I've been considering testing WD-40 as it's a 90% ingredient match for the spendier contact cleaners, and the cheaper ones, all the effectiveness is in the IPA content. It shouldn't damage PCB, IC packages or traces and contacts at all, but might remove screen printing, soften heatshrink like around capacitors and any globs of hot glue/wax that are holding inductors in place.

I just use dish soap (Ultra Joy), Dawn or Goo Gone (citrus cleaner), if it's oily or greasy, and usually follow up with IPA and compressed air. I don't know why or when WD-40 should ever be used on electronics. That sounds terrible.

Spray bottles of brake clutch cleaner in a ventilated environment. Does the job and then some.. techYEScity style 😀

I was gonna say there is some halogenated brake cleaner that might do the biz for deoxidising, but it's nasty to use inside.

tiny bit of WD-40 is used to protect from corrosion and rust. One or two drops with brush....
In my country, all general electricians use it....

When I clean boards and add-on cards, I use soapy distilled water (warmed up in the microwave) for washing, plain distilled water for rinsing, 99.9% Isopropyl Alcohol for getting the water off, especially in hard-to-reach places, and an air compressor. For corrosion, I hit it with a vinegar bath with a bit of baking soda before I do the wash cycle.

If there's anything that needs to move around (such as motors), I add machine oil to the shafts and grease the rails and see if they move freely. I saved 2 of the 360K full-height floppy drives from getting scrapped and they still work today.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-11-21, 19:48:

I've been considering testing WD-40 as it's a 90% ingredient match for the spendier contact cleaners, and the cheaper ones, all the effectiveness is in the IPA content. It shouldn't damage PCB, IC packages or traces and contacts at all, but might remove screen printing, soften heatshrink like around capacitors and any globs of hot glue/wax that are holding inductors in place.

The problem with WD-40 is that it is flammable, and if you leave it on as residue and say a tantalum capacitor goes boom..

WD-40 is a brand o products now not the original waxed based product in a spray can.

Been watching old "The Computer Chronicles" videos about laptops. Really love the manner of the presentation, guys form IBM, Compaq, NEC, etc, come and present their laptop models. And that late 80-ies-90-ies style is very fun to watch.
What caught my interest was this mini computer Lexmark Lexbook with a Disney Sound Source built-in. Never heard of it before. Does anyone happern to have one on the forum?
https://youtu.be/i_AB-es1pFk?t=88
some more info.
https://gadgets.notjakob.com/DOSPALMTOP/lexbookmb15.html

ayandon wrote on 2022-11-22, 04:03:

tiny bit of WD-40 is used to protect from corrosion and rust. One or two drops with brush....
In my country, all general electricians use it....

There is a WD 40 dedicated spray, that is called WD 40 contact cleaner. Also, a very cool guy on youtube called Necroware uses it for the repair of old electronics. I would rather recommend this one, over a basic WD 40. Or get some dioxide spray. That would also be OK.

Turbo -> wrote on 2022-11-22, 11:46:

ayandon wrote on 2022-11-22, 04:03:

tiny bit of WD-40 is used to protect from corrosion and rust. One or two drops with brush....
In my country, all general electricians use it....

There is a WD 40 dedicated spray, that is called WD 40 contact cleaner. Also, a very cool guy on youtube called Necroware uses it for the repair of old electronics. I would rather recommend this one, over a basic WD 40. Or get some dioxide spray. That would also be OK.

I use that WD40 contact cleaner and it works very well.

I'll make separate post from my CS9233 wavetable synth experiments. In the meantime I tested some DOOM recordings. For some reason my guitar turns into piano, don't know why. Maybe some reset occurs or something... I'll test later how original Terratec performs. Here are two samples, quite refreshing, right? 😁

Edit: playback using original Terratec SOWT-11 was perfectly fine. Problem was one bypass capacitor in midi uart trace which I didn't bother to measure and just put there some random value. Well, my random value was 300 times too large sucking uart data. Anyway, plays good now.

Have some fun with coloring)))

Got copies of 100 best dos games. Trying to get epicpinball to work. Keep getting 560kb memory required error. Used philscomputerlabs pif file for restart in MS-DOS mode. Still not able to get it to 560kb or more using any of the options.

Does anybody know if there is a modded BIOs available for the XPS M60 that overrides the need for the correct power supply? It doesn't recognize the 130w adapter I have for my XPS M1710 or the one for my XPS Gen1, apparently it only works with model PA4E. The underclock this thing applies without the correct power supply is brutal.

Today I got these cool custom mousepads, bought from Amazon, for my Pentium II and Pentium MMX retro builds

Demetrio wrote on 2022-11-23, 17:05:

Today I got these cool custom mousepads, bought from Amazon, for my Pentium II and Pentium MMX retro builds

Those look awesome! What seller did you get those from?

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-11-23, 17:08:

Demetrio wrote on 2022-11-23, 17:05:

Today I got these cool custom mousepads, bought from Amazon, for my Pentium II and Pentium MMX retro builds

Those look awesome! What seller did you get those from?

On Amazon, there are various sellers who make custom mousepads: during checkout, you upload the image you want and they send you the mousepad with that image printed.
I choose the cheapest seller for Italy, but anyone should be ok.

Is it a Miracle?!!

This is a very very old PCI Lan card which was packed decades ago. Dust+Rust.
It was installed in our PC with K6-2 500 processor and motherboard.

At 1st, it did not detected in a Core 2 Due based system at all 💔
I wanted to restore it as experiment for my restoration work and steps for other major restoration works.

Experiment-1: I cleaned it with IPA and a Toothbrush. Then dried it using Hair-dryer.
No improvement 💔 Not detected 😔

Experiment-2: I washed it with Vinegar. Then washed it with Soap water followed by clean tap water. Then dried it using Hair-dryer.
And then left for 2 days in the Sun. Then added a tiny drop of WD-40 and brushed all over it.

Now, its fully working and running! 🥳❤️

The capacitor may have gone a bit stale. Sometimes it takes a few power cycles for an old card to come back to life. The cleaning may or may not have had something to do with it.

Also, please don't coat your electronics in WD-40. It's flammable.