Moved one of my best CRT monitors to a new home - 22" Mitsubishi Diamond Pro 2070SB. Quite a heavy beast it is 😁 I haven't powered it on for about 2-3 years and I hope it still works fine 😒

CHANGE THEM ALL.

seriously. You already have the iron in your hand. Not replacing some of the caps is like buying 3 tires for your car.

verysaving wrote:

The picture is not very clear but they look like SANYO capacitor that usual are very good, I wouldn't change them without some […]
Show full quote

cj_reha wrote:

Created a capacitor map for a slot 1 A-Trend board I got today that doesn't work. Gonna visit an electronics shop near me and see if they can get me the caps. This is my first attempt at recapping and/or capacitor mapping 😊

The picture is not very clear but they look like SANYO capacitor that usual are very good, I wouldn't change them
without some other test to the board!
Try connecting a speaker and just the CPU with no RAM if it boots you should hear some beeps.

It is very unstable. With PC speaker connected, IF it posts, it is a long shrill continuous beep. It usually freezes at the memory test and a capacitor started hissing so I unplugged it.

Finally got around to getting my retro PC and audio areas together. Still need a good sized desk so I can have space for the CRT and room for builds and repairs.

cj_reha wrote:

verysaving wrote:

The picture is not very clear but they look like SANYO capacitor that usual are very good, I wouldn't change them without some […]
Show full quote

cj_reha wrote:

Created a capacitor map for a slot 1 A-Trend board I got today that doesn't work. Gonna visit an electronics shop near me and see if they can get me the caps. This is my first attempt at recapping and/or capacitor mapping 😊

The picture is not very clear but they look like SANYO capacitor that usual are very good, I wouldn't change them
without some other test to the board!
Try connecting a speaker and just the CPU with no RAM if it boots you should hear some beeps.

It is very unstable. With PC speaker connected, IF it posts, it is a long shrill continuous beep. It usually freezes at the memory test and a capacitor started hissing so I unplugged it.

If it beeps the CPU started and complains for missing RAM.
I would try a good known power supply being aware that these old
boards need a strong 5v and 3.3v rails while newer power supplies
are usually weaks on these since new boards take power for CPU
just from 12v rail.

Can you take a clearer picture of the whole board, I can't recognize
the brand of the caps on the top of the photo - they are used in a
DC-DC converter that supply the Chipset and the RAM so they can cause
the issue you are talking about.

Finally got done with my "Mighty Midget" build. It's a little cramped, but the necessary wires are strapped for good front-to-back cooling. It's all running on a MSI K9MM-V budget board which has been rock solid for almost 10 years now. It's one of those boards that says 2GB max memory, but in reality takes 4GB no problem and passes all memory tests. Using IC Diamond thermal compound and everything stays nice and cool even under load. Getting a decent score of 10070 in 3DMark05. What surprised me the most was playing Quake 4 under Ultra graphics settings still taxes this little guy pretty good. To get ultra smooth, silky FPS in Ultra graphics mode I have to knock it down to 800x600 resolution. The ID Tech 4 engine is still amazing to look at even in 2017. Really ahead of its time.

MSI K9MM-V Motherboard v1.7 BIOS
Corsair RM550x 550W Modular PSU
Athlon 64 x2 5200+ 2.7GHz 65W
G.Skill 4GB DDR2-800 CL5-5-5-5-15 PC2-6400 2x2
Diamond Viper ATI Radeon X1950 PRO 512MB GDDR3 AGP 8x
Creative Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS with I/O drive

Tried and failed at soldering today.

Must be doing something wrong. Set the iron to 650F and now my Ti4200 is a little discolored. Sigh, youtube videos make it look so easy.

Not too retro, but I've been running a bunch of ~2007 games on my 8800GTX for an upcoming project and I gotta say, especially gameplay wise, Modern Warfare aged like milk...

luckybob wrote:

mouser.com is where i get mine. reasonable prices, huge selection, fast shipping. i omly buy nichicon caps.

Any particular reason for the brand preference? I was about to pull the trigger on some caps until I realized they look too similar to the Mac IIcx's stock axial caps - because those were also Nichicons to begin with.

I'd prefer whatever capacitors I use to last even longer, within reason (tantalums are worth more than the IIcx board itself is!), but maybe I'm just expecting too much out of aluminum electrolytics for that kind of longevity. Perhaps production's improved in the wake of the bad caps plague, or maybe there's only so much that can be done with aluminum electrolytics before they start failing.

long story short, Nichicon make the best caps you can reasonably get. Other decent brands exist, like Panasonic.

dexvx wrote:

Must be doing something wrong. Set the iron to 650F and now my Ti4200 is a little discolored. Sigh, youtube videos make it look so easy.

You should not "set" and go on, instead see what the min. temperature is that gets the solder to flow. Also, do not heat the board too long, do take breaks.

elod wrote:

dexvx wrote:

Must be doing something wrong. Set the iron to 650F and now my Ti4200 is a little discolored. Sigh, youtube videos make it look so easy.

You should not "set" and go on, instead see what the min. temperature is that gets the solder to flow. Also, do not heat the board too long, do take breaks.

What elod said. If you feel uncomfortable or don't have solid solder techniques down yet, practice on a dead motherboard or some type of PCB to get your solder skills refined. Just takes practice and some patience. Be sure to get a solder wick. Makes it so much easier and cleaner.

Needed to look through some 5 1/4" floppy disks, so installed my newly acquired drive in an old Socket 7 system with an AMD K6-2 300MHz, running Windows 98 SE.

The disks haven't been stored well at all and as a result many have bad sectors, some unreadable and 1 or 2 that died soon after inserting them. I did manage to backup quite a bit of software, though not many games in this particular collection.

Backed up:

• Psion Link (Disk 1 of 2, seems to be Serial communication software.)
• Fantavision (Animation software from late 80s.)
• LocoScript (Disks 1-3 of 4) - not sure what version, disks copyrighted at 1990.
• Secretary Bird (Word Processor, Spreadsheet & Database software from late 80s.)
• Graphic Editor (no idea where this comes from, filename is GEDIT.EXE and it's a cursor based black/white block drawing program)
• NewsMaster (DTP from Unison World, 1986)
• Pafec PC DOGS (Amazingly, all 14 disks of this 2D CAD software backed up fine. These must have been stored properly.)
• Some GEM Apps (BASIC2, Paint, Doodle & KWord)
• A couple of Kuma Clip Art Disks.
• Leaper (Yay a game - Frogger clone, quite fun.)

A few disks that I checked, including stuff like GEM/3 Desktop & Timeworks Publisher are defective but pretty easy to source replacement disk images online, so I'm not worried about those. I was pretty gutted about my original copy of Borland Reflex Version 1 having a defective disk though.

All in all it was fascinating checking some of this old software out. 🤣

liqmat wrote:

elod wrote:

dexvx wrote:

Must be doing something wrong. Set the iron to 650F and now my Ti4200 is a little discolored. Sigh, youtube videos make it look so easy.

You should not "set" and go on, instead see what the min. temperature is that gets the solder to flow. Also, do not heat the board too long, do take breaks.

What elod said. If you feel uncomfortable or don't have solid solder techniques down yet, practice on a dead motherboard or some type of PCB to get your solder skills refined. Just takes practice and some patience. Be sure to get a solder wick. Makes it so much easier and cleaner.

Hmmm, could just be flux left on the board. Not always best to assume the worst.

Munx wrote:

Not too retro, but I've been running a bunch of ~2007 games on my 8800GTX for an upcoming project and I gotta say, especially gameplay wise, Modern Warfare aged like milk...

mw1.png

COD 4 still has great gameplay in my opinion. What gives you the stance that it has bad gameplay?

MrEWhite wrote:

Munx wrote:

Not too retro, but I've been running a bunch of ~2007 games on my 8800GTX for an upcoming project and I gotta say, especially gameplay wise, Modern Warfare aged like milk...

mw1.png

COD 4 still has great gameplay in my opinion. What gives you the stance that it has bad gameplay?

Yeah, it had a halfway decent campaign. Story may not have been great, but it was still fun.

Gave an IBM ThinkPad T42 to my cousin as a birthday present. Loaded it up with a bunch of games he loves, eg. Sims 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc. He's very happy. Nice XP gaming laptop

oeuvre wrote:

Gave an IBM ThinkPad T42 to my cousin as a birthday present. Loaded it up with a bunch of games he loves, eg. Sims 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc. He's very happy. Nice XP gaming laptop

Sims 2? I thought the T42 had a radeon 7500 at best.

xplus93 wrote:

MrEWhite wrote:

Munx wrote:

Not too retro, but I've been running a bunch of ~2007 games on my 8800GTX for an upcoming project and I gotta say, especially gameplay wise, Modern Warfare aged like milk...

mw1.png

COD 4 still has great gameplay in my opinion. What gives you the stance that it has bad gameplay?

Yeah, it had a halfway decent campaign. Story may not have been great, but it was still fun.

For me it was the clown cars and closets that spew hundreds brain-dead AI at you, mostly. Also the extreme linearity, where you either die or even break the game instantly if you decide to step to the side or just not move for a couple of minutes.

liqmat wrote:

elod wrote:

dexvx wrote:

Must be doing something wrong. Set the iron to 650F and now my Ti4200 is a little discolored. Sigh, youtube videos make it look so easy.

You should not "set" and go on, instead see what the min. temperature is that gets the solder to flow. Also, do not heat the board too long, do take breaks.

What elod said. If you feel uncomfortable or don't have solid solder techniques down yet, practice on a dead motherboard or some type of PCB to get your solder skills refined. Just takes practice and some patience. Be sure to get a solder wick. Makes it so much easier and cleaner.

The Ti4200 is dead anyways, so no big deal. The practice boards have much bigger holes and makes things a ton easier.