yourepicfailure wrote on Today, 07:36:

Shame the panel has yellowed though, this is a mighty fine 9x laptop.

I would be opening the screen and seeing if I can get a new CCFL tube for the display

NeoG_ wrote on Today, 07:43:

yourepicfailure wrote on Today, 07:36:

Shame the panel has yellowed though, this is a mighty fine 9x laptop.

I would be opening the screen and seeing if I can get a new CCFL tube for the display

In this case, I hate to be that kind of person but I'm going to leave it alone.
The laptop does have some history (original hard disk has some military documents on it, do not ask for them) and I would prefer to leave it yellowed to show it has history.

I mentioned the T21: The A21e's "really good" sibling. It is unmarred, and would offer a near-identical experience (minus the included floppy drive, slightly smaller screen and S3 Savage IX GPU) to the A21e. But its res is 1400x1050...

EDIT: I forgot... the display mode was set to 16bit color...

Last night I was all set to have a play with my retro rig and finally put the StarTech IDE-SATA adapter to use with an SSD and install Windows98... until I started the machine up and it just kept either restarting itself or just locking up - in both cases the symptoms were the same. After anything from 30s to a few minutes the VGA would go off, along with the power light on the case (but not the HDD light) and a sound like rapid HDD reads would be emitted from the speaker. It usually wouldn't respond to the power or reset buttons being pressed either. After two hours trying to diagnose the problem I gave up and went to bed thinking I'll be looking for a new mobo over the weekend.

This morning on a hunch I dug out an old (~2010 ish) barely used PSU and swapped it over. Rock solid for the time it took to do two passes of Memtest86+ (good half hour at least).

This is the old PSU.

And I'm guessing that brown gunk shouldn't be there and is probably the cause of the stability issues?

On the plus side the replacement PSU has a big slow fan which will improve air extraction in the case no end. The downside is its bigger and I could barely get 3 of the screws in to hold it - the fourth is a no go as it's just ever so slightly offset from the case slot.

I've currently got a Diamond Stealth S540 (Savage 4 Pro) in the machine and I also noticed the heatsink on that gets a bit hot - not uncomfortably so but I think I need to try and get some additional cooling on that too.

Although now the missus is expecting a parcel to arrive next week with "more computer crap"... I'd hate to disappoint her! 😁

that gunk is rotting glue, but not the problem right now. I would remove it safely later, after you figure out the stability problem.
check capacitor ratings, which would involve removing some of the glue anyways.

Reminds me, I do need to check on my Nipron Non-Stop PSU. Been going 24/7 for a very long time.

yourepicfailure wrote on Today, 09:03:

I mentioned the T21: The A21e's "really good" sibling. It is unmarred, and would offer a near-identical experience (minus the included floppy drive, slightly smaller screen and S3 Savage IX GPU) to the A21e. But its res is 1400x1050...

These make quite nice Win9x/Me retrogaming systems, with the DOS-compatible audio card and all. I had an A21m for some time, but, alas, it died. 🙁

hornet1990 wrote on Today, 09:34:

Last night I was all set to have a play with my retro rig and finally put the StarTech IDE-SATA adapter to use with an SSD and i […]
Show full quote

Last night I was all set to have a play with my retro rig and finally put the StarTech IDE-SATA adapter to use with an SSD and install Windows98... until I started the machine up and it just kept either restarting itself or just locking up - in both cases the symptoms were the same. After anything from 30s to a few minutes the VGA would go off, along with the power light on the case (but not the HDD light) and a sound like rapid HDD reads would be emitted from the speaker. It usually wouldn't respond to the power or reset buttons being pressed either. After two hours trying to diagnose the problem I gave up and went to bed thinking I'll be looking for a new mobo over the weekend.

This morning on a hunch I dug out an old (~2010 ish) barely used PSU and swapped it over. Rock solid for the time it took to do two passes of Memtest86+ (good half hour at least).

This is the old PSU.

The attachment psu.jpg is no longer available

And I'm guessing that brown gunk shouldn't be there and is probably the cause of the stability issues?

The attachment leak.jpg is no longer available

On the plus side the replacement PSU has a big slow fan which will improve air extraction in the case no end. The downside is its bigger and I could barely get 3 of the screws in to hold it - the fourth is a no go as it's just ever so slightly offset from the case slot.

I've currently got a Diamond Stealth S540 (Savage 4 Pro) in the machine and I also noticed the heatsink on that gets a bit hot - not uncomfortably so but I think I need to try and get some additional cooling on that too.

Although now the missus is expecting a parcel to arrive next week with "more computer crap"... I'd hate to disappoint her! 😁

Classic DEER crap. Discard it.

PcBytes wrote on Today, 11:29:

Classic DEER crap. Discard it.

Thanks, yeah, I wasn’t minded to try fixing it. Possibly a bit outside my comfort zone working on a PSU anyway…