TPU's Nostalgic Hardware Club

[Masterchief79]

Wow, there is some grave misinformation regarding the ATI 9800 cards here.
They didn't die because of the metal frame or shims. ATI cheaped out on the memory cooling and just left it bare. Over time, with many heat cycles and the mechanical stress of gravity, the solder joints underneath the memory often crack. That causes the typical screen artifacts that are shown here for instance.
If you have a hot air soldering station, a powerful preheater and some reballing flux, these errors are fixable relatively easily.

How do I know? I've repaired about 25 of them over the last 2 years. On 90% of them, a memory reflow did the job. And with reflow I mean: liquid solder joints, flux, and nudging them with a pair of tweezers.

If you wanna know why they put the metal frames on the GPUs: It's simply to stop the GPU from warping when getting soldered onto the board in the factory. With larger GPUs (4cm edge length and up), they had the problem of the outer edges of the substrate curving up and the solder balls not making contact any more. This was especially true when using a thin substrate like G71 GPUs. You can notice the curvature when reballing them.

Edit: Found the Nvidia document talking about this.

Little pic of my current ATI collection (just highend cards), so this isn't just a text post. More than half of these were defective when I got them btw.

 

[Radical Vision]

Wow, there is some grave misinformation regarding the ATI 9800 cards here.
They didn't die because of the metal frame or shims. ATI cheaped out on the memory cooling and just left it bare. Over time, with many heat cycles and the mechanical stress of gravity, the solder joints underneath the memory often crack. That causes the typical screen artifacts that are shown here for instance.
If you have a hot air soldering station, a powerful preheater and some reballing flux, these errors are fixable relatively easily.

How do I know? I've repaired about 25 of them over the last 2 years. On 90% of them, a memory reflow did the job. And with reflow I mean: liquid solder joints, flux, and nudging them with a pair of tweezers.

If you wanna know why they put the metal frames on the GPUs: It's simply to stop the GPU from warping when getting soldered onto the board in the factory. With larger GPUs (4cm edge length and up), they had the problem of the outer edges of the substrate curving up and the solder balls not making contact any more. This was especially true when using a thin substrate like G71 GPUs. You can notice the curvature when reballing them.

Edit: Found the Nvidia document talking about this.


Little pic of my current ATI collection (just highend cards), so this isn't just a text post. More than half of these were defective when I got them btw.

Nice Radeon collection, i have myself most ATi cards, even Mach 64 (missed ATi Wonder EGA 8 bit, still pissed about it), missing Radeon 8500, Radeon 9700 Pro, ATi Rage Fury MaXX, Radeon HD2900XT, Radeon SDR (7200 the first Radeon Rage 6 core)... From the newer i have HD4870, R9 280x and R9 290 (both R9 280x and R9 290 are Legendary cards that stood the test of time), did not bother to look for others... maybe HD5870 would be nice.... Not all the cards, as i usually picture them 1 by 1... After i saw ur pictures guess picture of them all would be nice, but it takes time to gether them all from all boxes for this...

Good to know about the cause of the problem and solution... That is great, more Radeon cards would be fixed then... Guess these GDDR 2 chips are getting too hot, they should at least added factory heatsinks to them.... Also cheers to u, for repairing the Radeons, u did well there >>>








This it would do i guess hah...

 

[Masterchief79]

Good to know about the cause of the problem and solution... That is great, more Radeon cards would be fixed then... Guess these GDDR 2 chips are getting too hot, they should at least added factory heatsinks to them....

Yeah, they definitely should have cooled the chips. Hynix memory is usually not affected because it doesn't get as hot. Mostly card with Samsung memory fail like this.
It's DDR memory to be precise, GDDR2 was only installed on a handful of cards (Nvidia FX5800 + Ultra and some very rare 9800 Pro 256MB cards). They get REALLY hot.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Up next in the repair lot. K7M and AX63 Pro.

 

[MaxiPro800]

My 9800SE AIW has went to the trash. Saved the HSF and the Sapphire sticker, and trashed the rest.

No, a reball would not have saved it, have attempted that with a similar card (exactly the same but without Sapphire sticker, I think it was a H.I.S OEM card) and it didn't work.

(and yes, everything BGA on it was reballed - RAM and GPU.)

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Apart from HP, Dell's OEM card looks exactly like retail. Check the back of it and verify the barcode. If it reads anything like 0358 or 0359, you have a Dell OEm card which won't directly work with the retail drivers.

The VOGONS thread I found out about the manual install process from. Should apply to Dell (0358 printed on the serial number on the back) OEM cards.

Here is a pic of the sticker on back. I do believe it is not a OEM card. I also have a Creative disk I have tried installing from It just doesn't see the card. but the os does as it does try installing drivers but doesn't have any.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Bad EEPROM then. These were known to have EEPROM issues.

Even TRW mentions the EEPROM corruption these card have.

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Not sure if this is Nostalgic enough but it sure is extremly rare. I have only seen 2 of these. I am sure the are a couple more out there somewhere but very few where made. Never sold to the public. There are quiet a few stories on it on the interwebs. It was promised but never made it to production. Just a few reveiw units where made. I was lucky enough to get one from a member here on this site a few years back. So i present the Corsair Graphite 780t in Yellow. The case that Corsair couldn't get the paint right on.

 

[lexluthermiester]

Bad EEPROM then. These were known to have EEPROM issues.

Possibly EEPROM bit degradation. Reflashing it should fix that problem if it's the culprit.

 

[MaxiPro800]

Last I've tried that, the other Audigy 2 ZS I had (the Dell card) stopped outputting any audio post EEPROM reflash. I had checked that the EEPROM contents match the flashed file right after flash. Not saying that the retail cards don't work (most likely the EEPROM dump available only works for retail cards to begin with), but it's something to look out for.

And yes - the card was picked up in Windows, I could install drivers (manually, via the linked guide) but no audio output no matter what. That was on both a previously installed system (which initially had Audigy 1 (SB0090) drivers) a fresh 98SE install on a separate drive and a fresh XP install on that same separate drive afterwards.

 

[Radical Vision]

Not sure if this is Nostalgic enough but it sure is extremly rare. I have only seen 2 of these. I am sure the are a couple more out there somewhere but very few where made. Never sold to the public. There are quiet a few stories on it on the interwebs. It was promised but never made it to production. Just a few reveiw units where made. I was lucky enough to get one from a member here on this site a few years back. So i present the Corsair Graphite 780t in Yellow. The case that Corsair couldn't get the paint right on. View attachment 394346

Jesuuus man fk christ.... When i see these cases i go insane..... This is how bad this crap is... Sure visually it looks very good, but outside of that the feel is cheap, and the air ventilation is non existent.... The black plastic brakes like bread sticks is insane... I am so happy i sold my garbage 600T and replaced it with full metal SS TJ11.... Real garbage plasticy case, the moment i got it, i got disgusted by how bad this thing is... But if u like brittle plastic and hot HW that cant cool properly this is ur case...







SS TJ11 is 1100% better in everything, only downside to it is, it is too damn high...

 

[MaxiPro800]

IMO the good cases are the old ones with the PSU placed up, not down, period. No bling bling, no modern look. Old is solid and better. Would rather use an 1990-2000 InWin or equivalent thick and beige box than some mid-late 00s Antec/CoolerMaster/whatever.

 

[Radical Vision]

SS Inverted mobo beats everything.... It uses the laws of physics too... For older systems ofc older cases are better..

 

[MaxiPro800]

SS just copied BTX and adapted it for standard mainboards by mounting the mainboard vertically. I still prefer a heavy fulltower over anything modern. I would rather stick a P55/X58 build in a older mid-late 90s case than anything made from mid 00s onwards. Dell's Dimension cases from the P3 era would be one of the cases I'd pick, specifically the T500r/T600r series.

 

[Radical Vision]

Shieeet DELL Dimension horrible design, when i see that, i feel bad.... The IBM Stealth desktop tower design was better... Also the cases did look also better...

 

[MaxiPro800]

For IBM I choose white/beige Aptiva cases.

 

[Audioave10]

My Windows XP is in the 600T and cooling is great with this older hardware...

The Windows 7 64bit system is fine with the old Hiper Anubis case...

 

[Ruru]

stash of broken goods like Radeon HD3850 AGP x3 of them

Any idea why they're dead? Fried Rialto bridge chip?

 

[Radical Vision]

Yes prob the AGP bridge chip is the problem... One was alive but sold it to a guy, and he did brake it.


Corsair 600T is bad, even anadtech review said so, that tge airflow is straight bad...

 

[lexluthermiester]

Normally, I wouldn't post videos like this, but it is interesting.

I used a set of these CPUs BITD on a server level.
Anyone else remember these?

Keep context in mind, these were 2006/2007 CPUs and were intended for Win 2k/XP based server editions.
The testing he did with Win10 was a bit unfair.

 

[farjam]

Do DDR3s count as nostalgic?

Mach Xtreme 2300MHz:

Some of my old MSI GPUs (GTX275, GTX 480, GTX 460, GTX 580, 2x HD 5870, 2x HD 5850) + one Gigabyte
All the MSI cards were sold to someone in Taiwan, maybe in the hand of a more capable Overclocker.

Still miss them all

 

[ThE_MaD_ShOt]

Jesuuus man fk christ.... When i see these cases i go insane..... This is how bad this crap is... Sure visually it looks very good, but outside of that the feel is cheap, and the air ventilation is non existent.... The black plastic brakes like bread sticks is insane... I am so happy i sold my garbage 600T and replaced it with full metal SS TJ11.... Real garbage plasticy case, the moment i got it, i got disgusted by how bad this thing is... But if u like brittle plastic and hot HW that cant cool properly this is ur case...

You may have missed the point of my post. LOL The case was never put into production by Corsair. Which makes it a very rare case. Coarsair only made a very small amout of them and they did past Quality control due to the paint not matching perfectly. I have only seen maybe 2 others on the web.

 

[y2faulty]

Some of my old MSI GPUs (GTX275, GTX 480, GTX 460, GTX 580, 2x HD 5870, 2x HD 5850) + one Gigabyte
All the MSI cards were sold to someone in Taiwan, maybe in the hand of a more capable Overclocker.
View attachment 394496
Still miss them all

those Twin Frozr II heatsinks were great, I still have my 560ti with one, coolest and most silent card I ever had.

 

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]

Also the cases did look also better...

That's your opinion....

For IBM I choose white/beige Aptiva cases.

Nice machines!

I owned a Corsair 600TM Black and Carbide Air 540.
I still have the Carbide Air 500R White, building a Truenas Scale system with it. Did mount a 4 bay swappable HDD rack in the front.

 

[firefly36]

You might be nostalgic if you remember these...still have a few brand new in the box