Sure would make more sense for a rugged machine to have any bigger part on a socket instead of soldered. It's typical on automotive application, and experience has shown me how annoying BGA is, can't have much higher hopes for soldered PGA either.
I took apart a top-of-the-line Toughbook once. I'm pretty sure you could beat someone to death over the head with that thing and it wouldn't be affected at all. This thing is a beast of a machine for its time. I love the hand grinding on the power supply. Assembled by hand manufacturing.
Initially, my first guess about the weird video quirks was them to be an active anti TEMPEST measure, to mitigate any compromising RF radiation :) Speaking of which, the external ports extension was a bit disappointing, one would expect bulky filters in all data lines ...
Reflowing the VRAM (and video chipset for good measure) would be a good bet Cracked solder joints are pretty common, especially if this is from the time when everyone was first switching to ROHS lead free AFAIK I would be very surprised if that didn't fix it!
I'm surprised that nothing inside the case was mounted using rubber or other shock-dampening material. The case itself is a beast, but a good drop could still trash that hard drive.
Yep! Definitely a memory issue. You can probably still get that video memory from AliExpress, if the solder joints appear to be okay. Awesome in-depth video!!! Love it!! 🥰
@@mmcv1987 Definitely true. Memory has been soldered too, though😉. Most of the memory problems I have encountered, actually were caused by cracked solder joints. So reflowing will probably be a great (but rather temporary) solution, depending on the usage of the machine.
While heating up VRAM and its contact points is a good point to start with, I think you will end up replacing a faulty VRAM chip or controller. Also try flexing a board with GPU just a little bit (while working) and avoiding touching VRAM to see if it makes any difference.
@@WurstPeterl As a Belgian i'm not so sure about that mate.. the Belgium - Chinese colony was between 1902-1931. Pretty sure this Intel Pentium was not made by then :-) Probaly there will be an other reason, maybe the previous (chinese) ower installed the chinese version of windows on it, because he didden't understand the Dutch or French version that was installed on it.
Really happy you're making more frequent videos! You presentation and commentary is among my favourite; see big growth for your channel! Do you use Twitter btw?
It looks much more hacked together than I expected. The way that one cable is just soldered to the expansion card looks pretty janky. Using an off the shelf pcmcia card was surprising too though I guess it means they didn't have to come up with something custom.
The two cables to the PCMCIA board are likely 40 pin and similar to IDE. CardBus is almost IDE compatible, which is why CF to PCMCIA cards are so cheap. I have some CardBus desktop adapters that have the same two cables from a PCI card
It is a military grade computer. You can bet it had a lot of thermal and vibration stress in it's life. Militaries don't upgrade equipment often, so this thing could have had a very long and difficult life (even if it looks this good). Since there is no issue with just blinking cursor, it could be an issue when writing to VRAM? Deoxy on those connectors before solder, just as a simple thing to try before going for "big guns" (soldering iron and scope). Now, I am not an expert in VGA standard and chipsets, it could still be VRAM issue. But easy and quick things first? From the first guess, that "low density" 2.54mm 26pin (if I counted correctly) connector looks like it would have just enough pins for parallel port from "main" board to port and VGA from "graphics" board to "main" board connector. The other connector (that looks very like a Ultra 320 SCSI connector), it would be my best guess that the connector was reused for standard PCI bus due to characteristics (frequency and bandwidth), but it is not very "reliable" connector, does not have a very positive mechanical retention. If deoxy and pressure on that high pincount connector does not help, I would not use hot air on VRAM chips. They look like standard PLCC SOJ package memory chips soldered directly. Just drag a regular hot soldering iron with some fresh solder over pins and try to get each pin to flow again, nothing too aggressive for first try, just get the solder to flow. Originally I thought TSOP, but not, looks like they just grabbed regular PLCC packaged VRAM (that would be socketed in normal graphics cards), and soldered them directly. Might not be the best package for this application, but as some other things on that machine, looks like just regular of the shelf components reused in a bit different function/mounting mode. Same as mounting CPU "upside down" from "normal" and using what looks like SCSI U320 connectors for PCI bus (I would bet it is a PCI, due to another connector on the bottom side of the board looks like it is connected directly to this one for "graphics" board), regular ribbon cables and 2.54mm pitch connectors for that PCMCIA card board interconnect. Even before taking a scope for a spin. (Damn, this comment got rewritten like 5 times now)
The Altera chip on the expansion board is a PLD - Programmable Logic Device, like a forerunner to FPGAs of today. It was probably doing something pretty custom for the application of that PC, some sort of custom logic or processor that wasn’t available off the shelf. Sometimes there is flash or eeprom chip associated with it to load the programming on boot - might be possible to read a chip like that to see what it’s function was. Interesting! Thanks for the tear down.
Looking at the power supply, I would say it was designed to be swapped as a module in the field rather than serviceable. It could be either dry/bad solder joints or at worst a chip in VRAM that is fractured internally. I'd try reflow of all the RAM/VRAM first and see how it goes.
@@RetroSpector78 This is not BGA, try the easy way with soldering iron to resolder the pins. look for dry join. You can check pins with a toothpick for bad contact (cold solder).
@@bojidar200 Reflowing BGA is at best a stop gap measure. To do it correctly, in my experience, remove the chip, clean the tin solder and replace with tin lead solder. No lead solder is generally too brittle
I'm not confortable using hot air all over the place. I suggest Louis Rossmann's standard quantity of flux and just using the soldering iron over de pins on those Dual inline packages and Quad inline packages with brand new lead solder tin. Great video.
Those pass through connector are the PCI bus, the chipset support the ISA/PCI slot. And the other pass through connector is probably the video pass through interface. They sure do weird configuration for military laptop.
Some things that pop up: - The screen is OK while the cursor is blinking. This to me means that the problem happens before the blinking cursor is generated into the image. Specifically that means the problem is not in the analog output part of the video card, since that would be affected by blinking cursor just as much as by any other change on the screen. - The video memory contents are OK. This is clear just from the fact that the picture stabilizes after a while. If video memory contents were corrupted, there would be no way for the output to stabilize when nothing is changing, since the correct image needs to be present in video memory. From this it seems that the problem could be in reading the video memory. Maybe writing and reading at the same time causes issues, but just reading without writing is fine. I'd look at the part of the daughterboard that is between the video memory and the video controller chip. Maybe there will be some visible damage or some suspicious capacitors there.
Right along my lines of thinking... Red is driven hard at times of screen rewrite/change or Blue and Green are shorted. My bet is a week current sensitive connection/solder joint or more likely a bad capacitor...
I'm no expert, but the way you were able to press on the vram chips and stabilize the ability to draw onscreen somewhat makes me think it might be loose contact on the chip pins, or potentially bad chips? Is that scrolling green line we see a vblank? Just a guess based on other things I've seen before. :) Thank you for your videos.
im an army ex marine and I can tell you for a fact those expansion slots on the motherboard were where one would install C4 and a C4 detonator. There would be a cable attached to the operator at all times and if they walked more than 2 meteres away from the case the cable would snap, activating the C4 and rendering the laptop FUBAR.
Hope it something as simple as a bad connector or if it's an IC with a solder whisker or something, ..something that is easily fixed by a bit of reflow.
This kind of mess is what you get when the government contracts out to the lowest bidder. Probably helps when that bidder is somebody's brother-in-law or something, too.
about the color things the same thing happened to me on old computer with s3 trio graphic adapter, in my case it was something with ground interference from external monitor that wasn't grounded blew up some caps on the graphic card but i am very interested what is in the laptop
I had one that would turn yellow instead of red like that. Turned out it was just bad video connection at the vga port, but pressing on chips says thats not it. Only suggesting this in case its both.
I suspect these laptops had a self-destruct mechanism in case they fell into enemy hands. This particular VGA chip must have a built in DAC as I can't see one on the board. I couldn't find a datasheet for it either but it's still widely available for as little as $4 on Aliexpress. D0 on one of the RAM chips has got connection issues. The other issue is weird, I notice at 3:10 when the POST code changes from 41 to 42 nothing happens. In text mode if the background was meant to be black an issue with D5 on one of the RAM chips could turn the screen green and an issue with D6 could turn it red.
Think you caught a video editing issue at 3:10 ..... it did flicker from 41 to 42. Only thing where it didn't do anything was when the cursor was blinking. But issue has been fixed and will present it in part 3 ! Do you have some more details on the D5 / D6 of the RAM chips impact on the background ? Are you referring to pin numbers or IO numbers ?
@@RetroSpector78 I'm referring to the data pins, in text mode one of the RAM chips will hold the foreground and background colour data. Not sure which one as I don't know how the controller connects the four RAM chips, it's possible they are multiplexed. The foreground colour data is stored in D0..D3, the background colour data is stored in D4..D7. Black is 0, green is 2, red is 4. The cursor is added by the controller chip, it is not stored in RAM. Looking forward to part 3.
You should map the connections between the motherboard and daughterboard though the two connectors. They appear to be input/passthoroughs. I would love to see system replaced with the guts of a more powerful laptop. I may have to go surplus hunting...
I’ve just received an LXI P3, and need to make power cord, whats the exact type of that connector? This one has the same bit I dont know the specs to buy one. Nice video.
Those video "artifact" most likely cause by the VRAM chips. Its either defect or suffering "dry joint". Btw It is a nice piece of war tech accompanied with an awesome teardown video.
Perhaps you have some cold solder joints or if there are any chips in sockets I'd remove them, clean both connector and chip pins and reinsert them. The fact that you pushing on the video RAM changes the issues with the video output leads me to believe the issue is with the video RAM. If you can isolate the rest of the surrounding components perhaps a heat gun or reflow of the solder joints.
Yeah will try that ... a bit delicate as there are lots of other small components in the area (resistor/ / caps) that I don’t want to blow off by accident.
Sorry, but I just have to say it; your choice of idle music while you were speeding up the footage was severely hurting my ears. I am glad I sucked it up though, because this video was very, very interesting. Last video I was very disappointed you blue-balled us by not showing the insides (even just a glimpse) but I had forgotten all about that when this one showed up in my feed. Military hard is always a sight to behold, and this laptop is certainly no exception! So glad I watched it, I was really looking forward to see its guts. That being said, for all I care you could put 130dB chalkboard screeching under the next video. It wouldn't matter; as I will most certainly be watching it regardless (while holding bandages against my ears to attenuate the noise and stem the bleeding of course!) :D In case it wasn't clear enough already, great video it was super interesting and entertaining! You have a new subscriber :)
I was expecting more, but military grade seems to be based on glue (somebody must have suggested filling the whole laptop with black resin). I am not impressed by its internals, only fascinated by the hacks :)
The video corruption suggests either a bad data bit connection or a bad address bit. The graphics mode is most telling with the thin vertical lines. I'd guess the RAM is organized as 32bit wide and one of the higher bits is not working correctly. I'd reflow the RAM chips and see what happens.
first look for a replacement video chip you are going to need to desolder that chip and solder a new one on chips graphics cards where known for high failure rates look for a pci card online or a old laptop that you can swipe the chip off of
Before you hook up a scope to troubleshoot the mainboard you might want to try removing all socketed chips and putting them back in. Spray some contact-cleaner into the socket while you're at it.
when you was pressing on the ram sticks the video got a bit better on the output to me it seems like its a ram slot issue thats making the video output go janky but thats just me honestly from watching the video and its reaction to you pressing on the ram sticks
Would need to check, but would be a challenge getting the CPU. Think the CPU is still fine. I'm guessing it will probably be the video chip, video memory or a cold solder joint somewhere.
Doesn’t SCSI port hardware need to be addressed, either by way of jumpers, or one of those funny switches with the buttons marked ‘+’ and ‘-‘ , and pushing one of them changes a little flipper wheel that displays one of 8 possible SCSI devices? I didn’t see any buttons near to the SCSI port, nor jumpers. I’m thinking your display was just having trouble adapting to your geographical location, maybe it’s set for 60 Hz and where you live the mains is at 50Hz? You ought to be able to just substitute a different old power supply from a different computer and at least eliminate whether that’s the issue. I’m confident that you can get it running smooth, it’s only a matter of perseverance. When you get that thing to run, I would expect that Grand Theft Auto 1 will run pretty smooth, and it should do fine with old Super Nintendo games. Good luck, and thanks for sharing!!
I looks like it's the gpu chip might need to replace it cause with the screen doing that really makes it look like it's the gpu. If it was the ram you wouldn't get this far.
I would say you have a bad solder joint from the vga chip or vga memory chip to the main board. Flux it and use the air rework station. Don’t put in the oven like the little boys say, they are getting confused with modern ATI and nvidia GPUs.
Random question, but what kind of keyboard is that built into it? is it a standard membrane keyboard or a mechanical keyboard? (was just thinking there's a possibility it could be mechanical for the increased durability)
@@RetroSpector78 thanks for the reply! slightly disappointing it's membrane but hey, the whole thing is pretty cool. I guess the trackball gets most of the limelight for the human input devices :P
i would replacement two purple capacitor see if does any thing if not then look for broke or loose pin on board it nightmare because there soo many thing in way
Probably there are still laptops like this used for military purposes, just now with i7 CPU :). The upper range Panasonic Toughbooks are quite brutal as well, but not as much as this one.
Short answer, they weren't. This is more like a "sliced'n'stacked" regular motherboard of the era with board to (daughter)board interconnections than a laptop of the era. In this kind of ultra rugged laptop, you could't care less about size/weight (on a "laptop scale") so it's both easier and more reliable to just use regular components and "orthogonal layouts" than trying to super-pack everything into the smallest form factor you can. Everything will follow philosophy as much as possible, from drives to connectors, to anything, so as to have better maintenance capabilities in a jam. The PSU is always the funny part, as you can pretty much fit an AT/ATX standard form factor with a little bit of extra "height" on the case, and that would make it also easily replaceable with "standard parts" instead of being stuck with that proprietary form.
![กี่หมื่นฟ้า | Your Sky Series EP.1 [1/4]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/vLGjxFL6U_I/mqdefault.jpg)
Looks like a dry joint on the memory?
Resolder those vga memory chips. Don't forget some flux to help the solder flow.
This!
@@StaticVapour590 That!
@@WindowsG Absolutely
That Pentium does appear to be in a socket, you can see it at 12:50. It's a low profile machined pin socket.
Absolutely . though its unusual to be mounted on the bottom.
Sure would make more sense for a rugged machine to have any bigger part on a socket instead of soldered. It's typical on automotive application, and experience has shown me how annoying BGA is, can't have much higher hopes for soldered PGA either.
@@Kalvinjj exactly . vibration and impact vreak solder joints. But theyre not going to snap a socket.
The Chipset is an ALi ALADDiN II, consisting of M1511 (Northbridge), M1512 and M1513 (Southbridge). Just in case anybody cares. :)
ALi ALADDiN II Now thats a name I haven't heard in a long long time!
The chip has my name on it 😄
I care haha
the Radio ISA is what catches my eye.. the pretty m68k specifically.
that board is probably for the BAMS tacitical radio: www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/bams/index.htm
I took apart a top-of-the-line Toughbook once. I'm pretty sure you could beat someone to death over the head with that thing and it wouldn't be affected at all. This thing is a beast of a machine for its time. I love the hand grinding on the power supply. Assembled by hand manufacturing.
Weird how some parts seem over-engineered while other things look more like hobbyist at work
Ikr.
I would try an ISA video card and see if it works in the expansion slot.
👍
@@x689thanatos you can test it, download ISA pinout and find the grounds. Or Find the voltages while turned on
Initially, my first guess about the weird video quirks was them to be an active anti TEMPEST measure, to mitigate any compromising RF radiation :) Speaking of which, the external ports extension was a bit disappointing, one would expect bulky filters in all data lines ...
That's not screen corruption, it's just loading data from tape ;-)
yep
If you wait long enough, you may see an Ocean logo with some music.
@@stonent Sierra in the usa
Hahaha
Reflowing the VRAM (and video chipset for good measure) would be a good bet
Cracked solder joints are pretty common, especially if this is from the time when everyone was first switching to ROHS lead free AFAIK
I would be very surprised if that didn't fix it!
I'm surprised that nothing inside the case was mounted using rubber or other shock-dampening material. The case itself is a beast, but a good drop could still trash that hard drive.
Yep! Definitely a memory issue. You can probably still get that video memory from AliExpress, if the solder joints appear to be okay.
Awesome in-depth video!!! Love it!! 🥰
it can still be a soldering fracture and resoldering might fix it before issueing new components.
@@mmcv1987 Definitely true. Memory has been soldered too, though😉. Most of the memory problems I have encountered, actually were caused by cracked solder joints. So reflowing will probably be a great (but rather temporary) solution, depending on the usage of the machine.
Very cool piece. I bet you have a cold solder joint on one of the RAM chips, or the video ram controller.
Hope so. Stay tuned for part 3.
While heating up VRAM and its contact points is a good point to start with, I think you will end up replacing a faulty VRAM chip or controller.
Also try flexing a board with GPU just a little bit (while working) and avoiding touching VRAM to see if it makes any difference.
3:49 It's odd no mention is made here about a Belgian military computer loading a Chinese version of Windows.
BilisNegra It’s a computer from the time when China was a colony of Belgium. Nothing surprising about a Chinese Windows Version.
@@WurstPeterl As a Belgian i'm not so sure about that mate.. the Belgium - Chinese colony was between 1902-1931. Pretty sure this Intel Pentium was not made by then :-) Probaly there will be an other reason, maybe the previous (chinese) ower installed the chinese version of windows on it, because he didden't understand the Dutch or French version that was installed on it.
Also has a german TÜV checkmark on some component :D
This thing kinda looks like someone had random computer parts and just threw them together in a metal box and called it a laptop.
Loving this series, very interesting. Maybe corrosion or bad solider joint
Been waiting on this series. I really can appreciate that design.
Really happy you're making more frequent videos!
You presentation and commentary is among my favourite; see big growth for your channel!
Do you use Twitter btw?
It looks much more hacked together than I expected. The way that one cable is just soldered to the expansion card looks pretty janky. Using an off the shelf pcmcia card was surprising too though I guess it means they didn't have to come up with something custom.
The two cables to the PCMCIA board are likely 40 pin and similar to IDE. CardBus is almost IDE compatible, which is why CF to PCMCIA cards are so cheap. I have some CardBus desktop adapters that have the same two cables from a PCI card
>everything is under control
famous last words
hi, great video again. the back plate is very nicely tough out
try reflowing the RAM and video RAM first. then check all those surface mounted capacitors. Oh and try cleaning up the RAM slots, pins, etc.
Cool, I like old stuffs from the past. I used to have one old PC, maybe Pentium 4 with socket 486 pins. But I lost it long ago.
It is a military grade computer. You can bet it had a lot of thermal and vibration stress in it's life. Militaries don't upgrade equipment often, so this thing could have had a very long and difficult life (even if it looks this good).
Since there is no issue with just blinking cursor, it could be an issue when writing to VRAM? Deoxy on those connectors before solder, just as a simple thing to try before going for "big guns" (soldering iron and scope).
Now, I am not an expert in VGA standard and chipsets, it could still be VRAM issue. But easy and quick things first?
From the first guess, that "low density" 2.54mm 26pin (if I counted correctly) connector looks like it would have just enough pins for parallel port from "main" board to port and VGA from "graphics" board to "main" board connector.
The other connector (that looks very like a Ultra 320 SCSI connector), it would be my best guess that the connector was reused for standard PCI bus due to characteristics (frequency and bandwidth), but it is not very "reliable" connector, does not have a very positive mechanical retention.
If deoxy and pressure on that high pincount connector does not help, I would not use hot air on VRAM chips. They look like standard PLCC SOJ package memory chips soldered directly. Just drag a regular hot soldering iron with some fresh solder over pins and try to get each pin to flow again, nothing too aggressive for first try, just get the solder to flow.
Originally I thought TSOP, but not, looks like they just grabbed regular PLCC packaged VRAM (that would be socketed in normal graphics cards), and soldered them directly. Might not be the best package for this application, but as some other things on that machine, looks like just regular of the shelf components reused in a bit different function/mounting mode.
Same as mounting CPU "upside down" from "normal" and using what looks like SCSI U320 connectors for PCI bus (I would bet it is a PCI, due to another connector on the bottom side of the board looks like it is connected directly to this one for "graphics" board), regular ribbon cables and 2.54mm pitch connectors for that PCMCIA card board interconnect.
Even before taking a scope for a spin.
(Damn, this comment got rewritten like 5 times now)
Thanks a lot ... will try that and keep you posted in part 3 !
The Altera chip on the expansion board is a PLD - Programmable Logic Device, like a forerunner to FPGAs of today. It was probably doing something pretty custom for the application of that PC, some sort of custom logic or processor that wasn’t available off the shelf. Sometimes there is flash or eeprom chip associated with it to load the programming on boot - might be possible to read a chip like that to see what it’s function was. Interesting! Thanks for the tear down.
That's for BAMS tactical radio: www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/bams/index.htm
Looking at the power supply, I would say it was designed to be swapped as a module in the field rather than serviceable.
It could be either dry/bad solder joints or at worst a chip in VRAM that is fractured internally. I'd try reflow of all the RAM/VRAM first and see how it goes.
More than likely id say most of this laptop is designed that way quick swappable parts minimal down town
Are you sure the connection is good between the motherboard and daughter board? If it is, then you should clean the pads and reflow the ram chips.
that is a motorola 68302 microcontroller on the expansion card cool to see that they used that for the BAMS interface.
just apply some heat with a heat gun on those chips and you are ready to go
hoping it will be that easy ... but have often been disappointed :)
@@RetroSpector78 This is not BGA, try the easy way with soldering iron to resolder the pins. look for dry join. You can check pins with a toothpick for bad contact
(cold solder).
Gonna offer the hot oven method as well
@@bojidar200 Reflowing BGA is at best a stop gap measure. To do it correctly, in my experience, remove the chip, clean the tin solder and replace with tin lead solder. No lead solder is generally too brittle
I'm not confortable using hot air all over the place. I suggest Louis Rossmann's standard quantity of flux and just using the soldering iron over de pins on those Dual inline packages and Quad inline packages with brand new lead solder tin.
Great video.
If you do get stuck with the video issue, you could contact youtubers DextersTechLab or JanBeta. Both are pretty good with SMD rework.
Those pass through connector are the PCI bus, the chipset support the ISA/PCI slot. And the other pass through connector is probably the video pass through interface. They sure do weird configuration for military laptop.
Some things that pop up:
- The screen is OK while the cursor is blinking. This to me means that the problem happens before the blinking cursor is generated into the image. Specifically that means the problem is not in the analog output part of the video card, since that would be affected by blinking cursor just as much as by any other change on the screen.
- The video memory contents are OK. This is clear just from the fact that the picture stabilizes after a while. If video memory contents were corrupted, there would be no way for the output to stabilize when nothing is changing, since the correct image needs to be present in video memory.
From this it seems that the problem could be in reading the video memory. Maybe writing and reading at the same time causes issues, but just reading without writing is fine. I'd look at the part of the daughterboard that is between the video memory and the video controller chip. Maybe there will be some visible damage or some suspicious capacitors there.
Fix coming up in part 3 ... stay tuned
Right along my lines of thinking... Red is driven hard at times of screen rewrite/change or Blue and Green are shorted. My bet is a week current sensitive connection/solder joint or more likely a bad capacitor...
I'm no expert, but the way you were able to press on the vram chips and stabilize the ability to draw onscreen somewhat makes me think it might be loose contact on the chip pins, or potentially bad chips?
Is that scrolling green line we see a vblank? Just a guess based on other things I've seen before. :)
Thank you for your videos.
im an army ex marine and I can tell you for a fact those expansion slots on the motherboard were where one would install C4 and a C4 detonator. There would be a cable attached to the operator at all times and if they walked more than 2 meteres away from the case the cable would snap, activating the C4 and rendering the laptop FUBAR.
@@sparklesparklesparkle6318 Jesus Christ
@@SockyNoob God cannot save you meow.
I want to know more about that card with the Altera FPGA and the Motorola CPU.
that's probabably for BAMS radio: www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/bams/index.htm
New subscriber... Great video. Relaxing. For such a rugged device I was surprised to see no shock absorbing devices. Just a laptop ina metal case
This would also be an interesting LGR Oddware episode
Hope it something as simple as a bad connector or if it's an IC with a solder whisker or something, ..something that is easily fixed by a bit of reflow.
The yellow chip on the left of the simm slots is a „snaphat“ battery for the bios and can easily be changed (compared to the Dallas disaster Chips)
This kind of mess is what you get when the government contracts out to the lowest bidder. Probably helps when that bidder is somebody's brother-in-law or something, too.
Love your videos, hope you can fix it. I think it is only a solder problem, or maybe a grounding issue. Fabio from Brazil
it looks so easy to hack custom parts into that thing. you could put a higher quality screen in it even.
what's the pinout on that rj45 to what looks like din45326 ? very curious
your not gonna take it on the battlefield anymore?... seems you got an alterego we're just learning about
about the color things the same thing happened to me on old computer with s3 trio graphic adapter, in my case it was something with ground interference from external monitor that wasn't grounded blew up some caps on the graphic card
but i am very interested what is in the laptop
I had one that would turn yellow instead of red like that. Turned out it was just bad video connection at the vga port, but pressing on chips says thats not it. Only suggesting this in case its both.
After u took the screws out of the PSU it looked like it had taken bullet holes
Warm with small heater or use cold spray to find your chip.
Background music has a very Telefon Tel Aviv feel to it! I like it.
I suspect these laptops had a self-destruct mechanism in case they fell into enemy hands. This particular VGA chip must have a built in DAC as I can't see one on the board. I couldn't find a datasheet for it either but it's still widely available for as little as $4 on Aliexpress. D0 on one of the RAM chips has got connection issues. The other issue is weird, I notice at 3:10 when the POST code changes from 41 to 42 nothing happens. In text mode if the background was meant to be black an issue with D5 on one of the RAM chips could turn the screen green and an issue with D6 could turn it red.
Think you caught a video editing issue at 3:10 ..... it did flicker from 41 to 42. Only thing where it didn't do anything was when the cursor was blinking. But issue has been fixed and will present it in part 3 ! Do you have some more details on the D5 / D6 of the RAM chips impact on the background ? Are you referring to pin numbers or IO numbers ?
@@RetroSpector78 I'm referring to the data pins, in text mode one of the RAM chips will hold the foreground and background colour data. Not sure which one as I don't know how the controller connects the four RAM chips, it's possible they are multiplexed. The foreground colour data is stored in D0..D3, the background colour data is stored in D4..D7. Black is 0, green is 2, red is 4. The cursor is added by the controller chip, it is not stored in RAM. Looking forward to part 3.
Was this project assembled from a package of "parts", like a boxed "drop shipment"?
I bet that connection between the two boards is the culprit here. I would make sure to clean that and check for bad solder joints on it.
Fix coming up in part 3 ... stay tuned
Very nice case contains of pure gold,a lot of aluminum and copper components.
You sound a lot like a metal scrapper lol
You should map the connections between the motherboard and daughterboard though the two connectors. They appear to be input/passthoroughs. I would love to see system replaced with the guts of a more powerful laptop. I may have to go surplus hunting...
If I can’t get it working that might be an option. But would prefer to keep it original.
I’ve just received an LXI P3, and need to make power cord, whats the exact type of that connector? This one has the same bit I dont know the specs to buy one. Nice video.
I'd start with resoldering vram chips. If that didn't help, then i'd look for broken connector pins yeah
Those video "artifact" most likely cause by the VRAM chips. Its either defect or suffering "dry joint". Btw It is a nice piece of war tech accompanied with an awesome teardown video.
Thx a lot ... appreciate it. Fix coming up in part 3 ... stay tuned
Perhaps you have some cold solder joints or if there are any chips in sockets I'd remove them, clean both connector and chip pins and reinsert them. The fact that you pushing on the video RAM changes the issues with the video output leads me to believe the issue is with the video RAM. If you can isolate the rest of the surrounding components perhaps a heat gun or reflow of the solder joints.
Yeah will try that ... a bit delicate as there are lots of other small components in the area (resistor/ / caps) that I don’t want to blow off by accident.
Sorry, but I just have to say it; your choice of idle music while you were speeding up the footage was severely hurting my ears. I am glad I sucked it up though, because this video was very, very interesting. Last video I was very disappointed you blue-balled us by not showing the insides (even just a glimpse) but I had forgotten all about that when this one showed up in my feed. Military hard is always a sight to behold, and this laptop is certainly no exception! So glad I watched it, I was really looking forward to see its guts. That being said, for all I care you could put 130dB chalkboard screeching under the next video. It wouldn't matter; as I will most certainly be watching it regardless (while holding bandages against my ears to attenuate the noise and stem the bleeding of course!) :D
In case it wasn't clear enough already, great video it was super interesting and entertaining! You have a new subscriber :)
Haha ... still experimenting with the music (obviously) :) will try to take your feedback into account :)
I was expecting more, but military grade seems to be based on glue (somebody must have suggested filling the whole laptop with black resin). I am not impressed by its internals, only fascinated by the hacks :)
The video corruption suggests either a bad data bit connection or a bad address bit. The graphics mode is most telling with the thin vertical lines. I'd guess the RAM is organized as 32bit wide and one of the higher bits is not working correctly. I'd reflow the RAM chips and see what happens.
Wait... that looks nothing like MSI's Military grade computer parts ;-)
But what about the Radio card, want to know more about it, all I could spot was some thing looking like a 68020/68030 cpu..
that's BAMS radio: www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/bams/index.htm
first look for a replacement video chip you are going to need to desolder that chip and solder a new one on chips graphics cards where known for high failure rates look for a pci card online or a old laptop that you can swipe the chip off of
IMHO, the video problem/artefact caused by cold/crack solder joint on video ram chip
Replace the communication ISA card with a Sound Blaster 16 card of equal length. Don't forget a speaker too.
Outstanding Military Laptop, thank you RetroSpector78, much appreciated.
Hopefully she’ll be up and running again soon.
Can't wait to see this beauty working! (Hopefully)
In WW1 & 2, army brought typewriter in battlefield.
Lol - i originally thought the red/green thing was to defeat Van Eck Phreaking!
I wonder how it should have been Voyager 1 electronics to resist time ???😊
Before you hook up a scope to troubleshoot the mainboard you might want to try removing all socketed chips and putting them back in. Spray some contact-cleaner into the socket while you're at it.
Not that many socketed chips on this motherboard. Seems strange that simply touching the memory chips has an impact on the screen.
Even the cpu is soldered onto the mainboard. Guess they wanted to keep it slim by omitting the socket :)
@@RetroSpector78 are the memory chips soldered in as well?
I couldn't see it clearly in the video.
No uses standard 72 pin edo ram sticks
how many videos are you getting at the PiP-GrownassMan Mk Zer0
That powersupply is something for CuriousMarc if it would fail! :D
Why is the OS in Chinese language? (and it's quite strange to see QQ, a commercial IM software on a military device)
windows 98 is chinese version ... neat....
All your data belong to us...
because Mr. Hanwen is Chinese. :D
Xircom, CHIPS, Cirrus Logic, ALTERA...Arrrg im drowing in the branding Nostalgia
"Hmm, this is an interesting board. Does anyone in the comments know what a 'Permissive Action Link' is?"
@Old Liquid I think the tech it controls was just upgraded so this machine is no longer necesary or relevant to current weaponry strategy
is this part of the BOWMAN system?
The CPU is mounted in a flat PGA precision socket, if you look from the side you see that black plastic thing between the CPU and the board
Very interesting. looking forward to the next part
military manage to use WIn' 98, that's why all the thing's ''work well'' in military branch.
Broken trace on the graphics board?
Do a continuity check and resolder any broken leads
Fix coming up in part 3 ... stay tuned
What kind of small bit driver is that you are using?
when you was pressing on the ram sticks the video got a bit better on the output to me it seems like its a ram slot issue thats making the video output go janky but thats just me honestly from watching the video and its reaction to you pressing on the ram sticks
12:50 - I am pretty sure that the Pentium CPU is socketed in that black socket it is stuck in and not soldered onto the morherboard.
I woulld try just reflowing the ram chips and see if it stablizes and gets better. I am thinking a possible dry joint that crackes.
I wonder if the cpu can be upgraded, like, desoldered and upgraded. Is there enough room to put a socket on the board?
Would need to check, but would be a challenge getting the CPU. Think the CPU is still fine. I'm guessing it will probably be the video chip, video memory or a cold solder joint somewhere.
Doesn’t SCSI port hardware need to be addressed, either by way of jumpers, or one of those funny switches with the buttons marked ‘+’ and ‘-‘ , and pushing one of them changes a little flipper wheel that displays one of 8 possible SCSI devices? I didn’t see any buttons near to the SCSI port, nor jumpers. I’m thinking your display was just having trouble adapting to your geographical location, maybe it’s set for 60 Hz and where you live the mains is at 50Hz? You ought to be able to just substitute a different old power supply from a different computer and at least eliminate whether that’s the issue. I’m confident that you can get it running smooth, it’s only a matter of perseverance. When you get that thing to run, I would expect that Grand Theft Auto 1 will run pretty smooth, and it should do fine with old Super Nintendo games. Good luck, and thanks for sharing!!
I looks like it's the gpu chip might need to replace it cause with the screen doing that really makes it look like it's the gpu. If it was the ram you wouldn't get this far.
Looks to me like a Video RAM problem either bad solderjoints or bad chips.
I would say you have a bad solder joint from the vga chip or vga memory chip to the main board. Flux it and use the air rework station. Don’t put in the oven like the little boys say, they are getting confused with modern ATI and nvidia GPUs.
Random question, but what kind of keyboard is that built into it? is it a standard membrane keyboard or a mechanical keyboard? (was just thinking there's a possibility it could be mechanical for the increased durability)
Pretty standard membrane ... nothing too special. But really like the total package of this thing.
@@RetroSpector78 thanks for the reply! slightly disappointing it's membrane but hey, the whole thing is pretty cool. I guess the trackball gets most of the limelight for the human input devices :P
@@RetroSpector78 Did you noticed that the keyboard gives almost no sound at all? Maybe intended to be stealth to enemy.
I notice that you called the inductors and other components are the thing, seems that you are a computer engineer only
Looks like bad cracked solder joints. The power supply is really nice. 28v supply also. 24 v Nicad! Much prefer silence to the music
I'd love to see this as a sleeper pc
Thinking about it ..
i had to stop at the 2 minute mark...that was excellent cable building..Kudos
i would replacement two purple capacitor see if does any thing if not then look for broke or loose pin on board it nightmare because there soo many thing in way
It's crazy to think that just 25 or so years ago laptops were built like this.
Probably there are still laptops like this used for military purposes, just now with i7 CPU :). The upper range Panasonic Toughbooks are quite brutal as well, but not as much as this one.
Short answer, they weren't. This is more like a "sliced'n'stacked" regular motherboard of the era with board to (daughter)board interconnections than a laptop of the era. In this kind of ultra rugged laptop, you could't care less about size/weight (on a "laptop scale") so it's both easier and more reliable to just use regular components and "orthogonal layouts" than trying to super-pack everything into the smallest form factor you can. Everything will follow philosophy as much as possible, from drives to connectors, to anything, so as to have better maintenance capabilities in a jam. The PSU is always the funny part, as you can pretty much fit an AT/ATX standard form factor with a little bit of extra "height" on the case, and that would make it also easily replaceable with "standard parts" instead of being stuck with that proprietary form.