perhenden wrote on 2020-08-22, 16:14:

Going through yesterday's haul! 118229753_10157345023010233_6698704421781622263_n.jpg Some interesting ISA and PCI cards, Amstr […]
Show full quote

Going through yesterday's haul!
118229753_10157345023010233_6698704421781622263_n.jpg
Some interesting ISA and PCI cards, Amstrad PC1640 with a dead motherboard and a working monitor.
A Quickshot 8-bit ISA Deluxe Joystick Adapter, a full-length Everex systems memory card, 8-bit ISA.
A CL-GD5422 ISA, a Hercules Dynamite 128 Tseng ET6000 PCI-card.
Also, an AT tower with an AMD k6-300 and a 5.25" floppy drive that needs some serious cleaning.
An IDE ZIP 100 drive, with the click of death.
Tested the power supplies, all ATX with -5v line, and one of them popped with a bang and blew a fuse, leaving me in the dark! 😀

Nice ! Like the Creative CDrom in the tower.

Started building the Monitor stand for the Versa Dock. I also revived the secondary battery in the M/75 using my truck's battery charger, and started copying over the CD-ROMs for Shivers and Lighthouse to the M/75. Considering bringing out the NEC Ready 9522 to mess with after awhile too. More details in my build thread to come.

I hired a couple of guys to help me clean out my garage. And we setup a couple of racks to organize all my computers.
It still needs work but we cleaned out allot of stuff. Now I can take all my stuff out of the house and put it in the garage.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2020-08-22, 22:09:

I hired a couple of guys to help me clean out my garage. And we setup a couple of racks to organize all my computers.
It still needs work but we cleaned out allot of stuff. Now I can take all my stuff out of the house and put it in the garage.

That's a lot of iPads!

I finally got my hands on a CRT, a 14" Magnavox, and I excitedly hooked it up to my 486 that hasn't been turned on in about a month.

No floppy (controller failure) or hard drive detected.

I took a look at my VLB IDE controller card and saw 2 busted caps.
I've only soldered a couple of times before, and never capacitors. Could anyone tell me what kind I need to get based on this picture? And is that a normal way for them to break?
The one on the left has a broken leg at the pad, and the one on the right broke differently. There was never a "pop" of smoke, or any residue that I can see. If I didn't know better (and I don't) I would say they were cut with snips.
Maybe it was like this all along, and there is another reason for my floppy/hd troubles?

EDIT: I believe I am confusing resistors and capacitors in my post above.

R5 is a resistor (I can't remember how to read the resistance, it's been many years since I knew the colour codes)
The other component is a capacitor, but I am unsure what type - I need to know that myself 🙁 I can't read the value in your photo (I have to use a 30x magnifier to read them these days). It will be the same as the one marked C10 on the board.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-08-22, 23:27:

R5 is a resistor (I can't remember how to read the resistance, it's been many years since I knew the colour codes)
The other component is a capacitor, but I am unsure what type - I need to know that myself 🙁 I can't read the value in your photo (I have to use a 30x magnifier to read them these days). It will be the same as the one marked C10 on the board.

C10 appears (using my phone's magnifier) to read 104 ZES as do several other capacitors. There are also several that read 103 ZES. Maybe ZES is a brand name?

To the best of your knowledge, would it appear as though this was a resistor and capacitor "blow" to cause that?

The resistor is a 1K ohm 5%, looks like 1/8watt. The cap is a multi-layer ceramic or tantalum. I do not see a red band or marker to indicate polarity so likely not a Tant. If a 104 ZES is a 0.1uF, 103 is a 0.01uF so those are multi-layer ceramic and almost never blow. Are you sure something did not bump the parts ?
When a cap blows it usually does from the middle and leaves blacked ends, I see no black.

Spent the day testing some boxed up spare IDE HD's. One of the old drives failed to spin up after being boxed for about 6 months: Quantum 105AT. It never showed any bad sectors or issues last test Dec 2019 but had been around the block a few times in the last 25+ years 😀 The rest of the small old HD ran/tested just fine. Thinking of buying another similar sized IDE for the old 386 era boards....

Horun wrote on 2020-08-23, 01:46:

Spent the day testing some boxed up spare IDE HD's. One of the old drives failed to spin up after being boxed for about 6 months: Quantum 105AT. It never showed any bad sectors or issues last test Dec 2019 but had been around the block a few times in the last 25+ years 😀 The rest of the small old HD ran/tested just fine. Thinking of buying another similar sized IDE for the old 386 era boards....

I imagine the lubricant inside the drive decided to seize up after nearly 30 years or so . I wonder if it would be feasible to re-lube the spindle without contaminating the drive media or heads .

darry wrote on 2020-08-23, 02:38:

I imagine the lubricant inside the drive decided to seize up after nearly 30 years or so . I wonder if it would be feasible to re-lube the spindle without contaminating the drive media or heads .

Yes think so, it will not spin up at all but also do not hear the heads trying move, no clicks or clacks (possible stiction). Thanks for the suggestion ! Might try to open it up as it has a few pre 2000 files on it would like to save. Did that with an old 80Mb and got everything off and it actually lasted a few more years of occasional boot-ups.

Horun wrote on 2020-08-23, 01:38:

The resistor is a 1K ohm 5%, looks like 1/8watt. The cap is a multi-layer ceramic or tantalum. I do not see a red band or marker to indicate polarity so likely not a Tant. If a 104 ZES is a 0.1uF, 103 is a 0.01uF so those are multi-layer ceramic and almost never blow. Are you sure something did not bump the parts ?
When a cap blows it usually does from the middle and leaves blacked ends, I see no black.

Agreed, there's no signs of capacitor "popping". There is, however a long scratch on the PCB near the top solder pad of the two components, extending almost all the way over to the chip ..

LHN91 wrote on 2020-08-21, 01:11:

Pardon the definitely not-retro visual on screen (most of my retro things are packed, and was testing with the laptop I had available), but I just received an HP P910 19" monitor from a family member. Needs a clean up, but seems to work fairly well.

Photo below is the screen running at 1600x1200 / 85hz. It's maybe a little bit soft, but certainly not bad, I think:

For the sharpest display, you probably want to run at whatever the monitor's "preferred" mode in the EDID is; modern windows versions should default to that mode, or sometimes mark it as the "native" resolution as if you had connected an LCD.

That said, when I'm using a modern operating system, I run my 17" Sony E200 using a custom 1440×1080@75Hz mode which is fairly soft - but the combination of super-resolution (that mode's about 0.21mm pixel pitch, but my screen is 0.24mm dot pitch), larger fonts (using 125% display scaling) and anti-aliasing give really nice-looking text.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-08-23, 07:53:

Horun wrote on 2020-08-23, 01:38:

The resistor is a 1K ohm 5%, looks like 1/8watt. The cap is a multi-layer ceramic or tantalum. I do not see a red band or marker to indicate polarity so likely not a Tant. If a 104 ZES is a 0.1uF, 103 is a 0.01uF so those are multi-layer ceramic and almost never blow. Are you sure something did not bump the parts ?
When a cap blows it usually does from the middle and leaves blacked ends, I see no black.

Agreed, there's no signs of capacitor "popping". There is, however a long scratch on the PCB near the top solder pad of the two components, extending almost all the way over to the chip ..

Good eye, thanks for catching that detail. Something must have happened, although in an enclosed untouched system, I'm not sure what it could have been.
Thanks for all the details on the resistor and cap too, it's much appreciated.

A 60GB DiamondMax was pronounced dead today at 2157. Cause of death: stuck heads.
However everything else from this 1,25€-pile works. Athlon Thunderbird, 512 megs, GF2 MX, SB Vibra 128. Nice period-correct combo paired with a Nokia TFT but I do not like the power draw and PSU requirements at all !

This motherboard or the Nokia monitor taking too much power?

Athlon XP CPUs are power hog, and you have to live with this.

Cheers,

I did my first component transplant between two Compaq Armada 1750. The system board of the one that looks like new was malfunctioning: IDE controller did not respond to anything (CD-ROM didn't even open) and the tiny Compaq-sized "IDE" pins were also bent out of shape.

I found an incredibly damaged 1750 for spare parts and transplanted the system board, together with it's DC-DC and sound boards and now I have a perfectly functioning 1750, with some extra RAM and floppy drive also taken from the donor.

One thing remains: bending the docking port into shape because for some reason, a previous owner managed to bend some pins and the plastic frame. But I'm positive that's fixable.

Been messing around with my PICMG system and it's getting there, under Win98SE at least:

Yes, that's Voodoo2 and PowerVR PCX2, both working nicely. Took a *LOT* of "banging the card till it works" before the PCX2 started doing its thing and needed to remove my Turtle Beach Montego II to get it there.

Nice D3D frame rate courtesy of the Voodoo2 and Tualatin 1400 😉

Here's the system:

BabyAT in all its cabling g(l)ory...

Once you remove the cables:

Generic PICMG backplane.
Adlink NuPRO-760 SBC with PLE133T chipset
P3-1400S with Thermaltake Golden Orb
2x 256MB PC133
Promise SATA150 TX2Plus with Intel X25E 32GB SLC SSD
Creative 3D Blaster Voodoo2 8MB
Videologic Apocalypse add
Generic Crystal CS4236 ISA PnP sound

Very mercurial system, it utterly refuses to cold boot, and gives memory error beeps on second boot, but after a second reset it happily boots on at third attempt.

Never actually run a PowerVR card before. I like its image quality in the demos, but none of the half-decently working games appeal, so this is purely for curiosity's sake.

dionb wrote on 2020-08-23, 21:27:

Never actually run a PowerVR card before. I like its image quality in the demos, but none of the half-decently working games appeal, so this is purely for curiosity's sake.

Mine is exclusively for Mechwarrior 2.

I think I finally fixed an Epox KT133 motherboard that's been hanging around needing repair for over 10 years. Back when I got it I was new to soldering. I had replaced the major caps but it had a shorted MOSFET. I replaced that MOSFET but it was unstable.
Over the past week I re-recapped it, replaced all 5 of those MOSFETs, and I *think* it's good now but I've only used memtest86.

I tested it with a Thunderbird at 1300/100 and 3x256MB PC133 and it eventually froze.
Clocked it down to 1200/100 with same RAM and it passed.
Guess what Epox listed as the highest supported CPU.
My PSU might be an issue, the 5V supply was sagging a bit.
You're also not supposed to run that many banks of RAM at PC133 speed on this chipset, something I had forgotten.

I was going to sell this board off. Now I don't want to. I think I should have one KT133 board around.

So in the search for boards to get rid of, I remembered having a few crappier KT133 boards (different brand) that I really don't want. I got them in a bulk lot in the late 2000s and had been selling them, but stopped because they were troublesome. Nowadays they could be worth something and I need to clear stuff out.
A few hours ago I dug one out (that used to run) intending to test it.
It turned on for a few seconds and a MOSFET smoked. I probably shouldn't have put a CPU in it.