What retro things have you done today?

LewisRaz · 31 Dec 2019 at 17:14

Well I won that motherboard combo for £12. Only stuck a 15 bid on and didnt expect to be winning it.

Hopefully I can collect it this week and see what we have. Might rip my socket 7 system out and replace it with this and wait for a proper AT case for the socket 7.

paradigm · 31 Dec 2019 at 17:19

Hopefully it’ll clean up ok. Does it need any recapping?

LewisRaz · 31 Dec 2019 at 17:24

Its hard to tell from the photos. I will give it a good cleaning and do some testing! Been some time since I had to recap anything but these ones arent that hard if I have to. More scared of possible broken traces

paradigm · 31 Dec 2019 at 18:28

I find that most “modern” motherboards are typically too thick to succumb to broken traces unless the damage is obvious. Corroded traces are a possibility if that damage is indeed corrosion, but I still think it looks like nicotine stained dust.

You never said what it is, but as it only goes up to 133fsb (looking at the dip switch settings) and has an Intel southbridge, I’m going to assume a Socket 370 board of some type? With is being blue, it’s unlikely to be Abit or Asus.

LewisRaz · 31 Dec 2019 at 19:13

paradigm said:
I find that most “modern” motherboards are typically too thick to succumb to broken traces unless the damage is obvious. Corroded traces are a possibility if that damage is indeed corrosion, but I still think it looks like nicotine stained dust.

You never said what it is, but as it only goes up to 133fsb (looking at the dip switch settings) and has an Intel southbridge, I’m going to assume a Socket 370 board of some type? With is being blue, it’s unlikely to be Abit or Asus.

Ah I have been posting in a couple of threads and didnt put the full link in this one. Its a Gigabyte GA-BX2000+ with unknown cpu on an adapter (likely a celeron from googling what the adapter supports).

This one definitely looks like rust:

paradigm · 31 Dec 2019 at 19:24

Looks like a decent board, I assume 440BX, what looks to be a promise RAID controller, four dimm slots and ISA, that’s a decent feature set right there.

LewisRaz · 31 Dec 2019 at 19:57

paradigm said:
Looks like a decent board, I assume 440BX, what looks to be a promise RAID controller, four dimm slots and ISA, that’s a decent feature set right there.

You would be correct!
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-BX2000-/sp#sp

This is actually something I am not familiar with so I am looking forward to getting it going. The board appears to be well regarded online. @almoststew1990 mentioned in the other thread that it was more a P3 board which does seem the case. I was planning to remake my 2nd pc with p2 450mhz 128m ram and a Geforce 2 mx I think. Could end up replacing my SFF compaq p3 1ghz with this.

paradigm · 1 Jan 2020 at 09:42

The fact that it appears to happily be running a Coppermine (regardless of if it’s a Celery or a PIII) means that it’s got the voltages needed for CuMine CPUs, you might even be able to mod that slocket to allow the board to run a Tualatin, which means 1.4GHz stock is possible!

Hopefully it cleans up up and boots ok, then you can think about upgrades and final spec!

paradigm · 2 Jan 2020 at 11:11

Thought I’d take another look at my seemingly dead 6800 XT 256MB as it’s the most powerful AGP card I had.

It was working great and then one day just failed so I wasn’t holding out much hope as it was likely electronic failure of some type and without a schematic it would be near impossible to diagnose, but I took a look at the board anyway.

I thought I’d hit the jackpot here with pins B65 and B66 potentially bridged, but alas nothing still after ensuring that they were no longer bridged. I’ve also stumbled across a scratched trace which I need to continuity test, but it doesn’t look bad so I’m not holding out any hope that it’s this trace.

Next step is to check the fuses and possibly re-flow the PCIe bridge chip with my rework station. But I’m almost certain that I can’t resolve this card’s issue. I guess that’s one of the troubles with second hand legacy equipment, it could die at any point

LewisRaz · 2 Jan 2020 at 11:38

if those pins were connected is there a chance something has blown?

paradigm · 2 Jan 2020 at 11:45

LewisRaz said:
if those pins were connected is there a chance something has blown?

It’s entirely possibly, B65 is an I/O pin so will likely use the 1.5v signalling of AGP 4x. B66 I’m yet to work out what voltage it runs at, but both pins I think go straight to the PCIe bridge chip hence me going to try reflowing it. If the chip is dead then the card is scrap unfortunately as I’d need a donor board, and if I’m buying a known good donor, I might as well just replace the whole card.

LewisRaz · 2 Jan 2020 at 15:26

Be s shame if it doesnt work!
I had a whole day without wife or kids today so I have gotten around to putting the other socket 7 board in the dishwasher on a hot wash... Used my compuvac do try it off as fast as possible and will attempt to fire it up later. Nothing to lose on it at this point

paradigm · 2 Jan 2020 at 16:10

Socket 7 system, what’s the full spec? I’ve not currently got a socket 7 system, been debating going K6-3.

LewisRaz · 2 Jan 2020 at 16:39

It is a PCI54IT. I have a 100mhz pentium for it but no luck in getting it to life. Just one long beep with about 3 second delay.

(Still a bit damp before I dried it off)

Tried every combination of jumpers/cache/ram but no joy.

The cpu and ram have all been tested in my windows 95 pc and are known working.

paradigm · 2 Jan 2020 at 17:17

Hmm, repeating single beep is usually memory related, at least it is on my socket 5 and slot 1 boards.

Is there any removable base memory socketed on the board?

LewisRaz · 2 Jan 2020 at 17:53

paradigm said:
Hmm, repeating single beep is usually memory related, at least it is on my socket 5 and slot 1 boards.

Is there any removable base memory socketed on the board?

Not that I am aware of. I have tried it with 2 different pairs of ram that are working fine in the other system. There is some battery corrosion on the legs of some of the cache chips but I have had the jumpers set for no cache and its still the same.

almoststew1990 · 2 Jan 2020 at 18:02

@LewisRaz You could try removing the cache maybe?

Great buy on that Slot 1 motherboard by the way.

My Slot 1 slocket 1GHz system sold for £38 (Buy it Now) which I thought was reasonably priced - not stupid money but not dirt cheap either.

Edit - that Dallas real time clock might also have gone. Not sure if that buggers up the whole board, it might a bit different to just not having a CR2032 present?

paradigm · 2 Jan 2020 at 18:31

LewisRaz said:
There is some battery corrosion on the legs of some of the cache chips but I have had the jumpers set for no cache and its still the same.

Localised corrosion could be causing a short somewhere. I’d probably dig out the multimeter and some datasheets for the cache chips and checking there are no shorts to ground?

What are the chips down the top right? They are socketed so could potentially be pulled for testing if unneeded for boot/post.

LewisRaz · 2 Jan 2020 at 18:39

@paradigm Those are the cache chips. I did try it previously with them not inserted but that was before I hooked up a speaker to hear the beeps. Its also had a couple of baths in white vinegar to try and shift the corroded areas. I will try to get a pic of the underside of the board, some of the solder points appear discoloured (rust/white colour) but not corroded. Also fairly localised as the rest of the board is immaculate.

@almoststew1990 I have read 1 or 2 posts on some forums that suggest boards can go crazy when the dallas is dead but I asked on vogons and the few replies all said it should at least boot.

I am going to have another attempt later once everyone is in bed. Will try without the cache chips and fiddle around with the ram slots.

almoststew1990 · 2 Jan 2020 at 21:30

I got my XP PC set up to play a bunch of games I got in the GOG sale (Hitman Contracts, System Shock 2, Thief 2, Legacy of Kain 1 and 2). I also found my disks for Prince of Persia the Two Thrones, XIII, Hitman 2, Sims 2 and a couple of expansions, Duke Nukem Manhattan Project....

I went for my Socket 939 Athlon XP 2.2 GHz, *some* RAM, 7950GT (PCI-E), SB Audigy 2 ZS. It has a SATA controller too which makes life easier.