I took a small break from studying and I laid out this on my workbench - I'll probably tackle it during the week a piece at a time.

I don't know anything about it save that it's a i7 960 and I added 12 Gb of DDR3 memory to it (1333) -NIB stuff, Kingston modules. I've got handfuls left over (also on eBay now).

It's what came out of the mutilated MDG case - you can see the server motherboard in the background ready to take its place 🤣.

Here's all the other stuff that came out of it:

I'll have to take this out:

That's a P4 HT 3.0, I have plans for that build as well.

Then I had to choose a power supply:

The one on the right (the gold one) is rated for 550w and that's what was connected to the i7 initially, but it looks... dubious at best. The one beside it is a new 350 w unit, seems to be better quality (and weights almost the same as the gold one) but I don't know how power hungry the combo is. Finally I decided on this one:

I took it out of a machine I'm building for my dad, which is a basic 6 core AMD from 2012 or 2013 (he doesn't game, to say the least!) with 12 GB RAM, GTX 650 (overkill for him 🤣) and two 2.5inch SATA hard drives (the spinning kind) so the new 350w power supply went there, and I took out the used Thermaltake and will include it in this build.

It's like a junkyard in my basement now - half stripped systems everywhere, piles of CD/DVDROMs here and there, cables, cables all over the place.... I gotta order some caps tonight for an MSI board and whatever's going to go into my NEC PIII build, otherwise if my kid ever goes down there unsupervised, those parts will be in jeopardy!

Deskpro XL power supply troubleshooting continues. Had broken solder joints and one of spade connector on power switch had wire separated so soldered that back on.

Fan twitching once every second and one of 3 LEDs flashes. Couldn't find any short circuit nor burnt spots so will unmount all the heatsinks so I have better access to circuit board. Then use ESR meter to check capacitors' health and check every components with meter.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-11-16, 01:29:

Deskpro XL power supply troubleshooting continues. Had broken solder joints and one of spade connector on power switch had wire separated so soldered that back on.

Fan twitching once every second and one of 3 LEDs flashes. Couldn't find any short circuit nor burnt spots so will unmount all the heatsinks so I have better access to circuit board. Then use ESR meter to check capacitors' health and check every components with meter.

Cheers,

That sounds like fun. Once I sell enough stuff off, I plan on buying an ESR and/or a basic (even used) scope so I can start troubleshooting like a pro, first and foremost with the 286/10 motherboard I have that suddenly has a keyboard error (not the 8042 - that would be too easy!) and maybe even getting to that 3/486 EISA/VESA mobo that won't work in 386 mode no matter what...

I invested in ESR meters nearly 17 years ago. It is worth it's gold many times over, do not buy combined features. Just straight ESR meter.

If working in 486 mode, then you have no problem with it especially chipset and other ICs. Might need to burn a new rom and replace all the jumpers with new one due to so much jumpers to set for 386 mode.

Jed118, I might be interested in your stuff once you start selling?

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-11-16, 01:50:

Jed118, I might be interested in your stuff once you start selling?

It's all on eBay already - there's almost always something on my page (don't have a store, I don't sell enough volume to warrant the expense) The Kombinator. They are mostly complete systems, there is room for negotiations of course, and the price can be lowered by removing components, etc. There are occasionally some parts that make it onto there too. I'm going to be listing an 8 bit VGA/EGA ATI card soon, once I finish using it in a 486 system (which is waiting for a VLB video card).

Or PM me and we can work something out 😁

Here's one - https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Complete-PCS-486-66-M … tYAAOSwBPZfqZCp

There will be two more like it (one SCSI even!) once I get the parts I need and have time to assemble. At least one PIII and one P4 system coming soon, and depending on my supplier/business partner, I may have more AT stuff. I just sold an SX-40 386 in less than 24 hours of it being up - sometimes that happens 🤣. Usually I get to posting stuff in December, after exams and when work slows down.

Thank you, checked your store under that name and have all I have already.

Defective parts somewhere?

Cheers,

Just a warning, the non-80plus Tr-2 powersupplies are really bad, like 450watt continous, 600 peak, use a bad design and mediocre caps. Iv used one with a FX8120 OC'd and a 2gb HD7870 in a friends machine for the past 4 or 5 years no problem but YMMV.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-11-16, 02:17:

Thank you, checked your store under that name and have all I have already.

Defective parts somewhere?

Cheers,

I have a bin of "defective" 386/486 motherboards stacked somewhere on the top shelf in a box labelled "when I have more time/get better at this" 🤣 - most are ones with obvious trace damage that I wasn't able to get to POST (or to work correctly even after reflowing / bodging traces) - all of them have some kind of code on my POST card analyzer, so they are not totally dead. That and defective I/O controllers (I have a non-working TEKRAM controller, among other things). Things without moving parts I generally keep (any old hard disk that grinds/smacks its heads around are typically removed from their controller board and thrown out) - I can take a cursory inventory of these parts, PM me to remind me later. 😁

ODwilly wrote on 2020-11-16, 02:19:

Just a warning, the non-80plus Tr-2 powersupplies are really bad, like 450watt continous, 600 peak, use a bad design and mediocre caps. Iv used one with a FX8120 OC'd and a 2gb HD7870 in a friends machine for the past 4 or 5 years no problem but YMMV.

I'm gonna open it up and see what's inside. There was a post here somewhere that went through the basics of what's in a good power supply - generally if I see empty spots on a PCB in a power supply, I know it's a bargain unit, as for what exactly to look for, I'd have to research that. Honestly this is for a super-occasional use computer, and to be even more honest, I'll probably build it, use it for like 10 hrs, and it'll go in the closet. 😉

Some Thermaltake were built well, the PSU with the man holding a thunderbolt looks like a Leadman/Powmax product iirc. Many of those were poor designed but some were better than average, All depends on the model. Some of the older Leadman/Powmax 6100 series were OK and worked as advertised and weighed a lot (without oddness adding to the weight).

Horun wrote on 2020-11-16, 05:20:

Some Thermaltake were built well, the PSU with the man holding a thunderbolt looks like a Leadman/Powmax product iirc. Many of those were poor designed but some were better than average, All depends on the model. Some of the older Leadman/Powmax 6100 series were OK and worked as advertised and weighed a lot (without oddness adding to the weight).

Is there a table somewhere I could look it up? I'd rather not give my dad something that's below average...

Honestly my particular TR-2 600w had a terrible coil whine for the first like 1 year of usage, and after throwing an OC on the 8120 it stopped making the horrible noise.

gca wrote on 2020-11-15, 19:40:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-11-15, 19:03:

Today I found time to test a 386 motherboard that I recently purchased, with a 386SX 25MHz CPU. Inserted a couple of 30-pin SIM […]
Show full quote

Today I found time to test a 386 motherboard that I recently purchased, with a 386SX 25MHz CPU. Inserted a couple of 30-pin SIMMs and powered it up and happily it POSTs ok -

Motherboard seems to be from some kind of Ambra-branded LPX PC. I'd actually never heard of Ambra before.

So I spent a couple of hours testing a bag full of 30-pin SIMMs. A few 4MB modules it would not POST or recognise correctly, no idea if they're bad or this board just doesn't like them. All the 1MB modules worked fine and I did find a working combination of 4MB modules to max the RAM to 16MB!

Also connected up a 130MB IDE HDD I had and was able to boot into DOS & Windows for Workgroups 3.11.

Had some trouble getting into the BIOS at one point, it would just freeze, so I had to short the RTC reset jumpers. That worked and got me back into the BIOS again.

I'll probably just use this board for testing purposes, as I don't have any spare LPX form-factor cases to set it up permanently. This board is currently the fastest 386SX I have in my collection.

That is the same as my Ambra Sprinta board. I would advise you remove the battery. I didn't and now I have the joy of fixing all the vias and traces that got death by Varta. Word of warning, it does not like MS-DOS 6.22 (at least mine didn't when it was alive). Some odd incompatibility with the BIOS, if you try to warm boot it just beeps and locks up. And if its any help you can retro fit an reset switch using the header JP11 which is useful.

Yeah, I intend to remove the battery, definitely do not trust those things. If I ever find a case for this board I'll keep JP11 in mind, thanks.

With regards to the MS-DOS 6.22 thing though, I didn't have any issues. MS-DOS 6.22 was already installed on the 130MB HDD I had and it worked ok.

I offered I will help in cleaning up some rooms in the dungeon at my workplace, and I found some interesting treasures...

HanJammer wrote on 2020-11-16, 14:24:

I offered I will help in cleaning up some rooms in the dungeon at my workplace, and I found some interesting treasures...

Znajdzie sie to na Allegro I bet 😁

Are you sure it wasn't the treasure room and not the dungeon. Those are some very nice finds.

Jed118 wrote on 2020-11-16, 14:49:

HanJammer wrote on 2020-11-16, 14:24:

I offered I will help in cleaning up some rooms in the dungeon at my workplace, and I found some interesting treasures...

Znajdzie sie to na Allegro I bet 😁

Nope. Those things are still owned by my workplace. And I can make use of this CPC for some less serious purposes there too.

Today I learned that my 430HX board has no problems seeing and using drives that are over 8GB, so long and you don't use the board to format it. When formatting, it just can't see over 8GB for whatever reason.

HanJammer wrote on 2020-11-16, 18:55:

Jed118 wrote on 2020-11-16, 14:49:

HanJammer wrote on 2020-11-16, 14:24:

I offered I will help in cleaning up some rooms in the dungeon at my workplace, and I found some interesting treasures...

Znajdzie sie to na Allegro I bet 😁

Nope. Those things are still owned by my workplace. And I can make use of this CPC for some less serious purposes there too.

Oh, szkoda. I just bought some stuff off there - a VESA card and thee soundcards. I could probably get them here quicker, but for the same price, I will have it shipped to me. Also, I am not in a hurry, as I just built yet another 486 DX2/66 - there are five of them in my house now!

I have become the CDROM repair guru! #7 -

Tray operation was very rough and that band just spun spun spun...

You can even see it took on its own shape - Luckily I had bought a bag of assorted bands to fix a very tight Compaq 4/75CX floppy drive and had a ton left over.

My two year old of course wanted to touch the 40x CDROM during a Windows install - he was escorted out of the room in tears of protest. Leave him unattended and he'll eject and insert diskettes...

I greased up the gears and ran the drive open and closed a dozen or so times - so much smoother and quieter. Bearing grease from about 20 years ago, I bought it to re-do my first Hyundai Pony's bearings. Still half-full 😉

The rest of the night was spent preparing yet another 486 DX2/66 for eBay (that one, actually!) - I have 5 of them here. I don't think I had that many at once even back in the late 90s.