That may actually be rat piss instead of nicotine?

appiah4 wrote on Yesterday, 08:36:

That may actually be rat piss instead of nicotine?

Oh boy ...Hanta Virus here we come.

Worse yet if there are fleas ...Yersinia Pestis here we come.

All jokes aside please wear gloves and a mask when cleaning that.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 08:37:

Oh boy ...Hanta Virus here we come. […]
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appiah4 wrote on Yesterday, 08:36:

That may actually be rat piss instead of nicotine?

Oh boy ...Hanta Virus here we come.

Worse yet if there are fleas ...Yersinia Pestis here we come.

All jokes aside please wear gloves and a mask when cleaning that.

Reminds me of a Pentium MMX server tower I had to clean... Rat piss and... stuff was all over, but no worries. Hanta virus can't live in old rat feces. It's the fresh stuff that is dangerous 🥲

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 08:32:

As someone who has had to clean a house of a deceased smoker ..its truly fucking disgusting ...even 10 years later I can still smell and taste the stench if I think about it.

I wont even touch a smokers PC if I can help it.

smokers dont think about that, many times a smoker friend tried to gimme parts for sell and i kept telling him that the only way i could sell those parts its to another smoker. He couldnt wrap his head around the fact that anyone who dont smoke its gonna notice instantly the smell (even worse if it gets warm), they dont notice the awful smell because they live with that, so its normal.

its something like when you get up in the morning and your room smells like ass and you dont notice until you get back from the kitchen / shower and need to open the windows to ventilate.

Well, I drenched it with foam cleaner, but still smelly. Tomorrow the 99.9% isopropyl alcohol comes in to play.

It mean time it is running Memtest. The PC100 memory runs fine with the P3-1000 (133). Must be some divider or the chips are forgiving enough.

Nevermind, it's hanging.

Living wrote on 2026-05-31, 15:13:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-05-31, 10:03:

I bought a lot of untested graphics cards. This is the first time I've made such a purchase, and the second photo shows specifically what I've gambled on.

well? it paid off?

It took me a very long time to test that GeForce 256 DDR because I didn't want to run risks on the old cooler, waited for replacement, heatwave dissuaded me booting anything at all, and then a period of sickness.

So after replacing the cooler and finally testing my observations are: There is no VBIOS banner at boot, POST output shows artefacts in the digital stage, standard GeForce 256 drivers are not loading, and voltage droop is causing horizontal banding in the analog stage.

Possibly a corrupted VBIOS. Possibly failed VRAM. Definitely a ceramic capacitor has failed. But, it does POST and does output an image..

🤣!

LMAO! Thank you for highlighting; I had not actually read the text.

Before getting around to testing that LRI GeForce 256 DDR, I had also already purchased another lot of broken cards specifically for yet another GeForce 256 DDR (photo attached).

I estimate I've spent around £110 chasing these three GeForce 256s, and various other cards were acquired as side-effects:

LRI GeForce 256 DDR: Described above.
ASUS GeForce 256 SDR: Broken/missing resistors on VRAM, which might mask other issues.
Creative GeForce 256 DDR: Voltage droop in analog stage, which is a far less serious annoyance.

Is it paying off? I do not know! 😉

Ydee wrote on Yesterday, 14:53:

🤣!

Well ..I never expected retro PCs to come with that BIOS option 😁

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 15:07:

LMAO! Thank you for highlighting; I had not actually read the text. […]
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LMAO! Thank you for highlighting; I had not actually read the text.

Before getting around to testing that LRI GeForce 256 DDR, I had also already purchased another lot of broken cards specifically for yet another GeForce 256 DDR (photo attached).

I estimate I've spent around £110 chasing these three GeForce 256s, and various other cards were acquired as side-effects:

LRI GeForce 256 DDR: Described above.
ASUS GeForce 256 SDR: Broken/missing resistors on VRAM, which might mask other issues.
Creative GeForce 256 DDR: Voltage droop in analog stage, which is a far less serious annoyance.

Is it paying off? I do not know! 😉

Depends ...not sure you can get a tested working 256 for 110 quid, but ...I would have just bought a known working one than keep buying unknown ones.

That said I did get my 256 DDR in a lot of other GPUs .. pretty sure the guy who sold the lot to me didn't know what was in it or didn't care. Got my working 6800 Ultra AGP in a broken GPU lot too so I've had some luck winging it that way.

I say keep going till you are roughly at what a working one would cost you ...

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 14:37:

It took me a very long time to test that GeForce 256 DDR because I didn't want to run risks on the old cooler, waited for replac […]
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Living wrote on 2026-05-31, 15:13:

MattRocks wrote on 2026-05-31, 10:03:

I bought a lot of untested graphics cards. This is the first time I've made such a purchase, and the second photo shows specifically what I've gambled on.

well? it paid off?

It took me a very long time to test that GeForce 256 DDR because I didn't want to run risks on the old cooler, waited for replacement, heatwave dissuaded me booting anything at all, and then a period of sickness.

So after replacing the cooler and finally testing my observations are: There is no VBIOS banner at boot, POST output shows artefacts in the digital stage, standard GeForce 256 drivers are not loading, and voltage droop is causing horizontal banding in the analog stage.

Possibly a corrupted VBIOS. Possibly failed VRAM. Definitely a ceramic capacitor has failed. But, it does POST and does output an image..

VRAM. Owned a similar layout card (inno3D Tornado Geforce 256 DDR) and resoldering ALL RAM chips fixed the artefacts. It seems to be a recurring issue with most 256s except ASUS' V6600 with SGRAM.

PD2JK wrote on Yesterday, 07:57:

Ha! Self restraint. Look what I got. It's a Tulip and it smells bad too! Yellow-brown everywhere so you guess what it smells lik […]
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Ha! Self restraint. Look what I got. It's a Tulip and it smells bad too! Yellow-brown everywhere so you guess what it smells like. But I'm gonna clean it anyway, probably in some HEV suit...

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But luckily there are some 'Pros' too.
-small
-yamaha XG sound
-real on-board graphics, not some shared memory solution
-someone tried to upgrade it to 1 GHz.

Adverted as non-working; yeah OEM boards like this Gigabyte GA-6ZOZ don't play nice with 133 MHz. And I figure one doesn't get far with PC100 memory installed.

The 6/400 name suggests a similar naming to Gateway, which would mean P6/400 - 400MHz Pentium II.

Ydee wrote on Yesterday, 14:53:

🤣!

Haha now that's some quality immature humor... 😁 what were the odds?

PcBytes wrote on Yesterday, 18:29:

VRAM. Owned a similar layout card (inno3D Tornado Geforce 256 DDR) and resoldering ALL RAM chips fixed the artefacts. It seems to be a recurring issue with most 256s except ASUS' V6600 with SGRAM.

So you kept the same chips, just removed and re-seated them like they have dodgy contacts?

That would actually fit my all-thumbs testing. From a cold boot I get corruption, but sometimes a warm reset cleans the image up temporarily - that's inconsistent with stuck bits in VRAM, and more consistent with noise or power causing VRAM to misbehave?

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 19:16:

PcBytes wrote on Yesterday, 18:29:

VRAM. Owned a similar layout card (inno3D Tornado Geforce 256 DDR) and resoldering ALL RAM chips fixed the artefacts. It seems to be a recurring issue with most 256s except ASUS' V6600 with SGRAM.

So you kept the same chips, just removed and re-seated them like they have dodgy contacts?

That would actually fit my all-thumbs testing. From a cold boot I get corruption, but sometimes a warm reset cleans the image up temporarily - that's inconsistent with stuck bits in VRAM, and more consistent with noise or power causing VRAM to misbehave?

Same chips, same positions. Just resoldered pin-by-pin.

MattRocks wrote on Yesterday, 19:16:

PcBytes wrote on Yesterday, 18:29:

VRAM. Owned a similar layout card (inno3D Tornado Geforce 256 DDR) and resoldering ALL RAM chips fixed the artefacts. It seems to be a recurring issue with most 256s except ASUS' V6600 with SGRAM.

So you kept the same chips, just removed and re-seated them like they have dodgy contacts?

That would actually fit my all-thumbs testing. From a cold boot I get corruption, but sometimes a warm reset cleans the image up temporarily - that's inconsistent with stuck bits in VRAM, and more consistent with noise or power causing VRAM to misbehave?

Dry solder joints on the Vram, when cold it has bad contact and as the board and chips warm up things expand a little and the Vram has better contact. You can test this a little by testing it cold and pressing on each chip with your fingers and see if the image clears up or things change on screen.

A good reflow wouldn't hurt.

Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 23:34:

.. Dry solder joints on the Vram, when cold it has bad contact and as the board and chips warm up things expand a little and the Vram has better contact. You can test this a little by testing it cold and pressing on each chip with your fingers and see if the image clears up or things change on screen. ...

Can be a bit tricky unless you can come up with a way to constantly and completely redraw the image ... bad contact would affect writing as well.

Some games will do this, some only redraw the parts that change.
If you can arrange it, I find live video from a camera to work well.

DaveDDS wrote on Today, 00:19:

Can be a bit tricky unless you can come up with a way to constantly and completely redraw the image ... bad contact would affec […]
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Trashbytes wrote on Yesterday, 23:34:

.. Dry solder joints on the Vram, when cold it has bad contact and as the board and chips warm up things expand a little and the Vram has better contact. You can test this a little by testing it cold and pressing on each chip with your fingers and see if the image clears up or things change on screen. ...

Can be a bit tricky unless you can come up with a way to constantly and completely redraw the image ... bad contact would affect writing as well.

Some games will do this, some only redraw the parts that change.
If you can arrange it, I find live video from a camera to work well.

Something like a VGA test app would work well if they can get into Windows .. there are DOS based ones too if they cant get into Windows.

Hmmm I will have to have another crack at the faulty one I got decades back. I messed with resistors to cut off half the RAM, and there was some cap/R knockoff in that area in the first place. So need to reconstruct that area (backside of GPU vicinity) and then flux and touch up the RAM to see if that works. Though by now I guess it might need all the electrolytics swapped out too.

I found a guy selling a computer on the local market place. THe pics were blurry and i couldnt see much but I took a gamble as it had the computer, monitor, Mouse , Keyboard, Joystick and a bunch of floppies.

Well here is it, its quite a nice machine. A bit dirty on the outside but super clean inside. The guy who sold it to me was super cool and even gave me 20 dollars off when I got there. He also had a cool collection of non computer related things that he showed me.

This was his own personal use computer back in the 90s.

PD2JK wrote on Yesterday, 12:54:

Well, I drenched it with foam cleaner, but still smelly. Tomorrow the 99.9% isopropyl alcohol comes in to play.

IIRC, what worked for me was putting the case in the bath tub with washing up liquid.