Installed the newly acquired Cardex W32P VLB card in my 386 machine (J-Mark OPTI 495SX 3/486WB), but had a slight hiccup with it: the system wouldn't boot and after disabling the delay mode and the DAC snoop, it sprang to life.

Frederik Pohl's Gateway still looks amazing in SVGA mode and I got the Promise DC4030VL-2 card installed with the SIIG 8-bit I/O card and the 3Com 3C-515TX card (will get the drivers installed once I fix the floppy drive situation).

Next: the MR BIOS installation (made a new EPROM).

Finished and documented my new MT32-pi build.

Now to spend some time scaring the neighbours (assuming the neighbours are scared by small bookshelf speakers which they can't hear, playing video game MIDI at moderate volume in somebody else's house).

I decided I would do some motherboard repairs tonight. What I had in mind was;

-Repair a Socket 3 motherboard that needed a socket replacement
-Repair a Slot-1 motherboard that needed an ISA Slot replacement

So I picked a donor Socket 3 board, something beyond repair. Well, 2.5 hours later, all I have to show for it is a desoldered ISA slot, and I managed to desolder a single row of the CPU socket.

I am so high on solder fumes right now that I can barely type this 🤣. I don't look forward to desoldering the damaged ISA socket anymore. I don't even know if it's possible to desolder the CPU socket with just a soldering pen either, it seems like it will be a tormenting exercise.

Also, I am useless with a desoldering pump. I had to do it all with a solder wick, and that shit is tedious. What is the trick to using a desoldering pump? I can't seem to lift any solder with it, but people make videos where they can clean a leg with a single click and it's driving me nuts..

appiah4 wrote on 2021-04-30, 23:05:

I had to do it all with a solder wick, and that shit is tedious.

Yes, good for cleaning up smd pads once most of the solder's already cleared off. Works better with lots of flux around.

What is the trick to using a desoldering pump? I can't seem to lift any solder with it, but people make videos where they can clean a leg with a single click and it's driving me nuts..

Don't know about other people, I generally find putting a tiny bit of solder on the iron so it makes good contact with the pin & pad you want to clean. Once the solder's melted, keep the iron on the pad by the pin, place the pump at a slight angle over the pin and push the button. Power pins are a pain as the power plane takes heat away too quickly, so I sometimes/often end up with a plug of solder in the bottom half of the via, which I can't melt without filling the via back up again. Keep the pump clean; both the pin and nozzle can become coated in solder which makes it slow to retract. It's probably not good practice, but if the solder looks to have been removed then I gently prod the pin sideways with a small screwdriver to break any weak solder bridges that might be left, before trying to lift the component.

It is quite satisfying when it works and the solder just magically disappears.

I've never used one of the combined iron+pump tools, but other people seem to rate them very highly for if you're doing lots of solder removal.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-04-30, 23:05:

I decided I would do some motherboard repairs tonight. What I had in mind was; […]
Show full quote

I decided I would do some motherboard repairs tonight. What I had in mind was;

-Repair a Socket 3 motherboard that needed a socket replacement
-Repair a Slot-1 motherboard that needed an ISA Slot replacement

So I picked a donor Socket 3 board, something beyond repair. Well, 2.5 hours later, all I have to show for it is a desoldered ISA slot, and I managed to desolder a single row of the CPU socket.

I am so high on solder fumes right now that I can barely type this 🤣. I don't look forward to desoldering the damaged ISA socket anymore. I don't even know if it's possible to desolder the CPU socket with just a soldering pen either, it seems like it will be a tormenting exercise.

Also, I am useless with a desoldering pump. I had to do it all with a solder wick, and that shit is tedious. What is the trick to using a desoldering pump? I can't seem to lift any solder with it, but people make videos where they can clean a leg with a single click and it's driving me nuts..

I have heard that, for items as challenging as slots and sockets, a dedicated desoldering station turns a nightmare 5-hour job into a slightly-irritating 30-minute one.

The ZD-915 is a specific model I have seen one of our peers (at another forum) successfully using in such a manner, specifically for motherboard slot removal and such.

After reading his saga (can't easily find/link it sorry - it's buried / distributed across many pages of random_forum_thread_elsewhere) I determined to follow his lead if I ever found myself in that situation.

Desoldering some of the pins, particularly the grounds can be especially tricky. Try desoldering data pins (thin traces) first to see if those go okay for you. Use a high temperature, clean the tip often with one of those brass tip cleaner things, and it can help to add a tiny bit of fresh solder just as you're preparing to vacuum the solder from a pin. Data pins are usually okay with 3 seconds heating, power and grounds need 10 seconds and sometimes more than that.

This evening I pulled out my Toshiba Portege 610CT for some repairs since its new screen has apparently arrived. Trying to make a cover for the battery since that's long gone and the battery cover is essentially one of the feet. Finally got my 3d scanner giving reliable scan data, so that might be possible soon.

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-04-30, 23:39:

The ZD-915 is a specific model I have seen one of our peers (at another forum) successfully using in such a manner, specifically for motherboard slot removal and such.

After reading his saga (can't easily find/link it sorry - it's buried / distributed across many pages of random_forum_thread_elsewhere) I determined to follow his lead if I ever found myself in that situation.

Absolutely.

I replaced 3 PCI sockets on a Asus K7V KX133 motherboard, where 3 PCI slots were not working on it.

I stole the PCI slots from an old Intel board that was no longer working (was a 815 board, completely dead, not really worth fixing) and using this exact ZD-915 desoldering Iron, was able to remove and install PCI slots without damaging them.

I also installed an ISA slot in a Athlon XP motherboard. Used the desoldering iron to remove the solder from the holes, and installed an ISA slot from an old corroded 486 motherboard.

Just be quite careful, as the desoldering iron is good at destroying traces if you are rough with it.

Finally got around to building some Voltage Blasters..

Finally upgraded the oldest system I have (a Sanyo XT MBC16PLUS1) to VGA using a Trident 16 bit ISA card (thanks @Tiido for the help on the 8-bit modus).

The card has now more VGA ram than memory, 1 MB vs. 640 kb. Still stuck at boot though, there is an issue with the MFM drive or its controller, but I'm not sure how to troubleshoot this.

Going to attempt putting a regulator on a GA-486VS Rev. 8a

And recap a Commodore PC 40 III motherboard.

I got Wing Commander 3 installed on my DOS machine today. Hello Mark Hamill! I booted up the CD and installed the first time no problem. Played for a bit and noticed that I could probably run the game at a higher frame rate. So I drop out of the game, use setmul to up my multiplier to full speed, and try to jump back in. Only this time I get a bunch of garbage on screen! Whatever for!? I try a bunch more times playing with all kinds of things. Memory managers, CPU speed, video bios. Something must be wrong. One time I managed to get the game going again, another try after that and back to where I was. How confusing?

I noticed that the installation said that my CD drive was running "faster than should be possible". Silly Wing Commander III from 1994, you just didn't have 22x CD drives then! This got me thinking though... could it really be? No. It couldn't be that.

I found a utility called CDBQ (CD-be-quite) which allows one to manually set the speed of your CD drive. Mostly this is for fussy people who care way too much about how loud their CD drive is. I set my 22 Lite-on CD drive to run at about 4x speeds, and wouldn't you know it the game gives me no more troubles after that! I have had my CPU be too fast, my files system and hard drive be too big, my RAM be too large, but my CD drive too quick was a first for me 😁. What fun!

Is CDBQ a Dos or Win9x program?

Superglue job on my A4000 keyboard arrow key stem.. noticed it was wiggly, so I took off the keycap and the stem remained in the slider. Popped it out of the slider and glued it back on the keycap. Once the initial job sets, I'll probably put some more down the middle hole to make it solid. Hopefully it holds, or else I'll have to find another matching key for it.

wiretap wrote on 2021-05-02, 12:08:

Superglue job on my A4000 keyboard arrow key stem.. noticed it was wiggly, so I took off the keycap and the stem remained in the slider. Popped it out of the slider and glued it back on the keycap. Once the initial job sets, I'll probably put some more down the middle hole to make it solid. Hopefully it holds, or else I'll have to find another matching key for it.

I know the problem from my Amiga keyboard. I have put a round metal bolt in the middle before gluing...

Spent today and most of yesterday testing out games on my recently acquired Atari 65XE.

My only means of input at the moment is the XC12 cassette player, so I've been converting CAS & XEX files to WAV and playing them through a cassette adapter. A slow & tedious loading process for each game and lots of misses & failed loads. But what has worked has worked very well so far. This machine will be much more useful and fun once the SDrive Max arrives.

I did obsess a bit about the colour output though. When I bought it, the seller's pics showed a green BASIC screen, which was black & white when I first connected it up. I tweaked the pot and achieved a blueish green BASIC screen, that seemed to match what the emulator says is correct for a PAL XE. After a few hours of usage, the computer seemed to settle & stabilise on a blue background similar to NTSC machines and similar to the emulator with PAL options tweaked. I checked several YouTube videos and there are many that look like mine, but also others that look like the blueish green. I'm going to have to play around with the pot again, but I need to find something small enough to fit in the hole, as I don't want to keep removing the keyboard ribbon & RF shielding just to tweak the pot.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-02, 10:02:

Is CDBQ a Dos or Win9x program?

Both, I guess. I am using it in pure DOS mode.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-05-18, 01:29:

The Award BIOS I found is Y2K compliant for the OS level. Speedsys says otherwise, but at least I get my L2 cache with a WT CPU installed this time.

Hi
Is this BIOS for the M912? Would you mind uploading it here? I have an older version of this BIOS and would like to upgrade. Thanks!
(meanwhile I'm using Y2KURE which works well)
TIA
JC

I checked my 486s for caches using Celem Cache Test, which I had never heard of. It says my 486 AMD DX 100 is running at 86 MHz, where as HWINFO states it runs at 100-ish MHz, so I don't know what's going on.

Brought my Sanyo XT back from the dead with the help of Waterbeesje. A good day today.

So I went ahead a month or two ago and sent my Vooodoo4 and not-working-3D V5 to the German forum VoodooAlert's user Backfire (Stephan Kleeman, who you can contact here: http://www.pct-server.de/~stephan/~hpage4/3dfx/) who works on 3dfx cards in his spare time, and I just got mine back. There's an issue with VSA-100 GPUs - their onboard PSUs will eventually fail in spectacular displays of fire (scary stuff). In addition to repairing my V5 (had bad memory for the second GPU, which he replaced with new modules), he replaced the PSUs for both my V4 and V5. He also cleaned both cards better than I can, recapped the V4, and touched-up my first attempt at SMD soldering on my V5.

All the work + shipping back to the US cost me around 200 Euros if you're curious.
I have the V5 back in my PIII-S rig, and it runs without issue. 😀