PC@LIVE wrote on 2023-09-29, 20:17:

Nexxen wrote on 2023-09-26, 15:57:

Today I bought a 286 boars on ebay, I'm attaching the seller's pic as it'll come from the Czech Republic. […]
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Today I bought a 286 boars on ebay, I'm attaching the seller's pic as it'll come from the Czech Republic.

I can't really determine the model, but it looks close to these two:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/dfi-286-20#expchips
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/iqs-jli

Seller complains no post, cpu hot and VARTA damage.
He attempted a repair but he failed.
No idea what the wire is for, I'll ask later.

Another long project I guess.

Congratulations, I kept an eye on that card too, but I didn't have time to decide if it could be repaired, looking at it it seemed damaged (interrupted) some traces near the battery, I think the repair was attempted, but they didn't understand much, certainly if you can understand what brand and model it is, it would already be a small step forward, then all the jumpers would have to be checked, but perhaps by fixing the broken tracks and redoing some soldering (in the battery area), it could give some sign of awakening.???

from the pics he posted (he sounds like a nice guy, really):

- traces are either broken or too thin
- a ceramic cap is cracked
- jumpwire goes to a chip under the keyboard bios, broken trace
- some resistances looks sketchy
- keyboard has to be removed and connections to the bios checked
- bios must be checked to be compatible
- power lanes caps...
... full job ahead

Ths design is simple, most ICs are common (like buffers...). I have a lot of spare cpus (I'll desolder it and test it on another board) + soket it.
To me it's just a boring simple job to do once again.

Maybe it's worse but it's gonna be fun 😀

I got some stuff:

Motherboard has a A64 X2 4200+ to test this stuff 😀

Edit: Creative cd-rom isn't powering on (will open and look); dvd-rom only reads cds; cd burner works fine.
Floppy drives are ok. Some floppies I tested are good, and of vergin disks work (a few formatted and tested).

Trashbytes wrote on 2023-09-29, 02:58:

Picked up this nice AIW 7500 VE today, normally wouldn't bother with the AIW models but this one was mislabeled as AGP but is actually the PCI model which makes it more interesting. Should make for a really nice card for my Dual Tualatin board that doesn't have AGP on it, not sure how a 7500 will perform on a Tualatin setup but PCI options can be limiting at reasonable prices.

7500 AIW Box.jpg7500 AIW PCI.jpg

Are you sure about the model ?
I never heard about 7500 VE.
I thought there was only :

1. 7500 : Late card released in mid 2001 along with 8500 to compete with GeForce 2 ti
2. 7200 DDR (aka Radeon DDR) 32 and 64 MB. 64 MB is faster. High-end ATI card of mid 2000.
3. 7200 SDR (aka Radeon SDR) released after DDR version. Cheaper
4. 7000 (aka Radeon VE) Budget version. 64bit mem bus. No HW T&L (Emulated in software. Still reports as a DX7 card)

Bought this lovely PCG-N505X today (been after one for ages)

Unfortuantely the hard drive died about 5 minutes after I started it up. I find that it is really common with Sony's of this age to have faulty hard drives - anyone else noticed?

Now starts the hunt for the correct recovery CD (usually impossible with VAIO's)

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-09-15, 15:28:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-09-14, 22:00:

Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-09-04, 01:52:

I dismantled the 939 system and cleaned the case. I cheated and replaced only the two popped caps because I only had two caps that were the correct voltage and capacitance, and they were generic unbranded Ebay ones (and they are scarily identical to the failed ones). So that'll do for now until I get some quality ones and replace all of them. Board is working fine, XP is installing while I'm typing this. My other 939 board has a Via chipset, so it's nice that this SATA controller works with an SSD.

The build of this thing wasn't good. Every drive in it was only held in place with two screws on one side, and the motherboard standoffs were mismatched with some being fine thread, while others were coarse thread.

It's too bad there are so many scratches as it's a nice color, and I like this case for sentimental reasons. Maybe if I get really ambitious I could paint it.

I was wrong - looking closely the Ebay capacitors I had, they weren't unbranded, they are KZG, and the reason they looked so much like the two that I replaced was because the failing caps on the board were also KZG! I replaced all five this time, using Nichicons.

One thing I noticed with this board is that the heatsink retaining bracket is held in place with push pins rather than screws (my Asus A8V uses screws). As a result, the bracket was a little loose, and this meant that some of the clamping force meant to press the HSF against the CPU was being wasted pulling the bracket tight. My solution was to use some blue masking tape to shim the retainer's back plate. It took about four layers to get it tight. I had never noticed before, but from AM2 on they switched to using a bracket that has four screws to hold it tight.

There are metal back plate with screws instead of type of what you have. Easily found on ebay.

Cheers,

I bought an Opteron 180, and it's working great. But I tried it in my Asus A8V-X (a very nice 939 motherboard crippled by the lack of overclocking options) and with that board I can use the solid copper heatpipe equipped stock AM2 cooler I have because the bracket is so solid (I'm restricted to a stock aluminum one with the Gigabyte as is). I realized that if I want to use this heatsink with the Gigabyte board, I'd have to get one of these, so I did so.

I bought another 9600XT. This one is a Sapphire having a different/smaller board layout, the cooler of the 9800 Pro, and 256MB of 2.8ns VRAM, which it does not have the capability to fully utilize.

nfraser01 wrote on 2023-09-30, 09:54:

Bought this lovely PCG-N505X today (been after one for ages)

Unfortuantely the hard drive died about 5 minutes after I started it up. I find that it is really common with Sony's of this age to have faulty hard drives - anyone else noticed?

Now starts the hunt for the correct recovery CD (usually impossible with VAIO's)

Is it the PCG-N505 VX With Pentium II 333 MHz ?? If so you could use one of these links to possibly get it back to original (there is 3 diff CD's in this archive) :
https://archive.org/details/pcg-n505
the SRCDG23R2_0_0_ENU1 ISO appears to be the restore one for the n505, from the Install.txt
"*** System Recovery CD-ROM for PCG-N505 series ***" and includes a floppy disk image to get it started...

Horun wrote on 2023-09-30, 15:43:

Is it the PCG-N505 VX With Pentium II 333 MHz ?? If so you could use one of these links to possibly get it back to original (the […]
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Is it the PCG-N505 VX With Pentium II 333 MHz ?? If so you could use one of these links to possibly get it back to original (there is 3 diff CD's in this archive) :
https://archive.org/details/pcg-n505
the SRCDG23R2_0_0_ENU1 ISO appears to be the restore one for the n505, from the Install.txt
"*** System Recovery CD-ROM for PCG-N505 series ***" and includes a floppy disk image to get it started...

Thanks for the link
It's a N505X, but might be close enough. I did serch archive.org yesterday, but nothing came up. Must try harder....
Downloading as we speak.
Thanks again

nfraser01 wrote on 2023-09-30, 15:51:

It's a N505X, but might be close enough. I did serch archive.org yesterday, but nothing came up. Must try harder....

Unfortunately not...

Went to an electronics fleamarket... computer hardware was super thin on the ground, "drier" than any I've been to in years. Even when there's "nothing for me" there's been stuff I didn't need/want or thought was too overpriced to buy, but this one didn't have any of that. However, grabbed a solitary retroish piece, MS Intellimouse Optical USB/PS2 that only had very light wear, because it's an okay "best of both worlds" mouse for systems with PS/2 holes. Though I did also get a box full of micro momentary switches that might fix a few serial mice and provide reset buttons etc. The modern microcontroller dude didn't seem to have brought any pico boards even which I would have liked to grab a couple of to try projects that are appearing with them here and elsewhere. I didn't even get to top up the capacitor stocks, nothing good around. Really weird what wasn't there this time. I kinda dragged myself there too, thought the FOMO would bite hard if I didn't go.

Picked up a precision 220 off eBay.
Dual piii 1ghz and 1gb ecc rdram.
The geforce2 gets it came with appears to be dead. Fortunately, I have a spare dell GeForce 256 ddr.

Couldn't help myself today at the recycling station's shop ... GTX285 1GiB for DKK 50, that's less than US$ 7.50. Don't know I'll be using it for, but too cheap to ignore 🤣 The guy at the counter told me that if I'm into older hardware, I should come by more often, as they sometimes throw stuff out (well recycle it) because it's been sitting on the shelf for too long 😮

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-01, 10:23:

Couldn't help myself today at the recycling station's shop ... GTX285 1GiB for DKK 50, that's less than US$ 7.50. Don't know I'll be using it for, but too cheap to ignore 🤣

Is that price tested or untested? If untested then it's quite a gamble.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-01, 10:23:

The guy at the counter told me that if I'm into older hardware, I should come by more often, as they sometimes throw stuff out (well recycle it) because it's been sitting on the shelf for too long 😮

Living near such a place is always a nice thing. 😄

Few interesting pickups from my local e-waste guy 😀.
Asus branded V3:

Late revision Diamond V2 with mixed EDO VRAM:

Elsa Gloria DCC (Quadro DCC):

Looks almost unused, very silent fan.

nfraser01 wrote on 2023-09-30, 09:54:

Bought this lovely PCG-N505X today (been after one for ages)

Unfortuantely the hard drive died about 5 minutes after I started it up. I find that it is really common with Sony's of this age to have faulty hard drives - anyone else noticed?

Now starts the hunt for the correct recovery CD (usually impossible with VAIO's)

I refurbished and sold one of these on eBay almost a year ago. I guess you missed it. I have all of the drivers saved as well as a large box of spare parts. Send me a message if you need help getting it setup.

Also, you *must* remove or replace the NiMH battery! I have refurbished a number of PCG-505s over the years and they all have leaked, often causing damage. Take photos of the markings on the original battery and clip the leads as close to it as you can, so it can be reused when rebuilding a replacement.

NOS PC-A77FR. Let's see how it turns out when/if it arrives...

gmaverick2k wrote on 2023-10-01, 21:25:

NOS PC-A77FR. Let's see how it turns out when/if it arrives...

That's one unit. Do you have a SSI board for this housing?

PD2JK wrote on 2023-10-02, 03:22:

gmaverick2k wrote on 2023-10-01, 21:25:

NOS PC-A77FR. Let's see how it turns out when/if it arrives...

That's one unit. Do you have a SSI board for this housing?

Lol unfortunately no. Was hunting for another Antec 300 case and came across this for 50+16 shipping. Couldn't pass it up. Stahp... -_-

dormcat wrote on 2023-10-01, 11:56:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-01, 10:23:

Couldn't help myself today at the recycling station's shop ... GTX285 1GiB for DKK 50, that's less than US$ 7.50. Don't know I'll be using it for, but too cheap to ignore 🤣

Is that price tested or untested? If untested then it's quite a gamble.

Untested, and has been taken from the recycling pile - politics are that everything being dumped at the recycling station will be put up for sale in the shop, unless specifically marked with a can of spray paint next to the drop-site (which nobody knows is there 🙄) I've found laptops up for sale, which I myself had been left for recycling, after removing CPU, memory and harddrives ... At least they do remove hard drives from everything before putting them up for sale ...

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-02, 06:49:

[...]

Untested, and has been taken from the recycling pile - politics are that everything being dumped at the recycling station will be put up for sale in the shop, unless specifically marked with a can of spray paint next to the drop-site (which nobody knows is there 🙄) I've found laptops up for sale, which I myself had been left for recycling, after removing CPU, memory and harddrives ... At least they do remove hard drives from everything before putting them up for sale ...

Do they also do the RNG pricing in DK?

Here in NL it's the same policy, with things like So775 boards with completely busted-up CPU pins on sale for more than complete working systems (with similar specs). Sometimes you get incredible bargains, sometimes you hear workers grumbling about how nobody ever buys their broken crap for insane prices.