2001fp from Feb. 2004. Models of this monitor, made after the middle of 2005 (june or july) are not working with 15khz input.

I have a Dell 2000FP, and it has all four types of input options: VGA(D-Sub) , DVI, S-video, and Composite. Really nice monitor to have, especially for older consoles with Composite video output.