PD2JK wrote on 2026-03-12, 18:31:

Tested out an Asus X800 XT AGP I recently got, turns out the previous owner did some BIOS flashing to PE.
Free from artefacts in 3DMark03, so I'm happy.

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Funny enough I have the PCI-E version of the X800 made by ASUS, came with a recent Shuttle SB81P I bought that's a nice time capsule.

I wonder if the EAX800XT I have can do XTPE speeds.

Returned to repairing the Roland SC-55 I had on my bench a few weeks ago. This was the unit with the faulty resistors on the rear MIDI input.

The resistors are in a really awkward location right next to the giant plastic MIDI ports. I didn't want to use hot air or a regular soldering iron to try to remove them.

I'd been waiting on getting tips for my new soldering tweezers. After several weeks on backorder, they finally arrived.

Using these soldering tweezers for SMD removal is a dream. The two resistors came off with virtually no effort and no risk of damage to adjacent components. Pads cleaned up well too.

Soldered the new resistors in place and did the MIDI input test. It finally passed. Did some subsequent listening via the rear input and everything seems to be working fine.

I still need to replace the tactile switches on the front panel, but I'll save that for another day.

Wrapped up my 9500Pro repair. It got real challenging in the end 😁

And I found some DRAM that is literally sending mixed signals?

Fixed the AIO dating from 2012.
Lots of gunk I had to flush and then filling it to the max.
From 104°C max to 32°C idle and 54°C at full (i7-3820 - 130W beast)

Pretty happy as I discovered watercooling while looking for stuff 😀

tehsiggi wrote on 2026-03-13, 13:40:

Wrapped up my 9500Pro repair. It got real challenging in the end 😁

And I found some DRAM that is literally sending mixed signals?

Well that's certainly a new one. How does that slip past quality assurance?

Solved my crashing problem on my 3DFX Athlon XP Win98SE PC by replacing the SB Live with an Audigy 2ZS. It really was that bug. Now it runs smoothly again. That OS install is sure well-travelled. I was planning on a clean reinstall for obvious reasons, but it seems that will really not be necessary after all. Shame I can't use the Live Drive anymore...

Also, after 10 years of having it, I realise the cooler on my Voodoo 3 isn't hard to remove at all. I thought it was one of those that are impossible to remove without putting it in the freezer, but just putting a box cutter between the chip and heatsink after having removed the push pins and warmed it up with a a little use is enough. I know that thermal pad might have been way better than whatever thermal paste I use, but at least I can replace the whole cooler now with something better, I wonder, would one of those fancy PTM7950 pads be ideal for a Voodoo3? I think it should, considering these things like to run hot, and the pads get better with each thermal cycle.

Did more work on my SC-55 sound modules.

I replaced all the tactile switches (except power) on both SC-55 modules and the SC-55 mkII. Also replaced the 2200uF capacitor on the mkII for good measure.

Removing the switches was tedious since all them were soldered on with pins bent in random directions. Took a lot of patience in removing them.

After doing all this, I thought I was done with work on these units. However, in testing, I discovered one of the units has a wonky MIDI 2 input. It's the SC-55 that originally had the damaged resistors on the MIDI 1 input.

Unfortunately I didn't thoroughly test its MIDI 2 input originally. The internal test reports it's fine, however, in playing back MIDI files I get occasional stuttering/lag and dropped notes or instruments. MIDI 1 input works perfectly fine.

It seems partially dependent on which MIDI files I use. Some it's hardly noticeable, others it's more obvious.

The MIDI 2 circuit goes through a completely different path than MIDI 1. While MIDI 1 is more-or-less connected directly to the CPU via a single trace, the MIDI 2 input goes through serial-to-parallel conversion via this MB89251A chip, before going into the CPU via 8 data lines.

I tested the second SC-55 I have, and both its MIDI inputs are fine. However, it's also using a later firmware (v2.00) while the one with bad MIDI 2 input is using v1.10.

I don't know if this is potentially a CPU/firmware related issue, or if it's something wrong with the MIDI 2 input circuitry. I plan to test and compare circuits versus the working SC-55 and see if I can pin down any differences.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2026-03-14, 00:17:

Well that's certainly a new one. How does that slip past quality assurance?

No clue. It's only of the top side, which leads me to believe that top and bottom memory are being fed by different reels in production, which is cool to know.

I used the lunch break for measuring some more AGP cards and their consumption.

Now that I've measured it, I'm a bit baffled what they were thinking. Full size PCB? Okay.. fine. But they draw 3oW at max and at max 13W from 12V from the external power coming it. Which translates to 1A on 12V. I'm pretty sure they just wanted to use the exact same BOM as for the PCIe variant, where they feed their VRM from 12V for the GPU. And as they wanted to make sure the AGP slot with it's single pin for 12V isn't an issue, they just went with the additional external power input.

The 3.3V from the AGP slot are used for the memory and for rialto it seems. What a weird weird card.

Don't mind the soft ball as a card mount, I'm a professional.

I think it's great that some of you disassemble the vintage synth modules and refurb them with replacement parts to keep them going. I'd certainly do that if I had the hardware and knowledge. I wonder if anyone is making money doing that.

Got hold of some laptops and setup a Counter Strike LAN with my old Clan mates, we played the very first CS Beta 1.0 3.0 and 6.0. How much this game has changed from a little half life mod, video link below

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOBVxrzkSUc

Spent the last 2 days messing around with my DOS rig. Playing and testing a few different games. Messing with the sound config a little bit. Moving some files around to make it a bit more organized. We're going to be moving in the near future and I wanted to get my "retro" systems sorted, Win98 rig is next. New place has much more room for my rigs and hobbies.

Can't go anywhere or do anything right now. I live in NE Wisconsin and Blizzard Elsa has dumped two feet of snow outside, and 40-50 MPH winds have pushed drifts much higher. So, I just fired up my DOS system and decided to ride it out in warm nostalgic memories. 🤣

I did a bench on my recently built Pentium 4 rig
It has socket 478 Pentium 4 Northwood CPU at 3.4 Ghz
Pixelview Nvidia GeForce 4 MX440 8x AGP 128MB
1GB Apacer/Hynix DDR RAM at 200Mhz
Western Digital VelociRaptor WD5000HHTZ 500 GB SATA
Operating system is Windows Millennium
I chose 3DMark 2001 for the DirectX 8 tests of this cards ability to run it but I believe it is originally a DirectX 7 card and PCMark 2002 pro for the CPU.
I think its a great system for DirectX up to 7 but it runs as a qualified V8 too.
The bench of the SATA HDD leaves all the IDE drive's I've had for dead!
Perhaps one day I'll spot a DirectX 9 card but I am happy for now.
Today I expect the arrival of an IDE DVD Writer to complete the rig so I can finally close it up and say finished!
Good for IRC with an old mirc client, Protoweb browsing with retrozilla, playing videos and music lots of cool games too.