Still on the i3, I loaded HWINFO, and made the benches, I'll see if I can do them on the i5 too.

Meanwhile today, I restarted the PC OFFICE, ABIT IP35 with C2D E4600, and redone the CPU-Z bench, in that PC I have version 2.08, so not the last, but if necessary I can replace it and redo the benches, I must say that having now got used to the Core iX, it seems a bit slow, in reality it is not, it is that it is those two PCs that are fast, I do not know if because the OS is light, or if the recent OS are too heavy, and require a lot of RAM.

I tried to finish the repair of the cache chip, with the missing pin on the Soyo SY-5BT (5BT5), yesterday milling the plastic part, which covers the pins, I saw a trace that had appeared, today I checked with the tester, unfortunately it was as I thought, that track leads to pin 9, and not to the 10 (missing), I tried to mill again on the side of pin 11, unfortunately you don't see anything emerge, maybe I'm very close or not? Who knows?

It depends on how it broke, I hope it didn't come away from the inside, in that case I would say, that it becomes impossible to find a point to redo the connection to the MB.

Maybe even if more complex, it's easier to find new replacement chips, and unplug it, and then weld the new one, unfortunately I don't have an MB from which to recover those chips, or at least one,

I don't know what they cost, and I don't have a hot air station, in short, I have to figure out whether to keep trying to look for the broken pin, or let it go, and think about replacing that cache chip.

I haven't yet ️ searched for a datasheet, of that cache chip, but I have two possibilities, the first, to continue milling, and hope to find what I'm looking for, that is, the missing pin 10, or get two more replacement chips, as long as they are identical, and replace the damaged one. Because maybe in the end, if the broken pin doesn't pop out, I won't be able to make any bridges, then you have to see if the cache works again.

Replacing that chip, without adequate equipment, will be neither easy nor simple, maybe since it is broken, you could cut all the pins, and in this way it would be easier to detach them, hoping not to damage the tracks.

I had something else to do, and I didn't continue with the repair of the Soyo cache chip, the idea is to try to mill a little more, if I could find the track that goes to the missing pin, I would only have to make a bridge between chip and MB, if the problem is just that (I guess so), I should have all 512 KB of L2 cache, currently I can't use them because the MB crashes, only by disabling the L2 cache, the card works.

In case it does not work, despite the bridge, it is possible that the chip is broken, and should be replaced, unfortunately I do not have MB scrap with L2 cache, to recover the chips.

Alternatively there could be the purchase of replacement (new) chips, I honestly don't know if it is possible to find them, the suggestion I received is to buy a coast module, and pick them up from there.

There is a further detail to consider, I have never soldered chips like that, and I don't know if in the absence of adequate equipment, I would be able to weld one without doing damage.

For the moment I put aside, the ASUS CUV4X REV.1.03 with Pentium!!! 733 SL3XY, I've already seen that it works, but it needs some upgrades, and right now I don't have the time ⏱ to do them.

I prefer to devote myself to other MB to try, or do some repairs, however I will come back hopefully soon, on the CUV4X for the final configuration, adding VGA AGP sound card and more, including RAM.

For example I have this AOPEN MX34 with P3 600, which visually looks great, and could be tried, there is only one thing I don't like, the BIOS chip welded directly on the MB, that is, it is not removable, but if it had BIOS problems, you would have to desolder it, to be able to insert it into the programmer, I don't think there is anything, like a socket to hook on it.

The AOPEN MX34 with P3 600, is almost ready to be tried, first I looked for info on the P3, to find out if it was a 100 or a 133, it is a 133 with multi 4.5X, this was also very likely, since the chipset is VIA, so I put a 64 MB PC133 RAM, RAM that I used in old PCs, and which I then replaced with modules of 128 MB or more.

As a VGA, since there are no ISA slots, I use the usual 8MB ATI RAGE XL PCI, I found it difficult for the CPU heatsink, an electrolytic capacitor is too close, but there are others that are close, and they prevent the use of coolers bigger than the socket, I have one used for Celeron Mendocino, the size is ok, the fin is perhaps not of abundant (generous) size, but for short rehearsals, it's fine (I guess).

I hope by the evening to be able to show pictures of the working card.

Therefore, the various commitments and jobs I have to do at the moment prevent me from sitting down at the bench to start up some PC or do some repairs. For example, I have a PCChips with P3 500 Slot1, which has been gathering dust for a few years, and I would like to dust it off and restart, on this occasion I will do some benching from Windows, I think there is Windows 98SE, or maybe XP?
Since I like doing repairs, I intend to buy a cheap oscilloscope, which would be very useful, both for MBs and for other repairs, I'll show it to you in a picture, if there are reasons to recommend it, or not, I would like to know what you think .

I was looking for the P3 600 (AOpen MX34), something useful to add later, and among the various cards under repair, I found this ASROCK 775V88+, with P4 3.0/1M/800 CPU, nothing special, but the repair may not be too complicated.

Around the CPU socket, there are swollen 3300uF 6.3V capacitors, in total there are six, apart from that the rest seems in very good condition, and probably changing those six, the board will work again, in this state I don't think it works, and I don't know if the value of ESR has risen beyond the normal values, from experience I say it should be very high and almost everyone should have an out of tolerance capacity.

Currently it is a socket that I appreciate, but this appreciation can go up if it supports dual core CPU, or it can go down if it uses a maximum of 400 DDR RAM and single core CPU, and I think that's what has slowed me down in the past, that is, the card should not be very upgradeable.

I tried the MB AOpen MX34 a little while ago, in fact I had few doubts about how it works, and it was like that from the first start, it displayed the post codes in succession, and then after the beep, I could see on the screen, the main page of the BIOS.

Just to take a quick look, I went into the BIOS, viewed a few screens, and then turned off.

I forgot to put the battery, even without but it works, now I should remove the temporary VGA, and put a definitive VGA AGP, to choose between ATi or GF, which one? And what model ???

The RAM must be changed and increased, for the moment the 64 MB may be fine, but if I install an HD with Windows, I should have at least 256 MB, maybe even less is enough, but you can leave a free RAM bank, for subsequent additions.

Tomorrow I think I can make some changes to the configuration of the PC with P3-600 on MB AOpen MX34, I will try more RAM and then I will see to gather some video cards, maybe the GF FX5200 is a little too powerful for a 600 MHz, of course I could change CPU with something around 800-1000 MHz, but for the moment I would keep the 600, because the other P3s I have are all faster, maybe it would be interesting to give it a try with a modified Tualatin, or via socket adapter, but the VIA chipset, I don't think it is at the level of Intel (like speed).

I could also have the time ⏱ to try some S.7, like the Soyo with VX chipset, it is a board that should work, unfortunately the linear controllers, do not allow the use of fast CPUs, the maximum is around 200-233 MHz, even if it is possible to go faster, it is not said that in the long run, the linear controllers fail, for too much heat to dissipate, but maybe taking good care of the cooling and keeping them nice fresh, it is possible to go to 75 X 3.5 = 262.5 MHz, with a Pentium MMX, you could also use a K6-2 266, but a Frequency parity, P.MMX should be better, especially when FPU is used a lot.

Here I am, always with my paws between old-HW, I'm currently trying an MB 370, the AOpen MX34 with P!!! 600, first of all I tried other RAM, to see to get 256 MB total, which for this PC can be beyond the indispensable amount, you can easily install any OS, preferably W98SE (or M.E.?), or even something better, like W2000 or WXP, it depends on what you want to do, that is, what use will you make?

If I use it, it's just a PC to run the programs of those days, you can use a VGA not particularly powerful, if instead you think of making a few games (Game), I would say at least a GF2MX or higher, or the equivalent of ATi, I don't know exactly which models to choose, but I have several, and in the end maybe the choice will depend on what I have.

The CPU is maybe not too fast, of course I could change it, but I would only do it if that limits in some way, the performance, definitely something close to 1000 MHz, it should be better than the 600, but if the difference was not even noticeable, I wouldn't have a valid reason to change it.

Finally a curiosity, the VIA chipset would probably be, perfect for VIA C3 CPUs, too bad that in the past, I tried a 600, and it was very slow, in short, I think the worst CPU I have ever tried.

Hi everyone... i'm trying to bring back to life this 386 but still fighting.
Removed battery, washed, vinegar.... first look, the tracks looks fine. Power on but no beeps, the clock seems weird as expected square wave on isa slot
i have tested the 74ls04 with tl866 and seems good, maybe some track under IC are damaged

LoStSOul wrote on 2024-07-06, 23:03:

Hi everyone... i'm trying to bring back to life this 386 but still fighting.
Removed battery, washed, vinegar.... first look, the tracks looks fine. Power on but no beeps, the clock seems weird as expected square wave on isa slot
i have tested the 74ls04 with tl866 and seems good, maybe some track under IC are damaged

Hello and welcome to my page, where I write about motherboard repairs and tests, sometimes unfortunately I am unable to complete the repairs, because I don't have the necessary equipment, in these cases I keep them aside to try again in the future, when I have added a new tool.
If you want to read the first few pages, there are a couple of 386s, which had a battery acid leak problem, fortunately it was solved, the problem was basically oxidation on the pins of a chip, and I noticed that you have a lot of oxide in the slot ISA, you can see the green very well, I know it's possible to clean them, but I've never done anything like this, I think there is a specific product to use, but I don't know what it's called, maybe start cleaning the areas with a lot of green , and then if you manage to remove it and the contacts go back to copper color, I would also clean the slots just below, because maybe they are not green but there is oxide.
However, a photo of the battery area may show some problems that you missed.

I found among the VGAs I keep stored, a Gigabyte of a nice blue, although it would have been better Green, anyway, an AGP 2-4X, with GF2MX200 chip and 32 MB of RAM.

Then I would have some ATi, but I don't know what models can be good on such a PC, I easily chose the GF, because on the P3BF I have a GFMX, and so I think that even here it can be fine, if I want I would also have some TNT2, maybe those would be fine too ???

This morning I downloaded some games of the period, kind of action stuff, and then also a diagnostic software, I have to transfer them to a pendrive, and maybe it becomes interesting, because there are about twenty pages, containing at least a dozen downloadable games, in short, you can spend hours playing with only one game, let alone with all these, but it must be said that some are newer and therefore not suitable, or the PC is too slow for those games.

Installed the GF2MX200 AGP, it works but I notice that from BIOS, there is a certain slowness, the menu lines are seen appearing slowly, I don't know what it depends on, from the feeling of having a PC of much lower power, I don't know it seems a bit strange to me, we will have to do some verification with diagnostic programs, soon I should connect the IDE-CF adapter with DOS, we will see what comes out.

From a BIOS screen, I notice that the card goes with AGP 2X, I have the doubt that instead it can also work at 4X, but I don't know if this VGA goes to 2X at most?

I am running some diagnostic tests, using QTPRO, I think I have found what a problem there is, it seems that it is a problem with the RAM of the VGA, because running the test takes a lot of time, it is usually a test performed quite quickly, especially considering that the total RAM is relatively low, compared to that of other VGAs that have much higher quantities.

I put the images of the benches, I do not know if they are useful for something, certainly in one you can see that it is globally slow compared to the reference P3 600, I do not know if it depends on the chipset or the memories, or if to this slowness we also add that of the VGA, which in any case should be tried in another PC, just to understand if the VGA is ok, and if it is an incompatibility with the VIA chipset, I remember that on the S7 the VIA chipset has big problems with the TNT2, we will see if the problem can be solved with a VGA ATi.

I put back the VGA PCI ATI Rage XL 8MB, and removed the AGP of the Gigabyte, and I saw a decidedly higher speed, in the display of any screen, the Gigabyte gives the impression that the PC is very slow, in the BIOS changing screen, I can see every single line added, which does not normally happen.

From the QTPRO program, I run the bench, and the result is that the ATI RAGE XL gets the same score as the Mach64, maybe it's a bit low, but still it's a lot better than the Gigabyte, which gets modest scores.

At this point, I have to see with a VGA AGP from ATI, what happens, that is, if the scores are better than the RAGE XL or are similar to the Gigabyte, in any case I think it will be necessary to try the Gigabyte on another PC, to understand if it has a defect or if it works?

The next attempt will be another change of VGA, I don't know why the GF2MX200 is so slow, but looking better, it turns out to be a little more modern than the PC, which I remember is from the end of 1999 (last century), so nothing strange if I use non-equivalent models of other brands, at that time there was not yet ️ the Radeon, so ATI RAGE but AGP (instead of PCI), there was also the Fury MAXX with two GPUs, but never had between my legs, and finally I would have to try TNT2 M64 and ATI 7XX0, of the latter I don't know by heart that I have models, we'll see what I find.

I really hope it's not a defect of the MB, because it would be quite impossible to fix it, if instead it's that video card that has a problem, it wouldn't be a big deal, I would end up using it as a test video card, I currently use the RAGE XL PCI, which is fine on all PCs except some type S7 or lower, because the PCI must have both 5V and 3.3V, there is a mod. that can be done, but I don't need it, because in those PCs I can use an ISA VGA.

So going back to the VGA AGP speech, I just tried the TNT2 M64, which should be worse than the GF2MX200, in reality it is not so, the card was detected faster, even if not enough (in my opinion), honestly I did not understand much, the one that on the card was the slowest, it was the fastest, that is, according to the bench of QTPRO, the ATI RAGE XL PCI goes better than the two NVIDIA AGPs, then of course it could be a driver problem, or maybe a BIOS problem (to be updated???), in short, a nice puzzle is detected, at this point there is only a Matrox G4X0 to try, for the moment I see that we understand more, with the TNT2 installed, but there remains the doubt that something is wrong, who knows if there is any problem between NVIDIA and VIA (chipset), it would not be a novelty, since with the S.7 VIA the NVIDIA VGA had more than one problem.

So going back to the P3 600 period, and what video cards were there then, I have a PC magazine from the period, in which the manufacturers and models are indicated, let's see them:

3DFX Voodoo 3 and Voodoo Banshee

3DLabs Permedia 3

ATI Rage 128

Matrox G200

Number Nine Ticket-ti-ride IV

Nvidia RIVA TNT

S3 Savage 4

Videologic Power VR 250

I would like to point out that there were advertisements for RIVA TNT2, and that therefore although it was not included in the list, it had to be available (soon?).

There is also a graphical comparison, with two different CPUs, a P2 400 and a K6-2/400, where you can see which one is better, well here is the TNT2 present !!!

Tests are performed with 3D Winbench 99 (D3D), Incoming Demo (D3D), and Quake II Demo (OpenGL).

From what you can see, Voodoo 3 and RIVA TNT2 are the best, while the Savage 3D is among the slowest.