PcBytes wrote on 2023-11-10, 12:30:

Welp, so much for spending a whole hour getting the G736 running.
Not sure if it's the GPU or the VRAM in this case. Might try a reflow but I have near zero hopes to have it running.

The power jack looks gnarly!
That's gotta be from the early lead-free solder days so I'll bet they aren't very reliable, shame. Looks pretty similar to the other laptops from that series. Any external differences?

None that I'd see, it's every bit as compatible as the G730 (even the DIP switches are from G730, actually) except there's no miniPCI slot for Wi-Fi... though the antenna is there.

And of course, the display lid was awfully sticky. The palmrest seems to be black-painted plastic, like the white ones from WinBook/Gericom are.

Another difference is the battery and power rating - G730/732 uses 19v 4.74, the 736 uses 19v 6.3A, and the battery is bumped from 5880mAh to 6600. Display is SXGA, made by Hannstar I think (or some other corporation that has HS in the model.)

BIOS used is AMIBIOS.

PcBytes wrote on 2023-11-10, 12:30:

Welp, so much for spending a whole hour getting the G736 running.
Not sure if it's the GPU or the VRAM in this case. Might try a reflow but I have near zero hopes to have it running.

I had a Dell laptop with a 3GHz P4 and Radeon 7500 that I bought in 2003 for $2000 that did that twice. The second time, Dell refused to replace it under warranty so I refused to buy anything from them ever again.

As I said, I'll open it up again tonight and try a reflow on the GPU and VRAM to rule everything out.

It's ECS after all, it doesn't surprise me that the BGA might have went bad. It's surprising that the Radeon driver DOES work and it did launch Ford Racing 2 - it looked like the most solid LSD trip you could think of - VHS tape tracking and jitter effects included.

That sucks, I didn't think mobile radeon BGAs were a problem until sometime after x300

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-10, 14:34:

That sucks, I didn't think mobile radeon BGAs were a problem until sometime after x300

The R300s were kinda known to go bad IIRC (lots of bad 9700 cards), and the mobile 9600 seems to be based from the R300 arch - not the RV350 like the desktop version does.

(that would explain why it went bad and why it could've probably ran with a 9700 driver as well)

Might be worth a shot to reflow, it could very well be just some bad BGA in this case.

Great news - it was the R300 BGA at fault! Just reflowed with some flux and I'm getting crisp and clean picture!

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-11-10, 14:34:

That sucks, I didn't think mobile radeon BGAs were a problem until sometime after x300

7500s are prone to failure in many, many laptops. (Thinkpads, iBooks). This seems to be largely to do with most laptops not putting any cooling on them because they could technically run passive, but really could have benefitted from better cooling. I don't hear of Latitude C640s failing in the same way.

Great news on the G736!

Hmmm in that case I should check up on one in a Compaq P4... thought I had a 7500 in something else too but can't bring it to mind right now.

All closed up. Internal keyboard is dead unfortunately (none of the keys work and I did check the ribbon, it is inserted all the way into the slot) so I have to use a USB keyboard.

Wow, Elitegroup BIOS. Usually don't see that often.
What's that Windows theme without the start text?

I've heard before that the keyboards in these were prone to failure.

Modified Longhorn build 4074 theme, although I changed it for the Plex theme used in Longhorn M3 build 3718 shortly after. Icons are 2000/ME and so is the soundscheme 🤣.

As for the BIOS, yeah, that's the default ECS splash screen. The BIOS underneath is standard AMI BIOS, kinda similar to what ASUS used during the Core 2 Duo era.
Interesting enough, the G730 and 732 use Phoenix.

EDIT: And just as I finished this, a G735 popped up over the classifieds. AMD K6-2 @ 400MHz.

Took apart this AM2 CPU cooler to find someone glued the fan to the heatsink with adhesive foam. Blocking most of the airflow in the process. This was an 125W TDP chip still in service!

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-10, 23:44:

Took apart this AM2 CPU cooler to find someone glued the fan to the heatsink with adhesive foam. Blocking most of the airflow in the process. This was an 125W TDP chip still in service!

Ok, this is new in the DIY fails. 🤣
---------------------------

Got a new board, MB694A https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/pcchips-mb694a.
Came with dead caps, replaced caps. Works 100%.
Along were a TNT2 M64 32MB and 128MB of PC-133 + 866MHz P-III. A neat setup for some old stuff.

Dug out the case I was planning to throw my recently acquired Athlon XP into, only to remember that front panel connector ribbon cable was busted on it. Decided I could probably frankenstein a HD Audio cable from another case to the mb end of the busted cable:

And yay it works! Also, thanks to the unnecessarily long Promise SATA card, the HD LED reaches just nicely 😅:

Plopped everything into the case and hmmm, I think I got something going here 😈:

Was hoping something like OpenRGB would work in XP, but it looks like a no, so I'll have to stick with offloading RGB control elsewhere. Also the chipset (VIA KM400?) seems to get pretty darn hot, so I'm looking at active cooling for it, which I remember was a thing at the time.

kingcake wrote on 2023-11-10, 23:44:

Took apart this AM2 CPU cooler to find someone glued the fan to the heatsink with adhesive foam. Blocking most of the airflow in the process. This was an 125W TDP chip still in service!

image_50744321.JPG
image_50749185.JPG

That is just so wrong. I wouldn't want to be the guy that did that after the AI revolutionary committee for retribution against cruelty to artificial lifeforms catches up with him after the war.

Wah, I've been buying broken 3DFX cards for a while to see if I can fix them. Today I was looking over a Voodoo 1 that I'd bought last year and I could never get it to do anything. It would only report 0xDEAD for the TMU status with 57005 TMUs. I'd thought it was down to a broken pin since there were a few on this card - but now I know how to actually use mojo.exe to generate the SST.LOG file which gives actual information:

This reference design Voodoo 1 card did have a very bad hit to the empty PCB area and I'd already had to rebuild the VGA pass-through circuitry, but it looks like the DAC took a hit too:

Those are all damaged traces where you see the thin metal legs, three of them were the red green and blue signals. I found that after I got the DAC to communicate with the FBI chip by resoldering legs at the upper part, which are the digital connections, the MOJO result changed into a good one:

It even has full RAM showing for both the texture and frame buffer - so I started a game and only saw a totally black screen, but the computer was still running. I was probing at the DAC while it was running to see if the VCCA (DAC analog side power) and ground were connected when my probe on ground slipped and maybe completed the circuit since the ground trace there was completely broken away. But when my multimeter probe slipped something good happened instead of something bad - I could see the unreal flyby in blue!
Pressing the DAC area more I think I managed to get red as well and turned it off to work on the DAC. I thought the DAC might be damaged initially but if it's working well enough to generate 2 colours of 3 and make an image it should be fine. Instead of using hot air I used the low melt solder stuff and that got the DAC off pretty cleanly except as you can see in the picture a bunch of traces were broken probably before the chip was removed.

Took an hour or two to get all the traces in place and then I marked the DAC legs where there were wire legs instead of copper traces, so I could squash some of the "J" shaped legs into "L" legs - allowing the remaining good traces to still make contact with the DAC's PLCC legs, while giving clearance for the wire leg 'traces'.
That went great though, I put the card back together again and could actually test it - it went straight into tomb raider demo with the 3DFX splash screen showing all colours 😁

This card has been with me for something like 18 months and I've now and then taken another go at getting it working with no result each time because I didn't know what the diagnostics could show, didn't know that no DAC would upset the whole card. I've taken chips off, replaced RAM, broken traces in the process of replacing RAM, resoldered the QFP legs probably multiple times... It's had a rough time and I've never been able to test it.
I found that although it can now run games with proper display, it's glitching sometimes - I resoldered the RAM again and added some more capacitors to no avail, but there were some 0-ohm resistors on the back that had somehow had the markings rubbed off and replacing those seemed to stabilise the display. To test it I ran the unreal flyby for a while and it looked fine.
I was celebrating a job well done when...

Party mode activated... I may still have a bit more work to do...

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-11-11, 02:22:

Wah, I've been buying broken 3DFX cards for a while to see if I can fix them. Today I was looking over a Voodoo 1 that I'd bough […]
Show full quote

Wah, I've been buying broken 3DFX cards for a while to see if I can fix them. Today I was looking over a Voodoo 1 that I'd bought last year and I could never get it to do anything. It would only report 0xDEAD for the TMU status with 57005 TMUs. I'd thought it was down to a broken pin since there were a few on this card - but now I know how to actually use mojo.exe to generate the SST.LOG file which gives actual information:

This 0xDEAD result in Mojo

Info for Voodoo board # 0:
=====================================================
Virtual Base Address: 0xe6000000
Physical Base Address: 0xe6000008
PCI Device Number: 0x9
Vendor ID: 0x121a
Device ID: 0x1
FBI Revision: 2
FBI Memory: 0 MB
FBI PowerOn Sense: 0x0
TMU PowerOn Sense: 0xdead
FBI DAC Output Color Format: 24BPP
Scan-Line Interleaved? No
TMU Revision: 57005
Number TMUs: 57005
WARNING: Board 0: Bogus number of TMUs (57005)!

Was caused by

sst1Init Routines: InitCode $Revision: 8 $
sst1InitMapBoard(): BoardsInSystem = 1
sst1InitMapBoard(): vAddr:0xc8dc0000 pAddr:0xdd000008 Dev:0x9 Board:0
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting TREX-to-FBI FIFO THRESHOLD to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting PRELIM FT-CLK delay to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Could not detect DAC...

This reference design Voodoo 1 card did have a very bad hit to the empty PCB area and I'd already had to rebuild the VGA pass-through circuitry, but it looks like the DAC took a hit too:
3dfx voodoo1 TVP3409 DAC traces damaged.JPG
Those are all damaged traces where you see the thin metal legs, three of them were the red green and blue signals. I found that after I got the DAC to communicate with the FBI chip by resoldering legs at the upper part, which are the digital connections, the MOJO result changed into a good one:

Mojo and SST log of working Voodoo 1

SST:
sst1Init Routines: InitCode $Revision: 8 $
sst1InitMapBoard(): BoardsInSystem = 1
sst1InitMapBoard(): vAddr:0xc8dc0000 pAddr:0xdd000008 Dev:0x9 Board:0
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting TREX-to-FBI FIFO THRESHOLD to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting PRELIM FT-CLK delay to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX0INIT0=0x5441
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX0INIT1=0xf420
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX1INIT0=0x5441
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX1INIT1=0xf420
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX2INIT0=0x5441
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX2INIT1=0xf420
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting up FAST DRAM Configuration
sst1DeviceInfo: Board ID: Obsidian GE
sst1DeviceInfo: FbiConfig:0x2, TmuConfig:0x11
sst1DeviceInfo: FBI Revision:2, TMU Revison:1, Num TMUs:1
sst1DeviceInfo: FBI Memory:2, TMU[0] Memory:2
sst1DeviceInfo: Dac Type: TI TVP3409
sst1DeviceInfo: SliDetect:0
sst1InitRegisters(): LFB Writes go through memory FIFO...
sst1InitRegisters(): TEXTURE Writes go through memory FIFO...
sst1InitRegisters(): exiting with status 1...
sst1InitShutdown(): Shutting down SST-1 #0...
sst1InitShutdown(): Returning with status 1...
Mojo result:
Info for Voodoo board # 0:
=====================================================
Virtual Base Address: 0xe6000000
Physical Base Address: 0xe6000008
PCI Device Number: 0x9
Vendor ID: 0x121a
Device ID: 0x1
FBI Revision: 2
FBI Memory: 2 MB
FBI PowerOn Sense: 0x2
TMU PowerOn Sense: 0x11
FBI DAC Output Color Format: 24BPP
Scan-Line Interleaved? No
TMU Revision: 1
Number TMUs: 1
TMU 0 RAM: 2 MB

It even has full RAM showing for both the texture and frame buffer - so I started a game and only saw a totally black screen, but the computer was still running. I was probing at the DAC while it was running to see if the VCCA (DAC analog side power) and ground were connected when my probe on ground slipped and maybe completed the circuit since the ground trace there was completely broken away. But when my multimeter probe slipped something good happened instead of something bad I could see the unreal flyby in blue!
Pressing the DAC area more I think I managed to get red as well and turned it off to work on the DAC. I thought the DAC might be damaged initially but if it's working well enough to generate 2 colours of 3 and make an image it should be fine. Instead of using hot air I used the low melt solder stuff and that got the DAC off pretty cleanly except as you can see in the picture a bunch of traces were broken probably before the chip was removed.

Took an hour or two to get all the traces in place and then I marked the DAC legs where there were wire legs instead of copper traces, so I could squash some of the "J" shaped legs into "L" legs - allowing the remaining good traces to still make contact with the DAC's PLCC legs, while giving clearance for the wire leg 'traces'.
That went great though, I put the card back together again and could actually test it - it went straight into tomb raider demo with the 3DFX splash screen showing all colours 😁

This card has been with me for something like 18 months and I've now and then taken another go at getting it working with no result each time because I didn't know what the diagnostics could show, didn't know that no DAC would upset the whole card. I've taken chips off, replaced RAM, broken traces in the process of replacing RAM, resoldered the QFP legs probably multiple times... It's had a rough time and I've never been able to test it.
I found that although it can now run games with proper display, it's glitching sometimes - I resoldered the RAM again and added some more capacitors to no avail, but there were some 0-ohm resistors on the back that had somehow had the markings rubbed off and replacing those seemed to stabilise the display. To test it I ran the unreal flyby for a while and it looked fine.
I was celebrating a job well done when...
IMG_2328 (Large).JPG
Party mode activated... I may still have a bit more work to do...

A labor of love knows no end. 😉

Please keep saving those injured Voodoos .

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-11-11, 02:22:

Party mode activated... I may still have a bit more work to do...

I had a similarly spectacular failure mode with a PowerVR PCX2:

PowerVR psychedelic failure

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-11-11, 02:22:

Wah, I've been buying broken 3DFX cards for a while to see if I can fix them. Today I was looking over a Voodoo 1 that I'd bough […]
Show full quote

Wah, I've been buying broken 3DFX cards for a while to see if I can fix them. Today I was looking over a Voodoo 1 that I'd bought last year and I could never get it to do anything. It would only report 0xDEAD for the TMU status with 57005 TMUs. I'd thought it was down to a broken pin since there were a few on this card - but now I know how to actually use mojo.exe to generate the SST.LOG file which gives actual information:

This 0xDEAD result in Mojo

Info for Voodoo board # 0:
=====================================================
Virtual Base Address: 0xe6000000
Physical Base Address: 0xe6000008
PCI Device Number: 0x9
Vendor ID: 0x121a
Device ID: 0x1
FBI Revision: 2
FBI Memory: 0 MB
FBI PowerOn Sense: 0x0
TMU PowerOn Sense: 0xdead
FBI DAC Output Color Format: 24BPP
Scan-Line Interleaved? No
TMU Revision: 57005
Number TMUs: 57005
WARNING: Board 0: Bogus number of TMUs (57005)!

Was caused by

sst1Init Routines: InitCode $Revision: 8 $
sst1InitMapBoard(): BoardsInSystem = 1
sst1InitMapBoard(): vAddr:0xc8dc0000 pAddr:0xdd000008 Dev:0x9 Board:0
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting TREX-to-FBI FIFO THRESHOLD to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting PRELIM FT-CLK delay to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Could not detect DAC...

This reference design Voodoo 1 card did have a very bad hit to the empty PCB area and I'd already had to rebuild the VGA pass-through circuitry, but it looks like the DAC took a hit too:
3dfx voodoo1 TVP3409 DAC traces damaged.JPG
Those are all damaged traces where you see the thin metal legs, three of them were the red green and blue signals. I found that after I got the DAC to communicate with the FBI chip by resoldering legs at the upper part, which are the digital connections, the MOJO result changed into a good one:

Mojo and SST log of working Voodoo 1

SST:
sst1Init Routines: InitCode $Revision: 8 $
sst1InitMapBoard(): BoardsInSystem = 1
sst1InitMapBoard(): vAddr:0xc8dc0000 pAddr:0xdd000008 Dev:0x9 Board:0
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting TREX-to-FBI FIFO THRESHOLD to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting PRELIM FT-CLK delay to 0x8...
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX0INIT0=0x5441
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX0INIT1=0xf420
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX1INIT0=0x5441
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX1INIT1=0xf420
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX2INIT0=0x5441
sst1InitRegisters(): Storing TREX2INIT1=0xf420
sst1InitRegisters(): Setting up FAST DRAM Configuration
sst1DeviceInfo: Board ID: Obsidian GE
sst1DeviceInfo: FbiConfig:0x2, TmuConfig:0x11
sst1DeviceInfo: FBI Revision:2, TMU Revison:1, Num TMUs:1
sst1DeviceInfo: FBI Memory:2, TMU[0] Memory:2
sst1DeviceInfo: Dac Type: TI TVP3409
sst1DeviceInfo: SliDetect:0
sst1InitRegisters(): LFB Writes go through memory FIFO...
sst1InitRegisters(): TEXTURE Writes go through memory FIFO...
sst1InitRegisters(): exiting with status 1...
sst1InitShutdown(): Shutting down SST-1 #0...
sst1InitShutdown(): Returning with status 1...
Mojo result:
Info for Voodoo board # 0:
=====================================================
Virtual Base Address: 0xe6000000
Physical Base Address: 0xe6000008
PCI Device Number: 0x9
Vendor ID: 0x121a
Device ID: 0x1
FBI Revision: 2
FBI Memory: 2 MB
FBI PowerOn Sense: 0x2
TMU PowerOn Sense: 0x11
FBI DAC Output Color Format: 24BPP
Scan-Line Interleaved? No
TMU Revision: 1
Number TMUs: 1
TMU 0 RAM: 2 MB

It even has full RAM showing for both the texture and frame buffer - so I started a game and only saw a totally black screen, but the computer was still running. I was probing at the DAC while it was running to see if the VCCA (DAC analog side power) and ground were connected when my probe on ground slipped and maybe completed the circuit since the ground trace there was completely broken away. But when my multimeter probe slipped something good happened instead of something bad - I could see the unreal flyby in blue!
Pressing the DAC area more I think I managed to get red as well and turned it off to work on the DAC. I thought the DAC might be damaged initially but if it's working well enough to generate 2 colours of 3 and make an image it should be fine. Instead of using hot air I used the low melt solder stuff and that got the DAC off pretty cleanly except as you can see in the picture a bunch of traces were broken probably before the chip was removed.

Took an hour or two to get all the traces in place and then I marked the DAC legs where there were wire legs instead of copper traces, so I could squash some of the "J" shaped legs into "L" legs - allowing the remaining good traces to still make contact with the DAC's PLCC legs, while giving clearance for the wire leg 'traces'.
That went great though, I put the card back together again and could actually test it - it went straight into tomb raider demo with the 3DFX splash screen showing all colours 😁

This card has been with me for something like 18 months and I've now and then taken another go at getting it working with no result each time because I didn't know what the diagnostics could show, didn't know that no DAC would upset the whole card. I've taken chips off, replaced RAM, broken traces in the process of replacing RAM, resoldered the QFP legs probably multiple times... It's had a rough time and I've never been able to test it.
I found that although it can now run games with proper display, it's glitching sometimes - I resoldered the RAM again and added some more capacitors to no avail, but there were some 0-ohm resistors on the back that had somehow had the markings rubbed off and replacing those seemed to stabilise the display. To test it I ran the unreal flyby for a while and it looked fine.
I was celebrating a job well done when...
IMG_2328 (Large).JPG
Party mode activated... I may still have a bit more work to do...

That is some seriously nice detective work figuring out what was wrong. I really love seeing old hardware fixed and working again. Good luck figuring out party mode.