TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Retrorockit]

I was referring to trying to fix the post. I tried to fix the large images, and lost one, and doubled up on the others. I did succeed in losing all the thumbnails somehow!

I don't have the computer that the H2C connects to. Dell intentionally made the XPS 7xx coolers too large to fit in any of their other computers. The XPS 720 is a full tower,with a wonky Nvidia chipset. People still want silly money for them too. If I decide to do a BTX water loop I will part this out for it. But I haven't exhausted the possibilites of my BTX big air cooler yet.

 

[kiriakost]

Dell intentionally made the XPS 7xx coolers too large to fit in any of their other computers. The XPS 720 is a full tower,with a wonky Nvidia chipset. People still want silly money for them too.

Dell makes mistakes which some of them they could benefit us too, but not all.
Dell did use wonderful high quality Sanyo Denki 120mm x 38mm , which they sold retail at 35 USD as NEW, and we can find them as used from Dell machines at 8 ~12 $ its one. ;-)

 

[lexluthermiester]

Today I wasn't planing to go at the flea market again but I went there and I found a Pentium II 266MHz SL2HE CPU complete with a Cooler Master heatsink. The Ultimate Thermal Solution. Wicked!

Interesting HS on that P2! Never seen one of them before, or at least as far as I can remember.. Nice find! Are you going to do your usual clean and display thing?

 

[Robert B]

If you have a soldering station worth 160$ at least, you may have some chances of success.
I would clean these pads and test the motherboard first.

Will do but instead of a soldering station I'll use something a little more getto. My 15W soldering iron. I feel pretty confident. I did this before.

I'll remove the damaged transistor and put another one that it is good. I don't plan to replace the ALC883 chip entirely.

Interesting HS on that P2! Never seen one of them before, or at least as far as I can remember.. Nice find! Are you going to do your usual clean and display thing?

Will do for sure!

 

[lexluthermiester]

Will do for sure!

Nice!

 

[Retrorockit]

Dell did use wonderful high quality Sanyo Denki 120mm x 38mm , which they sold retail at 35 USD as NEW, and we can find them as used from Dell machines at 8 ~12 $ its one. ;-)

For the same money get the Delta AFC1512DG 150x50mm 259cfm fan. Dell #NC466,or DG168.

youtube Delta fan fun at DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo. Privacy, Simplified.

duckduckgo.com

 

[xrror]

I have a PK5-Pro which looks *very* similar to the ECO, at first look this area looks the same on both boards but I'm having a bad time finding a camera that can actually focus close enough to read the part.

I'll try and get an image, or at the very least find a magnifying lens to be able to read the part # from the missing component.

Today at the flea market, I found an ASUS P5K/EPU [...]
If someone has this motherboard I need some help identifying that transistor. Ideally I would need a clear picture or what are the markings on the transistor. I might save this board. The missing transistor has a SOT-23 package.

Thanks in advance!

 

[Robert B]

Thanks a lot xrror. If you use your phone like me, you will have to take the picture outside when it is sunny or at least a bright day and keep the camera at an angle. If the markings can't be captured use a piece of A4 paper an try to position it above the board so that you can control the angle at the which the light falls on the components. If this fails telling me the markings on the transistor is plenty enough.

The thing is that I already soldered a "scavenged" 1P transistor from a discarded fan. I didn't power up the board yet. I'll wait for you when you are able to tell me the markings on the transistor. I'm in no hurry to give it the beans yet.

The 1P transistor that I used as a replacement was a little bigger than the original and I had to do some offset soldering. All in all I say that it came out pretty good. My 15W soldering iron did the trick even if the tip wasn't designed for this job. The solder joints are a little blobby but I wasn't going to insist to much as I feared that I might damage the solder pads.

I didn't have an exact replacement in regard to the size and position of the terminals so this is as good as it going to get!

Unless I soldered the wrong transistor ...

One day I'll buy that illusive soldering station!

 

[lexluthermiester]

Unless I soldered the wrong transistor ...

One day I'll buy that illusive soldering station!

Actually, that looks pretty good.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Hi,
Doubt it's nostalgic but it's pushing 11 years old and still alive
2009 Acer Aspire AX3800 with WG43M mother board and came with E5200 dual core upgraded to Q9550 core 2 quad and 2x4gb crucial memory came with Vista
Was my first jump into modifying and upgrading first was transplanting into a D450 case for a real gpu yes a evga 980 hybird lol worked well

For the lack of another gpu for x99 rig to be used woke this old thing up from hibernation and added it to my entertainment center on my new China clone hwbot test bench
Works pretty good still win-7 fired right up off an old system image and updated too
Win-10 has been on this machine but I haven't reinstalled it yet probably will self activate

Nice setup, I run the same oddball Acer motherboard in my $80 daily driver. It's actually a surprisingly nice motherboard, and took to a E5440 771 to 775 CPU upgrade with no issues (I did add microcode to newest BIOS). Performance is just fine for my usage patterns and board is stable and reliable! I paid $15 shipped for my board, and $5 shipped for the CPU!

Im assuming you have the DDR3 version? Mine is the DDR2 version which seems less common then the DDR3 version.
See my other specs to the left.

The left system is my Socket 423 based retro gaming PC running Windows 98SE. Both of my systems were built from matching cases I found literally in the trash. I live on an extreme budget so my complete setup works great for me and was inexpensive!

Why Socket 423? Why not? Mainly because while most retro hardware is getting pricey, the Socket 423 platform can be found cheaply. I have around $100 in my whole build - and that's not easy to do with PIII or other retro hardware.

Specs: Intel D850GB Socket 423 Gateway OEM motherboard
Pentium 4 1.9GHz CPU with Gateway OEM cooler
512MB Rambus memory (2 x 256MB)
Asus Geforce FX5200 AGP video card (128MB memory on 128-bit bus)
SoundBlaster Live PCI sound card (DOS emulation works fairly well)
Samsung 40GB IDE hard drive, Samsung IDE optical drive
Recapped Thermaltake 400W ATX power supply

I was running a Geforce 3 Ti200 until it died one day. The FX5200 was $12 shipped, and since it's one of the better ones with a 128-bit memory bus it actually performs better then the Ti200. I did redo the thermal compound and have a side panel fan blowing at the card as it's passively cooled. Overclocked slightly to 280 core / 460 memory. This system is CPU limited for newer games but can play Unreal Tournament 2004, Max Payne II, and Call of Duty 1 smoothly at 1024x768 with tweaked settings. All the DOS games I've tried run great, been playing though One Unit Whole Blood currently.

 

[Keullo-e]

Other of those cases needs to have a sleeper build built in.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Other of those cases needs to have a sleeper build built in.

Someday if my health/finances improve, it will be home to an all AMD Ryzen build no doubt!

I can dream anyways.....................

 

[ThrashZone]

Nice setup, I run the same oddball Acer motherboard in my $80 daily driver. It's actually a surprisingly nice motherboard, and took to a E5440 771 to 775 CPU upgrade with no issues (I did add microcode to newest BIOS). Performance is just fine for my usage patterns and board is stable and reliable! I paid $15 shipped for my board, and $5 shipped for the CPU!

Im assuming you have the DDR3 version? Mine is the DDR2 version which seems less common then the DDR3 version.
See my other specs to the left.

The left system is my Socket 423 based retro gaming PC running Windows 98SE. Both of my systems were built from matching cases I found literally in the trash. I live on an extreme budget so my complete setup works great for me and was inexpensive!

Why Socket 423? Why not? Mainly because while most retro hardware is getting pricey, the Socket 423 platform can be found cheaply. I have around $100 in my whole build - and that's not easy to do with PIII or other retro hardware.

Specs: Intel D850GB Socket 423 Gateway OEM motherboard
Pentium 4 1.9GHz CPU with Gateway OEM cooler
512MB Rambus memory (2 x 256MB)
Asus Geforce FX5200 AGP video card (128MB memory on 128-bit bus)
SoundBlaster Live PCI sound card (DOS emulation works fairly well)
Samsung 40GB IDE hard drive, Samsung IDE optical drive
Recapped Thermaltake 400W ATX power supply

I was running a Geforce 3 Ti200 until it died one day. The FX5200 was $12 shipped, and since it's one of the better ones with a 128-bit memory bus it actually performs better then the Ti200. I did redo the thermal compound and have a side panel fan blowing at the card as it's passively cooled. Overclocked slightly to 280 core / 460 memory. This system is CPU limited for newer games but can play Unreal Tournament 2004, Max Payne II, and Call of Duty 1 smoothly at 1024x768 with tweaked settings. All the DOS games I've tried run great, been playing though One Unit Whole Blood currently.

View attachment 164441 View attachment 164442

Hi,
I got the memory amount backwards
It's 4x2gb = 8gb kit yep ddr3 crucial part # CT25664BA160BA.c16

There's a cpu pin mod to oc the chip lol might try it later might even rig a water block on it I have plenty of them around looks like an ek evo would be easy
I never flashed the last bios on it just used inspectre to get rid of the performance hit.
Can't really remember when win-7 was released but I got this machine a few months before and it came with a win-7 free upgrade think it was 2009 ?
Think I bought it from home shopping network of all places for like 300.us lol

 

[Mr.Scott]

Why Socket 423? Why not? Mainly because while most retro hardware is getting pricey, the Socket 423 platform can be found cheaply. I have around $100 in my whole build - and that's not easy to do with PIII or other retro hardware.

You only have a C-note into it because you're using an OEM board.
Check out the prices on good 423 boards.......if you can find one.

 

[xrror]

found an ASUS P5K/EPU motherboard (...) help identifying that transistor.

I *think* it says "42t" , the picture is mostly to make sure the layout looks correct.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

One day I'll buy that illusive soldering station!

Naaah high end soldering equipent is over-rated ! I do lots of board level component repair using a cheap Weller 30W fine tip iron, and a cheap Chinese 60W pencil tip iron. Years of experience, I can even change tiny SMD caps using this junk equipment, though it's getting harder to do as my eyes age.

Just revived a dead Dell R7 250 with a damaged 128kb BIOS chip that wouldn't flash even with clip on external adapter, after taking a 256kb BIOS chip from a Geforce 750ti with bad memory. Had to double the size of the 128kb AMD BIOS to fill the 256kb chip, and soldering it was a challenge but everything worked! Did this with my 30W Weller.

 

[lexluthermiester]

I *think* it says "42t" , the picture is mostly to make sure the layout looks correct.

Looks like " 42L " to me...

 

[xrror]

Looks like " 42L " to me...

fought with the camera, I think I got it this time... to clarify, it's either "L" or lower case "t"

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Hi,
I got the memory amount backwards
It's 4x2gb = 8gb kit yep ddr3 crucial part # CT25664BA160BA.c16

There's a cpu pin mod to oc the chip lol might try it later might even rig a water block on it I have plenty of them around looks like an ek evo would be easy
I never flashed the last bios on it just used inspectre to get rid of the performance hit.
Can't really remember when win-7 was released but I got this machine a few months before and it came with a win-7 free upgrade think it was 2009 ?
Think I bought it from home shopping network of all places for like 300.us lol

I investigated the pin mod myself and I suspect it only works on 1066FSB CPUS to take them to 1333FSB, which we already are at. Some research I did also suggests these boards will not boot with any 1600FSB CPU (like some Xeons) so I think 1333FSB is all thats gonna work. And yes inspectre is awesome, did same here!

I have the latest DDR3 BIOS version that has been modded with 45nm Xeon microcode if you are interested. Probably only useful if you did the 771 to 775 mod - best bet would be a Xeon E5450 because of the lower 80W TDP. Honestly not sure its worth it coming from your Q9550 or my practically identical E5440.........

Also I have seen proof online that 4x4GB DDR3 sticks will work in your board to take it to 16GB.........also board seems more commonly known as the DIG43L.

 

[biffzinker]

fought with the camera, I think I got it this time... to clarify, it's either "L" or lower case "t"

42t is what I'm seeing.

 

[ThrashZone]

I investigated the pin mod myself and I suspect it only works on 1066FSB CPUS to take them to 1333FSB, which we already are at. Some research I did also suggests these boards will not boot with any 1600FSB CPU (like some Xeons) so I think 1333FSB is all thats gonna work. And yes inspectre is awesome, did same here!

I have the latest DDR3 BIOS version that has been modded with 45nm Xeon microcode if you are interested. Probably only useful if you did the 771 to 775 mod - best bet would be a Xeon E5450 because of the lower 80W TDP. Honestly not sure its worth it coming from your Q9550 or my practically identical E5440.........

Also I have seen proof online that 4x4GB DDR3 sticks will work in your board to take it to 16GB.........also board seems more commonly known as the DIG43L.

HI,
I tried some gskill long ago just steady tone on it 1333mhz can't remember the part number though.

acer wg43m mainboard specs

www.findlaptopdriver.com

Looks like I missed placed the pin mod image I made showing which one to cover :/
Here's the link

E8xxx/Q9xx0 FSB 1600 pin mod

E8xxx/Q9xx0 FSB 1600 pin mod QX9650 Retail http://www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/QX9650BOX/modfsb400/1.JPG Just put a tape on the pins... http://www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/QX9650BOX/modfsb400/2.JPG ...and off you go . http://www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/QX9650BOX/modfsb400/3.JPG...

www.xtremesystems.org

No another note just finished and system imaging the old timer on win-10 2004 build lol

 

[lexluthermiester]

42t is what I'm seeing.

Agreed. The angle change and closer/clearer shot shows it well.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Looks like I missed placed the pin mod image I made showing which one to cover :/
Here's the link

E8xxx/Q9xx0 FSB 1600 pin mod

E8xxx/Q9xx0 FSB 1600 pin mod QX9650 Retail http://www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/QX9650BOX/modfsb400/1.JPG Just put a tape on the pins... http://www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/QX9650BOX/modfsb400/2.JPG ...and off you go . http://www.coolaler.com.tw/coolalercbb/QX9650BOX/modfsb400/3.JPG...

www.xtremesystems.org

Interesting, the board I saw running 16GB had 4 matched JEDEC standard Hynix 4GB 2Rx8 PC3-10600U DIMMs. Odd that GSkill wouldn't work unless it was performance memory and needed more voltage or XMP timings?

OK, I read about that pin mod and wanted to try it but I'm too lazy to figure out which pin it would be on my LGA771 Xeon as it's rotated in the socket compared to a standard LGA775 CPU. If you try it and it works please let me know!!!!!

 

[ThrashZone]

Interesting, the board I saw running 16GB had 4 matched JEDEC standard Hynix 4GB 2Rx8 PC3-10600U DIMMs. Odd that GSkill wouldn't work unless it was performance memory and needed more voltage or XMP timings?

OK, I read about that pin mod and wanted to try it but I'm too lazy to figure out which pin it would be on my LGA771 Xeon as it's rotated in the socket compared to a standard LGA775 CPU. If you try it and it works please let me know!!!!!

Hi,
Since the memory didn't work doubt the pin mod well, looks like it's up to the mother board capabilities but if I fashion a water block on it what the heck
Someone already tried a 9550 and it failed on the link I posted too towards the end of the thread.

 

[budget_Optiplex]

Someone already tried a 9550 and it failed on the link I posted too towards the end of the thread.

So that seems to confirm what I've read that this board simply won't POST at 1600FSB. I kinda wanted to try an LGA771 Xeon E5472 (3GHz, 1600FSB, Harpertown core) in this board but after my research I decided to play it safe and stay 1333FSB. Honestly the capabilities of this system surprise me.....with a little tweaking it plays Metro Exodus, Far Cry 5/New Dawn, and Wolfenstein New Order just fine (30FPS is my acceptable standard - low budget gaming heh!) on my low resolution TV/monitor! A better video card like yours would be fun, as my card is quite low end.