At first I was not very convinced to recover the motherboard of the PINE, and the last attempts seemed to be useless, but today I focused my attention on the uniflash program, in the included info I found confirmation that the chipset and the BIOS chip were supported, even if it says that it is a program for expert users !!!
Anyway in the end thanks to the bootblock, the ISA video card, the 1.44MB floppy drive, the boot disk on floppy, the BIOS file recovered online, and at this point I would also put more but I would say ok so, started PC and OS , I ran uniflash and saw that the BIOS chip was recognized this time !.
In short, I rewrote it, it was a success !!!!
Now I have taken out the ISA card, and temporarily put in an 8MB AGP ATI, done some benching from DOS, and everything works normally, usually those non-Intel chipsets don't shine for speed, but at the moment this is not important.
I currently have a PII 400 64MB of PC100 RAM, ATX power supply (instead of AT).

Having now solved the problems of various MBs, I talk about it in the previous pages, I am considering which MBs I could be able to repair, among the various MBs I have an ECS K7S5A, previously I had replaced some electrolytic capacitors, but despite this the card does not start.
Looking at it better today I saw that it has a couple of problems to fix, one I think causes an interruption somewhere, the other instead is a short between two PINs, the latter problem perhaps can be solved simply, but only when the work is finished will it be possible say it.
These are multiple resistors, both marked with 100, this from very useful suggestions previously had, it means that they have a resistance of 10OHm (+ or -), they are identifiable as RN5 and RN14, and are located near the RAM and the CPU, in not very comfortable position to unsolder them and replace them, I have to see if I have the same ones in other MBs, in case I could change them, otherwise I think I will do a repair on the damaged PINs in order to connect a simple 10OHm resistor.
I will see in the next few days to carry out the repairs, if I succeed it is very likely that it can start, as long as something has not damaged that arrives at the shorted PINs.

I go back to the ECS K7S5A, I had written about it before, today I solved the problem of the RN5 PINs, I removed the excess soldering part that touched the PINs next to it, the work was not easy but the result should be good, I did not check the resistance of the various PINs, but I will do it as soon as I finish the work on the RN14, here it is more complicated a part is damaged, RN5 also has a damaged part but I think I'm fine anyway, RN14 is in a difficult position to reach, maybe it is impossible to get there with the soldering iron, I would avoid milling the socket hook to make room.
An alternative, which perhaps should be used, would be to see where the tracks go, scratch and solder a 10OHm resistor in order to reconnect the two pins of the multiple resistor.
Finished this work on the multiple resistors, I would pass to the test of the MB, installing CPU RAM and VGA, I remember having tried it in the past but I don't know what the post card displayed, assuming it displayed some code.

Among the works carried out today, I made a list of almost all the motherboards to be repaired, there are approximately more than thirty, but some, let's say a dozen, are easily repairable, have some capacitors to replace, others instead have unidentified failures, that is, everything seems ok but they do not start anyway (post card stops on - -), the most serious cases are those that also require the restoration of some tracks on the back, being very small it is not really easy to put them back in place, among the more difficult cases I would have two cards for 486 VLB, I think they are of the ZIDA model 4DVS RREV 0.1, one that has the tracks in better condition, has irreparable damage caused by removing the chipset, the other has tracks with a lot of oxide, the battery leaked and corroded nearby areas.
The one with the chipset removed, has two chips that need to be unsoldered, one is that of the AMIKEY the other is a T.I. 49C92KK, to be installed in the sockets of the other MB.
They both lack BIOS chip and TAG chip, actually the cache is missing too, but if the cache is not there the card can run (albeit slower) anyway, if it manages to boot up after repairs, then they would be from find the chips for the cache.
Obviously the first step is to clean the battery area, and the corroded tracks, in the back there are other traces that are damaged, but they are not that difficult to fix, there are a couple of repairs done by someone, but I will try to do better trying to restore as many tracks as possible.
Unfortunately this MB does not support CPU with voltage lower than 3V, but it is designed to add the necessary components to the circuit, I don't know if it has a fixed voltage, for example 5V and 3.3V, or it is changed by jumper (I'll try to look for the manual) , at the moment I do not have the manual but I will need it to replace the various jumpers, in order to set frequency, type of cpu, etc.
The only problem I would have is the BIOS chip, it's 28PIN, but I don't know what type it was and how many M or K it is, maybe if someone knows how to advise me it would be of great help, for programming, I don't have on my programmer the adapter for that type of chip, I don't know if there is a suitable adapter, so maybe the only solution would be either hot flash, or find someone in the area to program the chip for me.

I alternate the repair work between various motherboards, the last one I had to start was on the 486 zida 4DVS, I'm analyzing them to see if I find damaged traces, for tomorrow I think I can clean and restore several tracks, but for now I can't do anything else, also because finishing that job and missing the BIOS and TAG chip, I can't test the card.
So I switch to a more modern card, an ASRock K8Upgrade-NF3 socket 754, but it is possible through a special card to use CPU Socket 939 or AM2, just insert it into the Future CPU connector and move some jumpers, to make the PC more modern, the one with the AM2 socket even has DDR2 RAM (instead of DDR).
The board needs a simple repair, currently I know it starts but it does not display anything, I think it is due to a swollen capacitor near the chipset.
This is a 1000uF 6.3V OST, to replace it I think I use something like a nichicon, I would have other OSTs but I would avoid using them.
The card is complete with RAM (2 modules of 512MB DDR400) total 1GB, Sempron CPU 3x00 + 1.8GHz if I am not mistaken, and door mask.

The repair on the ASRock K8Upgrade-NF3 ended with a success, the motherboard started with the minimum necessary hw, in the hurry I even forgot to connect the speaker, and also the POST CARD (even if the BIOS shows the POST codes) , however the card starts and requires an OS to boot, for the moment I can only connect the usual IDE-CF adapter with memory card containing an old DOS and Win3.x, I also find some diagnostics such as HWINFO and QTPRO, or some programs to compare performance with old PCs, such as landmarks or speedsys 4.70 and others.
Entering the BIOS I notice a strange thing, the RAMs are identified as DDR333, while they are actually 400 (at least so it says in the RAM label), not that it is very important but I have to check if the same happens in other PCs with the same motherboard, otherwise everything seems ok, the CPU is actually a 2.0GHz Sempron 3400+ with 256KB L2, maybe it's not the best installable, but considering the type of cpu (plus single core) it should be enough for home office use, for those with greater needs I recommend either the upgrade via Future CPU card, or there would be a site somewhere where they use dual core laptop CPUs, but this is not such a simple thing, first you have to find the right CPU and then you have to adapt the heatsink.
With the current configuration, that is socket 754 and Sempron or Athlon64 CPU, you still have more than enough HW equipment, six audio outputs, four USB plus four more available, Integrated LAN, four PCI to add cards, two sata and two pata for connect HD or other drives, in short, since it is an outdated card, I think that the idea of ​​the Future CPU is ideal for those who wanted to keep the same PC for many years, and that it is a similar modern version of NLX PCs.
Returning to the boards being repaired, I re-examined the LS 6ABX2V, it still has some problems and it does not start, but I understood that it happened, since I have two of the three FANs without the + 12V, and I found in the notes of a few years ago that the C13 had exploded, this capacitor is connected directly to the PIN B9 of the ISA slot (where I measure + 12V), probably an overvoltage could have damaged the FANs and caused the C13 to explode, I'll try to understand if there is something fault that prevents the functioning of the FANs, I know they are not important but maybe fixing them I could see if I get further progress, in the end I just want it to start.

A little while ago I tested a MB slot1, it is not the usual bx, it is a QDI Legend-V motherboard, the chipset is the Intel 440LX, the installed CPU is a 333MHz PII (which is the maximum for the FSB66 PII), the RAM is PC100 of 64MB, I have not yet put a VGA AGP, I used to start it a VGA ISA WD (the same used for the PINE SI21), connected the keyboard power supply and Post Card ISA, start and the card starts showing the codes in succession, until it shows the BIOS boot screen, the rest is simple just press one key to enter or another to start the PC looking for the OS.
Honestly I don't think this card has any problems, I will only be sure when I have finished the tests, I will connect the usual IDE-CF with DOS, and I will change the CMOS battery (it is low), I must also find a suitable AGP card so a 2X possibly , I currently have an i740 but it is from another PC that I need to fix.
I think I can recover an ATI RAGE XL AGP with 8MB of RAM, it needs some capacitor replacement, some SMDs are lost and need to be replaced.

Seeing it's a QDI, I would urge recapping it. These Licon capacitors they loved to use in that era were horribly notorious of yielding POST issues 90% of the time.
Worst issue is they go bad WITHOUT showing any signs. I remember ending up with a bag of at least 20-30 or so Licon caps, ALL failed, from a QDI Advance 10F (P6V694X/10F).
The issues that would arise is 9 out of 10 times it wouldn't POST without any beeps, and whenever it would POST, it would get stuck right after counting RAM. (for the record, my RAM sticks were tested as good in another board beforehand.)
Recapped it with Panasonics (what I had available at that time.) and it ran rock stable with Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

PcBytes wrote on 2021-12-26, 11:27:

Seeing it's a QDI, I would urge recapping it. These Licon capacitors they loved to use in that era were horribly notorious of yi […]
Show full quote

Seeing it's a QDI, I would urge recapping it. These Licon capacitors they loved to use in that era were horribly notorious of yielding POST issues 90% of the time.
Worst issue is they go bad WITHOUT showing any signs. I remember ending up with a bag of at least 20-30 or so Licon caps, ALL failed, from a QDI Advance 10F (P6V694X/10F).
The issues that would arise is 9 out of 10 times it wouldn't POST without any beeps, and whenever it would POST, it would get stuck right after counting RAM. (for the record, my RAM sticks were tested as good in another board beforehand.)
Recapped it with Panasonics (what I had available at that time.) and it ran rock stable with Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.

Thanks for the advice, I hope it will be useful in the future, currently the card works without giving any problems, today I connected the CF-IDE with DOS5, the PC started without any problem, and I was able to do some diagnostic tests, everything seems to place.
In fact the capacitors are Licon, for the moment they seem okay, but to be honest I have not done functional tests for a long time, I have only started and used the PC for half an hour, I know that non-quality capacitors can fail despite being visibly perfect, among those on the black list there would be the OSTs from Asus (above all) and other brands.
The card I have is a Legend-V, it has LX chipset, among the cards I have is the second QDI, the first is a Titanium-IB + with K6-III-400, the BIOS is the one modified by Jan.
Usually when I change the capacitors of the motherboards I use the same capacity and voltage, but different brand, usually Rubycon and Panasonic are the ones I prefer, but sometimes they are not found and so if you are in a hurry you have to settle for another SANYO type.

Tomorrow I should start repairing a SKT462 / A motherboard, it seems to be manufactured by FASTFAME, the model is 8VTAA, overall it looks similar to other cards of the period, the capacitors used by the manufacturer are poor (Canicon brand), all 2200uF ones 6.3V need to be replaced, the others are visually fine, I hope they are working, if so after the repair the board should boot.
The rest of the card is like this, ATX format, VIA chipset, five PCI slots, one AGP, one AMR, and one ISA, Audio on board (integrated), three PC100-133 DIMM slots.
You can put CPUs with FSB 200 or 266, then Athlon (XP included) and Duron, probably the Semprons could also be installed, but I don't know if the BIOS recognizes them, in this regard having to update it I think it is very difficult to find online. 'latest BIOS, but from research it seems to be compatible with that of a SOYO, maybe having a BIOS chip programmer you could try, I can't do it because I don't have an adapter for that type of chip.

I continue with the operations on the old HW, today there has been yet another resurrection (even if Easter is a few months away 😀), lately maybe I have been lucky and that certainly never hurts, or probably I have reached a level a little 'above average, however, the use of tested and working cards together with the post card, allows me to have few doubts and a lot of certainty about what works or doesn't work.
In the end I removed seven 2200uF 6.3V Canicon, I put another seven new Rubycons with the same values, the rest of the board was in excellent aesthetic condition. However it is not a card from a famous manufacturer, it seems to be a FastFame MB ATX (a name a program!) Model 8VTAA, of course SKT462 VIA chipset and PC133 RAM, the interesting thing about this MB is that it has any slot you need, 1AGP 5PCI 1AMR 1ISA, also has integrated audio and USB, for the tests I used an Athlon XP 1800+ CPU and 128MB RAM PC133 CL3 from Infineon, as a VGA I use the usual AGP GF4 MX440, and a poor power supply but with normal voltages, this it is only needed for starting the MB and for initial configuration.
However started the PC starts with a couple of strange beeps, and displays a POST code 26 25, the BIOS is award, doing some tests at the end I understand that the beeps were due to CMOS errors (low battery), and that later they are become the normal single beep on startup.
Instead, the displayed POST code 26 25 remains, I have had a look at what it corresponds to, but before seeing why or what causes it, I would like to try to connect a drive and start an OS, if everything works normally I do not think further investigations are necessary.

funny,
another with code 26 and 25 yet boots and functions completely.
same post card. different motherboard

PC@Live do me a favor and try the post card in different pci slots please.

I've got a motherboard abit be6-ii which when the post card is inserted in the pci slot closest to the cpu acted weird and gave the same codes.
Abit BE6-II v1.0 conundrum
I think it's the electrolytics that need replacing, but I haven't gotten round to it yet.

weedeewee wrote on 2021-12-31, 10:13:

funny, another with code 26 and 25 yet boots and functions completely. same post card. different motherboard […]
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funny,
another with code 26 and 25 yet boots and functions completely.
same post card. different motherboard

PC@Live do me a favor and try the post card in different pci slots please.

I've got a motherboard abit be6-ii which when the post card is inserted in the pci slot closest to the cpu acted weird and gave the same codes.
Abit BE6-II v1.0 conundrum
I think it's the electrolytics that need replacing, but I haven't gotten round to it yet.

On the post card booklet I find this written:
"No fateful trouble, vga displayed normally. If non fateful trouble occurred, then display error message in VGA otherwise boot operating system and code "26" is ok code, no any other code to display"
It seems that it may be normal not to see other codes and stop at "26".
But it is still a strange behavior, for the moment I have not tested any other HW, maybe something is not right (even if it works).
I will try the ISA-PCI Post CARD in other slots, from info found online, the ISA slot may not work well, this is due to the BIOS that should be updated, currently I have ver.2.5, finding the next ones was not possible for me , among the advice I found is to replace the original BIOS with that of a SOYO, even if the cards have some differences they are compatible.
Among the things I noticed at startup, is that sometimes the POST CARD display does not show anything, that is, it stays off, this is also strange.
If the problem of the ABIT is due to a capacitor, it could be possible that there is also a problematic capacitor here, being poor (Canicon) they can have problems even if visibly perfect.
So if you have the latest version of the BIOS I don't think you will be able to do anything other than replace the capacitor, if you have an older BIOS version, you could see if among the things it updates it solves some problems, usually they do not only support the latest CPUs.
I will do the tests as soon as possible, and if I have results I will post them here, I'm not sure what I can do, because the card seems to work and so I think there is no fault, I think it could be a BIOS problem or something slightly faulty ( any capacitor?).

Today I went back to work on old motherboards, lately I have recovered some, among the ones I have to test I chose this MSI MS-6309 VER: 2, it is an ATX with VIA 694X chipset, the CPU is intel PIII 750/100 SKT370 , to test it I added a 64MB PC133 RAM, and temporarily a VGA PCI.
When the power supply is connected and when the PWRSW on is pressed, the card shows no sign of life, that is, no LEDs turn on and the fans do not start.
From a summary check done earlier everything seems ok, but consulting the manual, I find a couple of errors (wrong jumpers), what I think was critical is the JBAT1, it was on 2-3, and this according to the manual could cause the damage to the board, the correct position appears to be 1-2, I moved it but it may be useless if the previous boot (or boot?) causes a failure somewhere.
The only possible thing should be to try again with the jumpers correctly set, but I am not very confident that it will start, if nothing changes you have to check something else, who knows it could have had a fault somewhere else, and if so it could perhaps still be recoverable, maybe if anyone has any suggestions they are very welcome.
Lastly, the capacitors are poor, but looking at them they are perfect, I know it means nothing, but I would not want to replace or disconnect them without having a suspected failure.

Finally I performed some tests on the FASTFAME with the same HW, moving the POST CARD does not change anything, while inserting it into the ISA slot the display remains off (only the LEDs light up), but even using some DOS diagnostic programs the card seems to work and does not HW problems result.

For MSI MS-6309 VER: 2 motherboard, today I made a nice progress, after fixing the JBAT1 jumper (put back on 1-2), I started doing the usual research to see if there was the voltage of ST -BY, in fact it was present in every pin, then without wanting to check the PWRSW_ON pin, I made contact between the two pins and the MB turned on !!!
Unfortunately I had no keyboard or video card connected, so I could only see some POST CARD codes, until they stopped on d1 d0.
These codes are important as we will see later, checking the manual, maybe if I understand correctly it stops on d1 because the keyboard is not connected, I turn off and connect the video card too.
Reboot and after a series of various codes displayed, they stop and I have a video signal together with two beeps, obviously this is normal since the CMOS has been cleared, by pressing F1 I enter the BIOS to check the various screens, I exit without memorizing and I press F2 to start the boot of the OS, but obviously not being present, the BOOT FAILURE message appears ...
I noticed that there are four LEDs on the motherboard, normally they should be green, but in some moments someone changes color and becomes red, depending on which are red on the manual it is written what it means, at the moment I have not checked, but this function I it looks similar to other PCs (Dell for example), the difference is that they are in an internal position, and therefore not easily visible.
I connect a drive, I use the usual IDE-CF adapter with a 256MB card, there is stored the DOS 5 and various diagnostic programs and for bench DOS, I boot into the BIOS, I go to IDE HDD AUTO DETECTION, but strangely it does nothing, that is, the screen returns to the STANDARD CMOS SETUP page and they are all selected on Auto, I remove the floppy A: 1.44MB since I do not connect it, I save and exit to restart. When I restart I get a block on the codes d1 d0, I turn off and on again the codes restart but they stop at 13 12, useless to wait, nothing is displayed on the screen.
The only way to restart the PC is to reset the CMOS, I don't know if this problem is due to a malfunctioning BIOS, or if, as it happened on a previous occasion, the BIOS has been updated but despite being the one for this MB the wrong one was used, I know there are different revisions and different NBs and SBs, so I'll have to check which BIOS is right for the MB, it might just be rewritten, for some reason it might be damaged?
I think the card was put away for this problem, so it's unusable, I'll try with a 3.5 HD ATA, in case it goes I would have solved, plugging in a floppy drive is not a problem, the only problem is if the BIOS stores the settings and the PC restarts, for the moment this is what I can do.
Obviously if there are suggestions, I invite anyone who has some ideas, it is not a battery problem because I used a new one, then it would be necessary to verify if the part of the circuit concerned works, for the moment I would say yes, on older PCs c 'were those chips like dallas or other, and it was clear that the problem was there, here I have no idea where the equivalent circuit is, maybe if I remember correctly it has been integrated in the SB, for now I consider it working, I would not go to look for faults where there are none.

I checked online looking for BIOS info for MSI MS-6309 motherboard, the official site has the version currently present in the MB, but in my opinion it is not the right one, it is a version for the MB REV: 1.X, on another site I found the ones that should work for REV: 2.X, you can find them here:
http://web.archive.org/web/20211230120000/htt … therboards/9286
A couple cannot be downloaded because the page is no longer available, but there are others including the penultimate version that can be downloaded.
For safety I have downloaded various versions, there is some difference of course, but I think that the latest version no longer downloadable can still be found (maybe).
It remains to be seen if this card allows booting from USB pendrive, I would avoid floppies even if they are the most commonly used solution, because currently I don't have new floppies, I have some used ones but there is always the unknown that some bad sector ruin writing BIOS.
As a writing program I could use the same one used successfully on the PINE SI21, but you can still do a test with the programmer provided by MSI along with the BIOS.

Update:
I was able to download the versions that I could not find before, among them there is the latest version of the BIOS (V3.8 😎), I think I use this to rewrite the chip.

I was trying to solve the problem of the MSI MS-6309 VER: 2, basically I wanted to update the BIOS to V3.8, which should be the correct one for the card (as well as the latest one), currently V1.9 is present because probably it was downloaded from the MSI site and installed incorrectly, this BIOS while allowing the start gives problems in recognizing the drives and saving the new settings.
I tried rewriting the BIOS with a USB programmer, unfortunately the Winbond W49F002UP12B chip is not recognized, to detect and rewrite it you need a special adapter that I don't have, looking for alternative chips to rewrite even those are not recognized and you need the adapter.
I was thinking of booting the PC from USB flash drive and rewriting the chip via uniflash, but I was told that probably that PC being old, booting from USB should not work.
The only solution left is to use the usual 1.44MB bootable disk and floppy drive, hoping that everything is fine and that there are no bad sectors to create bigger problems.

Today I looked at some MB SKT 478, two are to be tested, one is an ASUS P4S533-VM, some time ago I changed the capacitors from 3300uF 6.3V, I remember that it had shown on a couple of occasions the BIOS boot screen, unfortunately not I had connected a POST CARD, so I have no idea if it showed a code, I tried booting with the POST CARD later but got no display.
I think I'll try again tomorrow or this weekend, the card is visually excellent, I remember that I had used only one memory module, and having two sockets, I had put it in the first and second, on the occasion of the two BIOS screens.
I don't know what it depends on, but since then I have by no means had a display, it seems that in many 478 cards there are bad sockets, but I don't think this is the case, we will see if I can get some results, hopefully good.
The other is an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe, this one also needed the replacement of the capacitors, the work was done a long time ago, but due to lack of time and components, it has never been tested, I suppose it may be working (hopefully well ), this too I'll try to try it in the next few days.

I'm back having repaired some MB a long time ago, today I try with an ASUS P4P800 Deluxe, it's SKT478 with Intel chipset DDR RAM (if I'm not mistaken 865), I put a CPU (exactly I don't know what) a DDR400 RAM and the GF4 MX440 AGP, connected the power supply, I try to start, and it starts up but at some point the display of the POST CARD on d6 d5 stops, exactly I did not understand what they indicated (BIOS AMI), however in the end I turn off and try again to see if I have a video signal, unfortunately no display and always the same codes displayed.

I don't know why but I decide to change VGA and put a PCI ATI Rage XL, and indeed this change was right, I see a BIOS screen appear on the monitor!

It is about the BIOS, and it is a Boot BIOS Recovery, try to restore it via floppy or CD-ROM, obviously here for the moment I stop, I have to recover the files for recovery, I will see if they are available on the ASUS website (I think so), then there is the usual problem using the Floppy or the CD-ROM?

Obviously I think it is better to use the CD-ROM, I think only the bios file is needed, but I have to look for info on how to proceed, I think that once the operation is successful, it should work without problems, so if I can I will run the usual diagnostics and bench DOS.

All in all I like the card, obviously it is limited by the SKT478 and does not support Dual core CPU, the RAM are only DDR and for the AGP 8X you need cards suitable for the system. the CPU will have to be replaced with a P4HT about 3GHz FSB800.

Just to know, today I started the work to restore the BIOS of the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe, I had downloaded the last two Revs from the ASUS website, one is more up-to-date but it's a beta, the other is the previous one (but not beta) so I decided to use this one, I don't remember what the beta added, but in the end it is still better a tested BIOS rather than a newer one but to verify, in short I took the file and transferred it to the floppy (one recovery), I configured the PC to boot and then started it up.

Here at that point it gives me the usual screen seen previously, but it warns me that the file on the floppy was not found, and that the file is called P4P800.ROM, then I turn off the PC.

I go back to the other PC and rename the floppy file, now with the suggested name.

I go back to the ASUS P4P800 Deluxe, put the floppy and start again, this time it starts reading, at some point it starts writing the flash, shortly after it warns to turn the PC off and on again, so when I restart I get a nice screen (Ai Series) , it was a success!

Among the various things displayed later, I could see which cpu I had put on, it is a P4NW 2800/512/800, a cpu that can fit but that should be replaced with a P4HT of about 3GHz (maximum 3.4GHz), on other PCs I have a 2.8 and a 3.0 with L2 1M cache always FSB 800, there is probably not a big jump in performance, but finding a CPU of that type would be fine.

For the moment I have not chosen anything about the final configuration, you have to choose all HD VGA RAM power supply etc. convenience vanishes, so you have to understand what PC you want, now it's up and running.