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Tantalum caps tend to fail short, if they are sitting on a power rail it will just go out with a bang but if it's smoothing the output of a small power regulator it can overload and take out the regulator chip if you're unlucky. The best modern replacement caps to use is probably dry polymer caps, they come in the same can styles as electrolytics but will not leak. They are kinda expensive but so are tantalums. I just replace with new cheap electrolytics on a lot of the computers I fix, after all they will be good for another 20-30 years before the new ones leak.
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Mar 9, 2023 11:43
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Purposefully putting tantalum capacitors in something you want to last a long time seems like madness to me. Maybe electrolytics can leak over long time periods or if they're abused but at least they don't spectacularly catch fire when they fail.
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Mar 9, 2023 11:55
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I got a cheap tantalum kit from ebay and one of them exploded like a firework. After that I bought a bunch of expensive tantalum caps from mouser and they've all been fine. As long as you overspec them I wouldn't worry too much.
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Mar 9, 2023 12:02
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GutBomb posted:When tantalums pop they pop in a visually spectacular way, but they generally only take themselves out, and it’s a pretty rare failure. Electrolytics sitting there for years doing nothing WILL leak and eat the board, which is a far more common outcome than a blown tantalum. Understood, thanks. I had always equated tantalum’s with temperamental and fragile capacitors that failed often and failed short, but that they had amazing ESR. Guess I was wrong e: seems there is some disagreement, glad I’m not completely off base namlosh has a new favorite as of 15:23 on Mar 9, 2023 |
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Mar 9, 2023 15:21
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Modern (made after like 2010) tantalum's are actually very reliable and don't even catch fire when they fail. They're the default bulk capacitor for high end industrial stuff. FWIW the old silver tantalum's are also really reliable, it's basically just the drop-shaped 80's types that fail regularly.
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Mar 10, 2023 11:05
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Those droplet shaped ones are fun to blow up. The jets of flames have pretty colors.
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Mar 10, 2023 11:36
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 Plugged in the Commodore 486 SLC tonight for the first time in months. All seems to be fine with it. I'll be installing a 5.25" drive into it tomorrow.
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Mar 10, 2023 13:28
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Mar 10, 2023 17:35
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Guess the game
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Mar 10, 2023 17:42
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pole position?
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Mar 10, 2023 17:45
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-jc6bsUUCk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLls9MpXcpA
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Mar 10, 2023 20:35
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That's a fun find and I completely agree with Colin here. The mundane, cheap, low-spec, everyday computers of our past are worth preserving and enjoying. RMC's trash-to-treasure series on that manky old packard bell, likewise; We didn't all rock fast pentiums with voodoo IIs back in the day
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Mar 10, 2023 22:38
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an actual frog posted:That's a fun find and I completely agree with Colin here. The mundane, cheap, low-spec, everyday computers of our past are worth preserving and enjoying. RMC's trash-to-treasure series on that manky old packard bell, likewise; We didn't all rock fast pentiums with voodoo IIs back in the day I just scored almost the same exact packard bell as RMC - I'll post some pics when I get back to my garage. Totally intact and works great even on the original HD. Very yellowed by in good shape - probably will slap an sd/cf reader in it and the voodoo 2 I just got.
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Mar 10, 2023 22:41
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an actual frog posted:That's a fun find and I completely agree with Colin here. The mundane, cheap, low-spec, everyday computers of our past are worth preserving and enjoying. RMC's trash-to-treasure series on that manky old packard bell, likewise; We didn't all rock fast pentiums with voodoo IIs back in the day That's where I am too. Going for period-precise top-end parts is fun and all but I'm nostalgic for when I was broke and in/just out of college putting together a 5x86 Frankenstein with a Sound Blaster clone since I didn't have Pentium/Creative money, with whatever the best video card I could afford at the moment was. I'm glad that IBM 486 I got came with an unexpected Pentium Overdrive upgrade since those things are pricey even now, but It feels like a system that needs a standard DX2/66. Not sure I'll downgrade it though since I want to play with OS/2 Warp after using it some in the day and I recall it being a bit more CPU-hungry than Windows.
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Mar 10, 2023 23:16
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an actual frog posted:That's a fun find and I completely agree with Colin here. The mundane, cheap, low-spec, everyday computers of our past are worth preserving and enjoying. RMC's trash-to-treasure series on that manky old packard bell, likewise; We didn't all rock fast pentiums with voodoo IIs back in the day I remember building heaps of Cyrix and AMD socket 7 systems back in the day. They were great for gaming on the cheap as well as low end workstations/office productivity stuff.  Found this Honeywell keyboard which has an AT DIN connector that was in the eWaste at my local tip. Took it home, gave it a clean and works perfectly on the Commodore 486.
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Mar 11, 2023 04:38
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The nice thing about old computers is period specific top end parts were beaten by next year's mid or low end parts. Just build a mid ranger from a year later for much cheaper. Geforce 2 ultra? That's a Geforce 4 mx440! Pentium III Tualatin? That's a slow Pentium 4 or Athlon.XP! 486 dx4? That's pretty much any socket 7 system. Unfortunately doesn't cover stuff like Glide or needing an ISA slot
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Mar 11, 2023 08:14
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well sure, and you can emulate anything on a relatively modern system. my phone is faster than most of my computers put together, probably. but that defeats the purpose. i want the old hardware for Reasons its cool as hell to have sli voodoo2s, even if the slowest agp card you can find will beat them handily
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Mar 11, 2023 09:26
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I recently bought an nvidia Riva 128 on eBay because I had one back in the day and I’m nostalgic for the way that riva 128 accelerated games looked. Back then each card brand did filtering and texture mapping and AA differently and therefore each had their own “look”. Early driver revisions of the Riva 128 also featured gaps in the textures but I don’t think anyone’s nostalgic for that
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Mar 11, 2023 15:34
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I remember someone making a really big deal of the particle effects in quake 2 being little round circles on a nvidia tnt2 but squares on a voodoo3, maybe due to a better opengl implementation or something? my designated retro graphics card is a voodoo5 5500 that a friend gave me for free back in the day (I wonder if he regrets it now) I feel like I am maybe limiting its potential by keeping it in a lowly p3 500mhz system, but i don't really have the same kind of nostalgia for anything newer and ISA slots rapidly disappeared once we got to the p4 and athlon xp era.
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Mar 11, 2023 16:13
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Humphreys posted:I should have broken a LOT of electronics as my homelab is carpeted, and I often play with ungrounded stuff without ESD protection (and most of the time sweaty due to the Aussie summer heat)
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Mar 11, 2023 16:55
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r u ready to WALK posted:I remember someone making a really big deal of the particle effects in quake 2 being little round circles on a nvidia tnt2 but squares on a voodoo3, maybe due to a better opengl implementation or something? They make some newer stuff with ISA, just search for "industrial motherboard isa" 
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Mar 11, 2023 17:02
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Voltage posted:They make some newer stuff with ISA, just search for "industrial motherboard isa" Socket 370 is for PIII processors.
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Mar 11, 2023 18:00
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Jim Silly-Balls posted:You can’t just say this and not post pics I’m pretty space limited, so I don’t have anything out on display. Just imagine an under-stairs closet full of beige boxes. I will post pictures sometime, but it’s not that easy to get to them. c0burn posted:The nice thing about old computers is period specific top end parts were beaten by next year's mid or low end parts. Just build a mid ranger from a year later for much cheaper. Nostalgia can be weird, and I totally get why people go for the top-end parts. And part of the fun of this hobby is getting things you could only dream of when you were younger. On the other hand, I was recently grabbing parts to build a late-model XP gaming machine. I had grabbed an e8300 and a good mobo, and was looking for a GPU when my brother-in-law gave me a Haswell i7 system with a 750 ti. Almost the exact system that PhilsComputerLab used for his XP build. Let me tell you, there is definite joy to be found in being ridiculously overpowered for what you’re doing.
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Mar 11, 2023 19:17
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvQtdQW3DsU
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Mar 12, 2023 00:31
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Anyone have some good YT recommendations? I follow most of the channels posted here but I'm always looking for new stuff - however never heard of tech tangents. A good one ive found recently is this guy: https://youtube.com/@vswitchzero Does some really good old gpu fixes and inspired me to snag that vooodoo2
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Mar 12, 2023 02:34
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You must chop it into small pieces and burn them individually! It's the only way to slay this monster before it grows!
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Mar 12, 2023 11:04
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Mar 12, 2023 21:37
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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcnFtLL3JLA
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Mar 12, 2023 22:46
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Voltage posted:They make some newer stuff with ISA, just search for "industrial motherboard isa" Most industrial motherboards do not support DMA on their ISA slots so you might as well get a real ISA board or not bother.
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Mar 12, 2023 23:43
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Woolie Wool posted:Most industrial motherboards do not support DMA on their ISA slots so you might as well get a real ISA board or not bother. The gas chromatograph I use at work relies on a proprietary ISA card and some software written in 1987 and whenever they try to put in hardware not on the verge of death everything breaks. I could tell them this might be a possible cause but I won't.
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Mar 13, 2023 01:07
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Dip Viscous posted:The gas chromatograph I use at work relies on a proprietary ISA card and some software written in 1987 and whenever they try to put in hardware not on the verge of death everything breaks. I could tell them this might be a possible cause but I won't. You could have them get a KT133 board (AMD K7, takes up to a 2.3ish GHz Barton with the BIOS mod) but you might have to pay more because they're in demand among retro gamers.
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Mar 13, 2023 20:32
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Linus Boman has an excellent video on the history of "clip art," from its origins in the 50s to its peak in the 90s to the current state of graphic design in the "post-clip art" era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfLlpxE6AYM
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Mar 14, 2023 21:54
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Oh wow I was just wondering about that recently actually, like, I remember pretty much drowning in clipart compilation CDs. Who draws all that?
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Mar 15, 2023 00:56
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We had some sort of Dos printshop program on our 386, and at some point my parents had gotten some pirated clip art collections and loaded them all on it. So one time at a family gathering my cousin is playing with the computer and starts going through the clip art. He runs across silhouettes of sex positions, which his mom and grandma see. Grandma flips her poo poo and wants to know how mom could possibly have this on her computer. “I didn’t know it was there!”
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Mar 15, 2023 02:07
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sex clip art would be a good username
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Mar 15, 2023 07:19
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Casimir Radon posted:We had some sort of Dos printshop program on our 386, and at some point my parents had gotten some pirated clip art collections and loaded them all on it. The image I had in my mind reading this was of screen beans getting it on. I don't know what that says about me, but there you go. 
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Mar 15, 2023 08:36
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Mar 15, 2023 09:48
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TheMadMilkman posted:I’m pretty space limited, so I don’t have anything out on display. Just imagine an under-stairs closet full of beige boxes. I mean you're not wrong. I have a stupid op 98 system with a socket 939 CPU.
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Mar 15, 2023 11:21
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Having enough horsepower to just chew through whatever bullshit windows had going on back then really 
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Mar 15, 2023 12:45
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Mitch Hedberg posted:I wish I could play little league now, I'd kick some fuckin rear end
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Mar 15, 2023 12:57
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