chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-09, 20:11:

I'd open the old PSU and see if any of the caps have leaked. But glad to hear the system is running again.

I may do that for curiosity, though even if they have, I don't have the skills to deal with it, though I intend to learn. Fixing PC parts, modding game consoles, making new cards... I see people making new cards, like the AWE64 Legacy and Dreamblasters and all sorts of stuff and wonder if, with enough study and practice, I could whip up a usb/modem/NIC combo card. That would be handy, if possible...

In the meantime, I am looking at PSUs at Newegg and on ebay. I could hook all of this back up with this other PSU, but I now feel worried. If this set up damaged the NOS Antec, it could happen again. The Antec wasn't completely killed as fans and lights come on, but it is definitely messed up. Also, I am afraid of it happening again PLUS the possibility of frying my mobo, CPU, or even worse - the Voodoo 5. Hell, most of this parts would be expensive or difficult to replace, including the Live! Drive. The SSD, CF/IDE adapter, CPU, Live! card, and RAM are easy and cheap enough, but all of the Voodoo's, the AWE32, the mobo... That would be rough. Some people think I am crazy for not using DosBox and 86box exclusively (I do use them sometimes,) but I am sure that many people on these forums understand the "need" to have original hardware.

I just hope that I can find safe and worthy PSUs for my particular set up so that I can use it without fear.

It's hard to tell what killed that PSU, maybe it had bad caps, maybe it was overloaded and something broke. BTW caps can leak by themselves after many years. I even had a Fortron PSU made in 2011 with all leaked caps. You could provide us with the exact model name of the PSU or how many Amps it has printed on sticker next to +5V. There are many different things that can happen to PSU, and obviously it's always a good idea to test even a NOS PSU. There are also many things that can go wrong and you can't see them without specialized equipment, like oscilloscope - voltage may seem to be fine, but there may be huge ripple due to dried capacitors.

But even if something goes bad, PSUs usually have overvoltage protection chips, which will shut them down (they may even 'kill' them on purpose by turning on a 'crowbar circuit' - it makes a fuse blow; modern equipment doesn't usually have that, but older PSUs may. Maybe that even happened to yours). But these chips sometimes have pretty wide tolerance, for example look at this datasheet of TPS3510 chip, found in some power supplies: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/slvs312a/slvs312a.p … s=1620571079722

On page 8 overvoltage threshold is between 5.7V and 6.5V for +5V line. So if you don't test the PSU with multimeter, you can't really know if the voltage is 5.0V or way more... and in theory voltage can change when some moisture gets onto feedback resistor, setting the voltage converter to another value. Probably not very likely, but can happen in theory. And with bad caps voltage also can be all over the place, because it is not being smoothed.

adalbert wrote on 2021-05-09, 22:01:

It's hard to tell what killed that PSU, maybe it had bad caps, maybe it was overloaded and something broke. BTW caps can leak by themselves after many years. I even had a Fortron PSU made in 2011 with all leaked caps. You could provide us with the exact model name of the PSU or how many Amps it has printed on sticker next to +5V. There are many different things that can happen to PSU, and obviously it's always a good idea to test even a NOS PSU. There are also many things that can go wrong and you can't see them without specialized equipment, like oscilloscope - voltage may seem to be fine, but there may be huge ripple due to dried capacitors.

But even if something goes bad, PSUs usually have overvoltage protection chips, which will shut them down (they may even 'kill' them on purpose by turning on a 'crowbar circuit' - it makes a fuse blow; modern equipment doesn't usually have that, but older PSUs may. Maybe that even happened to yours). But these chips sometimes have pretty wide tolerance, for example look at this datasheet of TPS3510 chip, found in some power supplies: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/slvs312a/slvs312a.p … s=1620571079722

On page 8 overvoltage threshold is between 5.7V and 6.5V for +5V line. So if you don't test the PSU with multimeter, you can't really know if the voltage is 5.0V or way more... and in theory voltage can change when some moisture gets onto feedback resistor, setting the voltage converter to another value. Probably not very likely, but can happen in theory. And with bad caps voltage also can be all over the place, because it is not being smoothed.

Thank you for the information. I have read that caps can rot from just sitting around, and that some caps are worse than others. I have yet to see a bulging cap, though I try looking for these since learning about the issue. The Antec PSU, while NOS, is probably 15-20 years old - it came in a relabeled desktop Compucase . I am going to start a new thread where I list all of my parts in this build (and parts I still wish to add) and ask the community for recommendations on specific power supplies and power supply needs for this build. I am reading more information about modern PSUs and how they lack the amperage required by certain parts, though I don't know if that will affect this build or not. I will probably risk going back formatting these floppies with this other PSU and see what happens. The NOS Antec had maybe a total of six-ten hours before it failed.

I picked up the Gateway with the P2B from a thrift shop around 2008, and it has been powered on only a few times until recently when I started this project. The Gateway had a 200w PSU (standard for Gateway PIIs and PIIIs from 1998-1999,) and I have no idea how much the PC was used before I got it. It may not even be the original mobo, as there is no Gateway splash screen during boot, and there is no option for it under the bios settings (I am trying to see if I can hack one in there.) I am even considering adding a 2nd PSU with a switch and extension molex cables fed through the back to power some of the parts to limit the draw on each PSU...

The idea for this build was to make it compatible with EVERY Glide game, sport the Live! for Windows games, the AWE32 (and eventually AWE64 Legacy) for DOS games, and use Moslo Deluxe so that I could run every game/app/Microsoft OS from 1980-2000.

adalbert wrote on 2021-05-08, 23:31:

How many amps can this PSU output on +5V line? You have a lot of 5V-heavy stuff here, and there may be some undervoltage situations caused by excessive load, also if capacitors are bad or have gone bad recently, such high load may definitely cause some problems (edit: if PSU is brand new, that shouldn't be a problem, but still may be a problem with mainboard). Definitely a good idea to check voltages with a multimeter.

I forgot to add that there are 25 amps on the +5. I haven't pulled the PSU out of the case yet, as it has a strange mounting part that is tedious to remove.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-05-09, 03:36:

IIRC the pre 2005ish Antecs had about 66% of output on 5V, then the Truepower 2.0s came out for the 12V heavy thoroughbred and northwood up era boards, and the hungry 9500s etc, and then it switched 66% to the 12V... so the later Antecs put out half the power on 5V the early 2000s ones did. Back in the day, I'd say ppl were running rigs that spec on "good" 250s or 300s, with 200W on 5V. So if you've got something that says 40A on 5V you should be okay.

I missed the 40A on 5V. I am looking for PSUs with this, and I made a thread asking people for recommendations for specific models.