Unpacking a donation, trying to repair a graphics card color glitch
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- Опубліковано 25 сер 2024
- I recently got such an overwhelming support and a lot of hardware donations. In this video I'd like to show you one of the packages and take a look at a strange VLB graphics card error.
Patreon:
/ necroware
Great work, man. I am not even into retro hardware, but your devotion to the things you repair is so genuine, your competence so captivating that I just can't stop. Honestly, this channel is a treasure.
Thes big mystery boxes are great to watch. Always so much interesting tech (and a recipe). Defo do more of these unboxing videos..
Saturday evening, the best time to watch a great repairing video from you. Well done and outstanding root cause analysis. 👍🏻😊.
Thank you very much Peter! As always, glad to see you here. And btw. I'm currently working on a video, which could be especially interesting for you. I have some open questions to answer, so I'm not sure if it will be the next one, but at least I plan it to finish it as soon as possible.
The 486 board "EISA" slots might be actually "Opti local bus" ones. They used same connectors, but weren't compatible. All EISA boards I have seen were usually server boards and had all slots EISA. But it is quite time, so I might be incorrect.
Yes, it's an OPTi Local Bus. There are already a lot of comments about it below. Anyway, thanks for the hint!
Just recently started watching your videos. Absolutely love them. You deserve so many more views. Please keep it up👍👍👍
Great stuff!
Did you wonder about modifying the circuitry to avoid the monitor detection and possibly get rid of the issue in the RAMDAC? I don't know if would help in any way...
Thanks! Yes, I thought about that afterwards, but I was not sure how to bypass that, may be a pull-down resistor of a low value on the SENSE output of the RAMDAC would help, but I'd have to dive deeper into S3 documentation to get the full picture. I thought, that the video was already long enough and with the software solution there is at least one way to workaround it.
i remember back when using s3 trio64 if i boot pc without monitor connected it beeps like there is no graphics card and when i connect monitor later it was all black and white. i was interested why it behaves so odd and found there is some pin at connector which should be connected to something (trough low value resistor for safety) or maybe it was one of R/G/B signals which need to be loaded by resistor to ground i cant remember now just remember it all ended up with plug with some resistor which was enough to make it happy
oh. i see ! it was exactly that. then since this feture is not really useful rather annoying why not just bridge that pin to "detected" state externally? than bios will think its in color mode and load appropriate ramdac values and everything would be good as new ;)
@@MRooodddvvv ^^^ Fixed. :-)
Maybe you can even add a physical switch on the card for monochrome and color mode if it's just a matter of toggling a single bit.
Very nice stuff for a lot of upcoming reapair vids!
Could it be one of the other caps around the ramdac? Ceramic caps can definitely fail in a “works when hot” mode. Should be easy enough to spray ramdac with some freeze spray when it’s working and see if it goes back to failure mode.
+1 I neither think the RAMDAC itself is broken, at least it's more likely that something's defective "around" it. @necroware it would be awesome if you would be able to revisit this card.
Also, I really liked how technical this video was.
The beeps you were hearing on the S3 VLB card - they're lower in pitch than Award's beeps. They indicate the VGA cable isn't connected - that's why the BIOS would be B/W and Windows in full color (though I have seen Windows in B/W as well, this happened on a Phoenix branded S3 Trio 64).
This channel is a gold mine, thanks!!!
WOW, excellent work. Your videos are always very exciting and instructive. Please keep it up. Thank you.
And that ladies and gentlemen, is how you pack hardware. Well done Andreas!
Valuable donation
Another great video, I really enjoyed this.
amazing! Thank you!
Eager to see you diagnose the Voodoo2 card, I have one that does the same thing, already replaced the GenDac chip but made absolutely no difference. Great videos, really appreciated.
I’m not sure, but one of the QFP’s on the voodoo looks to have pins bent. This once caused my voodoo to be detected, but definitely not work anymore. Bending them back with an exacto knife did the trick for my voodoo. :)
@@Inject0r I'll have a closer look with my microscope, thanks. Yes I get detection too, but when it switches into glide mode I get vertical Black and blue bars.
great video as always
That core 2 duo would definitely be a good candidate for a Linux build. I have an Odroid H2+ which runs a 'modern' Celeron processor (Intel J4115) that I run ubuntu on for my workshop. It is very snappy and does everything I need it to do, including running Autodesk Eagle CAD. UA-cam playback is extremally smooth, even in HD. I use an SSD as the boot drive and it boots and resumes instantly.
or a light storage server like TrueNAS or XigmaNAS
The youtube playback on the modern system might be due to hw accel, which probably was not available yet on the early GMAs used for the core-2. And even if the hw was available, it is likely that the intel team did not bother implementing this support for hardware this old.
Did you try with another monitor. Video cards that age might implement DDC1 (tying ID pins to GND or leaving them floating) to detect the monitor presence and type. Modern monitors use DDC2 (an I2C bus)
Wow... I skipped over this video for a few days, expecting it to be a boring VGA connector reflow, but this was actually lots of fun.
On this channel I wouldn't even bother to show you, how I reflew a connector. If I'd do that, I'd mention it only with one word ;)
Wow, I appreciate the adventure.
That EISA card is a rarity indeed! There is only another type even harder to find, MCA *IBM's MicroChannel Architecture, would love if you would get one of those systems fully working with MCA devices!*
I have in plans to make a video about the IBM PS/2 eith MCE and a video about a very interesting EISA build....
The Opti local bus card is the exact model I have. I also have a gfx card for it. Working like a charm with a DX-50.
1:20 double wipe sockets, nice
If it only works when hot, just don’t turn it off.
LOL! Best solution so far! :D
What an awesome video! I really found this to be super interesting and helpful. I have a few PCI cards of a similar vintage that suffer from similar issues; I always suspected a something with the RAMDAC and I suppose this just about confirms it. It sounds like the SENSE pin is the culprit.
That 928 is a beauty! I've always been curious how they were on VLB; on ISA, they are brilliant cards and probably just about the fastest you can get in DOS. I loved your work on it and, as always, thank you for providing so much helpful information and for really teaching us how these things work. Your videos are always fascinating!
Now, that Mach32 EISA--I'd be lying if I didn't say I was drooling! I have been hunting for one of those for some time and, like you said, EISA graphics cards are very rare. I can't wait to see what you do with it! I know it will be very cool! I love those early ATi cards and have a Mach32 VLB and Mach32 ISA; both are the same setup as your Mach32 EISA. The 2MB of RAM on them is quite nice and gives access to some great Windows color modes, and the cards provide pretty good acceleration, even compared to late cards. I suspect that's because, like the S3 928 you showed, they have a 64-bit memory bus.
That UMC 486 board is also very cool! I read some of the other comments and agree that those are likely OPTi Local Bus slots. There was also ECS Local Bus, but I believe that used a VLB-like connector. OPTi Local Bus would be neat to test! I believe there were some early S3 911s for it and a BUNCH of ET4000AX cards. I've seen some out there here and there, but not as often as I used to.
Anyway, thanks again for all of your work! This was awesome!
Thank you very much. I'll try to come up with some cool videos about EISA. I already have most of the parts I need to build an amazing EISA PC and I'm very excited to see how it performs.
In regards of the OPTi Bus, you are absolutely right! There were already some comments below about it and I fully forgot about an existence of such, but it's true, that was not EISA! :)
@@necro_ware You're welcome! I am very excited to see this. I am very interested in what you see, performance-wise. It seems like EISA is a very wide bus and super well-equipped for SCSI and Fast Ethernet, or other such bus-heavy data transfers. As for graphics, that's where I am uncertain. So little information is out there. I can't wait to see what you uncover!
OPTi Bus is very interesting! Do you think that's something you would explore at some point? I would be interested to see how it compares to, say, VLB. I imagine the performance is similar, right?
I have always wondered at those boards with 2-3 EISA slots. It feels like 2/3 of them are OPTi Local Bus or something like that. There's apparently ABIT boards that used a PISA riser card in such slots!
I have one odd board with a HiNT Caesar chipset that implements "mini-EISA," and it's pretty much regular old EISA, minus some DMA and bus-mastering features. Apparently it works normally if you tweak some SCSI controller settings in the EISA Config Utility. Oddly, it looks somewhat like your UMC board. I wonder how many customers bought such boards and damaged them, thinking that OPTi Local Bus or something of that nature was EISA? It's wild to think, especially these days, when everything is PCIe haha!
Well, at least I will try to repair the OPTi Local Bus board, I don't know yet, if I'll succeed, but I'll try. However, I have no OPTi Local Bus cards, so I will not be able to say anything about it's performance, even if I'll get it back to life.
@@necro_ware I see, that’s fair! But hey, if there’s anyone who can figure out what’s up with that board, I know it’s you! Best of luck with it!
I've seen similar issue with some ISA tvga9000 cards. Did some googling and found it could be an issue with a poor connection for Vga DDC data channel to detect the monitor capabilities. Sure enough jiggling around the VGA connector does cause the issue to go away.
It is highly likely that ISA and VBE cards predate DDC. Iirc, that only came about in the PCI era, and even then only few of the early pci cards had it in hardware. And the BIOS support is probably even further behind.
Ah, next comment, DDC1 vs DDC2...
Looking forward to the main board repair.
I have an S3 based Miro VLB card which uses the same chip and it has the same issue. Sometimes it boots up in color, but most of the time, it's in B/W.
Now you know what to check ;) Look into my community tab to see a workaround...
So the /SENSE is an output that tells the GPU to go mono. So... if you ground that /SENSE pin, it'll force the GPU to think there is always a monitor connected. So not only will this make your world more colorful, it also gets rid of the beeping error code.
Btw. I have a Cirrus Logic (run of the mill) card that does the same beeeeep beep beep beep and monochrome picture. However if I flex the board, it doesn't do that. I didn't fix it, but the solder on the GPU pins... barely exists.
Exactly, the solution with a pull-down resistor was already tried off camera and it works. I'll make a post in the next days about it.
Fanfookintastic!!!!
Hopefully uou can find another salvageable flatpack ramdac chip to properly fix it with such a little issue like that it would be sad if the chip and the bonding wires within break and the whole card dies. I am sure you will fix it given the chance you did do a good job thus far. Thermals were a issue back in that era they weren't self monitored and when something overheated it either damaged the component or components but often the magic smoke would come out which luckily didn't happen. Keep up the good work mate
Those ICs are unfortunately very rare and expensive. Usually they cost more, than what you'd pay for the card itself. This issue was however worked around for now with a resistor. Scroll through my community tab if you are interested.
Couldn’t find a better video to comment on but…
Action Replay PC
I beg you: Please tame the beast that I couldn’t!!
That VGA issue is related to BIOS configurations, anything using the BIOS, *the mainboard one* , is going to be monochrome because the card is defaulting to MONO due to the BIOS ERROR. There may be an issue preventing the VGA BIOS to load correctly. A DOS driver for the card would fix it too *if such a driver exists for DOS*
And some VGA cards will report an error if no monitor is connected, a VGA error at that as far as the BIOS goes!
Necroware. You have to record more videos! Please.
Another video?!
Good content as always, you have a new patreon ;)
What kind of hardware are you still looking for? I still have some socket 3/4 CPU's that are unused, also have an ISA I/O Card where the floppy works, but the IDE part doesn't.
Hi! Thank you very much, but I'm currently not looking for more hardware. I already got three packages donated from the viewers and those are more, than enough for many videos. I don't want to appear greedy and there are a lot other retro enthusiasts, who'd love to get something to play with as well ;)
Did you check the voltage at the the zener diode in the voltage reference circuit? It's possible the zener has changed value with age, returning to closer to original with heat. Also, not all solder joint defects can be detected visually. Sometimes a reflow is the only fix. Separately, modern monitors may not have a low enough input resistance to be detected, requiring a lower terminating resistor value to get color to work. The heat may be changing the value of the resistors just enough to get the detector to work.
As I said in the video I checked all the parts around and re-flew the solder on the RAMDAC and all the parts around.
If you need advice on PC hardware from the 8088 until now, go ahead! I have the hands on experience with that hardware (except MCA hardware)
I'm thinking here about that video card... This problem seems to be separated layers at the board. When you heat, board expands and make contact. What do you think about this try? Remove chip and test some traces and contacts between the sides.
I have the exact same Voodoo II and a Voodoo Banshee
nice fix
I had similar problem with b&w output using tft montor, but it worked perfectly (color) when I connected crt monitor.
Yes, but that's another failure, which has to do with the 2 "ID" lines in the VGA cable. On modern LCDs these lines are used for I²C communication, instead of fixed voltage levels. As you hopefully saw in this video the RAMDAC was simply defective.
Are you sure those are EISA slots on that 486 motherboard, and not Opti Local Bus? I think EISA motherboards usually have more than two EISA slots, but from what I've seen, Opti Local Bus motherboard usually has two OLB slots, and it seems to usually be the two bottom slots. The slots themselves look almost entirely like EISA though, so it can be difficult to tell them apart.
Yes, they are OPTi Local Bus. There are already some comments about it. Still thank you for the hint!
I have a Voodoo 1 with a similar issue. Would love to see you fix the Voodoo 2. Might give me some idea what to look for. BTW, your videos are well made and comprehensive and I enjoy watching them. Thank you.
Thumbs up on your success with smonitor utility and I'm glad to see you're got new stock, but unboxing... suxx, as we used to say back to old days. I like to see you doing something (and failing or succeeding), not unboxing donations.
Although, I already see a quite contrary comment and it got some likes, unfortunately.
Well, see it in a following way - if someone sends a donation, he'd be glad to see it on the channel, right? So I tried to satisfy both groups of people, the ones who like to see some stuff, which can become a potential repair video in the future, and the ones who like repairs, since I also was trying to repair the video card. I hope both groups of people will be satisfied. And not every upcoming video will be an unboxing. Don't worry.
@@necro_ware He who pays the piper calls the tune (here we used to say that he who feeds the girl dances her), so if someone puts a note along with his donation saying he'd like to see his goodies online and in detail, then, well, you ought to do that unboxing thing. But otherwise you could just quickly show a box, and next goes the whole stock laid down, and without further ado you start your usual programme with hardware wiggling sprinkled with some s/w exercises.
Unboxing is for those who are easily entertained and have lots of free time. If I had anything to send you (and sorry for having nothing), then I would be absolutely fine if you just said 'and for this pristine Sportster modem meine deutschewillendanke goes to Ziggy from far-far-far-away' and moved on. Action is the thing which runs the world, not unboxing.
@TheZzziggy Well, as I see some people would disagree... and I'm very sorry, that I couldn't match your taste with this one, but I can't make everybody happy, I guess, and also not every video must fit everyone's taste. This is how the world ticks, we are all different ;)
@@necro_ware Sure, no problem. Just letting you know so you could consider and take into account this input along with others.
Freundliche Grüße!
Perhaps a bad/cracked via like CuriousMarc's recent PS/2 Model 70 repair? Would be almost impossible to spot with visual inspection.
That can't be excluded, yes. I posted another workaround in my community tab back then, if you are interested.
Nice. Next step is patching the BIOS to force color mode.
Well this is the first graphics card i see that would need the opposite of a heatsink. maybe it works reliably with a small heating element that keeps the DAC at 45 degrees. Yes, I am entirely serious. :D
lol :)
Problem with temperature sensitivities like that is that it's indicative of a physical fault that will probably be exacerbated by continuous heating/cooling cycles.
Peltiers work for keeping things warm as well as cool, they just have to be flipped over.
No I don't think this is a good idea -- better to work around the problem as he has, and not stress the hardware out any further.
@@mal2ksc You don't have to flip the peltier over. Just change the polarity.
is there a chance that the Rset resistor is way over its nominal resistance? and by heating it and having lower resistivity produces the correct signal? i might have tried to replaced it with a new one just to test it (the 147ohm one)
Whoo oOoo oOoo my god
install . . . the MOD - let the 7400 burn
i managed to put 1Gb into an Asus P5A-B
15ns of fame
Try to resolder it by hand with a little bit of solder, sometimes this helps. Maybe test the connection of every pin from ic to the Board. How about to lift the pin and connect the pcb pad to ground?
Greetings
MiRa
Can we get a cooking video on the japanese rice dish?
LOL :)
Currently saving up to ship you some stuff. I understand you not wanting to pay for shipping, so hopefully I can afford to send it to you.
The shipping costs and taxes from US to Germany are so high, that it's not worth it to send anything here. I really appreciate your help, but it would be a huge waste of money. I think, there are plenty of channels located in the US, which you also can support in a similar way. And for me, just a "thank you" is also a great support, which I'm always very happy about :D
Interesting,thanks!!
Btw, maybe,you have some spare AGP video cards, that you would like to part ????
Ooooof thermal failures are a pain
"An attempt was made" :D
I found a workaround eventually. See ua-cam.com/users/postUgkxJxqQoNxZQf9HFNRdrkuR1vjRz_TV3cRB
Sir mera graphics card ( r7 250 2gb ddr5 128 bit 65w. Power supply required 400w ) lakin me. 300w power supply pa use kr rahi hn or card sometime work krta ha us ka baad blank screen ho jati ha please help me..
pity that the ramdac is broken :( I replaced the capacitors on the x1950 but nothing to do it does the same, now I know who to send HW to 😂😁 as I have enough at risk of being thrown in the garbage but I prefer to avoid
Would you know what causes slight artifacting in specific games using my vlb card? It's an s3 805 jaton corp that runs decently fast for what I need but when playing Fallout or Civ 1, or even SC2000, when there are visual effects occurring on screen it has a weird pixilation effect that distorts a bunch of the screen. I was gonna try to just resolder the entire card in case something is bad but I'm a bit lost.
Как всегда лайк! Про видеокарту познавательно было.
П.С. Заставка мне постоянно напоминает отрывок из видеоклипа Gorillaz - Clint Eastwood :)))
Да, что-то есть действительно )
@@necro_ware oh, you know Russian, nice
if its just the pin you can solder one back on
The core 2 duo will run windows 10 with no issues, especially with an SSD.
It will not, as long as it is in my hands, it will not :) lol
@@necro_ware 👍
Can you not simply pull the pin to ground to simulate a VGA monitor connectd 100% of the time?
Yes, see my community tab. ua-cam.com/channels/KU5nwSWYXa3xfXGBlKyvdw.htmlcommunity
capacitor on RAMDAC is not broken. Pleas never believe measured value, if you got this value by "inciruit-measuring".
We haven already written: You and i are very sure, RAMDAC has a little damage.
You can replaced it with BT485 ( i have same V7 Mercury VLB , but BT485 DAC )
And i want written a warning about 486 motherboard with "EISA" Slot. It is not EISA , it is a opti local bus. If you put EISA card into OLB-slot-> Motherboard and card burn.
regards
matt
Hi Matt, thank you once again. Yes, a new RAMDAC is just too expensive and unfortunately I didn't have any in my scrap. For now the sense signal was just pulled down to the ground. Now it always says, that the monitor is connected and it just works good enough until a replacement RAMDAC can be found.
Just pull the /SENSE output low with a resistor, simple as
Already did right before the release of this video.
DX50 is the BEST first generation 486 you can get! *BE CAREFUL ON VESA LOCAL BUS BOARDS THE 50MHZ BUS WILL KILL MANY A VLB VGA OR IDE CONTROLLER, THOUGH IT DOES WORK NICE WITH THE PROMISE VLB THAT TAKES 31 PIN RAM AS CACHE, STILL CAREFULL*
Could a bios mod on the V7 „simply“ deactivate the Mono/color detection ?
May be, but another solution was already found. I'll post an image in the next days here or on tweeter..
👌
Is it possible to replace this faulfty RAMDAC?
Sure, but the RAMDAC is very expensive starting at about 39€ used.
I'd take a risk, and force that \sense line low...
Already done, that worked....
Hah! I was proved correct! Yeeey!
Maybe not the chip but it could also be the pcb?
Yes, it could be also the PCB
@@necro_ware You already said that you checked the traces and resolders the joints.
CuriousMarc & his team recently wrestled with an old IBM PC and the culprit was a hair break in one of the vias next to a big custom chip.
Resoldering the via fixed the problem for good. Maybe check the vias in the area, too?
250nF is only 1,5x more than it should have, not 2,5x!
250nF is 2,5x the value it should have.
More or not more, that is the question!
Yeah, sorry, I meant, that is 2.5x times of what should be, without the "more".
If you get big enough, you've got to open an online store :)
So far doesn't look like that would ever happen. In Germany it is very complicated and expensive to make such an online shop.
@@necro_ware I understand, same in Sweden.
10:10 Really? Surfing with 4 gigs of ram? :-) Have you seen the browsers lately?
I'm using Linux since 1998 and don't have any problems with 4GB at all.
@@necro_ware well, you have about 10 years more experience with linux than me, but I'm pretty sure you're not browsing with linux. You're browsing with a browser, and you might or might not be fine with palemoon on 4GB of ram, but anything newer than that will be choked very quickly.
LOL :D Yes, but it is very much important, which system you are using and how much memory is left for all the other applications after the system has booted. I'm using Chromium and unfortunately I can't send you a screenshot here, but I just checked and the current total amount of used memory is in this very moment exactly 2GB. I have my browser open with four tabs two of which is YT, one news Site and one forum. In the background my email program is running (claws). I'm using XFCE as my desktop environment and the whole system uses around 400MB after it is completely booted.
@@necro_ware Yeah, I can totally believe these numbers, no screenshots necessary. However I have 8 tabs open in chromium and it's already approaching 3 gigs ram usage. A couple more tabs and we will be over 4.
Sure, but then let's come back to the initial statement. I said, that you can use it as a daily PC and browse with it. How many open tabs you like is heavily user dependent. For example I don't like too many tabs, for me it starts to be distracting, if I have more than 5-6 open tabs. Everything what I want to read I usually add to "To read" folder and close the tab until I need it again. Some people never close tabs, like my mother, who asks me why her super duper new PC with 16GB of ram starts to stuck from time to time and I see 1200 open tabs in the browser :) In other words for a normal usage with up to 10 tabs this system is still absolutely sufficient, don't you think?
Do you still accept donations?
Hi, thank you very much for the offer. I really appreciate it, but currently I have enough material for my videos and I don't like to hoard stuff. Still, thank you once again.
Loving your videos but I think you would get a lot more patreon support if you gave early video access at your lowest tier. Most UA-camrs give early access for $1.
To be honest I barely manage to provide early access to my videos anyway and if I can, it usually happens only a day in advance. And speaking of 1€, I investigated a little bit as I made the tiers and 1€ tier is not suggested to be made. Also many channels removed that tier since it is not profitable and is eaten away almost completely by the expenses.
I actually don't mind as it is, as you see I mentioned Patreon only once in the past, as I made an account there and didn't mention it ever since. I'm just glad, that people like the content, everything else is not as important.
voodooooooo
Hello!
I have one i486 dx2-66 CPU.
I do not need it and can send it to you.
If you would like to have it just give me your contacts.
Thank you very much for the offer, but I guess, you live in Russia? The shipping costs and taxes are not really worth it, since the DX2-66 are still relatively easy to find and luckily I have some at hand.
Nice donation.
Not trying to sound bitter, but when you are looking around for some hardware and not finding it and on the other hand there are people who get send these in boxes full, that is a bit.... doh! :D
Although I have to admit, several of the things are broken so therefore not valued as much as proven working hardware.
without such support, he probably wouldn't be able to make his videos. So we shouldn't be jealous, but be happy that there are people who support him with such donations so that we can continue to watch his videos
@@TT-tj6bg Yes, of course, I am definitely not jealous, but if you want to try to source hardware for a retro PC it is really hard to come by.
Just want to stress I don't want to express negative feelings, I am not mad and shouting at my screen when I see this :D
I can explain it very simple. I just have time and money to do one thing. Either I can sit hours and hours on Ebay hunting for the hardware, or I can spend the time to repair something and make a video, which is a huge amount of work. For a minute of a video I need about 3 hours of work, just imagine.
So, to have the time to make this channel I need either money to save the time on Ebay and buy things heavily overpriced, or I need the hardware donated by the viewers. In both ways I need some kind of donations, either money or hardware.
Now it's up to you to decide, do you want to see videos on this channel, or do you prefer, that I go back and hunt parts on Ebay for myself?
It seems what is lacking is a platform for trading hardware.
@@necro_ware please don't get me wrong, that was in no means intended as negative criticism to your channel.
More like a lament of someone less fortunate in sourcing old hardware ;)