BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-22, 03:21:

How is the phone wired into that? 🤣

How else is he supposed to dial into a BBS?

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:28:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-22, 03:21:

How is the phone wired into that? 🤣

How else is he supposed to dial into a BBS?

Are there bbs still operating?

Would be fun for a nostalgia kick to dial into one, just to hear the awesome modem talk.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:32:

Are there bbs still operating?

Yes there are. 😀

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-21, 23:47:

PcBytes wrote on 2021-12-21, 12:17:

Mmm, that 7200 repair was nice. Shame that I (very likely) threw my 9000 AIW away, would've surely loved to fix it using your techniques.

Please spread the word. If you're going yo throw these things away, there is probably someone here to who may be able to fix it or would otherwise be useful for practice.

For what it's worth, I'm not 100% sure if it was the caps. Oh, and not sure if I REALLY threw it away or just threw it into the closet and forgot about it completely. I said very likely because of the possibility of the RAM chips being dead, but not always the case.

I do remember soldering a few caps back but still had artefacting, so at that point it could have been BGA failure on the RAM, and I haven't had any card using BGA RAM ever come back alive after reflowing the RAM chips.

I'll look through my mountains of "trash" (in reality, it's just lotsa stuff - mobos, GPUs, MXM GPUs, and misc PCI/PCI-E/ISA cards) and check if I still have it and hopefully check up what's missing and what needs resoldering.

(believe me, I found cards I totally forgot about. One of them is a Winfast A6200 TD that I would love to see back in action after some repairing, knowing it has some short on the Molex connector.)

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-22, 05:41:

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:32:

Are there bbs still operating?

Yes there are. 😀

Over land lines? I know Telnet is still a thing but are there even real landlines left?

Opened the box, took this pic, closed the box.
Filthy.
I have to make a tool to remove all the keys. This is going to take a lot of time.

🤣

Nexxen wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:26:

Opened the box, took this pic, closed the box. Filthy. I have to make a tool to remove all the keys. This is going to take a lot […]
Show full quote

Opened the box, took this pic, closed the box.
Filthy.
I have to make a tool to remove all the keys. This is going to take a lot of time.

🤣

Thats ... thats a fuck ton of work right there, I would close the box too till I had enough scotch on hand to make it hurt less 😁

Keyboard restorations are my least favorite kind.. I still have a mechanical Dell I can't bring myself to clean..

PcBytes wrote on 2021-12-22, 08:03:

I do remember soldering a few caps back but still had artefacting, so at that point it could have been BGA failure on the RAM, and I haven't had any card using BGA RAM ever come back alive after reflowing the RAM chips.

I don't know the science behind it but even Louis Rossmann says that reflowing a BGA chip will usually end up destroying it. I can confirm that I've seen reflown joints fail again with time (weeks or months later). It's best to remove, clean, and apply fresh solder whenever possible.

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:41:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:26:

Opened the box, took this pic, closed the box. Filthy. I have to make a tool to remove all the keys. This is going to take a lot […]
Show full quote

Opened the box, took this pic, closed the box.
Filthy.
I have to make a tool to remove all the keys. This is going to take a lot of time.

🤣

Thats ... thats a fuck ton of work right there, I would close the box too till I had enough scotch on hand to make it hurt less 😁

You understand my pain, a relief! 🤣 🤣
Gonna do in 2022. Starting with the working ones.

I'll try to retrobrite with the basin method. Cream leaves traces and they don't come off, I guess because of uneven layer.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-22, 10:28:

I don't know the science behind it but even Louis Rossmann says that reflowing a BGA chip will usually end up destroying it.

Because the type of solder used was prone to crack in the first place (too hard RoHS buggy formulations). Reflowing will not change that physical fact, and keeping the mechanical stresses of the faulty solder balls would end destroying the BGA pads on your chip.

When you clean and reapply solder to the BGA packages, generally you will change the solder to newer formulations, or even to non-RoHS solder, to fix the problem at its roots.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:24:

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-22, 05:41:

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:32:

Are there bbs still operating?

Yes there are. 😀

Over land lines? I know Telnet is still a thing but are there even real landlines left?

Did a quick Google and found this for the UK:
https://www.icuk.net/broadband/dial-up-internet.asp

And now I'm wondering whether to give that a go over Christmas. Got an external 56.6 and an ISA Zoom 14.4 (BABT Approved! I think) somewhere. I've a vague memory of the last time I tried using dial up (many years ago, DSL connection died) that lots of websites just didn't work because of time-outs. I think the rough expectation at 14.4kbps was about 10min/MB. BBC homepage is currently about 3.6MB. So that'd be over half an hour. About 3MB is scripts, images and fonts. It'd be 5min just for the HTML.

snufkin wrote on 2021-12-22, 12:30:

Did a quick Google and found this for the UK: https://www.icuk.net/broadband/dial-up-internet.asp […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:24:

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-22, 05:41:

Yes there are. 😀

Over land lines? I know Telnet is still a thing but are there even real landlines left?

Did a quick Google and found this for the UK:
https://www.icuk.net/broadband/dial-up-internet.asp

And now I'm wondering whether to give that a go over Christmas. Got an external 56.6 and an ISA Zoom 14.4 (BABT Approved! I think) somewhere. I've a vague memory of the last time I tried using dial up (many years ago, DSL connection died) that lots of websites just didn't work because of time-outs. I think the rough expectation at 14.4kbps was about 10min/MB. BBC homepage is currently about 3.6MB. So that'd be over half an hour. About 3MB is scripts, images and fonts. It'd be 5min just for the HTML.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17zfz017s9A

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-22, 12:40:

snufkin wrote on 2021-12-22, 12:30:

Did a quick Google and found this for the UK: https://www.icuk.net/broadband/dial-up-internet.asp […]
Show full quote

appiah4 wrote on 2021-12-22, 09:24:

Over land lines? I know Telnet is still a thing but are there even real landlines left?

Did a quick Google and found this for the UK:
https://www.icuk.net/broadband/dial-up-internet.asp

And now I'm wondering whether to give that a go over Christmas. Got an external 56.6 and an ISA Zoom 14.4 (BABT Approved! I think) somewhere. I've a vague memory of the last time I tried using dial up (many years ago, DSL connection died) that lots of websites just didn't work because of time-outs. I think the rough expectation at 14.4kbps was about 10min/MB. BBC homepage is currently about 3.6MB. So that'd be over half an hour. About 3MB is scripts, images and fonts. It'd be 5min just for the HTML.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17zfz017s9A

Oh my .. that modem chatter, is it wrong to be happy to hear it again ?

TrashPanda wrote on 2021-12-22, 13:33:

Oh my .. that modem chatter, is it wrong to be happy to hear it again ?

Cathode Ray Guy also did a great video on modems too. He goes into it in depth more than would otherwise be relevant to computers specifically but I enjoyed it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OmBLsKV7Sx0

My retro activity for today was finishing the repair on my Midiman MM-401.

Diagnosing a broken Midiman MPU401

Well the Geforce 4 TI 4600 arrived today, the one that was artifacting from overheating and also had a bad fan, so I set about inspecting it and I could find no components that were missing or damaged so I set about removing the heatsink and as I suspected the TIM has gone super hard and brittle. Took quite a bit of effort to remove the heatsink without damaging the GPU, now I have to find something to remove the hard brittle TIM that remains.

Any suggestions since neither alcohol nor acetone had any effect on the TIM, I could gently scrape it off but im not sure how stable the surface of the DIE is.

Also anyone here ever rebuilt the small fans that come in the GF4 coolers ? it spins but doesnt sound great or spin fast, I think it might need a bit of grease but have never had to strip a fan this small down before.

I have fixed the GPU fan on my Ti4400 AGP by using sewing machine oil and white lithium grease, however, the fan died yet again and the fan connector totally ripped off on the fan itself.

You can use a case fan on the heatsink temporarily, however, the size of those things will prevent another add-on card from being installed, which can be problematic and using the regular fan is the way to go these days.

My recommendation is sewing machine oil and white lithium grease in the bearing shaft area (center of the fan underneath).

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-22, 04:28:

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-22, 03:21:

How is the phone wired into that? 🤣

How else is he supposed to dial into a BBS?

Ah man I wish I was around for the days of phreaking phones and stuff. I remember watching a BBS documentary where people they interviewed mentioned using 2600hz dial tones to get free internet.
Then they'd dial into a sketchy bbs to grab a copy of the anarchists cookbook.

Today I've been working on repairing a Voodoo 2. I've been carefully cleaning and reflowing the large quad flat pack chips and fixing other damage on the board.

Todays retro activity case mod like its Y2k ! Lan party grab handles, blow hole with obnoxious case fans, cold cathode lighting, led temp displays, fan toggle switches and custom paint job. Pc case was in really bad shape! I wouldn't cause any harm to a clean beige tower. I'll post some pics when its done. still have to make harness for the fans and some cable management to do 🤣

specs:
Pentium 3 Coppermine 1GHZ 133fsb
Asus cusl2
512MB pc133
Geforce 2 GTS
Sound blaster live
40GB IBM deskstar