I successfully flashed BIOS on a not so new ASUS socket 775 P5VD2-MX motherboard, using awd flash program. (thanks Youtube 😀)

brostenen wrote on 2021-02-27, 07:03:

The caps on my board look good, however there is a faint smell of fish from one spot. Nothing really bad. The machine is otherwise in working condition.

I have not really been on Vogons that much, so I have not read about your issue, or I have sadly forgotten that I have read about it. But what are your issue with your machine and what model?

Well... Other than those you describe here...

It's a 1200. If the machine is not powered on for some time and/or moved, it will refuse to boot with the 8MB Fast RAM expansion in the trapdoor slot. The only way to get it to Workbench when it's in this state is to remove the expansion. Sometimes it will boot properly with full fast RAM available but then randomly crash either to the Software Error screen or a green/garbled screen or even just reboot.

After the machine has been powered on for some time and after I've wiggled and reseated the expansion mutliple times, it eventually starts working perfectly and gives no more trouble and I can run it pretty much all day & night without issue. I've even tried cleaning the edge connector numerous times with IPA, but it makes no difference.

I'm hoping it's as simple as a failing PSU. I wouldn't even mind if I need to recap. On the other hand if it turns out to be the expansion card itself that is faulty, that's going to be a major pain in the wallet 🤣. Mind you, it would encourage me to buy an accelerator in that case haha.

Today I cleaned and bench tested an ATI 9550 256MB I picked up recently.

The thing reeked of smoke and had a film on it that it was practically brown instead of red. Soaked it in alcohol pretty good and wiped it down. The worst part is the fan plastic is clear, well, used to be, so without taking it completely apart it's tough to clean up perfectly. It came out OK though. Doesn't smell unless you get right up on it.

Every cap is bulging so I'll be replacing those at some point. It actually does work as is, although with a weird warble on the Windows desktop.

Tested the DFI MF-100 card by changing the memory settings from 384KB (4002 201 meant Bank 6 has no RAM installed) to 320KB and the card works in my Compaq Portable 1.

Still need to fix the 20MB HardCard so I can back up the files for the memory expansion card and many others.

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-02-26, 23:29:

Tetrium wrote on 2021-02-26, 21:37:

Lately I've been going through all of my graphics cards now and again and was busy with my box of GF4MX cards when I noticed one of the cards having SDRAM. Since I found it a bit odd for a GF4MX440SE to have SDRAM, I figured I might as well pop off the cooler and see if it was really a GF4MX440SE. But I got careless and while trying to push the push-pins through the PCB, I knocked off one of the tiny resistors. Was totally my own fault for having been too careless. Luckily it was just a MX440SE, but still kinda a waste imo since it could have been easily prevented. Then again, accidents do happen.
On top of that, when I popped the first push-pin through the PCB, it launched itself to somewhere else in my livingroom and I have been unable to find it. Feeling like a n00b all over again >.<

Any dropped screw or spring immediately becomes (a) invisible, and (b) sentient, and bounces about 5 times further than you thought possible, to wedge itself firmly behind any present obstacle. Especially if it's an important, unique piece. And if the screw can sense that the user is stressed out and/or in a hurry, then it will make a special effort to bounce further and faster. :p

I guess we have all had days like this! All one needs to complete the picture, is an angry version of the Benny Hill music.

This basically describes what happened when I built my wife a computer 2 weeks ago to play Guild Wars 2 with me. As fun as it was building the system I think I dropped a 1/3rd of the screws over the course of the build.

PTherapist wrote on 2021-02-27, 13:21:

It's a 1200. If the machine is not powered on for some time and/or moved, it will refuse to boot with the 8MB Fast RAM expansio […]
Show full quote

brostenen wrote on 2021-02-27, 07:03:

The caps on my board look good, however there is a faint smell of fish from one spot. Nothing really bad. The machine is otherwise in working condition.

I have not really been on Vogons that much, so I have not read about your issue, or I have sadly forgotten that I have read about it. But what are your issue with your machine and what model?

Well... Other than those you describe here...

It's a 1200. If the machine is not powered on for some time and/or moved, it will refuse to boot with the 8MB Fast RAM expansion in the trapdoor slot. The only way to get it to Workbench when it's in this state is to remove the expansion. Sometimes it will boot properly with full fast RAM available but then randomly crash either to the Software Error screen or a green/garbled screen or even just reboot.

After the machine has been powered on for some time and after I've wiggled and reseated the expansion mutliple times, it eventually starts working perfectly and gives no more trouble and I can run it pretty much all day & night without issue. I've even tried cleaning the edge connector numerous times with IPA, but it makes no difference.

I'm hoping it's as simple as a failing PSU. I wouldn't even mind if I need to recap. On the other hand if it turns out to be the expansion card itself that is faulty, that's going to be a major pain in the wallet 🤣. Mind you, it would encourage me to buy an accelerator in that case haha.

It might be a combined PSU and Cap issue. Green screen points to some memory error.
Have you looked at these codes here before: Amiga Boot Error Colours

The Tandy 1000 SL gets reacquainted with a CD-ROM drive. Oh, boy.

Set up a Pimiga microsd to use with my spare Pi3B, and I must say I am having as much fun with it as I normally have on a real Amiga.. It's a truly fantastic emulation effort.

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-02-26, 23:29:

Tetrium wrote on 2021-02-26, 21:37:

Lately I've been going through all of my graphics cards now and again and was busy with my box of GF4MX cards when I noticed one of the cards having SDRAM. Since I found it a bit odd for a GF4MX440SE to have SDRAM, I figured I might as well pop off the cooler and see if it was really a GF4MX440SE. But I got careless and while trying to push the push-pins through the PCB, I knocked off one of the tiny resistors. Was totally my own fault for having been too careless. Luckily it was just a MX440SE, but still kinda a waste imo since it could have been easily prevented. Then again, accidents do happen.
On top of that, when I popped the first push-pin through the PCB, it launched itself to somewhere else in my livingroom and I have been unable to find it. Feeling like a n00b all over again >.<

Any dropped screw or spring immediately becomes (a) invisible, and (b) sentient, and bounces about 5 times further than you thought possible, to wedge itself firmly behind any present obstacle. Especially if it's an important, unique piece. And if the screw can sense that the user is stressed out and/or in a hurry, then it will make a special effort to bounce further and faster. :p

I guess we have all had days like this! All one needs to complete the picture, is an angry version of the Benny Hill music.

Yes. I think we all know the drill when it comes to that one screw getting dropped and activating its cloaking device right away. But this spring literally launched itself off of the card as soon as I had popped the last bit of the push-pin through the PCB. It took at least a full second before it even hit anything, so I guess I'll just replace it with a spare once I feel like remounting the original heatsink back because I don't expect to find it again 😜

When I popped the second push-through pin, I taped the other end so the spring wouldn't be able to jump to the next starsystem 😜

The card itself is not really unique...well perhaps except that it's apparently a GF4 MX with SDRAM, but it's not a GF4 MX 420.

Historic first for Proliant 1500 modding. I was able to use Pentium 200 at 200MHz and does say that "Processor running at 200 MHz" it can report 150, 166 and 200. Had to add a resistor at R124 which is connected to pin 24 of clock generator and move 100 ohm resistor from R25 to R26 after cleaning the red blob glue off first and some flux.

Happy about that.

Cheers,

Swapped out a Savage4 with a GF2 Quadro2 Proon my Via C3 system. Fired up GL quake and quake2 to give it a spin - the card worked fine but I had the Sam'n'Max CD in the drive which has about 4 "bonus" cd tracks...that was an interesting combination to say the least. Not sure whether to force the regular geforce2 drivers yet or not...

Dial-up internet through the PiModem on an 8MHz, V30-based system. It's entirely as slow as it sounds.

Fixed the 20MB HardCard and it boots up on my Portable.

2 of the 5 issues resolved (blank screen fixed by reseating the cards and fixing the HardCard 20) and 3 left to tackle: floppy drive issues, keyboard issues, and the expanded RAM card issues.

Vintage or not: some family member have me an old laptop, an Acer Aspire 3100.
Sempron 3500, 1GB DDR2 and ATI 1100.
At least it's legacy as it no longer had and practical purpose for anybody, was designed for win vista, and runs xp at its best.

The password was long forgotten, so I thought: what the... And it now boots to Windows 10 20H2

I've officially de-vintaged it 😜

(For as long as this lasts, it's horrible slow ofc)

I was doing some 3DMark benches with 6800 Ultra Agp & X850 XT, fun time !

Main activity today was supervising my son's completion of his first soldering project (a simple digital clock). Had to do a few little reworks after he lifted a bunch of pads on two LEDs and a transistor, but nothing a few bodge wires couldn't solve. He's doing a lot better than I was age 8.

But seeing as the iron was out anyway, I re-capped an MSI K7TPro v3. SoA is a bit beyond my normal interest range, but I have some CPUs I want to test and this board can help there. Also made some progress on my SCSI to IDE converter board, as I have a chronic shortage of decent SCSI drives. Finally ordered a Zalman ZM-NBF47 for my MS-6168 i440BX-with-Voodoo3-onboard. I now have one that's stable with a P3-1400S on it (at 133MHz FSB), next step is to silence it, with a Zalman CNPS-6000-Cu for the CPU and that NBF47 for the Voodoo. That combined with an Intel SLC SSD and a PSU with a Noctua Redux fan will make this silent but deadly.

Done a retrobright and deep cleaning of this beauty:

so it now looks that:

The turbo/reset button and the bezel will be added on the second stage of taking care of this build.

Attached floppy drive to proliant 1500 for trial runs to know it better so I can test and evaluate the computer laid out on bench.
Creating disks to configure 1500 using R40 thinkpad equipped with XP and internal floppy.

Happy to find out the 3ware raid PCI card and Proliant 1500 can run as 1 hard drive mode and boots to the already prepared hard drive on this Proliant 1500 as it has no IDE onboard, only SCSI ports.

Cheers,

seleryba wrote on 2021-02-28, 23:29:

Done a retrobright and deep cleaning of this beauty: […]
Show full quote

Done a retrobright and deep cleaning of this beauty:

2AC605B1-F6A0-4977-884A-F518AC4CA430.jpeg

so it now looks that:

E7571A81-FECF-47F9-9A54-0340C3231381.jpeg

The turbo/reset button and the bezel will be added on the second stage of taking care of this build.

Nice!
That turned out really well!

I picked up 4 more retro PCs- two 1.8 P4s, some unknown/unworking 533 FSB P4, and an eMachines P3 500 MHz. I sorted out the 1.8s, the unworking one was salvaged for parts for now, I may swap in a new mobo, and I had to order a replacement power supply for that eMachines - eBay had one for $40, not the greatest price, but this is not a standard power supply.

I also found a 3.06 HT P4 so I upgraded my MDG 2.66 machine that's for sale with that new chip.