Turbo -> wrote on 2020-05-28, 17:59:

I don't want to give you hard time, but those damaged traces looked fixible. A little vinegar and alcohol do wonders. Scratch down oxidation to expose traces, some repair wire and solder, and there is a good chance the board will post (considering there isn't an error somewhere else).

Even if you need all of the components; I would rather keep them on the board, and desolder them when needed. Just for the purpose of better orientation when replacing components on the board you are trying to fix...

That motherboard was not POSTing at all, even after a vinegar treatment. I also bypassed the damaged traces with some wires. It just did not show any signs of life at all.

It would have been a waste of time trying to fix it. I had an identical, working board, that was in need of spare parts.

If it were something rare and uncommon, I wouldn't have done that.

Made a small adapter for connecting the PC speaker output of the motherboard to the mono input of the sound card.

Spent the evening disassembling and cleaning my newest purchase, 1993 Macintosh Color Classic. Before-photos can be seen here Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Under the dirt was really nice looking machine. It was covered in some black dust and grime, so it really changed. For 27-year old machine it looks very good. Inside it was actually already very clean, only minimal dust. I bet this machine didn't see much use when it was new. I'm really happy with the result, considering I only paid 50€ for it 😀

jheronimus wrote on 2020-05-28, 16:21:

In order to host IPX game I'll need some kind of an IPX simulator like Kali and Kahn. The current plan is for the latter because […]
Show full quote

In order to host IPX game I'll need some kind of an IPX simulator like Kali and Kahn. The current plan is for the latter because there are readily available freeware versions of both client and server. I've decided to use Red Hat Linux 9 for several reasons:

- Kahn is not available for WinNT and I suppose Win9x is a weird choice for a server;
- Red Hat Linux 9 was my first Linux distro ever (well, actually ASP Linux 9, but that was just a localized and reskinned version of RH9 for Russia);
- RH definitely was the most popular distro then, and every developer who ported their software or game to Linux provided an RPM package. It was also very user-friendly for its time;
- having a "final" version kind of takes away the issue of picking a specific version.

server accessible to others. Oh, and find people who are as interested in playing using original hardware as I am 😀

RH 9 was nice alright. Duvuan Linux, a modern init based distro based on Debian should install and run just fine as well. I run Duvuan Jessie on my K6-2 266 test rig with no problems. It also ran fine on the previous P166mmx mobo with 256megs of ram fine as well. Use NetSurf as the web browser.

Clean and Referb of two Sidewinder 3D Pro joysticks, one is a little finicky n has had some repair work it seems on the PCB (there's a crack but not going through much of anything) both seem to have some factory touch ups so maybe something wasn't quite right at the factory.

Next was fitting a Gotek Floppy emulator to my AMIGA 500, which has already had a Fat Agnus upgrade, however the original floppy drive is K/O (I did service it but it won't load the disks I have, limited selection, found a tiny ballbaring stuck to the magnetic spindle which was clipping on a transistor with every rotation, may account for the drive's death).

Gotek Floppy install was a success which is nice and the AMIGA 500 is not all worky worky and loading games for the first time in many years.

Tried using Audigy 2 drivers on a SBLive 5.1 as that was suggested on several forums. Turns out it works, and the results are quite interesting.

This might just be the ultimate SBLive driver setup from a retro gaming perspective. It gives you VxD drivers with EAX as well as improved SB16 emulation that can load soundfonts in DOS games running under Win98.

I managed to get Halo barely running on my G4 after installing an airport extreme, so now I can make dumb jokes about this being how it was meant to be played.

Finally got around to testing the motherboards I recapped (about time!)

The good: I tested the GA-K8VT800PRO with AMD Mobile Athlon 64 3400+ and it POSTed just fine 😀 Why a mobile CPU, you ask? Well, because I didn't have any normal s754 CPUs around, but I DID have an Acer Aspire 1520 where the GeForce FX Go 5700 GPU had gone bye-bye. Who could have thought that these things actually need cooling and not some piss-poor excuse that makes southbridge heatsinks look huge?!

The bad: The Abit KD7 board seems to turn off as soon as it powers, and two LEDs on the bottom right briefly flicker before it powers off, probably indicating something draws too much current. MOSFETs, maybe? Also, that was the only board I've seen with bulging Rubycon caps. Weird.

The ugly: Asus A7NBX-E. This board stays on, but it doesn't POST. It doesn't have a 4-pin header, so being more 5v-dependent, it's probably picky about the PSU. I kinda forgot about it, and left it running. I later noticed some of the brand-new caps I installed had started bulging, which is obviously not good. They are soldered correctly (I'm not making the same mistake twice!) Should I steer clear of RD caps? I hadn't had any issues with them previously, but now I'm getting kinda paranoid... Did I buy my way back into the Capacitor Plague!?

The boring: I also changed two caps on a Foxconn G31MX, right next to the lever on the PCI-E x16 slot, because they were leaking. Haven't tested it though, maybe tomorrow.

synrgy87 wrote on 2020-05-28, 21:54:

already had a Fat Agnus upgrade

I saw that there are an Fat Angus recreation in the works. It is FPGA based and will be an 2mb Chipram compatible chip. As of now, it is only the firmware that needs to be written.

I think it is the creator of TerribleFire accelerators, that are develloping it.

Else on the Gotek mod you made. I am thinking about getting a couple of those for my Amiga's. Especially the near stock Rev5 machine that I have fixed up.

I ran into some games I want to play on my DOS machine that are not compatible with EMS, and revising my autoexec.bat/config.sys menu would be a pain and I don't want to make boot disks if I can avoid it, so I just downloaded the philscomputerlab DOS starter pack and modified his files. 😀 Works great, thanks Phil!

I also got a small metal stand for my monitor so I could move my MT-32 to the top of the desk where it belongs!

Sadly there isn't enough clearance to also fit the SC-55mkii, so it's down with the speakers now.

Playing through half life 1 for the first time. It's quite enjoyable. Also checked out THPS2, where have these gems in plain sight been?

Half life 1 is a great game I've played it through so many times.

TechieDude wrote on 2020-05-29, 01:20:

Finally got around to testing the motherboards I recapped (about time!)

The bad: The Abit KD7 board seems to turn off as soon as it powers, and two LEDs on the bottom right briefly flicker before it powers off, probably indicating something draws too much current. MOSFETs, maybe? Also, that was the only board I've seen with bulging Rubycon caps. Weird.

The ugly: Asus A7NBX-E. This board stays on, but it doesn't POST. It doesn't have a 4-pin header, so being more 5v-dependent, it's probably picky about the PSU. I kinda forgot about it, and left it running. I later noticed some of the brand-new caps I installed had started bulging, which is obviously not good. They are soldered correctly (I'm not making the same mistake twice!) Should I steer clear of RD caps? I hadn't had any issues with them previously, but now I'm getting kinda paranoid... Did I buy my way back into the Capacitor Plague!?

Sounds like overvoltage from a defective power supply got the better of those. What series were they?

RD caps? Have a picture/specs?

TechieDude wrote on 2020-05-29, 01:20:

The ugly: Asus A7NBX-E. This board stays on, but it doesn't POST. It doesn't have a 4-pin header, so being more 5v-dependent, it's probably picky about the PSU. I kinda forgot about it, and left it running. I later noticed some of the brand-new caps I installed had started bulging, which is obviously not good. They are soldered correctly (I'm not making the same mistake twice!) Should I steer clear of RD caps? I hadn't had any issues with them previously, but now I'm getting kinda paranoid... Did I buy my way back into the Capacitor Plague!?

By "RD" you mean the RD series manufactured by Samwha? If so, keep in mind those are general purpose caps and those are not suited for a board like that ASUS which needs low ESR, in particular the larger ones near the CPU. So even if those worked for a time you would start having problems very soon.

Also, given that they bulged shortly after you installed them... are you sure you didn't reverse the polarity? ASUS motherboards are known for having different markings for the positive and negative leads which is very confusing.

evasive wrote on 2020-05-29, 18:44:

Sounds like overvoltage from a defective power supply got the better of those. What series were they?

Don't remember, but I think they were MBZ.

RD caps? Have a picture/specs?

The are the infamous Samwha ones, which in hindsight, I should've known better than to use. See below.

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-05-29, 19:00:

By "RD" you mean the RD series manufactured by Samwha? If so, keep in mind those are general purpose caps and those are not suited for a board like that ASUS which needs low ESR, in particular the larger ones near the CPU. So even if those worked for a time you would start having problems very soon.

Also, given that they bulged shortly after you installed them... are you sure you didn't reverse the polarity? ASUS motherboards are known for having different markings for the positive and negative leads which is very confusing.

Yep, they're Samwha. Crap. Also, I have no idea where the hell I can get high ripple, low ESR caps in Greece, if someone could help me at that, I would really appreciate it. Every electronics store I've been to has either those Samwha RDs or other cheap caps at whatever capacitance I ask, or a ziplock bag filled with random caps that may or may not include something close to what I need. It's disgusting.
Also, I put the negative lead into the white side, like almost any board dictates. Isn't that the supposed polarity?

Also, I put the negative lead into the white side, like almost any board dictates. Isn't that the supposed polarity?

I suggest you follow some of the traces all the way back to the power connector. There's no '+' sign at all in there?

evasive wrote on 2020-05-29, 20:03:

I suggest you follow some of the traces all the way back to the power connector. There's no '+' sign at all in there?

None at all. However, I just noticed that EVERY OTHER cap is the opposite. So there we have it: I put them in reverse, and I had no idea whatsoever that ASUS had it this way. Sigh. Live and learn.

oh f*ck.

at least you know 2 things now:
1) always take pictures before removing stuff
2) you'll have to order your caps online

evasive wrote on 2020-05-29, 20:15:

oh f*ck. […]
Show full quote

oh f*ck.

at least you know 2 things now:
1) always take pictures before removing stuff
2) you'll have to order your caps online

Indeed. If it's any good, only 2 started bulging. The rest seem fine, and I've already removed them all to check them

Used a GoTek FDE to install MS-DOS 6.22, W3.1, and Soundblaster 16 drivers. Disabled CPU Cache in Bios to make bomb32.exe (Tank Wars) run at a reasonable speed.

Considering getting an old server computer with Windows 2k Server for running an old computer network. Any tips on what hardware to go with?