Recapped my Gigabyte GA-5AX.

Cyrix200+ wrote on 2020-04-16, 19:39:

My Tulip AT Compact(s) (NEAT chipset 286) 3 is/are proving to be a nice project. I own two of these systems, both with their ow […]
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My Tulip AT Compact(s) (NEAT chipset 286) 3 is/are proving to be a nice project. I own two of these systems, both with their own problems. I decided to combine them into one.

One mainboard is 'dead', it does not POST. The other seemed to be okay, but some tantals exploded when powering it up (I posted before)... After replacing them all seemed okay.

I could not get a serial mouse working... I tried an external loopback plug, but tests failed. After some visual inspection and datasheet reading, I think the DS1488N chips are fried. They have some visible damage on top (a little bit visible in the picture), possibly/maybe as a result of the tantals blowing up? Or they were the cause... We'll find out when I replace them. Desoldered them today and put in sockets... Spares should be here on saturday, I found a cheap local seller.

IMG_20200416_162030.jpg

New(OS) chips arrived today! And....

Success!

After ordering an I/O coverplate for my old Asus P4S800D motherboard and finding that it would immediately power off after the fans started to spin up, I figured in for a penny, in for a pound, and ordered new caps for it. When I'm in a good mood, I'll take it back out of the case and re-cap it, but that won't be any time soon. Also got two replacement RTC chips (didn't feel like gutting them and attaching CR2032 sockests) for a 486 I got from a garage sale years ago and a Packard Bell desktop I drove across the state to pick up years earlier, along with sockets to mount the chips, and a couple odds and ends like cables and de-soldering braid.
I've been looking for projects around the house, but many require complete disconnection and disassembly to sort out. While I don't feel boredom anymore, I still keenly recognize absolute tedium.

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-04-18, 17:36:

Recapped my Gigabyte GA-5AX.

A4BAA608-C1A8-4FBF-B7BF-0FC25598AED8.jpeg

Nice. What are the tools used?

kolderman wrote on 2020-04-18, 22:40:

Nice. What are the tools used?

The solder pick I got ages ago from Radio Shack when I was living in the US. The solder sucker is Engineer SS-02 (made in Japan) and it's very nice, much nicer than the cheap junk that is common on eBay. My soldering iron (not shown) is A-BF GS90D: this is a thermostatic soldering iron, very well made, I've been using it for the past 5 years without any trouble.

Social isolation, quarantine and having all this time at home as been nice. It's given me a chance to catch up on a backlog of things on my to do list, as before that I've been a busy bee.

Between that, I've done some other retro activities.

The first was excessive OS testing on 86Box with a setup emulating my Dimension95 build. There's some additional OSes I know work on bare metal that don't emulate nicely. The point was mainly to plan hard drive partitioning. Of course I don't plan to have as many OSes, but more as an exercise to see which play nice and which don't. The ideal setup will be OSR2, NT4.0, Red Hat 5.2, an older flavour of BSD and a modern BSD as well.

That build is taking me an awful long time, but I am still working on it. I am avoiding finishing it until I have all the hardware I want, some of which is proving incredibly difficult to track down. I want to have all the hardware tested and working, the configuration of hard drives planned out so I can set it up once, image everything and enjoy using it with as little stress as possible. I should motivate myself to post a thread update soon.

Additionally, as I posted about in another thread, I've come into possession of a very large collection of software - namely fully boxed and documented early copies of 3D Studio/3D Studio Max, Lightscape, as well as a large amount of CAD software from Autodesk, Visio and some other companies. Additionally, my own long term collection of Microsoft and Borland development tools. I'm thinking over the best ways to archive all of it. Been considering investing in building a book scanner as I have quite a few things I've acquired over time that I'd love to archive and share with the world, a lot of which isn't available online at all. More a post for Winworld, but ya know, still retro activities.

Other activities include:

• Hardware purchase testing:
  • Intel Bonetrail DX38BT - Fully successful, including BIOS flash without crapping itself. Surely a new record for an Intel xTrail board.
  • ATI 3870 - Fully successful
  • Another ATI 3870 - Fully successful
  • About 20 CPUs varying from Socket 3 to S775- only one 2.4GHz Northwood dead. Rest in peace.
  • Triplex Millennium Silver MX440 - Fully successful
• Sold a bunch more hardware for funds for new projects.
• A lot of design work for upcoming project.
• More minor work on my YouTube to Netshow platform.

Looking forward to eventually posting some more. Lots of exciting things coming in the future.

Stay safe everyone!

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-04-18, 23:09:

The solder sucker is Engineer SS-02 (made in Japan) and it's very nice, much nicer than the cheap junk that is common on eBay. My soldering iron (not shown) is A-BF GS90D: this is a thermostatic soldering iron, very well made, I've been using it for the past 5 years without any trouble.

Thanks ! Will look into that solder sucker, looks much better than the cheap one I have.
Worked on a couple of old boards that were quirky. The Bioteq/Biostar 1433AEA was giving the most bootable issues, got it sorted so now it gets a green sticker (I put blue for perfect, green for good, yellow for quirky and red for not working stickers on my parts, helps me go back to trouble shoot those that need work. Just my odd way of labeling stuff for a quick visual). Did not tweak BIOS yet, was more concerned about the ram and cache working....

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-04-18, 04:51:

Man, that has to hurt big time. I had a RadioShack soldering iron or might still have it and it takes forever to heat up. My parents got me one for Christmas and it works a lot better than the old irons I had that either took forever to heat up or the tips kept falling off all the time. I like this one better, but I set it to 250C to tin and clean the tip off, then turn it to 350C for soldering and takes 5-10 seconds to heat up, which is really cool. I, myself, need a hot air station so that I can remove and install SMD/SMT QFP video chips on a motherboard that I'm planning on upgrading the chip from a 5428 to a 5429 for better DOS acceleration.

Eh, that old soldering iron of mine was a liability (especially since I have inquisitive cats at home - the short cord, very light weight and inability to secure it means that I am either nervous about them burning themselves near it, or me dropping it on the carpet and start a fire). Frankly, the fact that it died in full view of my wife meant that I can now justify buying a new one (probably a Weller 70w digital soldering station) It's really too bad that due to the quarantine Amazon cannot deliver one for 3+ weeks, and most retailers will not have one at my doorstep for at least 10 days.

Eh, hot air rework stations are kinda pricey, and bulky enough to not make it an impulse purchase. I still remember the horror of using a hot air gun (the stuff used in doing vinyl floor tiles) to rework a ThinkPad X31 motherboard...and watching bits fly out of the board when I did it for a bit too long.

Set up my new old computer testing area. and reorganized more computer storage area in the shed.
Been testing old x86 and Acorn ide drives. Some interesting stuff on them. One 420meg hdd had DesqViewX, GeoWorks 2.0 and wfw3.11 on it. I'm going to make an image/clone that one. A few Os/3 v3 drives and old linux distros. Only one dud.

Also managed to get 2 RiscPCs up and running. Next is 3 Acorn A3000s with various issues.

I quite happy with what I've done.

I would seriously install GeoWorks on a computer. Wasn't GEOS also an OS for Commodore and Apple II systems on diskettes back in the day as well?

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-04-19, 08:22:

I would seriously install GeoWorks on a computer. Wasn't GEOS also an OS for Commodore and Apple II systems on diskettes back in the day as well?

The 16-bit PC/GEOS came after the 8-bit GEOS for several of Commodore's 8 bits, and the Apple II line, both from Berkeley Softworks.

I played some Quake II, does that count?

I build a Socket A machine with ASUS A7V600-X mainboard and Athlon 2500+, 1 GB DDR400, Radeon 9600 and I played Diablo II LOD 1.09 (my favourite version) and also I played Tzar and Gorky 17. And I tested there my other Radeon videocards (9000PRO, 9200, 9250, 9500, HD2600PRO). Tomorrow I build machine with Athlon 950 and ATI Rage 128 when I receive mainboard MSI MS-6511.

Oj0 wrote on 2020-04-19, 11:59:

I played some Quake II, does that count?

Just say you've benchmarked Quake II extensively on your daily retro rig 😉.

flupke11 wrote on 2020-04-19, 12:32:

Oj0 wrote on 2020-04-19, 11:59:

I played some Quake II, does that count?

Just say you've benchmarked Quake II extensively on your daily retro rig 😉.

I doubt my daily driver counts as retro 😜

I picked up a package with Voodoo 3 2000 today; tested it, attached a 40mm fan to the heatsink and installed it in my K6-2/400 setup. At first glance it performs almost the same as with Voodoo 2. Just the image looks cleaner and sharper. A bit of a disappointment really, but now the V2 can go back to my Pentium build.

I then did some final cable management in my ongoing 286 build. I just need some beige 5.25" bay covers for the case (came with none) and I am done....for now....

assasincz wrote on 2020-04-19, 20:41:

At first glance it performs almost the same as with Voodoo 2. Just the image looks cleaner and sharper. A bit of a disappointment

What were you expecting?

kolderman wrote on 2020-04-19, 20:50:

assasincz wrote on 2020-04-19, 20:41:

At first glance it performs almost the same as with Voodoo 2. Just the image looks cleaner and sharper. A bit of a disappointment

What were you expecting?

I've read several times that the performance of the V3 is about the same as two V2 in SLI, so maybe the expectation was for the V3 to be about twice as fast as a single V2? anyway, I'm happy with my V3 2000 PCI.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-19, 21:01:

kolderman wrote on 2020-04-19, 20:50:

assasincz wrote on 2020-04-19, 20:41:

At first glance it performs almost the same as with Voodoo 2. Just the image looks cleaner and sharper. A bit of a disappointment

What were you expecting?

I've read several times that the performance of the V3 is about the same as two V2 in SLI, so maybe the expectation was for the V3 to be about twice as fast as a single V2? anyway, I'm happy with my V3 2000 PCI.

To see the performance difference vs single V2 you need to up the resolution. Then it will be about twice as fast. Try 1024x768.

It's the Voodoo3 3000 that's often compared to the V2 SLI, but SLI setups are overrated impractical curiosities anyway and a V3 trounces that overall (larger resolution variance, no interleaves and far less thrashing) so.... 😀