Mistakes were made...

I'm usually very carefull handling hardware but this one well i fucked up by not heating it and frankly not paying any attention that it was adhesive and not a normal thermal pad.

In my defence the other side fell off on it's own (the side that screws in and holds it all together) but the other side was still sticky and i went a bit too hard on it by tilting the dimm while it was sticking to that one chip.
Strange thing is though that the thermal tape was already a bit damaged and there are signs of damage to the coldplates ... which is odd because i didn't use any tools on it. But nonetheless i was probably the one who tore of the chip.

The nickel (i think?) plating has some gouges in it at the edges leading me to believe someone was there already (again i'm pretty sure i tore the chip off though)

But anyway it is/was a set of 4 dimms all in not so great condition. These will likely not get used and i have a set of Corsair XMS PRO 2x1gb DDR2 that will probably be installed (unfortunately i have only 2gb instead of 4 for a S775 build)

Athlon 64 4000+ 939
1gb DDR at 200
GeForce 6800 (for now single I need to add the second one)
Sound blaster X-fi

The CPU runs at 42c with an ambient temp of 33c
The case says it's at 36, I can't complain I guess.

I got one of these https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/micron … 0wb-09-00220-xx

I was excited to check out the rare Micronics X30WB chipset and integrated CMD 640b VLB storage. Everything looked clean and mint when I took the cover off, practically unused. But when I tried to take the mobo out of case to inspect it, I couldn't get one of the 9 pin serial cables off the motherboard. That's when I realized that it wasn't held by hot glue but green battery crust. Spend the next hour washing out the simm sockets and the corroded capacitors near the keyboard connector.

I found a half spindle of Sony CD-Rs at goodwill. 4 buckeroos.

I got a bunch of laptops from someone recently... some worth fixing up, some with broken screens. But one just made me shake my head in disbelief. I remember giving one away 12 years ago because it was so outdated THEN... why anyone (read: a normal person that wouldn't be on VOGONS) would still have still had one of these laying around in 2024 boggles my mind.

It is an Acer Aspire One ZG5. One of the original netbooks from 2008, complete with a dirt-slow Atom N270 1.6Ghz single core, 1024x600 (yep...) screen, 512MB of soldered DDR2 667 and a single DDR2 SIMM slot. It all actually worked fine except for the hard drive being dead, so I figured I'd go back in time 16 years and tear one of these apart to upgrade the RAM to 2GB and put in a newer hard drive (really not worth wasting a modern SSD on such a slow machine).

I wish I'd done a bit more research first, because this dumb thing supports a max of 2GB of RAM, but thanks to the onboard 512MB you can only add 1GB without going over the limit and causing it not to POST. GENIUS! So, after tearing it apart and putting it all back together twice, it now has a 1.5GB of DDR2 and I threw in a Seagate Firecuda 500GB SSHD (hybrid SSD hard drive) I had laying around.

I am planning to install XP on it, since that's probably the easiest thing to run on the machine. I would like to install something else just for kicks, but I doubt the onboard video or sound would work in Windows 9x. I don't know if pure DOS 7.1 will work, but I have considered that as well. I'm not a Linux guy, so shoehorning some variant of that onto such a weak machine isn't something I'm interested in doing right now.

G-X wrote on 2024-07-30, 17:53:

Mistakes were made... […]
Show full quote

Mistakes were made...

...

Ack, that's such a shame. I think I may have done something similar a long time ago or was very close to it, since then I don't touch ramsinks. Probably dripping some IPA in there would loosen the thermal pad temporarily.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-31, 23:30:

I got a bunch of laptops from someone recently... some worth fixing up, some with broken screens. But one just made me shake my […]
Show full quote

I got a bunch of laptops from someone recently... some worth fixing up, some with broken screens. But one just made me shake my head in disbelief. I remember giving one away 12 years ago because it was so outdated THEN... why anyone (read: a normal person that wouldn't be on VOGONS) would still have still had one of these laying around in 2024 boggles my mind.

It is an Acer Aspire One ZG5. One of the original netbooks from 2008, complete with a dirt-slow Atom N270 1.6Ghz single core, 1024x600 (yep...) screen, 512MB of soldered DDR2 667 and a single DDR2 SIMM slot. It all actually worked fine except for the hard drive being dead, so I figured I'd go back in time 16 years and tear one of these apart to upgrade the RAM to 2GB and put in a newer hard drive (really not worth wasting a modern SSD on such a slow machine).

I wish I'd done a bit more research first, because this dumb thing supports a max of 2GB of RAM, but thanks to the onboard 512MB you can only add 1GB without going over the limit and causing it not to POST. GENIUS! So, after tearing it apart and putting it all back together twice, it now has a 1.5GB of DDR2 and I threw in a Seagate Firecuda 500GB SSHD (hybrid SSD hard drive) I had laying around.

I am planning to install XP on it, since that's probably the easiest thing to run on the machine. I would like to install something else just for kicks, but I doubt the onboard video or sound would work in Windows 9x. I don't know if pure DOS 7.1 will work, but I have considered that as well. I'm not a Linux guy, so shoehorning some variant of that onto such a weak machine isn't something I'm interested in doing right now.

I have a couple of those Acer Aspire One ZG5s in a box somewhere 😀 I like them for how disposable they seem and the 'cheap plastic toy' feel of them. The netbook craze was a pretty interesting death knell for ultraportable laptops 😀
How are they with DOS these days now that there's SBEMU?

-----------
Today I finally uploaded the pre-load disk images for the Toshiba Satellite T2450CT, but I decided it can work better as an 'information pack' for the whole T2400 series since there's only one disk different between the T2400 > T2450 series.
https://archive.org/details/ToshibaSatelliteT2450CT
There's very little information for it on the live internet anymore but I was able to find a fair bit in the internet archive with flyers, press release documents and detailed tech specs.
This T2450CT I got a couple of months back in this sorry state:

But I bought it without hesitation because it had the soundcard installed:

Now it's all cleaned up and working:

A dead T4600C gave me the LTM09C011 screen I needed, because the original LTM09C012 screen's outer and inner polarising films have broken down i.e. vinegar syndrome. And the control board is broken because of damage from leaked capacitors. Frustrating because the panel does actually work when I test with a known good control board and I look at it through a polarising filter attached to my camera lens.
And after lots of recapping the laptop is 100% working with the sound - see the pictures on that Internet Archive link to see what the soundcard looks like close up!.
I've been going in depth with it because I also have a T2400CS which I really want to swap out for a TFT screen. In the process I've learned that the T2400 series is basically a much more complex form of the later T2100 series, with the same chips making up its chipset and a double-decker type motherboard, only the video chip is different. The T2100 series is a much smarter layout which sacrifices the onboard SCSI for the internal IDE CD-ROM

In the process I've even learned how to overclock the T2400CS / T2400CT to 33MHz FSB or a DX2-66 instead of the stock DX2-50. I'd love to know how the folks in Japan worked out how to set up the Toshiba specific clock generator but I was able to use that info from the T2100 series to up the clock on the T2400 😀

Did you know that in Japan these were called the Toshiba DynaBook GT450 and GT475? The T2400 is the GT450 and there's both a Grey and White GT475, with the white one being mostly the same as the T2450CT and Grey GT475 being the T2130 / T2150CDT. Not long after though, they switched over to using the same model names all over the world.
That lead me to this amazing cache of brochures for Japanese computers: https://www.facebook.com/100057204950233/photos/
Check it out, the Acer Aspire that LGR just demonstrated: https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=983776251638308 & https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=983776248304975

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-08-01, 02:01:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-31, 23:30:

I got a bunch of laptops from someone recently... some worth fixing up, some with broken screens. But one just made me shake my […]
Show full quote

I got a bunch of laptops from someone recently... some worth fixing up, some with broken screens. But one just made me shake my head in disbelief. I remember giving one away 12 years ago because it was so outdated THEN... why anyone (read: a normal person that wouldn't be on VOGONS) would still have still had one of these laying around in 2024 boggles my mind.

It is an Acer Aspire One ZG5. One of the original netbooks from 2008, complete with a dirt-slow Atom N270 1.6Ghz single core, 1024x600 (yep...) screen, 512MB of soldered DDR2 667 and a single DDR2 SIMM slot. It all actually worked fine except for the hard drive being dead, so I figured I'd go back in time 16 years and tear one of these apart to upgrade the RAM to 2GB and put in a newer hard drive (really not worth wasting a modern SSD on such a slow machine).

I wish I'd done a bit more research first, because this dumb thing supports a max of 2GB of RAM, but thanks to the onboard 512MB you can only add 1GB without going over the limit and causing it not to POST. GENIUS! So, after tearing it apart and putting it all back together twice, it now has a 1.5GB of DDR2 and I threw in a Seagate Firecuda 500GB SSHD (hybrid SSD hard drive) I had laying around.

I am planning to install XP on it, since that's probably the easiest thing to run on the machine. I would like to install something else just for kicks, but I doubt the onboard video or sound would work in Windows 9x. I don't know if pure DOS 7.1 will work, but I have considered that as well. I'm not a Linux guy, so shoehorning some variant of that onto such a weak machine isn't something I'm interested in doing right now.

I have a couple of those Acer Aspire One ZG5s in a box somewhere 😀 I like them for how disposable they seem and the 'cheap plastic toy' feel of them. The netbook craze was a pretty interesting death knell for ultraportable laptops 😀
How are they with DOS these days now that there's SBEMU?

Ugh....

After tinkering with this thing on and off for many many hours (while doing other things thankfully) I finally got into the XP installer, started entering the product key... and... note to self:

The first thing to test once a laptop is booting: Do all of the keys work?

-_-

Yep, everything on it works now, except for a handful of the keys on the keyboard. I have tried reseating the connector to no avail. It's just toast. So, while I basically knew that the machine was kind of a waste of time since it isn't worth much (though people do buy them working), it was at least going to end up as a functional computer that was, in a sense, "the best it could be" for no outlay of money. Whelp. Even if I use a USB keyboard to install XP, and then install all the drivers, the built in keyboard needs replaced to be usable. So, unless I spend money on this stupid thing it really has no practical use. And do I want to spend time tearing the entire thing apart (down to the motherboard) to pull that 500GB SSHD out of it? Not really...

I'd love to find an old unit. Anything dos based. But particularly that big Zenith I used to have (z-171/181?). I have big hands. If anyone can point me in the direcrion of one, please pm me.

I have a 16" Sony PCG-GRX560. Different era of course. But it crapped itself 1.5 years after I got it. I REALLY need to look into repairing it. Ran XP. The thing ran pretty hot as I umderstand it. There was even a class action lawsuit. I found out after the fact. I will always despise ****ing Sony. Some of their audio products are kind of alright I guess. But basically everything Sony I bought in the early 2000s was garbage. Famous for it's name only.

Finally got the sound setup in my main DOS machine to a point where I feel like I can stop messing with it. SB16 with real OPL3, Goldfinch card, GUS Classic, and a HardMPU. It was simpler with an AWE32 card, but there's only one ISA slot in this machine that can accommodate the GUS or AWE32 but not both.

Cleaned up a CT1330 today and removed the rust with navel jelly (fairy dust). Put a thin layer of oil afterwards on the metal to reduce the speed of the rust returning. Not sure if anyone has a better method for reducing the speed of the rust coming back?

zuldan wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:01:

Cleaned up a CT1330 today and removed the rust with navel jelly (fairy dust). Put a thin layer of oil afterwards on the metal to reduce the speed of the rust returning. Not sure if anyone has a better method for reducing the speed of the rust coming back?

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Wait a sec...
People put oil on cards? is that why once i bought a GF 6600GT and it was an oily mess?
Damn now everything makes sense.

iraito wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:23:

Wait a sec...
People put oil on cards? is that why once i bought a GF 6600GT and it was an oily mess?
Damn now everything makes sense.

You would hardly notice the oil. Wipe it with a paper towel after applying with oil. A microscopic layer of oil is still left. Don’t worry it won’t feel like a McDonald’s chip 😉

zuldan wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:31:

iraito wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:23:

Wait a sec...
People put oil on cards? is that why once i bought a GF 6600GT and it was an oily mess?
Damn now everything makes sense.

You would hardly notice the oil. Wipe it with a paper towel after applying with oil. A microscopic layer of oil is still left. Don’t worry it won’t feel like a McDonald’s chip 😉

I don't know what the other guy did but the GF was a mix of grease and dust, i had to submerge the card in pure alcohol and scrub the whole card with a brush, and it was still oily.
I think the biggest danger is the micro dust build up, it kills the card if it mixes with oil.

zuldan wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:01:

Cleaned up a CT1330 today and removed the rust with navel jelly (fairy dust). Put a thin layer of oil afterwards on the metal to reduce the speed of the rust returning. Not sure if anyone has a better method for reducing the speed of the rust coming back?

The attachment 4A0F584F-CAE8-4612-A869-9269561A5EBB.png is no longer available

The attachment C444B611-B97C-46A8-82DA-FAD2788ACA54.png is no longer available

You could try something like "faucet gloss" which is a chrome polish with a wax coating, wouldn't come off as easily as oil.

edit: That brand is so ancient that google gives useless results. ... searching "chrome polish for faucets" seems to give better results, one standout is a marine grade product call "Star Brite" which seems to say the right things... another brand called Flitz, I am not sure it would leave so good a coating, but that might work also for "cutting" dead paint and dull plastic on old cases and shining them up.

I solved a puzzle without schematics.

Since I replaced the original board with an 33 MHz processor, the new CPU speed didn't match the display. Now it's a DX with 64kB cache.
(Highscreen Kompakt III system)

Filled the Gateway build with some more games.

Also included a few more obscure games - Hey Arnold Runaway Bus, Mad Cars, Mad Caps being a few. Not sure if anyone knows of "Maths with Reksio" but it had been popular in Poland and Romania, so not really that obscure I guess?

iraito wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:36:

zuldan wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:31:

iraito wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:23:

Wait a sec...
People put oil on cards? is that why once i bought a GF 6600GT and it was an oily mess?
Damn now everything makes sense.

You would hardly notice the oil. Wipe it with a paper towel after applying with oil. A microscopic layer of oil is still left. Don’t worry it won’t feel like a McDonald’s chip 😉

I don't know what the other guy did but the GF was a mix of grease and dust, i had to submerge the card in pure alcohol and scrub the whole card with a brush, and it was still oily.
I think the biggest danger is the micro dust build up, it kills the card if it mixes with oil.

That can happen from being in oily or greasy environments for many years. Kitchens and car garages can be really bad. I remember working on PCs for automotive shops in the early-mid 2000s and they were the greasiest, second most disgusting machines ever. Almost as bad as one that has been in a chain smoker's home for a few years. We often don't think of how much stuff is floating in the air until we see it accumulated in things that constantly draw in air, like computers. Everything from the rubber microparticles that come from tire-wear near roads or the vaporized oil and fuel in exhaust to that lovely smell of cooking oil floating in the air in a kitchen. It all collects in our devices with active cooling. Of course, it also collects in us, and that's probably a bigger concern. 😮

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-08-01, 16:57:

That can happen from being in oily or greasy environments for many years. Kitchens and car garages can be really bad. I remember working on PCs for automotive shops in the early-mid 2000s and they were the greasiest, second most disgusting machines ever. Almost as bad as one that has been in a chain smoker's home for a few years. We often don't think of how much stuff is floating in the air until we see it accumulated in things that constantly draw in air, like computers. Everything from the rubber microparticles that come from tire-wear near roads or the vaporized oil and fuel in exhaust to that lovely smell of cooking oil floating in the air in a kitchen. It all collects in our devices with active cooling. Of course, it also collects in us, and that's probably a bigger concern. 😮

Can confirm (work in automotive) the screen on my work laptop always get's a film of sticky goo after a week or so. If dust lands on it and you try to clean it suddenly it starts making streaks all over. Meaning there is oily mess floating arround all the time. I can clean my workbench and i kid you not 4 hours later if you wipe your hand over the top it's all dust/dirt. Image a pc that's running 24/7 for years in this enviroment (or my lungs).

I would imagine a lot of it is air tool and compressor oil... switch to electric tools and let ozone kill you instead 🤣

zuldan wrote on 2024-08-01, 11:01:

Not sure if anyone has a better method for reducing the speed of the rust coming back?

Look up "rust converter" to seal the rust and prevent it from getting any worse.