The 486 motherboard that took a bath yesterday is repaired, one keyboard connector trace was bypassed with wire, the KBC soldered back on, all jumpers, cache and BIOS put back in their places, CPU reinstalled and...

keyboard works reliably now.

Onto installing a VRM for 3.3V, a couple extra jumper headers onto solder pads for DX4 which are unpopulated at the moment, and to try a DX4 CPU.

the_ultra_code wrote:

(...) why would businesses still have dialup of all things? 🤣

For the exact reason stated in my prior post...our internet was down for over 12 hours. 😵

Our credit card terminal connects over ethernet, but has an automatic rollback to dialup if it's not able to connect over that. Likewise, the pharmacy department of the store where I work has to be able to process certain prescriptions through the local hospital, as well as submit electronic insurance claims and CSOS signatures, so they have a backup dialup connection in case the internet goes down. It's just really frustrating to use them because they both max out at 2400 baud (Why so slow, I have no bloody idea...I didn't design these systems. 🤣)

Continuing to work on the 486 motherboard from above posts... Soldered a VRM (I went with a LM338) and confirmed with voltmeter that it gives out the correct voltage... 3.41V, perfect. Soldered a few missing jumper headers, and also a coin cell holder which the MB had a solder print for but they went foolishly with the NiCd battery instead which leaked... won't happen again. 😀

Tested the new and inproved motherboard with some higher end CPUs.

First was a Intel Overdrive DX4ODPR100. The computer would not boot with it. Checked everything again including voltages and jumpers, all is good. TBH I had never used this overdrive, it may be dead.

Second an AND 5x86-PR75. Booted right up, recognized as a DX4-S

Next up, Cyrix 5x86-100GP. Lots of jumpers to change for this one.
It boots but only as 66MHz, and recognized as a 80487SX. 😀 Probably have to fiddle with jumpers more.

Tried to take a picture of the VRM but the phone decided that it should be out of focus. It's a LM338. Also don't worry about the lack of HSF on the CPU, I powered it on only for a few seconds to take pictures. It got barely warm. Eventually I'll put heatsinks both on the CPU and on the VRM.

(edit) it was pointed out to me that the overdrive is a 5V CPU, which I had forgotten. Will test again at 5V. 😀

Love where this is heading, man. Planning on installing a VRM on my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus as well, or just purchase a Packard Bell Plus 1150, assembly required part lot that has a Kingston AMD 5x86 CPU (pictures unclear) that has 5V supported.

stamasd wrote:

Continuing to work on the 486 motherboard from above posts... Soldered a VRM (I went with a LM338) and confirmed with voltmeter […]
Show full quote

Continuing to work on the 486 motherboard from above posts... Soldered a VRM (I went with a LM338) and confirmed with voltmeter that it gives out the correct voltage... 3.41V, perfect. Soldered a few missing jumper headers, and also a coin cell holder which the MB had a solder print for but they went foolishly with the NiCd battery instead which leaked... won't happen again. 😀

Tested the new and inproved motherboard with some higher end CPUs.

First was a Intel Overdrive DX4ODPR100. The computer would not boot with it. Checked everything again including voltages and jumpers, all is good. TBH I had never used this overdrive, it may be dead.

Second an AND 5x86-PR75. Booted right up, recognized as a DX4-S

Next up, Cyrix 5x86-100GP. Lots of jumpers to change for this one.
It boots but only as 66MHz, and recognized as a 80487SX. 😀 Probably have to fiddle with jumpers more.

Tried to take a picture of the VRM but the phone decided that it should be out of focus. It's a LM338. Also don't worry about the lack of HSF on the CPU, I powered it on only for a few seconds to take pictures. It got barely warm. Eventually I'll put heatsinks both on the CPU and on the VRM.

(edit) it was pointed out to me that the overdrive is a 5V CPU, which I had forgotten. Will test again at 5V. 😀

You might want to replace that capacitor near the CPU in the last photo. It's bulging.

Started setting up my website that I will be posting reviews , downloads and pictures for retro/vintage hardware and software on. Yay for free hosting and tools from a family member.

I was also able to get permission to include some ARIA16 drivers/source for the Miles Sound System in the review project I am going to do for those cards. I'm just awaiting the arrival of the files. Still looking for the SSDK packages for the ARIA16 cards which seem to unobtanium.

PcBytes wrote:

You might want to replace that capacitor near the CPU in the last photo. It's bulging.

Yeah, that one and another one not far from it. It's on the to-do list.

Made backup of fat 16 partition C with Norton Ghost 😀

stamasd wrote:

PcBytes wrote:

You might want to replace that capacitor near the CPU in the last photo. It's bulging.

Yeah, that one and another one not far from it. It's on the to-do list.

Ha, I’ve never seen caps on a 486 board do that, bloody caps. My ~9 year old Logitech 5.1 sound system starting flaking out on me recently - caps starting to bulge there too. Sigh.

I lost a cap on my AM2+ motherboard that caused the system to shut off without warning. Heck, my Dimension 4550 motherboard has 4 bloated caps and it still works, and my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus has no bloated or broken caps of any kind (24 years old and still running, even though I had the system for close to 2 years now).

Selling some surplus IDE drives. Everything under 10GB went like hotcakes, everything over 100GB too. Then someone made me an offer that was a little bit too low on the 40-80GB drives I had. Turns out he's an artist who wants shiny HDD platter wheels and maybe wants to make an installation with the actuators.

Interesting...

Told him I'd prefer to give him dead drives for that and would see what's being chucked out at work. Amusingly he was completely unaware of the fact people actually value older stuff more than less old stuff, he'd been somewhat confused by my pricing (3x more for a 340MB drive than for a 160GB one 😜 )

the_ultra_code wrote:

What, are you in retail? Also, I'm sorry if I sound ignorant, but like - why would businesses still have dialup of all things? 🤣

The year before I worked in a KOA camp store and we had 1.5m/b because that was all that was available. Also my POS system was a Dell Optiplex with 256mb of Pc-133 ram, a 1.5ghz P4 Rage 16mb 128 and Windoes 2000. By the time I was done for the season it had 512mb of ram, a 128mb Geforce 4 mx460 and a couple hidden games installed hehe.

Yesterday I went to the computer parts store to see if they had a Socket 478 motherboard since I do have a 3 GHz P4 HT lying around that I rescued from my PC repair school, it had bent pins but I was able to straight them out to make it work but I came across a normal Abit NF7 and that board was so known with gamers in the mid 2000's (2004, 2005, the Athlon XP era) so I bought it together with a non working 9600 Pro that needs some new caps, is from those which are "solid state" while in reality they are electrolytic

So I came back home with both of the boards and on the first time, motherboard did not work, it gave me the CPU overheating siren, so after digging on some Tom's forums and googling a lil' bit I thought that was one of the mosfets that went down buuut, it wasn't the case after I changed the processor (Athlon 2000) for a Sempron (both at 1.6 GHz) and the motherboard did show signs of life so I was thinking, why not about replacing my MSI K7N2G board with this one?? Both have the same chipset but the Abit sacrifices 2 of the 4 USB ports of the MSI but meh, has a big cooler and the best of all?? It recognized all my Kingston RAM that I had and it didn't get stuck on Memtest like happened with the MSI so I'm happy now :3

torindkflt wrote:

the_ultra_code wrote:

(...) why would businesses still have dialup of all things? 🤣

For the exact reason stated in my prior post...our internet was down for over 12 hours. 😵

Our credit card terminal connects over ethernet, but has an automatic rollback to dialup if it's not able to connect over that. Likewise, the pharmacy department of the store where I work has to be able to process certain prescriptions through the local hospital, as well as submit electronic insurance claims and CSOS signatures, so they have a backup dialup connection in case the internet goes down. It's just really frustrating to use them because they both max out at 2400 baud (Why so slow, I have no bloody idea...I didn't design these systems. 🤣)

Redundancy - makes sense. Just felt that by now businesses would have some better redundancies than that. 😜 🤣

ODwilly wrote:

the_ultra_code wrote:

What, are you in retail? Also, I'm sorry if I sound ignorant, but like - why would businesses still have dialup of all things? 🤣

The year before I worked in a KOA camp store and we had 1.5m/b because that was all that was available. Also my POS system was a Dell Optiplex with 256mb of Pc-133 ram, a 1.5ghz P4 Rage 16mb 128 and Windoes 2000. By the time I was done for the season it had 512mb of ram, a 128mb Geforce 4 mx460 and a couple hidden games installed hehe.

Sneaky pete. 😁

Rodoko wrote:

IMG-20181019-WA0016.jpg

IMG-20181019-WA0018.jpg

That ATI card with a Nvidia cooler. 🤣

stamasd wrote:

https://i.postimg.cc/28SFJC1f/20181019-111105-AMD-5x86-PR75.jpg […]
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Is this TrackIR on top of your monitor?
How does it go with DX? 🤣

Used my last floppy-mod cable, to give my second Amiga500 a new floppy drive. I had a spare Alps drive, and an eject button that fits in an Amiga500 case. Crafted a longer power cable in the process. Now both my a500's have new and quieter floppy drives, and can run some 10 years more. Need to find a way to mount the vga header in the case, as the 500 I worked on today, has an internal scandoubler. After that is done, then I am ready to install the accelerator (Terrible Fire 530) and an kickstart switch, so I can choose 1.3 for old games, and 3.1 if I want to load Workbench from an internal CF card.

Replacing caps on a 486 motherboard. Damn the maker of the board, used caps too thin for their rated voltage and capacity, so of course they went bad. And also squeezed one of them in a very tight space between the CPU socket and one of the VLB slots where none of my nice Nichicons can fit. Still managed to get it done though. Lots of swearing was involved.

Tested out my Expert Data Opti 495SLC board today now that i managed to get a VGA card for it.

This is the card that arrived today. Its a VLB Cirrus Logic 4528 with 1mb on board.

I got everything plugged in powered on the system and nothing. I had read about this board being funny with VLB cards. After a bit of reading i had to change a jumper position, powered it on a Bingo the machine posted!

Going to sit down with it tonight and get it mounted in a case and Dos installed on it.

Bancho wrote:

Tested out my Expert Data Opti 495SLC board today now that i managed to get a VGA card for it.
I got everything plugged in powered on the system and nothing. I had read about this board being funny with VLB cards. After a bit of reading i had to change a jumper position, powered it on a Bingo the machine posted!
Going to sit down with it tonight and get it mounted in a case and Dos installed on it.

Post some Doom benchmarks ASAP please!
VLB gives a boost on 486 systems, so I keep wondering if it could make Doom playable on a 386