VOGONS


First post, by Erik765

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I recently grabbed this Tseng Labs ET4000/W32 for next to nothing from the computer recycler and was stoked out of my mind.

I had it working for a for a couple weeks, but then it seems to have gone bad somehow 🙁

I'm desperately hoping someone can offer a solution as this beast outperforms my other cards by a pretty wide margine (even my CL-5429 vlb).

I have had no luck finding this exact card online- "BCM Advanced Research Inc"? so I have no idea what the jumpers do, but have tried every combination and the system either doesn't boot, I get blank gray screen, or it does this (see video). Image 5 shows the jumper configuration that I obtained it with, but it no longer boots with this configuration.

I've tried this on about 6 different motherboards- same result

Have tried it on 4 different monitors (LCD and CRT)- same result

I'm not one to shy away from replacing components if that's what's needed, but I just have no idea where to even start here.

I've re-seated all the socketed chips.

I can't spot any physical damage anywhere, but maybe I'm missing something?

Anyone else ever seen anything like this, or are able to point me in the right direction for where to begin on a repair?

It only seems to have this issue once you load a program that uses graphics. In other words, Norton Commander and Topbench, etc. look fine.

Images of card: (clickable links to allow for larger images)-

http://eriksplace.com/shared/tseng/1.jpg
http://eriksplace.com/shared/tseng/2.jpg
http://eriksplace.com/shared/tseng/3.jpg
http://eriksplace.com/shared/tseng/4.jpg
http://eriksplace.com/shared/tseng/5.jpg

Video of the issue:

http://eriksplace.com/shared/tseng/1.mp4

Thanks in advance,

E

Reply 4 of 7, by luckybob

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that issue is either bad ram chip or a bad connection somewhere. its honestly a coin flip telling which one.

1: you can re-flow the solder joints, careful to not short anything. this happens to be a cheap & easy potential fix.
2: replace the ram chips. They are very standard chips and should be easy to source replacements.

It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.

Reply 5 of 7, by Malvineous

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It looks like it could be a problem with the address lines rather than the data lines, since it looks like some of the pixels are repeated rather than just being corrupted (random colours/static). You could try pressing on the chips with the card on and the corrupted screen, and you might notice the flickering stopping or starting again when you press on one of the chips (don't expect the screen to clear up immediately though, the data in the RAM has been written incorrectly by this point.) I've done this before to help narrow down where a bad connection was. But if it is a bad RAM chip as @luckybob says, this probably won't do much.

Also give the chips a good clean, making sure there's no dust or gunk in between the pins. A clean paint brush is really good for this. I've had metallic dust connect two address lines before that causes a similar sort of visual effect, and a good clean was all I needed to fix that up.

Reply 6 of 7, by Erik765

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Fixed! Thank you for all your suggestions!

Turns out there was indeed a memory pin on the top memory chip that had gone cold. Re-flowed it, messed with the jumper settings again and we have a winner! I'm very happy as this card out-performs my 5429 by over 10% on most benches.

Thanks again 😀 😀