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Killer robot posted:
Certain semi-professional mplifiers and subwoofers are especially bad in that regard, the leakage through the glue can cause all sorts of weird popping and banging noises.
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Dec 2, 2023 11:38
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Is that the same glue one of the home UPS makers used for a bit, causing a fire or two when they got old?
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Dec 2, 2023 16:45
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LimaBiker posted:99% sure it's glue. It starts out cream or yellow, but over time and with the effect of the heat of the electronics, it turns dark brown and slightly conductive. You have to remove it from the board and components to prevent weird unpredictable problems from popping up. That makes sense. Some of what was under one of the caps looked messier, but it's gone now so doesn't matter. It was just all weirding me out after the cap size discrepancy. I hadn't thought much that capacitors would get smaller over time like ICs did, but my last recapping was early 2000s motherboard rather than mid-1980s power supply. 
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Dec 3, 2023 03:43
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I just recapped a Suzuki Omni chord and I had the same experience. At least I didn't have to worry about the replacements fitting!
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Dec 3, 2023 05:02
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Be aware that tiny modern replacements without a 'real' brand might last much shorter than the older ones and might have lower ripple current ratings. Especially on the secondary smoothing side of a switching PSU you really have to keep into account the ESR, temperature rating and ideally ripple current, or your newly installed caps will fail in about 5 years. For switching PSUs buy brand name Panasonic or whatever. It pays to grab one of these (clones of a) component tester: https://www.eleshop.nl/gm328a-component-tester.html That way you can quickly check the capacity and ESR of an old electrolytic and see if they're any good still. LimaBiker has a new favorite as of 10:28 on Dec 3, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 10:25
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LimaBiker posted:Be aware that tiny modern replacements without a 'real' brand might last much shorter than the older ones and might have lower ripple current ratings. Point taken. If this works I'll wait for the next failure to worry about it, but for future recappings I'll pay more attention on brands and detail. Edit: And success! I tried setting a VGA card to EGA mode and it wasn't working right but once I put in the actual EGA card it booted clean.  I'll look into recapping some Socket A boards next but I'm not gonna rush, those have a lot more capacitors than a monitor power supply. Killer robot has a new favorite as of 04:33 on Dec 4, 2023 |
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Dec 3, 2023 21:48
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I did a re-cap on my IIfx power supply a few months ago and found that for most of the capacitors they aren't that much smaller if you go for the longest life options. I did bump up the voltage ratings on a few replacements just to get closer to the original dimensions. PSA for IIfx owners: the internal power connector is a pretty bad design:  It's old-school .156" connectors, but they used a dual-spring system that presumably allows for higher current. Unfortunately the contact shell has such wide tolerances that unless you mate it perfectly only one side makes good contact. Motherboard side developed some kind of oxide coating:  Replaced them with these beautiful things, and a gold-plated motherboard pin header. 
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Dec 4, 2023 13:26
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keep going, I'm almost there.
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Dec 4, 2023 13:47
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I love my IIfx. Such an amazing silly machine. Full up on Unicorn 64 Pin SIMMs 128MB Baby!   Yes, that's a 040 Radius Rocket Co-Processer Board at the bottom.
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Dec 4, 2023 16:29
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I love my IIfx. Such an amazing silly machine. Looks like a penis.
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Dec 4, 2023 16:31
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3D Megadoodoo posted:Looks like a penis. I see my bony-rear end ankle titillates you. I think you need to get laid more often, seeing penises everywhere.
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Dec 4, 2023 16:56
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Maybe try having less penis-y ankles 
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Dec 4, 2023 17:11
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I love my IIfx. Such an amazing silly machine. That's cool as hell. I had a IIci from ~1990 until whenever it would crash doing anything, like '98-99 or so. At that point I'd been using PCs for a few years so it was unceremoniously taken to e-waste at some point, but I sometimes wonder if it could be fixed if I still had it. I do still have a 68040 powerbook with the trackball and horrible dual passive display if I feel nostalgic, though.
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Dec 4, 2023 17:31
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to be frank I'd be at full mast too if I had that IIfx i do have this transparent se/30 with a carrera040 but it's not nearly as cool since all the expansions are newly made clone cards    
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Dec 4, 2023 17:41
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I love my IIfx. Such an amazing silly machine. Brave of you to leave those SMD electrolytics in there – mine leaked within 6 months of power it on for the first time in ~20 years. Biggest issue I've had with mine is that monitor & GPU support is so weird, like nothing really works all that well with LCD's. RasterOps card had some weird clock-noise that gave me vertical pinstripes and on a PRAM reset it would output like 1/100th the normal video levels until I flicked it over to a colour mode (mostly blindly, or shuffling NuBus cards around to make it a secondary display). Spectrum 24 card would only work on first power-up after a PRAM reset and would sad-mac on reboot. miro card worked but only with an 18" 1280x1024 monitor that could do 72 Hz, and unaccelerated 24-bit mode. Toby card just kind of sucks and only does 67 Hz with weird sync pulses that I've only seen my old Philips 24" handle properly. When I had A/ROSE and TokenTalk active the Spectrum 24 (back when it was working properly) would corrupt the screen whenever the network did anything (but apparently fine with A/ROSE & Ethernet NB card…) You should get a Pro Tools setup if you come across it, the IIfx can happily do 4-channel 16/48 playback! So I had it out to re-cap but ended up playing with the Sawtooth instead, then got the very quirky iMac G4.
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Dec 4, 2023 18:33
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longview posted:Brave of you to leave those SMD electrolytics in there – mine leaked within 6 months of power it on for the first time in ~20 years. The caps are in surprisingly good shape (tested them with a probe and no signs of leakage) If I didn't have such severe palsy in my hands, I would recap it, but I can't hold my soldering iron steady anymore. I have a stack of NuBus cards, including a RACAL InterLAN Ethernet card that currently lives in my kitchen junk drawer to confuse visitors that need to borrow some scissors, with several Spectrum and RasterOPs cards. It's actually booting on 8.1 at the moment, but I hardly ever fire it up these days. Such a silly expensive machine.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:03
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r u ready to WALK posted:to be frank I'd be at full mast too if I had that IIfx 1-bit graphics were the peak of computer art. It was only downhill from there.
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Dec 4, 2023 19:07
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Jealous as all hell of that IIfx. About two months ago I decided that I needed an 8 bit computer in my life and bought an Apple IIe from ebay that looked like it had been stored in a shed for the last 20 years. I'm just going to assume that yall want to hear about how the restoration went and I have a strong desire to  .The one I picked was a lot cheaper than the others that, well, were actually clean, but I assume that's because most people don't want a computer that looks like this one did and the photos didn't really show much. When I got the computer the case was filthy and the connectors and screws were severely corroded (even the AC jack, its prongs were green!). The seller had no interior shots so I had no idea if it was even going to come with a disk controller, let alone anything actually interesting in terms of expansion cards, but more on that at the end. But the keyboard was fully intact unlike a lot of them out there and it had the older "brown" keys that I just think look cooler than Apple's later all gray all the time aesthetic that came a few years later. This particular one turned out to be a non-enhanced IIe built in the 42nd week of 1983.  Yep, that's disgusting   Somehow I don't think I want to use these Before I did anything I wanted to remove all the screw-shaped rust. Most of them came out without issue, but two case screws were so seized I had to use a drill with a phillips bit rather than just a screwdriver and a third was so seized even that didn't work and just stripped it so I hacksawed a slot into it and then the drill plus a slot bit worked. I'm still trying to figure out what to replace the weird clip nuts that the case uses to attach its halves together with, but the rest at least I had random screws lying around for if not always as many as it started with. Then I took the various parts outside and blew them out with a datavac to get the absurd dust balls and various dead bugs out. I also briefly wiped the case down after I took it apart and while it looked like nothing changed the microfiber cloths I used basically came up black. The good news was the internals generally looked in good shape. Some ICs had crusty legs and basically every screw was junk (except the ones attaching the keyboard which I guess are a different metal), but the board itself was in great shape and the inside of the power supply was pristine, minus the presence of a rifa. First up was dealing with the power supply. Thankfully panel mount AC jacks seem to all use the same spacing even today so I could easily order a new one of those. Once it arrived I snipped the wires to the original jack and soldered them to the new one and it mostly went without issue, except that my brilliant self forgot that when soldering a wire the wire gets hot, and my heat shrink became heat shrunk before I got a chance to put it over the actual contacts. Whoops. I stuck some electrical tape over them instead, figuring it's better than nothing and nobody but me is ever likely to see the inside of that again. If someone else does in the future, well, they're free to try to fix that. While I was at it I swapped the one rifa with a new non-paper X2 cap, and thankfully my wild-rear end guess of the lead spacing was correct. That also went just fine. I was led to believe these power supplies had two rifas but mine only had one so I guess that's a different revision (or maybe the 220V version?). Testing the power supply was a little more interesting since I couldn't get a straight answer on if Apple II power supplies work without a load, I wasn't going to plug it in to the computer until I had at least seen it be vaguely in spec, and I didn't have anything immediately useful as a dummy load. So I figured the hell with it and just powered it on with no load anyway, assuming I'd only have it on for a few seconds at a time and I'd just buy a new build replacement if I had to. I did this outside, using a power strip to power it on "remotely" and with my loving fiance standing ready with a fire extinguisher just in case, but everything went just fine. This testing got 5.1V/12.4V which was thankfully well within spec for no load. In hindsight I/we probably should have had safety glasses on but whatever moving on. Then I pulled all the chips off the board and, lacking any better idea for cleaning the decades of dust off, just sprayed it with my utility sink faucet and then blow-dried it with the datavac again. It doesn't look new but it at least just looks used instead of left for dead. Onto the rear connectors. Desoldering them was a pain in the rear end, between the 40 year old solder and the rust and the fact that they just all have a ton of metal to sink heat. I cut the various pins and did everything as individually as I could to minimize the heat sinking issue, but that wasn't possible for the cassette jacks so those were a pain. That plus using a larger soldering iron tip to transfer heat more easily eventually got everything out, leaving behind some rust stains where everything was and the two posts the game port was mounted to, which appear to be riveted to the board. Rude. The rust stains were easily cleaned up with some IPA and an old toothbrush. I found what looked like an exact match for the video and cassette jacks, other than the RCA jack I got is a black inner ring rather than the red it was when I got it, but the game port I mis-measured slightly and I'm not taking a drill to this thing to get the posts out to install it properly regardless so I just kinda bent it into place and called it good enough. Also left some flux stains behind I can't get out due to having to run the iron super hot but oh well, that's a lot better than the connectors being unusable.  Ew. Next I took some fiberglass pens that I bought just for this purpose and scrubbed the legs on the ICs. Some of them were just fine as they were and some definitely weren't, but they all looked good enough when I was done. The fiberglass pens all now have black ends, which I have no idea what to do about because how the hell do you clean that, but they worked great. The ICs thankfully all went back in their sockets without protest; I was expecting at least one to make horrible crunching sounds and make me have to buy replacement sockets, but somehow I got lucky there that all the corrosion was external.  That cleaned up way better than I expected Nothing left to do at that point but actually try to power it on, so I plugged in the power supply to the logic board and threw the switch and... nothing obvious happened aside from the internal power LED turning on, so at least I didn't blow it up, but I was expecting a beep. Connected a monitor to the video out, got a test pattern, reconnected the keyboard because it turns out on an Apple IIe without the keyboard it goes into a diagnostic mode, and got a prompt! The thing was still fully functional. Blew my mind, I was fully expecting to have to diagnose bad RAM or something. Then I tried typing "Hello World" and got as far as "HELL" before I ran out of working keys. The keyboard was in good mechanical shape but terrible electrically, with shift, O, W, R, D and many others not working. Also the power indicator lamp was burned out, and the speaker definitely didn't seem to be working which was really no surprise given how corroded it was. Easy option first, I gently applied deoxit to the switches. That restored some of them, killed some others though I suspect they were marginal to start with, and still left me with a bunch that worked only sometimes or not at all. For the intermittent ones I just pressed them a ton of times which managed to reactivate a couple more but nowhere near all of them. Which left desoldering the switches to try to fix them the hard way. As far as I can tell all the advice on repairing these Alps SKCC switches is "just buy replacements" but I am too stubborn for that, so I desoldered one of them and took it apart. Which is by the way incredibly tedious, these things are fragile as hell when they're half-opened and you have to be super careful to not snap these tiny plastic clip arms off. Thankfully I had some ifixit spudgers which worked great, and I somehow didn't break a single one. With the switch fully apart I was able to verify that it had no continuity when closed, and just sort of started poking and prodding at it figuring that worst case it was already dead so I couldn't really make it worse. Eventually by dumb luck I hit on "scrubbing" the metal sheets in the switchplate with a pair of tweezers I had with sort of plier-like serrated grips, and somehow that fixed it. I assume there was corrosion between them and this was cleaning it off. But whatever it was, after that it worked perfectly! Then I just had to do the others that were dead. All 19 more of them. There's only 63 keys on this keyboard to start with. That took so goddamned long. In desoldering the keys a couple tried to tear pads on their way out because their leads were bent so I couldn't cleanly desolder them but thankfully they didn't tear at the trace, so resoldering them back in fixed it aside from the solder joint looks weird since there's no metal in part of the pad now. In entirely unrelated news my christmas list now includes a desoldering pump that isn't the cheapest crap ever to exist. I also cleaned the keycaps while they were out because they were filthy. I did wind up short one keyswitch, because its casing was damaged in such a way that I nearly couldn't get it out of the metal plate and I do not want to do that again, though it does actually work electrically fine now. So for that one I ordered a replacement. Oh well. But I can live without right shift until the replacement gets here so while I'm sad I had to buy one after all it's not like it's impacting the usability of the computer. At least I somehow didn't lose any of the tiny springs or metal spring arm things despite dropping a couple before I figured out how to open the switches safely. With the keyboard fully functional (right shift aside) next up was the speaker, and for that I found a speaker from an ancient early ATX case I had that was also rusty (no I don't know why I still have this) but the speaker was in perfect shape, and it turned out to be an exact match in both size and specs. I just repinned the header down to only 2x1 and it worked immediately. The cable was shorter but thankfully still long enough and the old clips fit it perfectly. Then came the keyboard power lamp but for that I just ordered a new one and swapped it which isn't a very fun story, but the new one at least is comically bright to the degree I feel like the original wasn't likely this powerful but what do I know, I otherwise haven't used an Apple II since like 1999, maybe they were like this new. Also in hindsight it's kind of amusing that that's the one thing that was actually broken prior to it going into storage as it was very clearly burned out, not rusted or mechanically damaged. A couple more futile passes at cleaning the case later, it's pretty much "done" and ready to play Oregon Trail again like it's still 1983.  Very satisfying, other than that shift key, and I really need to find replacement clip nuts so I can keep the case from sliding over the Reset key like that. I did fix it after taking that photo. Don't ask why I didn't then take another one. What cards did it come with, you might be wondering? It had: A Disk II controller, which probably works just fine but I bought a DuoDisk because they were weirdly cheap and seemed cooler than a Disk II, and it turns out those need a different controller card. D'oh. Maybe that's why they were cheap. Without a regular Disk II I can't test the controller but I'm sure it's fine given how well everything else held up. On the plus side the DuoDisk has basically an identical degree of yellowing so aside from being much cleaner it actually looks like a match. The standard 80 column extended card, which worked flawlessly once I hit the aux slot with deoxit as the slots had some moderate corrosion too. A printer card with an extremely rusty ROM which isn't a model of IC that seems very common. I'll see if I can dump this at some point anyway. A "Titan" accelerator card, which I haven't tested yet, but these seem to be relatively valuable so I'm pretty pleased with that. This is apparently a 65C02 running at 3.58MHz vs the standard 1.02MHz, and I think its RAM is supposed to be faster somehow too. A "Burple". No, really, that's what it's called. I can find next to no evidence that this even existed, except for a friend of mine dug up a newspaper ad saying it cost $500 new and was for connecting to Burroughs mainframes. I want to dump the ROM on this thing too at some point so I can try to figure out what the hell it does, probably some kind of serial adapter, though I am admittedly short on Burroughs mainframes to use it with and have no plans (or space) to change this. I also bought a new build VGA card which works great and doesn't tie to me to the one tiny LCD I have that actually has a composite input. Plus the different floppy controller the DuoDisk needed which also worked flawlessly. All in all that was actually a lot of fun and I'm only disappointed that I'll probably never have as great of a story using the thing as I did getting it working. I'd guess it took me somewhere around 30-40 hours in total to fix it, more than half of that being the keyswitch repairs. I probably spent as much in the end as I would have on a "good" one factoring in replacement parts and a few new tools, but I've at least got a hell of a story and this particular IIe is now undoubtedly mine. For what it's worth I have no plans to do retrobrighting or anything. Beyond the fact that I just don't really want to deal with that, it's not really that yellowed, and I think that just gives it the aged look it deserves for what it's been through. I do want to try to clean up the various blemishes remaining but if I can't, same thing, it's part of this computer's history. The only one I want to "fix" is the badge which just looks horrible but I have no idea what to actually do there.
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Dec 4, 2023 20:14
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Humbug Scoolbus posted:I see my bony-rear end ankle titillates you. I think you need to get laid more often, seeing penises everywhere. There's precedent on the forums.
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Dec 4, 2023 20:42
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power crystals posted:… Mighty impressive restoration! Really satisfying to see the transformation, I guess it's similar to how drain-cleaning youtube is weirdly popular. In case you feel like redoing all that work, it sounds like you came up with a basic burnishing technique, there are specialised tools for this: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/jonard-tools/OB-1-3/5956091 It's kind of like micro-filing.
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Dec 4, 2023 20:46
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longview posted:In case you feel like redoing all that work, it sounds like you came up with a basic burnishing technique, there are specialised tools for this: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/jonard-tools/OB-1-3/5956091 I figured I wasn't treading any real new ground, but good to know there's a better tool in case I somehow ever have to do that again. I'm still surprised it worked at all, really, let alone that reliably.
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Dec 4, 2023 21:10
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SekM6yD26Qc
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Dec 5, 2023 15:08
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No time to watch this now but the Duke in the thumbnail looks a lot like what we ended up getting. Old and tired.
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Dec 5, 2023 15:27
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Geez I’m getting a flashback to when our dad snuck my brother and me into E3 in ‘95 when we were 4/6 years old (he was managing the Ubisoft booth, who were showing off Rayman that year). Eventually someone said we couldn’t be there and we got stuck in some daycare side room to watch disney movies, but for a couple of hours we were in kid heaven. Apparently it was their first year! Things I remember: Lots of gimmicky controllers, racing rigs, some kind of skateboard thing you stand on. Donkey Kong Country 2, Thinkin Things, huuuge Sega booth, geodesic domes. Also I remember getting super freaked out by some of the people in costumes, especially Spiderman, but also the “live” talking Crow T. Robot that they had bantering to the crowd at one of the booths. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=fC9ZJWHFjhc https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=l8sg25vqso0
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Dec 5, 2023 19:26
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That asset control sticker makes me think this was originally used in a hospital?
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Dec 5, 2023 21:41
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DrBouvenstein posted:That asset control sticker makes me think this was originally used in a hospital? There's a couple other stickers on the bottom, it was from Ottawa General Hospital.
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Dec 5, 2023 21:47
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Pulled this out of a retiring employees office yesterday. It powered right up! Date on the tag was 1995  E: It's running NT 4.0 and has a pcmcia token ring card Enos Cabell has a new favorite as of 22:28 on Dec 5, 2023 |
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Dec 5, 2023 21:53
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Should've redacted that login because I am now hacking their Geocities page. 
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Dec 5, 2023 22:01
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Killer robot posted:There's a couple other stickers on the bottom, it was from Ottawa General Hospital. Hopefully they wiped th hd because you cant be trusted with melanoma case files.
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Dec 5, 2023 22:29
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I would like to dedicate this post to top-lit keyboards. They only survived a brief window between the period where we realized we needed keyboard lighting and where we realized we could back-light keyboards RIP top-lighting. You were too beautiful for this world 
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Dec 5, 2023 23:19
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Beve Stuscemi posted:I would like to dedicate this post to top-lit keyboards. They only survived a brief window between the period where we realized we needed keyboard lighting and where we realized we could back-light keyboards 
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Dec 5, 2023 23:38
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i will never back-light my keyboard.
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Dec 5, 2023 23:45
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Pham Nuwen posted:i will never back-light my keyboard. i will walk backwards into hell and type "gently caress YOU" at the retreating light
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Dec 6, 2023 00:00
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Flipperwaldt posted:Saw this in some dollar store type store the other day though: I've got something like this on one of my monitors, it also can throw a nice light behind the monitor I like that I can have it on, and the angle of it won't wash the screen out at all, super handy
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Dec 6, 2023 00:21
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I'm just tickled by the idea of someone carrying it in their laptop bag and using it in a public place maybe.
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Dec 6, 2023 00:32
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Arivia posted:i will walk backwards into hell and type "gently caress YOU" at the retreating light well, "GIVL UPI" because I didn't get my fingers on the right keys
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Dec 6, 2023 00:34
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I went to that one.
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Dec 6, 2023 02:28
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Beve Stuscemi posted:I would like to dedicate this post to top-lit keyboards. They only survived a brief window between the period where we realized we needed keyboard lighting and where we realized we could back-light keyboards I miss my thinklight every day. The x20 had it off to the corner so your hands didnt cast direct shadows. Also useful for seeing around the laptop too
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Dec 6, 2023 15:16
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Also wonderful when you're working in a sound booth running video for live shows. Yeah backlights can orient you on where the keyboard is, but those Thinklights can let you see set-lists or scripts. Only thing better would be if they had a red light option too.
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Dec 6, 2023 22:03
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Wizard of the Deep posted:Only thing better would be if they had a red light option too. Dell had a laptop with TWO red lights, which is so cool it automatically means no manufacturer will ever do it again. https://youtube.com/clip/UgkxU_rl2z5WIBZy4vRgnn9yU08z3rNLZS0L?feature=shared
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Dec 7, 2023 03:42
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