The video is now complete
Fujitsu Ergo Pro x453 PC - CH03: The Repair https://youtu.be/jdukubiLE34
I hope it captures the overall flow of how the machine was fixed in the end. It was certainly an interesting collaboration and I learnt a lot.
I also have a friend, who is an engineer, and makes a lot of kit (mainly Amiga) and he was an advocate of removing and replacing the SRAM
Which I then dutifully ordered from China, costing £2 for the 4 chips and £26 postage 😒
And as we know, not needed in the end, so if anyone needs one of those fancy 12ns Sram chips, you know where to call 😀
Hope you all enjoy the video, knowing you had some part in it.
It was quite nerve wracking flashing the BIOS, I had this fear it would fail, and maybe break a BIOS that was in fact perfectly fine.
But it turned out to be the bullseye.
Thanks for taking the time to extract those files for me, they were the fix in the end eh 😀
So, next step is to put it all back together, and I hope to get some new kit in there.
First I have to solder up and mount the two replacement Noctua fans. So airflow will be higher, but noise actually reduced.
I have a SCSI card, and I was going to put a BlueSCSI to replace the hard disk, but then found out they are £70 these days!
Which is funny as I bought the entire PC for £60!
So, change of plan, and now it gets a bog standard IDE to CFlash and a 16GB card.
Unless I can source a cheaper alternative, with the same perf.
The SCSI card goes in anyway, as I have a SCSI Zip drive I want to use on many of my retro machines, so its a great addition anyway.
Also, I bought a Matrox Millenium graphics card, which was actually an upgrade offered by ICL
I might try it with the on-board graphics, and maybe bench mark it.
That would make sense I suppose, before upgrading.
Oh yeah, now the machine is working, I also have two sticks of 32GB, so its not maxed out, but 64gb for a machine of this age is pretty enormous
I think it will play DOOM 😀
BTW, does anyone have an recommendations for utilities to test the machine and also benchmark it?
I want to benchmark its CPU, RAM, and its graphics card, and the hard disk.
Cheers
Chris
https://www.youtube.com/@RetronautTech