TheMobRules wrote on 2024-11-03, 22:25:

Nunoalex wrote on 2024-11-03, 22:07:

unisound doesn't seem to detect it either it is not PnP or it is not working

It's from early 1994, I don't think it's PnP.

You can try cleaning the contacts, some of them look kind of corroded.

They do indeed
I had already sprayed a bit of contact cleaner but seems to need more attention
In my experience 90% of the problems with old hardware are bad contacts of some sort

Thank you

I have found that old hardware sometimes needs a little bit of exercise to get going. I don't know exactly why that is; I have thought that maybe it had to do with reforming aging capacitors, and that may be a factor, but I've experienced it with cards that are all-ceramic as well. My guess is that contacts are just as important.

If all else fails, I would put the card under a microscope and poke at each pin on the large QFP to see if there are any cracked solder joints. This is a common failure mode that I've seen on old Voodoo cards, but they are known for having a much more extreme thermal cycle. I don't know if it's an issue with chips that run cool.

Has anyone else tested hardware that seems defective but comes back to life on it's own?

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-10-31, 05:30:

So, I tested the card. It works, which is a miracle considering it covered the entire width of an hemisphere of the planet in a paper bag.
And unfortunately it's "only" a 275/300. Will be interesting to see if's faster than the 9100 128mb 275/275 that I have.
Also there is the overclocking route for the juicy 300/300. I mean all the other R200s I have can do 300mhz on the core. Hopefully this one won't be different.

Could you post this bios file somewhere, I'd love to flash my 3.3Ns 8500 to that 😁! Since mine is only 250/275.

Cheers!

I didn't get too much retro PC hardware at the flea market this past weekend. Of course, I didn't come home empty-handed either. 😉

1st purchase was a large(ish) green PCB AGP video card that looked like a higher-end GeForce FX or Quadro FX model. It's a Dell 0W0663... which from what I'm researching right now is a Quadro FX1000 - i.e. the same chip as the FX5800 & FX5800 Ultra, but with slower DDR2 memory (instead of GDDR2) and slower GPU clock too. It's untested and was destined for the metal scrap place, just like everything else I try to save from this flea market. Couldn't resist of taking a gamble for $3 only. 😁 I'll see if I can post pictures of it a little later tonight.

2nd purchase was a whole PC build for $6. What grabbed my attention was the case - a silver Delux ATX case with a handle on top and the BMW-like grille on the front... yeah, one of those I've been gawking about here for a while. 😉 I've missed my opportunity three times in a row now on this flea market with that case. The 2nd was a major bummer, since the case was the beige version rather than the silver one, and it had all era-appropriate Gigabyte hardware. The one that I bought is a little newer. I haven't taken it apart for cleaning and testing yet, but it came packed with three beige IDE optical drives (a DVD writer, a CD writer, and a CD+DVD-ROM), a 40 GB WD IDE HDD, some ASUS ATX motherboard with an AGP slot and AMD cooler (so it's either a socket 754 or a 939) and I *think* a Delux PSU... that I don't care at all for. But probably the best of the bunch in this combo was the video card - a GeForce 6600 LE AGP with full 128-bit memory bus.

3rd purchase: just a plain ol' full-height LGA775 heatsink with pushpins... but minus the fan (no biggie - I have lots of spares for these.) It has an aluminum insert rather than copper, but that's fine. $1.25 for this one, which is OK.

And that really sums it up for the retro PC purchases from this weekend.

Also, I forgot a few from the past weekend's sale:

- a 4-heatpipe Sapphire dual-fan video card cooler that looks like it came from a high[er]-end AMD Radeon HD video card. In decent shape (no bent or dinged heatpipes) but needs a wash. Fans spin OK. Can't go wrong for $3 here. 😀

- an mATX 1155 H61 motherboard with a Celeron G530 CPU and 2 or 4 GB stick of DDR3 RAM. All for slightly less than $2. The mobo looks like it came from a scrap PC that's been sitting outside for a while, judging by all of the leafs/dirt everywhere on the board and the completely rusted out USB ports on the back. But miraculously, the CPU socket looked pristine underneath the CPU - no bent pins whatsoever. Still, I don't have much faith that it will work. If it does, that' be like a miracle.

- a Sapphire Radeon HD6750 1GD3 for $1.75. Appears intact, though was quite dusty/dirty and with some surface corrosion on the X-fire connectors on top. Currently it's outside, drying in the sun/wind. I had to give it a wash. No way I'll test such dirty hardware as-is. And good thing I did - the thermal compound needed re-doing. The heatsink basically fell as soon as I got its screws removed - a sign that the TC is dry and that the card has been running hot. Being that the HD6750 is the same thing as the HD5750 and knowing how failure-prone those are... I also don't have much faith in this one that it'll work. But that's how scrap hardware goes.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2024-11-03, 20:46:

Got 2 AMD computers to play with. Need to work through a few others before really cracking into them, but one has and Aureal Vortex and LS120 drive, which had me sold!

That OG Athlon system with the K7S5A is in need of a recap. Can see some bulging on the CPU VRM out and also a few more on the rest of the board. The PSU is not inspiring any confidence in that build... though probably no less than the PSU in the Athlon XP rig (looks to be a Codegen with badly inflated label: 40 Amps on the 5V rail... yeah right! 🤣 )

Kahenraz wrote on 2024-11-04, 14:49:

I have found that old hardware sometimes needs a little bit of exercise to get going. I don't know exactly why that is; I have thought that maybe it had to do with reforming aging capacitors, and that may be a factor, but I've experienced it with cards that are all-ceramic as well. My guess is that contacts are just as important.

If all else fails, I would put the card under a microscope and poke at each pin on the large QFP to see if there are any cracked solder joints. This is a common failure mode that I've seen on old Voodoo cards, but they are known for having a much more extreme thermal cycle. I don't know if it's an issue with chips that run cool.

Has anyone else tested hardware that seems defective but comes back to life on it's own?

Indeed my friend
so many times dead boards come back to life after a few power cycles and a few reseats
I have no scientific explanation but something inside that silicon must be sleeping and needs time to wake up 😀

Probably the capacitors as you mention 🤣

AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2024-11-04, 15:55:

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-10-31, 05:30:

So, I tested the card. It works, which is a miracle considering it covered the entire width of an hemisphere of the planet in a paper bag.
And unfortunately it's "only" a 275/300. Will be interesting to see if's faster than the 9100 128mb 275/275 that I have.
Also there is the overclocking route for the juicy 300/300. I mean all the other R200s I have can do 300mhz on the core. Hopefully this one won't be different.

Could you post this bios file somewhere, I'd love to flash my 3.3Ns 8500 to that 😁! Since mine is only 250/275.

Cheers!

Sure, but I haven't done it in ages and I am not sure what program to use. Also, did you try overclocking it? Perhaps yours can do 300/300. I tried overclocking mine and I have a lot less margin than the other 8500s I have. I can't overclock it to 300/300 🙁 Best I could do is 300/275, by underclocking the memories, which I am not sure is faster than stock.

Just picked up a donor case for a rather tame DOS sleeper, P55C@233MHz. It’ll need some rust removal and touch up though…

Recently purchased ti4200 x8 64mb, quadro pro 2, new old stock arctic cooling silencer 3 for my fx5900xt (now pleasingly silent) and a cheap flower VGA fan cooler for the quadro pro 2 as I've broken the brittle fan trying to reoil it whilst taking it apart.
Quadro 2 pro didn't have text corruption texel alignment issues but desktop use is annoyingly not sharp. Will try descent: conflict freespace, which from memory had texel alignment issues

x850xtpe

"perfect conditions tested!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111111oneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneone"

:roll eyes:

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-11-05, 07:03:

x850xtpe

"perfect conditions tested!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111111oneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneone"

:roll eyes:

is that the one with dead in the image name ?

looks like a memory issue, might be temporarily fixable by reflowing the memory ICs.

Trashbytes wrote on 2024-11-05, 08:01:

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-11-05, 07:03:

x850xtpe

"perfect conditions tested!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111111111111111111111111oneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneoneone"

:roll eyes:

is that the one with dead in the image name ?

looks like a memory issue, might be temporarily fixable by reflowing the memory ICs.

yes. nomen omen.

Here's another pic of the artifacts.

Wes1262 wrote on 2024-11-05, 08:19:

Here's another pic of the artifacts.

Give it a reflow with a hot air gun on the memory ICs, use Kapton tape around them if you have it so SMDs dont get heated up.

If this improves the artifacting then it might be worth reballing , I wouldnt normally suggest reballing but this is a X850 XT PE which is a special case card, if you cant do it you may be able to find a repair service that can do it.

I would personally send it off to Northwest Repair if I lived in the US, the guy is a repair god and might actually be willing to try his hand at it, he has done a few other retro GPUs before. (This card is worth the effort for me to do that)

I wouldn't guess that's a BGA issue.
I'd be firmly looking at RAM.

High res pics?

myne wrote on 2024-11-05, 10:19:

I wouldn't guess that's a BGA issue.
I'd be firmly looking at RAM.

High res pics?

click on the image its pretty high res, its definitely ram, reflowing may help it may not at this point it cant hurt. I doubt itll last long even if it does help but itll give some indication if the ICs need replacing or not.

I meant of the board

Diamond Monster MX300 (Vortex 2) with a Diamond Monster MIDI 4MB. Not sure how common they were back in the day but I think it’s funky companies were still making waveblasters in 1998.

zuldan wrote on 2024-11-05, 11:18:

Diamond Monster MX300 (Vortex 2) with a Diamond Monster MIDI 4MB.

Nice. I got one of those with a 2mb diamond midi card. Didn't know there was a 4mb. I thought it was only 512kb and 2mb

RetroPCCupboard wrote on 2024-11-05, 13:22:

Nice. I got one of those with a 2mb diamond midi card. Didn't know there was a 4mb. I thought it was only 512kb and 2mb

The 4MB version was included with the MX200.

zuldan wrote on 2024-11-05, 11:18:

Diamond Monster MX300 (Vortex 2) with a Diamond Monster MIDI 4MB. Not sure how common they were back in the day but I think it’s funky companies were still making waveblasters in 1998.

The attachment IMG_6713.JPG is no longer available

Nice!

I had an MX200 back then which included the 4MB ROM. Sadly gave it away to a recylcing centre years later, although have since reacquired multiple Diamond Monster sound cards.