assasincz wrote on 2020-05-29, 16:57:

I consider this a great coincidence, being able to source locally two 460s just a week apart. Second one (right) is in much better shape, with original floppy drive and brighter screen with no burn-in. Yeah, I am very happy now...
20200527_182028.jpg

Nice pair! 😀

Hi all,

So to keep the thread on these awesome machines alive:

As I have two 460s, I decided to put together one from the best parts taken from both, and leave the second for backup (for now at least).
The trouble is, the one with the good screen had some damage on the front bezel around CRT (melted hole right in view) which is very irritating.
So I decided to swap the bezels. This of course means a complete disassembly of the thing. While doing that, I decided to thoroughly clean every part and do some preventative maintenance/recapping.
If this is of any value, here are some pictures I took during disassembly, and list of electrolytic caps for replacement (the specs of caps are marked as uF/V):

1) Mainboard (1pc total)
100/25 - 1pc

2) Power supply board (18pcs total)
150/25 - 1pc
1/50 - 1pc
470/25 - 1pc
100/63 - 1pc
100/25 - 2pc
10/25 - 1pc
1000/16 - 2pcs
470/16 - 1pc
220/100 - 1pc
1000/35 - 2pcs
2200/35 - 2pcs
4700/16 - 2pcs
2200/16 - 1pc
330/400 - 1pc

3)CRT neck board (5pcs total)
10/160 - 4pcs
100/16 - 1pc

4)CRT driver board (20pcs total)
10/16 - 2pcs
47/160 - 1pc
47/25 - 1pc
1/50 - 4pcs
47/16 - 1pc
1000/16 - 1pc
4,7/160 - 2pcs
100/16 - 3pcs
470/16 - 2pcs
47/100 - 1pc
4,7/25 - 1pc
6,8/50 - 1pc (looks non-standard, custom made)

This was my first time disassembling a monitor, handling CRT and respective analog boards. I took necessary precations, not too bad overall.
Diassembling both, I noticed minor differences btw the CRTs themselves and few components, but functionally looks the same.
I will try and make more pictures as I reassemble the thing after recapping and cleaning.

Recapping finished. I also hot glued a few things down and did some cable management. I am glad I did it, since there were indeed some leaking capacitors, as shown in the picture. I replaced all except one on CRT driver board that I could not find a replacement of proper size.

I removed the 80mm fan that moves air from system board compartment to the monitor compartment, and put in its place a Noctua fan, and wanted to power it from the system board. The trouble is that the power supply board freaks out when there is no fan plugged to its fan header, and does not power on properly. Running the Noctua from the header was not working. So I shorted the fan header pins and now it works nicely.

I also stuck a 40mm Noctua fan to the Overdrive heatsink. You may notice CT3670 and SD-IDE in the system. Also now there is 16MB of RAM.

I am properly satisfied, having the 460 next to me running completely silently, playing Doom demo as I write this post...

assasincz wrote on 2020-06-06, 14:56:

Recapping finished. I also hot glued a few things down and did some cable management. I am glad I did it, since there were indee […]
Show full quote

Recapping finished. I also hot glued a few things down and did some cable management. I am glad I did it, since there were indeed some leaking capacitors, as shown in the picture. I replaced all except one on CRT driver board that I could not find a replacement of proper size.

I removed the 80mm fan that moves air from system board compartment to the monitor compartment, and put in its place a Noctua fan, and wanted to power it from the system board. The trouble is that the power supply board freaks out when there is no fan plugged to its fan header, and does not power on properly. Running the Noctua from the header was not working. So I shorted the fan header pins and now it works nicely.

I also stuck a 40mm Noctua fan to the Overdrive heatsink. You may notice CT3670 and SD-IDE in the system. Also now there is 16MB of RAM.

I am properly satisfied, having the 460 next to me running completely silently, playing Doom demo as I write this post...

Now you're making me want to crack my 433 all the way open and inspect the caps.

I pulled mine out of storage a few days ago and have been slowly going insane. I'm one of the masochists that ran 95 on mine. I was never able to get the onboard sound working properly in 95. But, alas, the hard drive I had in there was dying and I grabbed everything off it I needed and wiped it. Currently the drive has been replaced with a 128MB IDE DiskOnModule to ease testing.

Now to the problem: When I put it away, it had 20MB, working flawlessly.
When I pulled it out of storage, I had to clean up mouse pee and poop off the board (small bits! cleaned up nicely.) and now I can only get it to ever see 12MB no matter what I do. I even pulled out the stash of 72-pin stuff, set aside the EDO, and tested what was left... turns out, not much at all. The two sticks I had in there were IBM branded SIMMs with 16 RAM chips with IBM part numbers on them and two Samsung I can only assume were for parity... ? but these sticks have ALWAYS worked and I think I pulled them from an IBM machine I was playing with at the time 7 years ago. I believe that's also what I acquired the Overdrive DX4-100 from.

At the end of the day, no matter what sticks I use, the machine can't see more than 12MB installed, meaning one of the slots are not registering with the system in the slightest.

Edit: Just confirmed, the dead slot for me is the slot nearest to the CPU. the rear slot if looking at the RAM slots and ISA slots head-on.

Cleaning, resoldering pins, adjusting pins in the slots to make better contact, I've tried it all. I've tried it all so much that the go-handle on the back of the motherboard tray needs to be babied since two of the clips that keep it on the tray are broken now. Contemplating drilling them out and attaching it firmly with nuts and bolts... but, I'm at wit's end with this 433 seeing more RAM. I even tried swapping back to stock with the SX-33 I pulled out of it. No dice.

As far as those that CAN see the full 20MB, the VLSI VL82C486 on these boards DOES support up to 64MB of RAM, so this is something else to look into for getting these machines to see more than 20MB. I have a feeling that the BIOS is what is limiting the RAM ceiling and not the boards.
For convenience, I've attached the datasheet for the chipset in PDF form so those that know more than I can look into this a bit closer.

The only way we're going to know if this is BIOS limitation or board limitation is to get a full dump of the BIOS chip in these. and, while at it, a dump of the modem BIOS too, because why not, it's there and should get dumped. it may help someone out someday. Sadly that person is not me, I don't have the necessary tools to dump the ROMs for analysis. I implore anyone out there with one of these that can, or has a friend who can, get a dump so we can pick it apart and figure this out.

Hello 😀

Any update on these ?

Does anyone have the bios that is on the hard drive ?

Could the memory issue be a cap issue ?

James

So the 460 has a 66MHz SX built-in? I'd never heard of the 460 until now. Any other differences between it and the 425/433?

smokeycockatiel wrote on 2021-01-11, 13:48:

Hello :-) […]
Show full quote

Hello 😀

Any update on these ?

Does anyone have the bios that is on the hard drive ?

Could the memory issue be a cap issue ?

James

It's a CMOS configuration tool that's on the HDD, I have the floppy creation tools as well as physical floppies around someplace. If you need them I can dig thru files I guess, let me know.

Sudos wrote on 2020-12-11, 11:43:

Cleaning, resoldering pins, adjusting pins in the slots to make better contact, I've tried it all. I've tried it all so much that the go-handle on the back of the motherboard tray needs to be babied since two of the clips that keep it on the tray are broken now. Contemplating drilling them out and attaching it firmly with nuts and bolts... but, I'm at wit's end with this 433 seeing more RAM. I even tried swapping back to stock with the SX-33 I pulled out of it. No dice.

Did you check all the traces to the chipset pins? The chipset pins/mount themselves for that matter, as well?

Sudos wrote on 2020-12-11, 11:43:

As far as those that CAN see the full 20MB, the VLSI VL82C486 on these boards DOES support up to 64MB of RAM, so this is somethi […]
Show full quote

As far as those that CAN see the full 20MB, the VLSI VL82C486 on these boards DOES support up to 64MB of RAM, so this is something else to look into for getting these machines to see more than 20MB. I have a feeling that the BIOS is what is limiting the RAM ceiling and not the boards.
For convenience, I've attached the datasheet for the chipset in PDF form so those that know more than I can look into this a bit closer.

VL82C486-VLSI.pdf

The only way we're going to know if this is BIOS limitation or board limitation is to get a full dump of the BIOS chip in these. and, while at it, a dump of the modem BIOS too, because why not, it's there and should get dumped. it may help someone out someday. Sadly that person is not me, I don't have the necessary tools to dump the ROMs for analysis. I implore anyone out there with one of these that can, or has a friend who can, get a dump so we can pick it apart and figure this out.

Yeah this is what I found in my intensive research I mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it another thread?), I'm pretty sure it's a board limitation and that an appropriately wired riser card off the chipset with slots could remedy it. As I said back then, though, bit beyond me and that hasn't changed. xD

Warning to anyone with loose CRT tube. Always, must sit the faceplate (the end you watch at constantly) on the towel or soft material and only handle the fat end. Never rest or hold, handle around the socket end on anything else. Reason: the vacuum pinch off tube (that one in middle of round connector) is easy to break ("blow!" sound that you hear is vacuum vanish in a instant) and easy to bend pins. The chances of cracking the glass increases if you bend the pins any directions, so have to be extremely careful.

This comes from me as TV tech who used to work with CRTs back then (2003-2010).

Cheers,

Yushatak wrote on 2021-10-06, 21:05:

So the 460 has a 66MHz SX built-in? I'd never heard of the 460 until now. Any other differences between it and the 425/433? […]
Show full quote

So the 460 has a 66MHz SX built-in? I'd never heard of the 460 until now. Any other differences between it and the 425/433?

smokeycockatiel wrote on 2021-01-11, 13:48:

Hello :-) […]
Show full quote

Hello 😀

Any update on these ?

Does anyone have the bios that is on the hard drive ?

Could the memory issue be a cap issue ?

James

It's a CMOS configuration tool that's on the HDD, I have the floppy creation tools as well as physical floppies around someplace. If you need them I can dig thru files I guess, let me know.

Sudos wrote on 2020-12-11, 11:43:

Cleaning, resoldering pins, adjusting pins in the slots to make better contact, I've tried it all. I've tried it all so much that the go-handle on the back of the motherboard tray needs to be babied since two of the clips that keep it on the tray are broken now. Contemplating drilling them out and attaching it firmly with nuts and bolts... but, I'm at wit's end with this 433 seeing more RAM. I even tried swapping back to stock with the SX-33 I pulled out of it. No dice.

Did you check all the traces to the chipset pins? The chipset pins/mount themselves for that matter, as well?

Sudos wrote on 2020-12-11, 11:43:

As far as those that CAN see the full 20MB, the VLSI VL82C486 on these boards DOES support up to 64MB of RAM, so this is somethi […]
Show full quote

As far as those that CAN see the full 20MB, the VLSI VL82C486 on these boards DOES support up to 64MB of RAM, so this is something else to look into for getting these machines to see more than 20MB. I have a feeling that the BIOS is what is limiting the RAM ceiling and not the boards.
For convenience, I've attached the datasheet for the chipset in PDF form so those that know more than I can look into this a bit closer.

VL82C486-VLSI.pdf

The only way we're going to know if this is BIOS limitation or board limitation is to get a full dump of the BIOS chip in these. and, while at it, a dump of the modem BIOS too, because why not, it's there and should get dumped. it may help someone out someday. Sadly that person is not me, I don't have the necessary tools to dump the ROMs for analysis. I implore anyone out there with one of these that can, or has a friend who can, get a dump so we can pick it apart and figure this out.

Yeah this is what I found in my intensive research I mentioned earlier in the thread (or was it another thread?), I'm pretty sure it's a board limitation and that an appropriately wired riser card off the chipset with slots could remedy it. As I said back then, though, bit beyond me and that hasn't changed. xD

Could you make a copy of the cmos tools please.

James

I have uploaded restore floppy images of Compaq presario 4xx on archive.org if that helps, both English and Swedish.

The biggest different of 425,433 and 460 is the sx cpu speed , 25mhz/33mhz and 66mhz