A while back, I got a Sanyo MBC550 motherboard, and I want to restore it at some point. The problem is that someone removed the keyboard and composite video connectors. Whoever did it desoldered the composite video connector, but was terribly lazy with the keyboard connector and simply cut it off the board.
Since the motherboard is two-layered, it's easy to follow the lines. But I haven't found a suitable photo of the underside.
I sent images (and some references to software, info and the bios) of mine to theretroweb (I edited the cut part in the image from above, cloning the other connector) for a new entry.
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/sanyo-fs-555d
https://theretroweb.com/motherboard/image/san … f8547383519.jpg
https://theretroweb.com/motherboard/image/san … 15061121590.jpg
So, I would appreciate it if anyone has a full picture of the underside with enough detail , or has this PC and could take a detailed photo of that part of the board.
I have the schematics, and I can see the keyboard and controller connections, but an image would help me do the job even faster later.
Also, to make a better, more complete picture for the retroweb

Pondering whether to try some retrobriting. Picked up a "Sharper image sanitiser" which appears to be a UV-C unit with a 4W tube. Has perforated metal around it though, so not sure if it will do a mottled pattern. Has a 10 minute timer, not sure if that would be enough to zap an EEPROM or whether it would take 2 goes.

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-05-11, 02:40:

Pondering whether to try some retrobriting. Picked up a "Sharper image sanitiser" which appears to be a UV-C unit with a 4W tube. Has perforated metal around it though, so not sure if it will do a mottled pattern. Has a 10 minute timer, not sure if that would be enough to zap an EEPROM or whether it would take 2 goes.

Haha! In a few days, I'll try a toothbrush sanitizer. So far, I've erased all my Eproms with a couple of weeks of sun exposure (shiny tropical sun, fast retrobrite is a bonus 😀 ). Since I have several of each type, I can do a few tests before needing to take a couple of weeks to erase some. Believe it or not, it's a bit difficult to get a dedicated eraser where I live, although it would be a bit easier for me now. I was also going to build one with UV LEDs, but now I can get this for free, if it works.

kinetix wrote on 2025-05-11, 02:50:

BitWrangler wrote on 2025-05-11, 02:40:

Pondering whether to try some retrobriting. Picked up a "Sharper image sanitiser" which appears to be a UV-C unit with a 4W tube. Has perforated metal around it though, so not sure if it will do a mottled pattern. Has a 10 minute timer, not sure if that would be enough to zap an EEPROM or whether it would take 2 goes.

Haha! In a few days, I'll try a toothbrush sanitizer. So far, I've erased all my Eproms with a couple of weeks of sun exposure (shiny tropical sun, and retrobrite is also fast 😀 ). Since I have several of each type, I can do a few tests before needing to take a couple of weeks to erase some. Believe it or not, it's a bit difficult to get a dedicated eraser where I live, although it would be a bit easier for me now. I was also going to build one with UV LEDs, but now I can get this for free, if it works.

Yeah I've got another UV device, a cellphone sanitiser that just seems a bit difficult... can't get an EEPROM to sit sideways in it to get close to emitter... just for phones slimmer than 10mm I guess. Has annoying lid interlock and smash to access construction, so didn't feel like re-engineering the whole damn thing yet.

Marathon fixed the 4 working mobos from this month's first lot:

- ABIT ST6-RAID - recap, one socket tab unfortunately broke off so might need constant supervision when using 462 coolers
- Gigabyte GA-6BXC rev2 - cleanup, BIOS IC, 2032 holder
- Soyo 6BA +III - recap
- DFI P2XBL Rev D - cleanup

I "got around" to making a proper/working serial cable for the "Poqet PC"
I acquired a few months back... and after some software work, am finally able
to move "stuff" onto the system!

The "Poqet PC" is an ancient (and TINY -large calculator size) 8088 DOS 3.3
system which runs on 2 AA batteries. It has:
C: is a ROMdrive with DOS, D: a 32k RAMdrive (minmal working space to boot),
The system has two "expansion slots" under the keyboard which happen to have
two "massive" 512k RAM based drives A: and B: which presumably will hold their
content long enough to change batteries.

It has no externally accessible drives, network or any other simple way to put
files on/off.. I had no way to transfer "stuff" to it.

The only usable I/O is a single serial port. But.. this as well as a few
expansion signals are on a "unique" slot connector on the back.

I didn't have the Poqet serial cable (or any other expansion accessories), but
I did find that a PCI card edge connector was the right spacing, and was able
to make a cut-down section to connect to the end which has the serial port
signals and worked out the signals and confirmed that they are standard RS-232.

But.. I didn't have the "other" side of Poqet tools to actually transfer files!
No problem: I can use my own DDLINK which can "bootstrap" itself to a new
system via a serial cable - but for some reason that wouldn't work.

In the interest of "faster" I had made to bootstrap loader operate at 19200
bps - turns out that 4.77mhz 8088/DOS couldn't keep up... (I must not have had
such an old/slow system by the time I developed DDLINK)

So I modified DDLINK to allow the bootstrap transfer speed to be changed (and
defaulted it to 9600bps.

Now-a-days when testing little tools for "real" DOS, I often use my own DBDOS
to boot DOS under DosBox and in this case communicate with another instance of
DosBox running on the host via it's "nullmodem" feature...

In testing the modified DDLINK, I found what appears to be a DosBox BUG!
Turns out if you connect a "nullmodem" serial, then "config -r .." to restart
DosBox, It doesn't release that connection before the "new instance" while
initializing, tries to make it again (and fails because the connection is
already busy) - I had to modify DBDOS to NOT make the connection on first
launch (where you make selections/settings) and make it on the restart so
that the booted DOS would see it.

A fun day!

My recently purchased laptop Chicony NB5625, see post here, was fully disassembled and inspected.
All plastic parts are in a good condition, no breaks. It looks not new but quite good.
Found a missing screw inside the LCD, hope that it didn't short any circuit inside, this means that somebody was here before.
Battery was leaked and damaged the PCB, was repaired, hopefully small area was affected.

Combined two of these to make one working pad. Also replaced the green LED with a bright yellow one 😁.

Susanin79 wrote on 2025-05-12, 12:57:

My recently purchased laptop Chicony NB5625, see post here, was fully disassembled and inspected. All plastic parts are in a go […]
Show full quote

My recently purchased laptop Chicony NB5625, see post here, was fully disassembled and inspected.
All plastic parts are in a good condition, no breaks. It looks not new but quite good.
Found a missing screw inside the LCD, hope that it didn't short any circuit inside, this means that somebody was here before.
Battery was leaked and damaged the PCB, was repaired, hopefully small area was affected.

Super tidy wire repair, looks great, what kind of wire do you use? I assume some thin copper wire with the insulation stripped off?

This last day or so I've been working on my Toshiba T1950CT which has been in my 'needs work' pile because since its front polariser on the TFT went bad and got replaced, the Sharp LQ9D023 screen's capacitors have also been causing glitches / noise in the display and overall the screen has been making straining sounds, which has made the laptop unpleasant to use. I knew it was *a* capacitor somewhere on the LCD panel itself but hadn't been able to track it down well before since there are quite a few caps and I didn't want to remove all of them.

I got these LCR tweezers and while of course they can't give accurate readings for where capacitors are in parallel with others, they did let me find the bad caps. The 'X' one had dropped to 4uF and high ESR from what should've been 33uF. The two '--' ones were where the capacity didn't add up - there's two 22uF caps and should've been reading ~44uF but it was instead nearer to 30. Pulling both off let me confirm which one was bad.

I didn't have the right caps for either exact size / value so used 35v caps instead, one with the proper SMD and one with a cap placed on its side. There's no room to work with a soldering iron so resoldering those was hard work. The quantity of plastic nearby puts me off of using hot air.

Put it all back together and although the polariser is now glossy and not attached to the screen itself, instead just taped to the top of the LCD housing and sitting in place there - curiously it's not 'sticking' to the LCD glass or causing water marks from partial adhesion so it seems to be fine with the non-adhesive polariser. I was going to try installing an adhesive polariser with a matte finish but can't be bothered now, it looks great and the lack of 'matte' finish makes the LCD look a little clearer even if it is now very reflective.

Then while I was testing some floppy disks, the belt popped off the Citizen V9DA-71B because it was one of my earlier 3d printed ones from before I got the dimensions more accurate. That's ~30 screws and a couple of hours just to get it and replace the belt. Hopefully that doesn't happen any more.
IT's nice to get to enjoy this particular laptop again 😀

Today I just bricked my only other retro win 9x system (for the time being) with a bad driver, fun times were had by all 😀

steakguy120 wrote on Yesterday, 04:07:

Today I just bricked my only other retro win 9x system (for the time being) with a bad driver, fun times were had by all 😀

Bricked your system with a bad driver? Care to explain?

JustJulião wrote on 2025-05-08, 22:17:

I took two NexGen based ADDX computers, some Olivetti stuff, and many mechanical keyboards but everything else is still there. If you are from southwestern France, let me know to get in touch with the old man. He needs everything to be gone.

PS: I gave more than 1€ each as I didn't want to take advantage of his kindness.

I'm in !

Great job, especially the LCD screen, laptop looks awesome.
Hope that my Chicony screen works well, have never repair them before.

Thermalwrong wrote on Yesterday, 02:37:

Super tidy wire repair, looks great, what kind of wire do you use? I assume some thin copper wire with the insulation stripped off?

Yes this is a thin 0,2 mm copper wire without the insulation. Didn't save a label, but it is a common item. Nice to work with, electronic microscope helped a lot to make all wires straight and accurate.

Testing more of my Socket A CPUs I discovered that an XP2000 Throughbred I have is multiplier unlocked. Another little unexpected bonus. There is no one I know in real life who would/could understand why this would make me happy.

dominusprog wrote on Yesterday, 11:51:

steakguy120 wrote on Yesterday, 04:07:

Today I just bricked my only other retro win 9x system (for the time being) with a bad driver, fun times were had by all 😀

Bricked your system with a bad driver? Care to explain?

So I'm using a Chaintech 6BJM0/BCM QS440BXP socket 370 motherboard, I had a Matrox G250 video card in it, and I was installing the latest intel released chipset drivers which after getting everything else thus far (audio and video drivers) installed just caused the system to crap out, luckily though i just figured out that the system doesn't like either my weird g400 (flex3d) or g250, but is okay with my trio 2d video card and ATI rage, as of now I'm trying to get the included bios update utility to work with the latest bios for the system, though that maybe jumping the gun now.

Susanin79 wrote on Yesterday, 21:22:

Yes this is a thin 0,2 mm copper wire without the insulation. Didn't save a label, but it is a common item. Nice to work with, electronic microscope helped a lot to make all wires straight and accurate.

Very nice repair. Curious to know where you got that 0.2mm copper wire from? Every time I buy some it comes insulated and I have to burn it off with a flame.