I really like how you edit those videos and even how you approach it. You cut to the chase and just go for it without 20 minutes of explaining stuff and do a 30 second teardown! I really like that!
It's a Biostar M5ALC board. It does look pretty good aside from the ALi chipset. I've had bad luck with those and stability in Win98 (esp with AGP cards) but hardware of this era can be finicky in general. Prefer VIA MVP3 boards myself. Would make a pretty overkill DOS rig though.
I did watch a video on YT about the best way to apply thermal compound to CPUs. It shown that spreading it out like that is not the best way because air can get trapped. The best way to apply it is to let the heatsink spread it out for you.
No notes whatsoever. You even know when it's time to stop the repair before you throw good time after bad. You're nailing these videos -- keep up the great work!
I used to hoard as many computers as you do, my local recycling center was pretty chill and let me pick stuff. I have kept at LOT. Such a fun thing to do, you never know what you gonna get. I remember one PC cas that was heavy, and it felt like there was loose stuff in it. When I opened it, it was full of CPUs, RAM stick and loose chips of all kinds. Like a treasure chest. One thing I often find is CDs in the drives, and sometimes it's retail games.
Every episode, I will learn from you. As always, you talk nicely. Greetings from Poland . Co odcinek , to się od Ciebie nauczę . Jak zawsze fajnie opowiadasz . Pozdrawiam z Polski .
CyberMax was a marque of Fountain Computers based out of Somerset, NJ. They also sold machines under the Quantex, Pionex, Pionex Elite, and Inteva brand names. I was working at a PC shop at the time and we were selling Pionex Elite machines to customers. The cases were exactly the same as that CyberMax, just a different front panel attached to them. The hardware configurations were similar too. They loved Biostar and FordLian/RedFox boards.
The PC that you looked at, with the missing agp slot, That card can be retrofitted with an agp slot. The bios May need to be updated depends on the rev of it. I did one for my dad, before he passed away.
About power supplies from the early 2000s, they usually are made to deliver more power on the 5V rail than modern ones, so you can't use some of the more power hungry graphics cards without a ridiculously overrated modern power supply. Therefore those old ones might just be worth trying to fix.
I know exactly what happened to cause the frankensteined system 3. An HP desktop board had it's southbridge die and they harvested what they could for the cheapest possible fix. I've done something similar for customers in the past, except I've never hacked up a card reader to shoehorn in a new case.
RIP retro systems may your spare parts live on in other systems! Another great video ahh for Friday mornings! Have fun at VCF midwest and control that urge to buy lol. Have s safe trip!
That third P4 system, I use the version of that board with AGP for my late 98/XP rig (P4P800-VM). It's actually a very capable board for a late era 98/XP dual boot rig since that 865 chipset is surprisingly stable in 98. Even gives me full USB2 mass storage speeds no problems which is usually a stickler for 98 and later boards like this. I wonder too if you could solder an AGP slot onto it and if it'd actually work. The 865GV chipset does support AGP, the only hurdle I can think of is BIOS support - but maybe flashing it with the BIOS file for a different board would remedy that.
That second system... I had a couple generation machines in those cases When I saw you grab that from panel I was so worried, those damn things needed quite a pull even brand new hehehe Edit: Forgot to add that, for cleaning contacts on cards and RAM sticks and stuff, pencil eraser. My father gave me that trick over 20 years ago, still as relevant today :)
Mike awesome as always, awesome tip about using the desoldering alloy as I'm a novice at soldering so it will definitely come in handy, I laugh as you post regularly on Fridays, two of my other favorite computer channels -Phils Computer Lab and LGR have also started posting regularly on Fridays after sporatic upload schedules just as your subscribers count grows, maybe just a coincidence but I at least like to think you had something to do with them getting off their duffs and back to work😂
For the S2, take the battery out, let it discharge for a few secs, ans try to power it up again. Sometimes a low battery hangs the rtc and the bios code freaks out.
I always get a kick out of the "de-dusted" phrase. Would that not mean that you are 'adding' dust to the system. As in "Hey, I'm tired of dusting all the furniture in the house. I'm going to start de-dusting the furniture instead." No? Just never heard anyone say "de-dusted" before and that's the first place my mind went. Nice job on spotting those bulging caps on the first system. I was yelling at the screen when you first opened it the showed the board and was going to comment, but of course you noticed. I am in the "cracked/bad BGA issue" bandwagon with the chipset regarding the motherboard not working. Good job, regardless.
24:24 i know what youre talking about when you say how bad the case quality is, because i used to have one. not the exact same, but i can tell it is by the same manufacturer because of the indentations on the bottom of the case. There's a reason why the side panels are missing, because you immediately bend and/or break all the retaining clips when trying to put them back on!
Cool finds, that Gigabyte board could be useful as a sort of bridge between new and old if it works, could probably run XP just fine. Could be fun to try to add an AGP slot to that board, it doesn't have much value without it.
31:30 Yes, that card reader was cut out of a mid-2000s HP Pavillion. I happen to have one at arm's reach as I'm watching this! Color, layout, shape (except for the snapped missing chunk on the right 🙃), and font are an exact match.
19:05 I'm all for ghetto tech but not when there are better and inexpensive options. My recommendation would be that you treat yourself to some "ProbeMaster" test leads! They are very sharp (you have been warned! 😉), gold-plated (won't oxidize) and have very flexible silicone leads. Perhaps start with the standard 8000 series test leads which are very affordable. Important: You have to choose the correct plugs for your instruments! (most likely the 8017S "right angle safety banana plug") I also use the 8152 "Spring Loaded Micro-Tip" leads which are even "pointier" but they also retract before you make holes into copper masks... They also have kits but you know best what you need.
Btw,you CAN add AGP. But,it would be a LOT of work,and you would need to find configuration resistors. And not only that,it could be missing all the ICs, needin' to drive the AGP.
On that board, for AGP to work you'd need to replace the chipset too. The 865GV has the AGP port fused off in hardware, it's integrated extreme graphics or PCI only. ASRock and some other vendors did make 865GV with an AGP slot, but that's actually wired through PCI.
The hard drive failed within a month and I had to sent the whole PC back to have it replaced. Then one of the SIMM slots came off the mother board when I tried to upgrade the RAM. Both times they covered the shipping and repairs. It worked great but I never got to use the fancy new VESA slots. @@keithbrown7685
23:30 cool case, too new for my liking but apperciate the break down and run down on it! thanks again for all these videos Mike and sorry for so many comments !
If you see LGR (Clint) there at VCFMidwest, definitely say hi! He likes what you do, and I'm sure you've seen his stuff. Have fun, stay safe and good travels!
Another good video. And I was wrong about never having seen an 'Enlight' PC. I updated one of those for my brother's girlfriend about 12 years ago. Like you, I'm a fan of COMPAQ computers. My first PC was a COMPAQ Deskpro 4000, with Pentium 120, which I upgraded to 166 MMX. It had EDO Ram. 64 kb.
Hey man, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate what you're doing here. Your repair techniques are top notch--I was an electronics tech in the Navy (with Miniature and Microminiature electronics repair certification) and it's always nice to spot others so well-versed in the field in the wild. One tip I might have is to invest in multiple soldering iron tip sizes--the one you used to replace the cap, though it got the job done, was a bit on the larger side. They are pretty cheap on Amazon these days (I think I got a dozen or so different tip sizes for my Weller for less than $20). Cheers and thanks again from someone who has been actively involved in computer building/repair since the late 90's!
just saw your channel by accident, but wau didnt get here .. pure awesome video and nice tips on most components what, how and where .. hope to see more of this kind of videos in the future on how to maintain pc computer hardware
If you add a case like system number 2 has to your collection... Here's a valuable tip from my years of experience- *Remember to pick up this case by the left & right sides & NOT the front & rear.* You can pick up pretty much ANY other PC case from the front & rear but.... *Not this one* I'm🤣now... But was😭back then...
That usb card reader came from an hp system I just did a similar thing after it died recently 26:32 they cut off the rest of the curved part that was designed for the dumb curved faceplate gotta love up cycleing and it works great too.
I would definitely remove the CMOS battery out of that socket 775 motherboard. Out of all old socket 775 motherboards I have worked on, the vast majority were "repaired" by clearing the CMOS and reseating components, and the voltage on that battery is low enough that I don't trust it.
Love your video's. Had a "Escom" P90 back in the day. Mum had to carry it herself all the way up the High Street! Love to see another some day. Had OS/2 Warp with Win 3.11 built in.
That first motherboard…. Capacitor plague has taken its toll on that thing. The best way to get rid of issues with system not booting is to pull all the electrolytic caps, and do some ESR and capacitance testing on all of them (need to pull them out for accurate readings) As for replacement capacitors, while ideally one would want exact value replacements, they aren’t often available or common, so for testing purposes one can use capacitors with an equal or higher capacitance rating and equal or higher voltage, as well as operating temperature rating if applicable. Of course, the prudent thing would be to replace that capacitor with the correct rating and values as soon as reasonably possible, but there should be no issues as the capacitor will only charge up to the circuit’s supplied voltage and no more - it’s not an inductor or voltage ladder.
Card reader in system 3 was chopped out of a HP/Compaq Presario SR1500NX or similar. (I have one I'm trying to get working for windows XP gaming right now.) Oddly none of the other parts look like they're OEM
It does help give a sense of the PC's history... what left, what came in its place, what changed for the worse (such as the case quality). Imo, the most interesting PCs, though they seem to be rare, incorporate as much of the old and new as possible. Everything is a testiment to what changed and what wasn't coming back, like the 5 1/4 drive. Also, the advent of SATA and PCIx, the departure of AGP. Other things, too, but you see what I mean.
Wow the spec is pretty high end for the No. 3 PC in its era. Back in 2000s, my home PC only has 256mb RAM. I didn't get to use a faster PC until i built one in 2008
I know this video is a couple months old, but I didn't see any comments about the date code. That's called a Julian date, it's a combination of year (09) and days since the start of the year (335), so it was manufactured December 1, 2009.
Damn, somebody was using Windows XP with the default Luna Theme in 2014. Not shocked that this person didn't wipe the hard drive, just completely oblivious to security/privacy issues.
14:20 I wonder if the manfactuer or technician who made that ding was like "oh well, no ones going to see this anyways" boom come a decade later, it's on youtube for the world to see haha : )
I think that first board had a bad cap. One world of advice. If you ever find a socket 478 or what not with bad caps on the motherboard. Check the PSU for bad caps too.
That socket 775 board might be dead due too bios chip bitrot, this is the era of bios firmware sort of corrupting & getting wiped from the cmos battery running out of power And funnily enough some socket 775 boards outright refuse too post if that cmos battery is empty as well. so it might sort itself out if you remove the cmos battery. Otherwise burn a cd with the bios firmware on it or run a floppy disk with the firmware on it, if its small enough for it. And let it try too rescue itself loading that in which some boards actually can recover with just fine giving it like 10 minutes for the cd approach & 25 for the floppy disk.
interesting to see something newer in the pile. for those modems i kept finding them too and it was the first thing to pull out and throw them aside without even testing them but thought one day ill do something with them...and that day has yet to come. i easy have 20-30 of those modems and still wondering why im keeping them. maybe time to send them. for hard drives id rather get more sata ones. i already have too many ide ones and i rare use any of them and i dont need any more of them for my od old pc tinkering. but could easy find uses for sata ones. i did have a place i got piles of drives (lucky got some 500, 1tb and 2tb ones) quite a few had bad sectors or be totally dead but still plenty good ones that were healthy. sadly that place does not get rid of them as much and when they do they smash them up so there no good for anything apart from salvaging magnets etc. and i already have more than need. so if there smashed i don't even bother taking them. guess no more free drives for me :(
Stumbled across your channel when searching for IBM videos.. love your enthusiasm! Where do you store all your finds? I need to limit my PC gear to IBM branded only due to limited space.
With a computer running Windows Server and having both a dialup modem and ethernet adapter, and an ATA, it is possible to get old computers onto the internet without actually having dialup service.
I wonder if Rosewill made that third case. Rosewill being Newegg's inhouse brand. I bought one of their cases once. Paper thin steel like material that would bend if I you looked at it wrong.
They’re made by a company called Enlight. These were some of the best cases of the time. They were also among the first to feature the easily-swappable drive caddys/rails.
You should consider investing in BIOS programmer... For the first system, it's worth investigating, maybe a pin on the bios chip is oxidized and you just got it working by bending the board or by luck due to heat expanding pin in contact, who knows... alternatively, maybe the bios is flaky and reprogramming the bios by taking the bios chip off the motherboard could revive it.
Gotta point out that recap on the M5ALC - you forgot to replace the bigger puffy cap next to the one you soldered in :) But to be honest - the fact that the board POST'd only once tells me you might need to replace them all and test again. Chances are a full recap should bring it back alive.
Your videos combine two of my favourite things, vintage tech and big arms. 😈
I really like how you edit those videos and even how you approach it. You cut to the chase and just go for it without 20 minutes of explaining stuff and do a 30 second teardown! I really like that!
"Speed Holes!" LOL! Love it!
Mike, your sense of humor cracks me up. Gremlins indeed!
YEAH, Mike's back !! _TSST_ 😂😂
Yay - my Friday afternoon again is complete with a MikeTech awesome video!
I really like that SS7 board!
* mATX
* ESS Solo-1
* Super Socket 7
* AGP + PCI + ISA
Full bang in small form factor!
It's a Biostar M5ALC board.
It does look pretty good aside from the ALi chipset. I've had bad luck with those and stability in Win98 (esp with AGP cards) but hardware of this era can be finicky in general. Prefer VIA MVP3 boards myself.
Would make a pretty overkill DOS rig though.
This one is definitely worth the resurrection effort!
I worked at a local computer store from 1999-2001. Your system 2 case I sold SO. MANY. of them. One of my favorite cases with plenty of room.
I did watch a video on YT about the best way to apply thermal compound to CPUs. It shown that spreading it out like that is not the best way because air can get trapped. The best way to apply it is to let the heatsink spread it out for you.
Love that you apply thermal paste with a guitar pick
Allways a good day when MikeTech telling us up about vintage computers :)
Dude with arms like yours, you can crumple sheet metal like tin foil!
aw yeah buddy. early morning miketech. this + coffee = comfy mornin.
Mike has to be the most wholesome retro youtuber I ever seen.
No notes whatsoever. You even know when it's time to stop the repair before you throw good time after bad. You're nailing these videos -- keep up the great work!
I used to hoard as many computers as you do, my local recycling center was pretty chill and let me pick stuff. I have kept at LOT. Such a fun thing to do, you never know what you gonna get. I remember one PC cas that was heavy, and it felt like there was loose stuff in it. When I opened it, it was full of CPUs, RAM stick and loose chips of all kinds. Like a treasure chest.
One thing I often find is CDs in the drives, and sometimes it's retail games.
The extent of your knowledge is incredible, nice video once again.
I love how much of a handyman you are with repairing this stuff. It's really interesting to watch.
Every episode, I will learn from you. As always, you talk nicely. Greetings from Poland . Co odcinek , to się od Ciebie nauczę . Jak zawsze fajnie opowiadasz . Pozdrawiam z Polski .
CyberMax was a marque of Fountain Computers based out of Somerset, NJ. They also sold machines under the Quantex, Pionex, Pionex Elite, and Inteva brand names. I was working at a PC shop at the time and we were selling Pionex Elite machines to customers. The cases were exactly the same as that CyberMax, just a different front panel attached to them. The hardware configurations were similar too. They loved Biostar and FordLian/RedFox boards.
Thanks for the info! So they were bigger than I thought.
With all the 56k modems u've got you can start a retro ISP
I’ve thought about starting a BBS. There are so few actual dial-in BBS systems now.
@@miketech1024 that could be cool I’ve only been on a few BBS but non that I’ve ever actually had to dial into
13:53 that's the newest system iv seen you take apart
It felt weird. Eww, SATA!
@@miketech1024 ya m.2 is way better
Yay... mystery machines... meanwhile i wanna start an SI with that name
The PC that you looked at, with the missing agp slot, That card can be retrofitted with an agp slot. The bios May need to be updated depends on the rev of it. I did one for my dad, before he passed away.
About power supplies from the early 2000s, they usually are made to deliver more power on the 5V rail than modern ones, so you can't use some of the more power hungry graphics cards without a ridiculously overrated modern power supply. Therefore those old ones might just be worth trying to fix.
I know exactly what happened to cause the frankensteined system 3. An HP desktop board had it's southbridge die and they harvested what they could for the cheapest possible fix. I've done something similar for customers in the past, except I've never hacked up a card reader to shoehorn in a new case.
RIP retro systems may your spare parts live on in other systems! Another great video ahh for Friday mornings! Have fun at VCF midwest and control that urge to buy lol. Have s safe trip!
The paintbrush and sewing needle were excellent ideas! Definitely going to put those in the ol' bag of tricks.
seems like they got rid of that last computer a few months after Windows XP's expiration date
They stayed more current than some companies!
I appreciate the use of an AOL disk
That third P4 system, I use the version of that board with AGP for my late 98/XP rig (P4P800-VM). It's actually a very capable board for a late era 98/XP dual boot rig since that 865 chipset is surprisingly stable in 98. Even gives me full USB2 mass storage speeds no problems which is usually a stickler for 98 and later boards like this.
I wonder too if you could solder an AGP slot onto it and if it'd actually work. The 865GV chipset does support AGP, the only hurdle I can think of is BIOS support - but maybe flashing it with the BIOS file for a different board would remedy that.
An AGP mod would be an interesting project!
8:10 thank you for using the proper amount of thermal paste.
That second system... I had a couple generation machines in those cases
When I saw you grab that from panel I was so worried, those damn things needed quite a pull even brand new hehehe
Edit: Forgot to add that, for cleaning contacts on cards and RAM sticks and stuff, pencil eraser. My father gave me that trick over 20 years ago, still as relevant today :)
Dude thanks for posting this today. IT work this week has been dragging on me.
Mike awesome as always, awesome tip about using the desoldering alloy as I'm a novice at soldering so it will definitely come in handy, I laugh as you post regularly on Fridays, two of my other favorite computer channels -Phils Computer Lab and LGR have also started posting regularly on Fridays after sporatic upload schedules just as your subscribers count grows, maybe just a coincidence but I at least like to think you had something to do with them getting off their duffs and back to work😂
I mean you just use any type of solder and it should work almost as good, if not as good.
@@beardsntools It can be done with regular leaded solder, but it’s much easier with the alloy. It’s almost unbelievable how well it works.
For the S2, take the battery out, let it discharge for a few secs, ans try to power it up again. Sometimes a low battery hangs the rtc and the bios code freaks out.
Would love to see a AGP slot mod, I have quite some computers with no slot in storage at work.
You should put that mobo with the gremlins in the oven for a quick diy reball of sorts ! Lol
I always get a kick out of the "de-dusted" phrase. Would that not mean that you are 'adding' dust to the system. As in "Hey, I'm tired of dusting all the furniture in the house. I'm going to start de-dusting the furniture instead." No? Just never heard anyone say "de-dusted" before and that's the first place my mind went. Nice job on spotting those bulging caps on the first system. I was yelling at the screen when you first opened it the showed the board and was going to comment, but of course you noticed. I am in the "cracked/bad BGA issue" bandwagon with the chipset regarding the motherboard not working. Good job, regardless.
i had a motherboard i put new cmos battery in and it worked so i would try the first one you tried
Scrolling through the TH-cam feed I'm sometimes confused. Is it about fitness or vintage computers😅?
24:24 i know what youre talking about when you say how bad the case quality is, because i used to have one. not the exact same, but i can tell it is by the same manufacturer because of the indentations on the bottom of the case. There's a reason why the side panels are missing, because you immediately bend and/or break all the retaining clips when trying to put them back on!
Cool finds, that Gigabyte board could be useful as a sort of bridge between new and old if it works, could probably run XP just fine. Could be fun to try to add an AGP slot to that board, it doesn't have much value without it.
i do have few old computer. i like collecting them. brings back my highschool memories. also they are not much left most of them are scrapped.
31:30 Yes, that card reader was cut out of a mid-2000s HP Pavillion. I happen to have one at arm's reach as I'm watching this! Color, layout, shape (except for the snapped missing chunk on the right 🙃), and font are an exact match.
You deserve a sponsorship for DeoxIT at this point.
As a German I appreciate your pronunciation of Knoppix!
19:05 I'm all for ghetto tech but not when there are better and inexpensive options.
My recommendation would be that you treat yourself to some "ProbeMaster" test leads!
They are very sharp (you have been warned! 😉), gold-plated (won't oxidize) and have very flexible silicone leads.
Perhaps start with the standard 8000 series test leads which are very affordable.
Important: You have to choose the correct plugs for your instruments! (most likely the 8017S "right angle safety banana plug")
I also use the 8152 "Spring Loaded Micro-Tip" leads which are even "pointier" but they also retract before you make holes into copper masks...
They also have kits but you know best what you need.
its good to see those floppy drive still works. i have like 5+ drives all dead condition.
Btw,you CAN add AGP.
But,it would be a LOT of work,and you would need to find configuration resistors.
And not only that,it could be missing all the ICs, needin' to drive the AGP.
On that board, for AGP to work you'd need to replace the chipset too. The 865GV has the AGP port fused off in hardware, it's integrated extreme graphics or PCI only.
ASRock and some other vendors did make 865GV with an AGP slot, but that's actually wired through PCI.
11:23 me too, beautiful case.
My first PC was a 1996 Cybermax 486DX2. It was one of those brands that were heavily advertised in Computer Shopper.
And how was it when you finally got to try it at home?
The hard drive failed within a month and I had to sent the whole PC back to have it replaced. Then
one of the SIMM slots came off the mother board when I tried to upgrade the RAM. Both times they covered the shipping and repairs. It worked great but I never got to use the fancy new VESA slots. @@keithbrown7685
Awesome video! Looking forward to seeing you at VCFMW!
See you there! 🙂
And we got some kind of hoard of retro parts 😉
27:30
Darn still no sparks or hard drive splatter lol
That day may yet still come!
@@miketech1024 Perhaps you could get one of your 3dfx cards to put a voodoo curse on the drives? 😈
@@miketech1024 And I for one will be here when it happens!
23:30 cool case, too new for my liking but apperciate the break down and run down on it!
thanks again for all these videos Mike and sorry for so many comments !
Comments are good! 🙂 The algo likes them.
If you see LGR (Clint) there at VCFMidwest, definitely say hi! He likes what you do, and I'm sure you've seen his stuff. Have fun, stay safe and good travels!
There he is
Stumbled into your channel a few weeks back. Videos are awesome!!
Cutest tech guy around! 😋
Another good video. And I was wrong about never having seen an 'Enlight' PC. I updated one of those for my brother's girlfriend about 12 years ago. Like you, I'm a fan of COMPAQ computers. My first PC was a COMPAQ Deskpro 4000, with Pentium 120, which I upgraded to 166 MMX. It had EDO Ram. 64 kb.
I always enjoy your videos. One thing that really stood out to me was the POST analyzer card. That was pretty neat.
26:28 looks like it's from a mid 2000s Compaq machine. I did similar endeavors at one point..
So Much Fun Recycling Computers! the last chassis is a keeper in my opinion!
Yay! Another video! This is a blessed day!
9:40 you know you love to see it Mike! : )
Hey Cutie, with all your new modems you should build an ISP or BBS for fun! Haha
Friday saved🎉 Nice systems!
9:08 that beautiful µATX Super Socket 7 Board with ALI Chipset.
I see a "slightly" discolored Coil, right next to the Cap you replaced.
Hey man, I just wanted to say that I really appreciate what you're doing here. Your repair techniques are top notch--I was an electronics tech in the Navy (with Miniature and Microminiature electronics repair certification) and it's always nice to spot others so well-versed in the field in the wild. One tip I might have is to invest in multiple soldering iron tip sizes--the one you used to replace the cap, though it got the job done, was a bit on the larger side. They are pretty cheap on Amazon these days (I think I got a dozen or so different tip sizes for my Weller for less than $20). Cheers and thanks again from someone who has been actively involved in computer building/repair since the late 90's!
first motherboard might have an issue with BGA solder balls under the chipset.
just saw your channel by accident, but wau didnt get here .. pure awesome video and nice tips on most components what, how and where .. hope to see more of this kind of videos in the future on how to maintain pc computer hardware
If you add a case like system number 2 has to your collection... Here's a valuable tip from my years of experience- *Remember to pick up this case by the left & right sides & NOT the front & rear.*
You can pick up pretty much ANY other PC case from the front & rear but.... *Not this one* I'm🤣now... But was😭back then...
That usb card reader came from an hp system I just did a similar thing after it died recently 26:32 they cut off the rest of the curved part that was designed for the dumb curved faceplate gotta love up cycleing and it works great too.
I would definitely remove the CMOS battery out of that socket 775 motherboard. Out of all old socket 775 motherboards I have worked on, the vast majority were "repaired" by clearing the CMOS and reseating components, and the voltage on that battery is low enough that I don't trust it.
I had a CyberMax PC back in the early 2000's maybe late 90's Slot A Athlon.
Love your video's. Had a "Escom" P90 back in the day. Mum had to carry it herself all the way up the High Street! Love to see another some day. Had OS/2 Warp with Win 3.11 built in.
Hey Mike, did you try re-seat the bios rom chip on that first motherboard ?
That first motherboard…. Capacitor plague has taken its toll on that thing.
The best way to get rid of issues with system not booting is to pull all the electrolytic caps, and do some ESR and capacitance testing on all of them (need to pull them out for accurate readings)
As for replacement capacitors, while ideally one would want exact value replacements, they aren’t often available or common, so for testing purposes one can use capacitors with an equal or higher capacitance rating and equal or higher voltage, as well as operating temperature rating if applicable. Of course, the prudent thing would be to replace that capacitor with the correct rating and values as soon as reasonably possible, but there should be no issues as the capacitor will only charge up to the circuit’s supplied voltage and no more - it’s not an inductor or voltage ladder.
That Gigabyte G41 mobo is a great one. I still have 2 systems running with them Mike!
Awesome video!😊
Card reader in system 3 was chopped out of a HP/Compaq Presario SR1500NX or similar. (I have one I'm trying to get working for windows XP gaming right now.) Oddly none of the other parts look like they're OEM
Is it weird that the card reader is the most interesting part of this video for me?
It does help give a sense of the PC's history... what left, what came in its place, what changed for the worse (such as the case quality).
Imo, the most interesting PCs, though they seem to be rare, incorporate as much of the old and new as possible. Everything is a testiment to what changed and what wasn't coming back, like the 5 1/4 drive. Also, the advent of SATA and PCIx, the departure of AGP. Other things, too, but you see what I mean.
Wow the spec is pretty high end for the No. 3 PC in its era. Back in 2000s, my home PC only has 256mb RAM. I didn't get to use a faster PC until i built one in 2008
I know this video is a couple months old, but I didn't see any comments about the date code. That's called a Julian date, it's a combination of year (09) and days since the start of the year (335), so it was manufactured December 1, 2009.
Damn, somebody was using Windows XP with the default Luna Theme in 2014. Not shocked that this person didn't wipe the hard drive, just completely oblivious to security/privacy issues.
14:20 I wonder if the manfactuer or technician who made that ding was like "oh well, no ones going to see this anyways"
boom come a decade later, it's on youtube for the world to see haha : )
I think that first board had a bad cap. One world of advice. If you ever find a socket 478 or what not with bad caps on the motherboard. Check the PSU for bad caps too.
That socket 775 board might be dead due too bios chip bitrot, this is the era of bios firmware sort of corrupting & getting wiped from the cmos battery running out of power
And funnily enough some socket 775 boards outright refuse too post if that cmos battery is empty as well.
so it might sort itself out if you remove the cmos battery.
Otherwise burn a cd with the bios firmware on it or run a floppy disk with the firmware on it, if its small enough for it.
And let it try too rescue itself loading that in which some boards actually can recover with just fine giving it like 10 minutes for the cd approach & 25 for the floppy disk.
interesting to see something newer in the pile. for those modems i kept finding them too and it was the first thing to pull out and throw them aside without even testing them but thought one day ill do something with them...and that day has yet to come. i easy have 20-30 of those modems and still wondering why im keeping them. maybe time to send them. for hard drives id rather get more sata ones. i already have too many ide ones and i rare use any of them and i dont need any more of them for my od old pc tinkering. but could easy find uses for sata ones. i did have a place i got piles of drives (lucky got some 500, 1tb and 2tb ones) quite a few had bad sectors or be totally dead but still plenty good ones that were healthy. sadly that place does not get rid of them as much and when they do they smash them up so there no good for anything apart from salvaging magnets etc. and i already have more than need. so if there smashed i don't even bother taking them. guess no more free drives for me :(
Stumbled across your channel when searching for IBM videos.. love your enthusiasm! Where do you store all your finds? I need to limit my PC gear to IBM branded only due to limited space.
Thanks! Currently my garage is the storage area/shop. The keepers get moved into my computer room.
when you find a use for that modem - i can send you a few more
With a computer running Windows Server and having both a dialup modem and ethernet adapter, and an ATA, it is possible to get old computers onto the internet without actually having dialup service.
I wonder if Rosewill made that third case. Rosewill being Newegg's inhouse brand. I bought one of their cases once. Paper thin steel like material that would bend if I you looked at it wrong.
Awesome video! What temperature was your soldering iron at when you replaced the capacitor?
What do you call that case, "in-light"? That is the case of my first PC back in 2000, a PIII 600 :)
They’re made by a company called Enlight. These were some of the best cases of the time. They were also among the first to feature the easily-swappable drive caddys/rails.
You should consider investing in BIOS programmer... For the first system, it's worth investigating, maybe a pin on the bios chip is oxidized and you just got it working by bending the board or by luck due to heat expanding pin in contact, who knows... alternatively, maybe the bios is flaky and reprogramming the bios by taking the bios chip off the motherboard could revive it.
Gotta point out that recap on the M5ALC - you forgot to replace the bigger puffy cap next to the one you soldered in :)
But to be honest - the fact that the board POST'd only once tells me you might need to replace them all and test again. Chances are a full recap should bring it back alive.
It’s one of the 1500uf caps which I didn’t have a replacement for. Let’s hope the caps are the only issue. BGA soldering gives me anxiety.
You know, Mike,it would be REALLY, REALLY surprising ,if this Crapstor would work.
40-60-80 gb series of Maxtor hard drives was particularly bad....
You get all that storage space, and for what, so the hd can die and be reduced to 0 bytes for disk capacity.
Released 6 minutes ago... already 7 hours old comments... something fishy is going on :D
That would be from Patreons.
you did not mention the size of that voltage regulator heatsink.