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Thank you for comments. I have designed one of those PCBs that accepts all three: an ideal diode, a throughole diode and a SOT-23. Yeah I may restore it back to the original state.

@@scrap_computing Do you mind sharing the project via pcbway? Thank you in advance!

Yeah, it looks pretty bad. I just checked it and there is continuity :)

@@scrap_computing I was talking about that stub trace.

That's what I though myself and I was avoiding SMD parts, but it's not that much harder than through-hole. You just need some tweezers and some helping hands to hold the board at a comfortable position.

It got damaged by the heat while de-soldering the IC. I think it's not visible in the video, but even its plastic package melted a bit. I will replace it for sure.

Why is it your favorite ?

Awesome, thanks!

I think I found what the issue was with the transistor. It took me a while to figure out where the traces go. It's a bit anticlimactic :P But anyway, thanks for sharing the boardview!

Yeah the Space Quest Historian has done an awesome job remixing these Space Quest themes. I wonder that myself! Perhaps it was used as a donor board? But then who would remove easy to get components like ceramic capacitors?

Yes, but would they remove SMD capacitors, or a small IC! I was using some lead-free solder which is not shiny, but yeah they look pretty bad in the video :D I redid them off camera.

@@scrap_computing threw into a pile and those parts were knocked off?

@@Pickle136 There is solder residue, so someone took the time to remove them with a soldering iron.

Thanks and welcome! :D

Yes, I've seen others use such solder, it's probably a great idea to use it! I should buy some. The board is pretty old so it must be using leaded solder which has a lower melting point than lead-free. I didn't care too much about the header, but the DIMM socket melted because I didn't cover it completely with foil. You can even see the gap in the video (next to the chip on the left hand side), that's where all the air came through and melted it. I am really bad at using hot air for soldering / de-soldering.

That's exactly what my guess was too! But it turns out it's an NMOS, I tested it with the IC tester once I removed it, I think it's an RK7002 but I may be wrong. But yeah, it must be controlled in some way by the power good signal. I can see two traces connected to that pin, but the one headed towards the ATX connector goes straight under the DRAM sockets so I can't really trace it. I will check the other power circuit, it should be using a similar design, so I may be able to trace it that way.

Yes! it definitely needs replacement :D

@@scrap_computing Btw, great video. Thanks!

I was going to point that out also ❤

I don't get why, I think it's just crap. v1.04 supports memory caching only up to 128Mb, v1.06 won't work with K6-2+ or K6-3+ without modding. And after modding it's possible that it's not stable over 500MHz CPU clocks. And then there's that stupid voltage bug, if you select 2 volts from jumpers it's 0 volts 😂 VIA MVP3 anyway is super stable chipset.

I haven't made changes to this project for quite a while, but that doesn't mean that things are not going to change in the future. It's in a pretty stable state though, if this is what you are asking. I don't own a Cyrix 5x86, but if I ever get my hands on one I will try it on.

​@@scrap_computingYes. When you used the AMD 5x86 133 you added more components to the underside of the adapter/regulator. Do I just need to follow the video or is your information fully updated and plus is a premade version available to purchase. I don't have the faintest clue on all the comments that I need to purchase are, plus I don't have any as soldering skills nor do I know anyone that can make one up for me. I definitely need to be able to purchase these rvm fully made.

Hmm perhaps the diode is the wrong way in? Have you tried measuring the voltage at the pins with a multimeter when the PC is off? You should be getting a little over 3V with a new battery.

Sorry, I can't sell them. But it's not too hard for anyone with some basic soldering skills to put them together, so perhaps you could ask some friend to make them for you. You can get the boards made at any online PCB manufacturer and you can get the 7-segment display and the rest of the parts from an electronics store either local or online.

Core 2 duo has a STPCLK pin but I think the socket is SMD so it will be tricky to reach the pin. I think the best systems for this would be Socket A Athlons and early Pentium 4s.

Hmm good question. Perhaps the bus is floating so the card reads random noise from the floating bus. If the faulty RAM is completely broken, then it might as well not touch the output bus, which would result in the same type of random noise.

You're welcome!

They may not be strictly necessary. You may get it to work without soldering them. My guess is that they are used for stopping noise coming in from the connector or cable. But I may be wrong.

That's quite interesting, though it's a bit more tricky for a couple of reasons: (i) The ADCs on the Pico are not fast enough for VGA, so you would need an external ADC chip, like the TVP7002. (ii) Then you would have to reduce the color bits a bit because you would run out of GPIOs on the Pico. But other than that it shouldn't need too many changes on the firmware side.

I find it a bit easier to solder them using the soldering iron. Most footprints I used are actually designed with hand-soldering in mind.

All such games should work fine with the Throttle Blaster. You have very fine control over the CPU performance all the way down to XT-class.

It should be possible to output a more modern digital video signal straight from the Pico. DVI or DP should be possible, I have not looked into them in detail. The biggest challenge is the TTL sampling part, but once this is taken care of I think making a variant that can output a digital signal is the next step.

Yeah I think line-doubling should fix the issue. It's already doing this in CGA mode, so it should work fine.

Actually, it is these specific games that look strange in Hercules mode, because they don't actually support proper Hercules mode. Instead they will produce this stretched image, and they expect the user to fix the aspect ratio on the CRT monitor (see @alexloktionoff6833 's comments). Hercules mode text actually looks all right.

Yes, line-doubling should do it. CGA is already doing the line-doubling so it should work fine on Hercules too.

Actually, it is these specific games that look stretched in Hercules mode, because they don't actually support proper Hercules mode. Instead they will produce this stretched image, and they expect the user to fix the aspect ratio on the CRT monitor (see @alexloktionoff6833 's comments). Hercules mode text actually looks fine.

Thanks! It could have been a lot nicer if the Pico had slightly faster main cores. For example the brown color fix is currently handled in the VGA PIo because the main core isn't fast enough to handle an additional if (Color == Dark Yellow) { Color = Brown: }.

Please make a video only about the sw!

@@alexloktionoff6833 I will try to add details in the README, because things will change as the firmware matures.