I've been struggling with BGA rework for a loooong time before I was able NOT to incinerate everything! :D Thank you for watching Adrian, I am honoured!
Your first two hours certainly weren't wasted. You learnt some things, as did we! Congratulations on a successful reflow. It's always satisfying when something comes back to life!
Great job, especially figuring out that the chipset needed to be reflowed! I never would have even thought about trying to push down on the chipset as a troubleshooting technique.
My Fujitsu Ergo Pro motherboard, is now deadlined post giving it a wash. I was gentle, but... It complains it has no RAM if there is none installed. And then I plug that in, and... nothing. So Tony, your video is certainly an inspiration to get tooled up, and to try and figure out where the issue is. In the meantime I've ordered two replacement DIMMS, just in case the original one went bad. Great video, please more of the same as I have learnt a lot from it :)
Amazing thank you! For your Fujitsu, if it was only washed I'd recommend some good contact cleaner on the RAM slots. I found that the one for switches - which leaves behind a thin layer of lubrication which enhances conductivity - is much better than the dry one. De-Oxit is probably as good. Good luck with your project!
I have ordered a POST analyser card, not needed one till now, but with zero output, its a must. Also ordered the Aishun soldering station you covered. I know its flawed, but it appears to be FAR supperior to the iron I have, especially the heat delivery. Anyway, Ill try the new DIMMS with the POST card installed, and take it from there. BTW, what oily contact cleaner do you use?? DeOxit is good, but its pretty expensive for its can size...@@tony359
My goodness, you are the first hobbyist person on YT I've seen to this date use a PCB heating plate. I've been telling everyone for a while (even some of the larger channel hosts) to use one, because its not just for place and flow - it can enhance your desoldering efforts, enhance your regular soldering (metal-wetting and flow,) and even help make your joints more resilient to potential cracking resulting from cooling too fast. In some cases it might help with older PCB warping and separation. Good practice sir. Cheers.
ahah I'm glad you like my technique! I've read and experimented a lot to realise that pre-heating is more or less a must when working with SMD. I am too appalled when watching much more famous youtubers (sometimes professionals) blasting 500C at a multi-layer board to do the job. I have a video coming clearly showing why no preheating is bad! Thanks for commenting and for watching!
Hello Tony - The Amptron MB brings back a lot of memories, the first PC I "built" featured the Amptron PM 7400 motherboard. I used it for years and years and still works (although it's not being used now). Never had any issues with the board whatsoever. thanks for your very thorough testing videos.
Well, that was a journey! Thanks for taking us along. After testing for shorts. I always plug everything in when testing, video, keyboard, the lot. So many boards just halt if they don't see what they want to see! 😆 You can make a great DOS machine out of that now, nice job!
In the Doom engine, the game simulation and the video frames are locked together, and each time the game simulation is advanced and a frame is rendered, it's called a tic. The game is designed to run at 35 tics (or frames) per second, so a tic is meant to be 1/35th of a second. When the game runs at this ideal frame rate, time in the game is progressing as fast as as real time. You have 1 gametic (1/35th of a second of in-game time) for each realtic (1/35th of a second of real time). If the computer isn't fast enough to keep up with that, the game slows down. There is more than 1/35th of a second of real time between gametics, so you have less than 1 gametic per realtic. If the computer is fast enough, the game doesn't try to run faster than 1, because then game time would progress faster than real time, so 1 is normally the maximum. But for the test, that limit is removed, and it tries to run as fast as it can, so you can get more than 1 gametic per realtic. So what that message in the video is saying is that it processed 2134 tics (60.97 seconds) worth of game time, but it only took 1459 tics (41.69 seconds) worth of real time to do so.
Dear Tony, when i see that motherboard? I got so many flash backs of my old job. Did repair those kind of motherboards like Asus, Abit, Aopen (did like that brand back then), MSI. Wish i could turn back the clock and repair them again for the 1st time. Great video Tony, watching this video gives me a good feeling from the old days.
ahah thank you! To be honest, I'm not sure either! I think it's a mixture of nostalgia but also an easier way to learn electronics: much easier to probe a large chip with big pins than a modern PCB where you struggle to see the components :) Thanks for watching!
Good job sir! This kind of problems are typical for the crappy boards from ECS, Zida, Biostar and of course PC Chips who is original manufacturer of this board probably.
I have the same Pre heater. My ground wire on my device was added abouve paint and didn’t make connection. You probably should check if your ground is good if you not already have done it. 👋
Thank you! I had the same issue, you can see me rectifying it on the video review I made here: th-cam.com/video/Y3bPvus-_as/w-d-xo.html I also published a follow up where I add some extra earth connections to be on the safe side. This pre-heater has also been banned by the UK government for this very reason.
I did the same but it's really necessary - even for small jobs. Yes, you can set the hot air "at maximum" but that's not how it's supposed to work. If you end up with the one I got, please bear in mind it's now been banned from the UK because unsafe (no earth connection which you can fix yourself). My review is here: th-cam.com/video/Y3bPvus-_as/w-d-xo.html It's not the best on the planet but it works. It's just very slow and ignore the temp readings it gives you :) Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 oh i see why you put off buying it.. its a pretty damn expensive investment to fix a $20 board (that might be worth $100 when fixed).. youd have to fix 4 or so boards/cards to make it worth it
Shorting electrolytic capacitors will generate heat and noise on the power line. When you check to see if anything is getting hot, you should check the tops of the electrolytic capacitors as well... but be aware, when they go full short they can get extremely hot!
Thanks very much for your videos. I have several socket 7 boards needing repairs, and thanks to your videos I now know some of the basics to check in regards to this platform. Isn't communal learning wonderful?
If you look at the data of the flash bios showing at 22:23, you'll see at 0001FFFF0, "EA 5B E0 F0 00", which is the reset vector, the first instruction executed by the processor after it comes out of reset. It's a jump to F000:E05B, down lower in the Flash ROM, where it starts to execute code.
Thank you for that great Video. I have found a PC on the Streets, it is an Desktop PC with an Intel Pentuim MMX with 166 MHz, 16 MB RAM, 1,6GB HDD IDE, 52X CD Drive, it has a VX Pro II Chipset, and it runns Windows 95, that pc was almost bever used. The Windows Installation is from 1997 als the Whole PC. Special for me is, it has a AMI Bios called Winbios, and a Souundblaster card. (Vibra_16) ISA I just replaced the CMOS Battery.
oh, I didn't consider that, thank you! I should have touched the chips to check they were floating but my hands were not cooperating... :) Thanks for the tip and thanks for watching!
@@tony359 Even in my younger days I'd probably not have trusted my hands not to shake. I certainly wouldn't trust them now - nor my eyes. Stereoscopic magnifiers are your best friend 😁
I like these lower speed Pentiums. With 486 machines being extremely expensive, a P100 can be under locked to a P33 with jumper settings it runs nearly all 486 based games and Windows 3.1 very well. I find 75mhz is the sweet spot.
Sir, you just got a new subscriber! :) I have myself an Amptron PM8600 which is of course not working properly... when I enable the onboard L2 cache it's just random stuff on the screen after post. Will do the same as you did. Will look for detached pins between cache and pcb... as a first step toward a fully working mobo.
Please keep me posted! Also it seems that AMPTRON is another name of PC-CHIPS and apparently they used to manufacture boards with FAKE cache chips! I know, it sounds impossible but there is an LGR video showing that! Make sure your boars has good ones - this is LGR's video: th-cam.com/video/mZnS-whVuDI/w-d-xo.html Thanks for watching!
@@tony359I totally gorgot about this. Yeah i checked the pins of the cache but they are all ok, so i guess it's a bad chip. Meanwhile I got another pm8600 and this one is perfect. Maybe I could try and swap chips, but not really seeing the point, since the first board is in a poor shape anyway... Burnt usb traces (i guess someone connected the usb ports the wrong way) 😅 I also read about the fake pc chips cache yes, but fortunatelly these boards have working chips, usually they fakef the amount (showing 1mb, when there was only 512kb)
This motherboard is very similar to the PC-Chips M571. It has integrated VGA, there's a 15 pin connector on the left of the PCI slots, where you can add a VGA header. You can confirm that by looking at the bios, where you can select the frame buffer size up to 4mb.
oh, I was wondering what that header was. I'll check in the BIOS but if it has integrated VGA, do you know which one the VGA chip is? I cannot find any info about the AliM1531 (TX TWO) having an integrated VGA inside.
@@tony359 Edit: that's actually a pin header for USB/ PS2 ports, using an ATX form factor card, check out this video: th-cam.com/video/49nIzruszhI/w-d-xo.html Now why did they add a Frame buffer option in the BIOS, that's beyond me.
@@juniorbcm5375 ah ok! Some web pages say the chipset is an Ali M1531 and I could not find any reference of a VGA. It would have been cool though! Thanks for your feedback!
Theres no point of using it.. Back it the days it was a low cost solution.. So dont expect high performance of it.. Better go with a faster PCI solution instead.
Just FYI, back in the day it was always recommended to populate the first PCI with the video card. Not sure what difference it actually makes in real like. Probably to give the video card resource preference.
That’s a good tip thanks! Now you mention that, it rings a bell. Do you know which one the first slot is, the one on the PSU end or ISA end? Thanks again
It would tend to place the video card closer to the North Bridge and therefore electrically better signal quality, but the main reason may have been that each PCI slot has a unique configuration space address, decided by the IDSEL pin, and I think the first slot may have been more consistent in being a particular device ID. It may also have meant a better bus priority from the bus arbiter, as you mentioned.
I think I had one of these boards for a cyrix build I did in 1997. IIRC it failed shortly after my trident video chip blew up, if I can find it I'll have to look at those BGAs. I was under the impression that boards started going solder free much later than 1995, I wonder if I'd kill fewer boards with a bga reflow attempt if using a preheat station.
Thank you! The 866II does that as well. All I need to do is to load the BIN file and then click "verify". The "verify" button compares what is read from the chip with what is on the "workspace". Thanks for watching!
Flux. It prevents the solder from oxidising. This way the solder melts better and flows better. It's totally needed for soldering, maybe not 100% for de-soldering but it never hurts. Thanks for watching!
Seems like this board had integrated sound on board, because they had the jumper pin for the bracket. But not the sound pro chip. Anyone who knows about this board , because the TX Pro chipset mainboards mostly (not all) had a sound pro(CMI-8330) sound chip onboard.
WTF is that chipset? TX TWO? Never seen those in my life, and trust me when I say I worked on a TON of PC's during those days. Who the heck made those?
That's something PCChips did for their mainboards, they had ALi, SiS and VIA supply them re-marked chips. The different iterations of "TX Pro" and "VX Pro" were from each of these companies. SOYO did the same but rebranding various chips to ETEQ. Amptron was a brand of PCChips.
Doesn't surprise me that the problems on this mainboard were that of a bad soldering, Those mainboards with TX Two or TX Pro chipsets were the cheapest out there. Imagine a mainboard for $35. So their build quality wasn't really up there. They got used in the cheapest PCs, also I remember that they weren't that stable
@@tony359 No problem. If you have some time, check out the Red Hill Hardware Guide, which has a lot of the hardware info of the late 1980s and 1990s. PC Chips made those fake cache boards. I watched about a dozen of your videos, and I like them
amptron was another division of that crappy company pc chips the company who was known to sell motherboards with fake cache chips. amptron had awful c/s i had one of there socket 462 boards back in the day that failed and not only did i have to pay to send the board in at my cost they made me pay them $30 to repair the board even though it was under warranty they said this was a fee the charged everyone for warranty funny now other manufacture had such a charge. then after all that they sent a board back with dead ram slots.
Ah, amazing! I've heard of PC Chips only a few times and every time it was such a negative feedback! How can you possibly sell boards with fake chips on it??? Lol Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 ya it was back around the 486 era the funny thing to the fake chips are soldered to pads that don't even have traces connected to them so u couldn't even put real chips on them. i guess they also did some tricky in the bios so the system would even claim there was cache when there wasn't. pc chips lasted till around 2005 and then they were bought out by ecs who are still around they are another low end motherboard company. a few other utubers have done videos showing off those boards with fake chips.
@@tony359 idk there is a lot of scummy companies out there who have no trouble with lying to there customers for profit i guess. in more recent times look at gigabyte with there exploding psus that they tried to sweep under the rug rather then just do the right thing right way they had to be called out by multiple large tech utubers before they recalled them.
![TEEDEE TADA - DIAMOND NARAKORN X LEGO LYKN [Special Dance Performance]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/QgtZedFeumA/mqdefault.jpg)
I'm a simple man. I see old hardware fixed and brought back to operation, i like!
eheh I can share the feeling :) Thanks!
Another awesome video! You were able to reflow the BGA chip which is simply amazing to me!
I've been struggling with BGA rework for a loooong time before I was able NOT to incinerate everything! :D Thank you for watching Adrian, I am honoured!
@@tony359 Yeah turning chips into simulated popcorn isn't great. Still working on it myself, need a bottom preheater I found out for bigger stuff.
@@frizzlefry1921 pre-heater is a must for larger stuff! I like popcorn but not that type :)
Your first two hours certainly weren't wasted. You learnt some things, as did we! Congratulations on a successful reflow. It's always satisfying when something comes back to life!
Thanks - I was surprised as well :)
Socket 7 is by far my favorite. Also yes NecroWare is a BIOS lord.
He is! I love when he comes up with those tweaks 35 years after the board was actually being used 😂! Thanks for watching!
Great job, especially figuring out that the chipset needed to be reflowed! I never would have even thought about trying to push down on the chipset as a troubleshooting technique.
Thank you! I can tell you I was about to give up to be honest! :)
My Fujitsu Ergo Pro motherboard, is now deadlined post giving it a wash. I was gentle, but... It complains it has no RAM if there is none installed. And then I plug that in, and... nothing. So Tony, your video is certainly an inspiration to get tooled up, and to try and figure out where the issue is. In the meantime I've ordered two replacement DIMMS, just in case the original one went bad. Great video, please more of the same as I have learnt a lot from it :)
Amazing thank you! For your Fujitsu, if it was only washed I'd recommend some good contact cleaner on the RAM slots. I found that the one for switches - which leaves behind a thin layer of lubrication which enhances conductivity - is much better than the dry one. De-Oxit is probably as good.
Good luck with your project!
I have ordered a POST analyser card, not needed one till now, but with zero output, its a must. Also ordered the Aishun soldering station you covered. I know its flawed, but it appears to be FAR supperior to the iron I have, especially the heat delivery. Anyway, Ill try the new DIMMS with the POST card installed, and take it from there. BTW, what oily contact cleaner do you use?? DeOxit is good, but its pretty expensive for its can size...@@tony359
I love Servisol S10, now sold under a different name.
My goodness, you are the first hobbyist person on YT I've seen to this date use a PCB heating plate. I've been telling everyone for a while (even some of the larger channel hosts) to use one, because its not just for place and flow - it can enhance your desoldering efforts, enhance your regular soldering (metal-wetting and flow,) and even help make your joints more resilient to potential cracking resulting from cooling too fast. In some cases it might help with older PCB warping and separation. Good practice sir. Cheers.
ahah I'm glad you like my technique! I've read and experimented a lot to realise that pre-heating is more or less a must when working with SMD. I am too appalled when watching much more famous youtubers (sometimes professionals) blasting 500C at a multi-layer board to do the job. I have a video coming clearly showing why no preheating is bad! Thanks for commenting and for watching!
Hello Tony - The Amptron MB brings back a lot of memories, the first PC I "built" featured the Amptron PM 7400 motherboard. I used it for years and years and still works (although it's not being used now). Never had any issues with the board whatsoever.
thanks for your very thorough testing videos.
Thank you for watching!
Well, that was a journey! Thanks for taking us along. After testing for shorts. I always plug everything in when testing, video, keyboard, the lot. So many boards just halt if they don't see what they want to see! 😆 You can make a great DOS machine out of that now, nice job!
That's good advice. I tend to assume the board will beep if no RAM etc but as you say each board is different! Thanks for watching as usual! :)
I sold these boards in systems back in 1996 with p120, 133 or 166's later.. worked well and the TX chipset was great at the time.
Indeed the PC-Chips/Amptron were loved/hated as they could be nasty but some models were actually pretty good and cheap! Thanks for watching!
another great video.. Back in the day with the paper documents it was so much easier to set up.. Sad that a lot of docs are gone.
Thanks! There’s lots of people trying to preserve that documentation indeed!
In the Doom engine, the game simulation and the video frames are locked together, and each time the game simulation is advanced and a frame is rendered, it's called a tic. The game is designed to run at 35 tics (or frames) per second, so a tic is meant to be 1/35th of a second. When the game runs at this ideal frame rate, time in the game is progressing as fast as as real time. You have 1 gametic (1/35th of a second of in-game time) for each realtic (1/35th of a second of real time).
If the computer isn't fast enough to keep up with that, the game slows down. There is more than 1/35th of a second of real time between gametics, so you have less than 1 gametic per realtic. If the computer is fast enough, the game doesn't try to run faster than 1, because then game time would progress faster than real time, so 1 is normally the maximum. But for the test, that limit is removed, and it tries to run as fast as it can, so you can get more than 1 gametic per realtic.
So what that message in the video is saying is that it processed 2134 tics (60.97 seconds) worth of game time, but it only took 1459 tics (41.69 seconds) worth of real time to do so.
Amazing, thank you so much for taking the time to explain that to me - I did not know that and it's amazing! So 51.2fps if my math is right?
Dear Tony, when i see that motherboard? I got so many flash backs of my old job. Did repair those kind of motherboards like Asus, Abit, Aopen (did like that brand back then), MSI. Wish i could turn back the clock and repair them again for the 1st time.
Great video Tony, watching this video gives me a good feeling from the old days.
Thank you, I'm glad the video brought you some good memories :)
Not sure why you're fixing these but much respect for caring for these relics.
ahah thank you! To be honest, I'm not sure either! I think it's a mixture of nostalgia but also an easier way to learn electronics: much easier to probe a large chip with big pins than a modern PCB where you struggle to see the components :) Thanks for watching!
Great video Tony!Its nice to see your channel growing and your videos are better and better.
That’s so nice of you to say! Thanks for watching!
Good job sir! This kind of problems are typical for the crappy boards from ECS, Zida, Biostar and of course PC Chips who is original manufacturer of this board probably.
Thank you! I heard of ‘PC Chips’ twice and twice it was to highlight poor quality 😂
@@tony359 Second thing PC Chips is known for is rebranding chipsets ;)
I have the same Pre heater. My ground wire on my device was added abouve paint and didn’t make connection. You probably should check if your ground is good if you not already have done it. 👋
Thank you! I had the same issue, you can see me rectifying it on the video review I made here: th-cam.com/video/Y3bPvus-_as/w-d-xo.html
I also published a follow up where I add some extra earth connections to be on the safe side.
This pre-heater has also been banned by the UK government for this very reason.
I've put off buying a preheater bed for long and this convinced med I need to order one.
I did the same but it's really necessary - even for small jobs. Yes, you can set the hot air "at maximum" but that's not how it's supposed to work. If you end up with the one I got, please bear in mind it's now been banned from the UK because unsafe (no earth connection which you can fix yourself). My review is here: th-cam.com/video/Y3bPvus-_as/w-d-xo.html
It's not the best on the planet but it works. It's just very slow and ignore the temp readings it gives you :)
Thanks for watching!
even using a temperature controlled hot air gun can work for large ground planes
@@tony359 oh i see why you put off buying it.. its a pretty damn expensive investment to fix a $20 board (that might be worth $100 when fixed)..
youd have to fix 4 or so boards/cards to make it worth it
@@kyrieeleison1905 I feel it's an important tool in someone's toolkit - clearly not just for one board! :)
Shorting electrolytic capacitors will generate heat and noise on the power line. When you check to see if anything is getting hot, you should check the tops of the electrolytic capacitors as well... but be aware, when they go full short they can get extremely hot!
Thank you, good tip, I'll keep that in mind!
Thanks very much for your videos. I have several socket 7 boards needing repairs, and thanks to your videos I now know some of the basics to check in regards to this platform. Isn't communal learning wonderful?
It’s amazing! Thanks for watching!
If you look at the data of the flash bios showing at 22:23, you'll see at 0001FFFF0, "EA 5B E0 F0 00", which is the reset vector, the first instruction executed by the processor after it comes out of reset. It's a jump to F000:E05B, down lower in the Flash ROM, where it starts to execute code.
Very interesting, thank you! Is this code the same on any BIOS of that age?
@@tony359 Any Intel BIOS on any Intel-made board that I'd ever seen, from the 386 through to the Pentium 4 units.
cool, I didn't know that! Thank you!
I remember MagicFinger™ when CuriousMac was collabing with TubeTimeUS to figure out a unique board fault.
Ahah Eric’s magic finger, amazing! I do remember that board it was an IBM machine! Faulty VIA if memory serves. Thanks for watching!
Thank you for that great Video.
I have found a PC on the Streets, it is an Desktop PC with an Intel Pentuim MMX with 166 MHz, 16 MB RAM, 1,6GB HDD IDE, 52X CD Drive, it has a VX Pro II Chipset, and it runns Windows 95, that pc was almost bever used. The Windows Installation is from 1997 als the Whole PC. Special for me is, it has a AMI Bios called Winbios, and a Souundblaster card. (Vibra_16) ISA
I just replaced the CMOS Battery.
Hey thank you!
wow that's so cool! What motherboard does it have?
A motherboard of that age probably didn't use lead-free solder. Lead-free only really became a thing in the early 2000's.
oh, I didn't consider that, thank you! I should have touched the chips to check they were floating but my hands were not cooperating... :) Thanks for the tip and thanks for watching!
@@tony359 Even in my younger days I'd probably not have trusted my hands not to shake. I certainly wouldn't trust them now - nor my eyes. Stereoscopic magnifiers are your best friend 😁
@@tony359 , 220C peak temperature at chip's top is OK for PbSn solder. It should be much higher for PB-free solder. And thanks for interesting video!
@@romanm.4763 you're right, I think the industry profiles call for 240-250C - well thankfully that was PbSn! :) Thanks for watching!
I like these lower speed Pentiums. With 486 machines being extremely expensive, a P100 can be under locked to a P33 with jumper settings it runs nearly all 486 based games and Windows 3.1 very well. I find 75mhz is the sweet spot.
oh cool I didn't know that! I got the 90 as it has a special place in my youth but I also have a 200Mhz MMX. Thanks for watching!
Sir, you just got a new subscriber! :) I have myself an Amptron PM8600 which is of course not working properly... when I enable the onboard L2 cache it's just random stuff on the screen after post. Will do the same as you did. Will look for detached pins between cache and pcb... as a first step toward a fully working mobo.
Please keep me posted! Also it seems that AMPTRON is another name of PC-CHIPS and apparently they used to manufacture boards with FAKE cache chips! I know, it sounds impossible but there is an LGR video showing that! Make sure your boars has good ones - this is LGR's video: th-cam.com/video/mZnS-whVuDI/w-d-xo.html
Thanks for watching!
@@tony359I totally gorgot about this. Yeah i checked the pins of the cache but they are all ok, so i guess it's a bad chip. Meanwhile I got another pm8600 and this one is perfect. Maybe I could try and swap chips, but not really seeing the point, since the first board is in a poor shape anyway... Burnt usb traces (i guess someone connected the usb ports the wrong way) 😅
I also read about the fake pc chips cache yes, but fortunatelly these boards have working chips, usually they fakef the amount (showing 1mb, when there was only 512kb)
Enjoyed that! Subscribed :)
Thanks Steve!
This motherboard is very similar to the PC-Chips M571. It has integrated VGA, there's a 15 pin connector on the left of the PCI slots, where you can add a VGA header.
You can confirm that by looking at the bios, where you can select the frame buffer size up to 4mb.
oh, I was wondering what that header was. I'll check in the BIOS but if it has integrated VGA, do you know which one the VGA chip is? I cannot find any info about the AliM1531 (TX TWO) having an integrated VGA inside.
@@tony359 Edit: that's actually a pin header for USB/ PS2 ports, using an ATX form factor card, check out this video: th-cam.com/video/49nIzruszhI/w-d-xo.html
Now why did they add a Frame buffer option in the BIOS, that's beyond me.
@@juniorbcm5375 ah ok! Some web pages say the chipset is an Ali M1531 and I could not find any reference of a VGA. It would have been cool though! Thanks for your feedback!
Theres no point of using it.. Back it the days it was a low cost solution.. So dont expect high performance of it.. Better go with a faster PCI solution instead.
@@rallyscoot now I’m curious! If I get it fully up and running I’ll do a benchmark comparison!
Great work 👌
Thank you so much 😀
Just FYI, back in the day it was always recommended to populate the first PCI with the video card. Not sure what difference it actually makes in real like. Probably to give the video card resource preference.
That’s a good tip thanks! Now you mention that, it rings a bell. Do you know which one the first slot is, the one on the PSU end or ISA end? Thanks again
@@tony359 The one at the top when stading inside the case. The one furthest away from the ISA slot, or next to the AGP slot.
@@eugenioarpayoglou thank you! I shall definitely do that next time!
It would tend to place the video card closer to the North Bridge and therefore electrically better signal quality, but the main reason may have been that each PCI slot has a unique configuration space address, decided by the IDSEL pin, and I think the first slot may have been more consistent in being a particular device ID.
It may also have meant a better bus priority from the bus arbiter, as you mentioned.
I think I had one of these boards for a cyrix build I did in 1997. IIRC it failed shortly after my trident video chip blew up, if I can find it I'll have to look at those BGAs. I was under the impression that boards started going solder free much later than 1995, I wonder if I'd kill fewer boards with a bga reflow attempt if using a preheat station.
in my experience preheating is a must when re-flowing! Thanks for watching!
23:15 handy program to use is hexcmp to compare binary files :) so you can also see if what u read is identical to what u downloaded
Thank you! The 866II does that as well. All I need to do is to load the BIN file and then click "verify". The "verify" button compares what is read from the chip with what is on the "workspace". Thanks for watching!
what was the liquid you applied to the pins of the IV chip to heat and then remove it?
Flux. It prevents the solder from oxidising. This way the solder melts better and flows better. It's totally needed for soldering, maybe not 100% for de-soldering but it never hurts. Thanks for watching!
Seems like this board had integrated sound on board, because they had the jumper pin for the bracket. But not the sound pro chip. Anyone who knows about this board , because the TX Pro chipset mainboards mostly (not all) had a sound pro(CMI-8330) sound chip onboard.
Very interesting, it's been a while, I didn't notice! Thanks for watching!
Nice job
Hey thank you and thanks for watching!
WTF is that chipset? TX TWO? Never seen those in my life, and trust me when I say I worked on a TON of PC's during those days. Who the heck made those?
Ahah yes, had a similar feeling at the beginning🙂
Its a marketing marking. Its ALI, but they used "magic" TX to look similar like Intel. There were also some fake VX chipsets.
@@xsc1000 ahah yes! The TX of Intel TX. When the marketing dept takes over 🙂
That's something PCChips did for their mainboards, they had ALi, SiS and VIA supply them re-marked chips. The different iterations of "TX Pro" and "VX Pro" were from each of these companies. SOYO did the same but rebranding various chips to ETEQ.
Amptron was a brand of PCChips.
I have an ASUS socket 7. The debug does not show the code. It may be the chipset is faulty.
Hi there - it could very much be. Did you check the voltages, clock and reset first?
@@tony359 I checked the voltages, it is okay and flashed the BIOS.
I will check the reset and clock.
Let me know the outcome!
You can solder another cache chip on the board
Thank you!
Doesn't surprise me that the problems on this mainboard were that of a bad soldering, Those mainboards with TX Two or TX Pro chipsets were the cheapest out there. Imagine a mainboard for $35. So their build quality wasn't really up there. They got used in the cheapest PCs, also I remember that they weren't that stable
Yes, many viewers have said the same, also made me aware of boards with fake cache chips on them, amazing! Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 No problem. If you have some time, check out the Red Hill Hardware Guide, which has a lot of the hardware info of the late 1980s and 1990s. PC Chips made those fake cache boards. I watched about a dozen of your videos, and I like them
@@michvod thank you I'll take a look - and thanks for watching!
I had a P90 back in the day, in a "Escom" PC. They bought Amiga.
The P90 has some special meaning for me for a number of reason, that's why I have one! Thanks for watching!
Amptron is PCchips / ECS Elitegroup
It is... unfortunately! :D Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 plenty are still working great though! So much for their cheap reputation, I have a soft spot for them. :)
IC chip, i'm correction a typo from my previous comment/question
Great video. I have to click subscribe.
Hey thank you a lot! I'm glad you liked it and hope to see you again soon! :)
@@tony359 Nearly 1,000 now! 😃
@@ted-b indeed!
@@tony359 Yay! Congrats! 🥳🎉
How come you found out before I did 😂 Thanks Ted, it’s an achievement which I couldn’t have got without you viewers!
15:25 I’ve figured it out, I don’t need to watch the remainder of your video: your motherboard is a cicada, classic problem.
ahahah didn't think about that! :D
The board looks like a similar board from PC-Chips.
It is indeed!
168 pin SDRAM is DIMM, 72 pin ADRAM is SIMM.
I think I'll never cease to mix them up!! :D Thank you for watching!
Dead VRMs if not shorted caps or other nonsense
amptron was another division of that crappy company pc chips the company who was known to sell motherboards with fake cache chips. amptron had awful c/s i had one of there socket 462 boards back in the day that failed and not only did i have to pay to send the board in at my cost they made me pay them $30 to repair the board even though it was under warranty they said this was a fee the charged everyone for warranty funny now other manufacture had such a charge. then after all that they sent a board back with dead ram slots.
Ah, amazing! I've heard of PC Chips only a few times and every time it was such a negative feedback! How can you possibly sell boards with fake chips on it??? Lol Thanks for watching!
@@tony359 ya it was back around the 486 era the funny thing to the fake chips are soldered to pads that don't even have traces connected to them so u couldn't even put real chips on them. i guess they also did some tricky in the bios so the system would even claim there was cache when there wasn't. pc chips lasted till around 2005 and then they were bought out by ecs who are still around they are another low end motherboard company. a few other utubers have done videos showing off those boards with fake chips.
I found a video from LGR on the subject! Unbelievable! How can someone possibly sell such thing? 😂
@@tony359 idk there is a lot of scummy companies out there who have no trouble with lying to there customers for profit i guess. in more recent times look at gigabyte with there exploding psus that they tried to sweep under the rug rather then just do the right thing right way they had to be called out by multiple large tech utubers before they recalled them.
@@mraaron1584 pc chips bought ECS! They decided to use the ecs brand because their own name was kinda burned.
Please remove the plastic on the screen of your Fluke equipment :-)
ahaha no way! I'll remove it before I dispose of it :D Thanks for watching!
Those chipsets were always on the cheap nasty motherboards that broke after a couple of months.
ahah yes it's now pretty clear that this is a cheap one! :) Thanks for watching!