Packard Bell PB486CD restoration (Part 2)

[@immeranderwandlang]

Danke!

[@necro_ware]

Vielen Dank auch!

[@immeranderwandlang]

Sehr gerne. Ich sehe deine Videos schon so lange und dachte, es wäre mal an der Zeit zurück zu geben 😊

[@Friddee]

Waiting for a video from you is like waiting for a girl to get ready. It might take some time but when they arrive you forget all about the wait and just enjoy the great moment. Can't wait for what you have in store in the next one!

[@necro_ware]

I think, this is one of the most hilarious comments so far on this channel :)

[@tennickjestzajety69]

So, if you want to enable/disable turbo, you need to replace motherboard. Not bad idea at all, very innovative relative to keystroke 😂

[@necro_ware]

:) Great idea, why didn't I think about it?

[@AB0BA_69]

@@necro_wareBrother, you are a machine! I just rewatched the first video before watching this one since your last update was a while ago. The amount of patience and diligent work that went into this is insane. I know that I would be burned out by the end of this adventure, but for you it seems to just be good for! Keep up the work! Looking forward to more of your videos!

[@asanjuas]

@@necro_ware Of course you can investigate how to change the thing that was annoying to take turbo off to use the keyboard and instead use a button on the case for example. I had back in those days when i was 16 years old one of these packard bell concretly the PB430 (i remember it because of the cirrus logic CL-GD5428 which works out of the bok on slackware 3.0) and it was annoying specially if you want to use OS/2 Warp without hanging every 2 times 3, without knowing what is causing the hang.

[@blakecasimir]

A pleasure to have you back, sir. Another great video. 👍🏻👍🏻

[@usermanico]

I really enjoy your videos man, those new traces are beautiful art *chef kiss*

[@Inject0r]

Necroware, the king of all cliffhangers! :D I had a problem with a TMC PET48PN once, where 2 pins were connected inside a VLB slot. Data line 4 was connected to ground, which caused all sorts of unexpected behavior. One of such was the computer randomly hanging, always seemed to be running in de-turbo mode, but able to enable turbo nonetheless, which made it run even slower. Eventually, I found the pins inside the slot. I was working on it for months! Rabbit hole anyone!? Anyhow, thanks for the awesome video. I can’t wait to see the next one. :) Stay safe!

[@boydpukalo8980]

I like how you bend the repair wire to follow the shape of the original trace routing instead of a bodge wire just connecting point A to B. Much cleaner and superior attention to detail! Cool video.

[@DanSuneKronvold]

As so many others I was beginning to worry for you. Glad to see you back👍

[@asanjuas]

Thank you very much for the video!! It was a wow moment i view two o three times or more this video. Two weeks ago I found two computers next to the trash. It turns out that I got excited and I said to myself, well, nothing's wrong, 90% of the problems that caused the computers to be thrown away can be solved. One had two capacitors (3300 microfarads 6.3 Volts) in bad condition. I changed them (I had a hard time removing them, but I replaced them with 3300 microfarads 16 Volts and the box was bad so I changed it. The other one had the box to throw in the trash again, I took advantage of it. To my surprise the motherboard is an Intel S3200SH a server board with an intel xeon x3220, curiously it works perfectly.

[@Adrian_Finn]

That was some masterful trace repair. Great Work.

[@vswitchzero]

Great to see you back! Awesome work. It always amazes me just how much damage those batteries can cause. It's also very interesting how various manufacturers implemented the turbo functionality. I had always assumed it was L1 cache being disabled on most 486s and didn't know about the halt signal that some used too.

[@necro_ware]

Thank you very much. Yeah, just think of 386sx and 286, they have no cache at all and though they could do slowdown.

[@PROSTO4Tabal]

Can't wait to see another 3dfx repairs of yours 🙂

[@Zorix83]

Thank you for repairing that PB410 board. That was my first PC in 1993. Still have fond memories of it. It's also emulated in PCem and 86Box if anyone is interested.

[@LetsPlayKeldeo]

AHHH HOW DID I MISS YOUR LATESTS VIDEO UNTIL NOW ? Welcome back ! I hope the next video wont take another 4 months haha

[@ABRetroCollections]

Perhaps the oscillator on the PB430 was damaged due to the VARTA battery? I noticed that it was in close proximity to the VARTA battery.

[@AbdAlgani1999]

you cant believe how much i wait your videos

[@dorfschmidt4833]

Your soldering is a work of art.

[@Choralone422]

This takes me back! Back in the early 90's I had a 486 Packard Bell PC with the 410 mainboard! Even with all of the limitations of that board I was still able to modify and upgrade that machine well into the socket 7 days. The only thing I didn't manage to upgrade was the video RAM as I left it at 512KB. I added 128 KB of L2 cache, upgraded the CPU to a AMD 5x86 133MHz running at 120Mhz with a 5V-3.3V voltage adapter. Upgraded the RAM to 12MB total. Added a SB clone soundcard, 2x CD-ROM, a 2nd HDD, 28.8 US Robotics modem, external SCSI Zip drive, 10 Mbit NE2000 compatible 10base-T NIC. Loads of learning and good times were had with that machine!

[@teknologyguy5638]

Thanks for working on this, as I said in a previous comment, I have 2 of these that I need to do these repairs on as well and this is extremely helpful.

[@averayvistraen6864]

Long time no seen !! but,I'm glad you made it !! The Value you bring is unmatched in the hardware domaine. I salute you with respect brother !

[@obd6HsN]

Your repair wires are a work of art! Lovely to watch

[@cndctrdjful]

Awesome video. Your skills are amazing.

[@rodhester2166]

So glad to see you have had some time to make a new video. thank you.

[@synthnerd4539]

@18:09 That's incredibly neat. I'm doing exactly this repair on an identical board from a Zenith Z-Select 100 3x3 and I know how much patience and practice this takes! Excellent and inspiring :)

[@Madscientist9898]

Good to see you back, I always enjoy your videos!

[@SockyNoob]

Always love seeing your repairs. Your channel name is quite fitting given the kind of stuff you've repaired before. Your trace repairs are always top notch looking.

[@sonovoxx]

It's super rare that a Necroware video doesn't end in a game of Doom! Great job on the repair of all those traces!

[@necro_ware]

Yes, that was the initial problem. Would I have tested the board with doom last time, I'd realize, that it has an issue much earlier. Of course I tested it this time running Doom, just didn't take it into the video ;)

[@gianniskaravasilis9464]

My favorite channel by far! Glad to have you back, keep the videos coming, such a joy to watch

[@ricargoncalves]

Agree!

[@fisakewolf]

Incredible repair, nice to see this all this hardware back to life

[@andrew1977au]

YES! He's back!!!! Thanks for the video mate, made my morning. What a headache of a board!

[@soverysleepy]

4 months is a long time hope all is well

[@necro_ware]

Thank you very much. I was finally able to make a video again, so I life's better now ;)

[@markuswiik7086]

I'm so glad you're back, I always enjoy your repair videos. Looking forward to the follow up!

[@jeremiefaucher-goulet3365]

Yay!!! You're back. And what a great video too! That was art. That music feels nostalgic now ;) Perfect intro, catch-up and bringing up to speed too. I look forward to the next one.

[@GadgetUK164]

Brilliant work!!!

[@hollgo626]

Knifflige und aufwändige Reparaturen! Wow, Respekt 👍

[@lemagreengreen]

The necromancer is back!

[@tomekrv942]

One of my favourite channels. Great video.

[@jakubponczynski7368]

So good you are back

[@Constantin314]

yeeeeey, finally!! i started to think you wouldn't post anymore. so relaxing to watch after a 60km bike ride into the mountains. my knees hurt like hell :)) amazing video and repair, awesome

[@simontay4851]

60km, bl00dy hell. No wonder your knees hurt. ...and the rest of you, as well, i expect.

[@DavoShed]

Great video! Sometimes I wish I could do what you do and other times I’m also glad I can not 🤠 Your videos are easy to watch and you make them enjoyable.

[@TRONMAGNUM2099]

YESSSS you are back!! Love your restorations.

[@simontay4851]

23:55 "that was one of those wow moments" i bet you were jumping up and down in excitement, shouting "YES YES,YES! its working! Amazing. I can't believe it. Its only gone and bl00dy worked! Yes!

[@slaapliedje]

I screwed up trying to swap out SIPP slots with SIMMs on a rare board... I have the stuff to repair it, but had my confidence shaken... your videos are great for building that back up!

[@mogwaay]

Wow, your trace repair work is amazing, you make it look so easy!

[@loganjorgensen]

Such a lot of work but interesting the electrolyte "candy coating" problem and the microcrack repair, great job.

[@supergoofy123]

These are godlike skills in repairing old motherboards. For me the best I can do is to change the bad caps. I saved a couple of motherboards that way. But I don't have the equipment, nor the skills for advanced repairs. Best regards.

[@whoevertf]

So impressive... what a wonderful repair.

[@BobHannent]

I've never seen those SIPP video cache memory, it would be interesting to look into that more

[@chriscrossan8034]

Nice to see you back again!

[@Popclone]

Welcome back!

[@jasmijndekkers]

Great job you did again. Love your content as well. Greetings from Steven from the Netherlands

[@AlbertAGhazaleh]

Yes!! 🎉🎉 Necroware is back to bring a MOBO back from the dead!

[@tassdesu]

Вернулся ура!!!!!!!

[@troymcfee960]

Титаническая работа. Вы супер ❤

[@tony359]

very cool and amazing soldering skills :)

[@Linkintime1]

He's Back! I was worried about you. lol

[@dant5464]

No worries about it being a while since the last video, that's what subscribing is for. Then it's a nice surprise when a new video arrives. :)

[@nitrgnlab9400]

Great soldering skills as usual! Thanks for sharing this video!

[@Stratotank3r]

Ganz viele Daumen hoch! Wieder brilliante Arbeit! Die Retrocommunity ist froh, dass nach 4Monaten wieder ein Lebenszeichen in Form eines Videos auftaucht.

[@necro_ware]

Danke Dir vielmals! Ich wünschte ich könnte pausenlos basteln und Videos machen, aber das Leben hat manchmal eigene Pläne.

[@techdistractions]

Wow - amazing detail video. This is incredible footage - well done sir 🎉

[@skjerk]

Beautiful trace work! I could watch this for hours! Totally ASMR♥️

[@TheChimeraMan]

Welcome back

[@atheatos]

WOW repair... for sure!

[@NaoPb]

Thank you for this. Packard Bell machines deserve love too. The Pb in my username is kind of a nod to the brand and also to my love for heavy metal music, hehe.

[@ToniHiltunen1980]

Long time no see :) Thank you of your restoration videos you send to KZbin.

[@HrLBolle]

so we enter the necromancy time of the year again

[@pavelmusiyenko]

Welcome Back!:)

[@PaulTheFox1988]

Beautiful repair work as usual, it's a shame you couldn't repair the other board in this video, but no doubt you'll get both running perfectly in due time

[@omegamsx]

I had a similar issue on a Commodore A2386SX pc card for Amiga, where the turbo was always off. It was a chipset pin that was loose, normally connected to a pin on the KBC. But I had access to a clickable board view, schematics and chipset datasheet, way easier than the issue you're facing here! Looking forward to the next part.

[@adamdmowski1190]

Hey men, well done. It was pleasure to watch your work. I wonder what do you do in real life to earn.

[@necro_ware]

Thank you. I'm a software engineer.

[@derchomat]

Hi Necro, nice video and extremely nice soldering. Regarding the speed just check your jumpers. Some of these boards behave weird if you have it set to pentium P24 of smth. Just google PB430 Processor Upgrade. Some boards also used Jumpers for maintenance modes which interupts the cpu. Greetings from Nurnberg.

[@necro_ware]

Thank you! The issues are unfortunately deeper, I'll present the details as soon as possible ;)

[@waltercardozo4876]

You are back!!!

[@decoydaniel]

Great video. I've been tinkering with a PB410 board myself. I just checked and I do have working turbo function. If it would help, let me know if there's anything I can check on my board for you.

[@fft2020]

You are a magician ! I take so much inspiration from your videos ! I already bought a ZD-915 desoldering station and am giving my first steps in this fascinating hobby! all thanx to you ! Thank you !

[@simontay4851]

Remember to clean the filter and spring regularly otherwise the tube will block up.

[@fft2020]

@@simontay4851 you are right. I already did . the tube is a bit hard to remove and reinsert :(

[@rallyscoot]

very clean repairs, like it.

[@DrMattBug]

Wonderful repair work. It honestly looks a little sloppy or cumbersome in magnification, but the final macro shot looks unbelievably tidy. I've resoldered pins to a CPU before and that was bad, but I can't begin to appreciate whether I would have the patience for this work. Great music choice for the montage too 😊

[@jeffattwood4538]

I have a PB410 with the same issues as your DRAM trace repair. Though I don't get any beeps. Only thing I get on the post code analyzer is 66 --. Going to go investigate now!

[@jeffattwood4538]

I found a bad trace under one of the DRAM chips. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. Good stuff!

[@peterkornaukhov9990]

Thank you for the very good video and your search and research. Happy to see that the old school skill can do miracle. So far I suppose 486 DX2 will be good for the board without turbo on - good so that all whistles and dongles as Cirrus video and so on can do perfectly. Very good thanks once more.

[@JD3Gamer]

Those Varta batteries are pure evil

[@ChrisR3tro]

Really like the music in this video but can't seem to find it on the bandcamp page you linked. Any hints to the title of the track?

[@necro_ware]

This track was made explicitly for the channel. I redirected the request to the author, let's hope the author uploads it on badcamp.

[@ChrisR3tro]

@@necro_wareThanks! I was suspecting as much. Nice choice of music! 😎

[@--fishiiki-]

Hell yea, saturday is saved!

[@luc_libv_verhaegen]

Hrm, why would all external ramdacs produce vertical lines on a LCD? Having developed display drivers for linux for 20 years, i am sure that this is not an issue with ramdacs being external. Especially with the symptom of LCDs showing lines, as LCD are much less likely to show any variation in clocking. These days, spread-spectrum is often enabled on the dotclock to reduce EMI, as LCDs don't really care (for a value of "these days" I spent several days chasing this in 2007 on the RadeonHD driver). And i am still keeping some old CRTs around as those are just as good or better than a scope for showing instability in the PLL, an LCD controller either syncs, or not, and shows a valid picture, or not. You are likely seeing an issue with the drivers (which in my world view includes the VGA/INT10 BIOS) for a specific external ramdac on a specific graphics card of yours, not doing proper pll value calculations for a specific dotclock (it might depend on a table of dotclocks and "tested" pll values), and a specific TFT monitor of yours that might be unhappy with a dotclock being slightly off. Similarly, differing track lengths between display chip and ramdac are not that critical for VGA/SVGA resolutions, and if pixeldata reaches the ramdac at differing times, you should see the off colours just the same on a CRT as on an LCD. And this difference in track lengths, and or any interference on this short stretch is very board specific again. Then, between graphics chip and ramdac there was usually either an 8 or 16bit bus, and the driver (again, i count the int10 bios as a driver), decides how to use that bus depending on the colourspace, colourdepth and frequency. All of which is specific to an intricate combination of: display chip, ramdac, board design, driver, and the chosen display resolution and bitdepth/colourspace. Again, likely a combination of 1 specific graphics card, 1 specific lcd based monitor, and 1 specific display mode. Also, from its general shape and the shape of the print on it, that looks like a Chrontel CH9398. I think that that was the one ramdac i actually did end up re-implementing in xf86-video-tseng after i cleaned up the X.org/Xfree86 clock handling code, back in late 2005 early 2006. The other ramdacs are still listed TODO today, but I've had no complaints :)

[@necro_ware]

My statement was probably misleading. You are right, this is not necessarily an issue of external RAMDACs, but what I wanted to say is, that solutions with external RAMDACs more often have that issues, where Cirrus Logic with its integrated RAMDAC is guaranteed always stripes free. Regardless, very interesting comment, thank you very much!

[@luc_libv_verhaegen]

@@necro_ware Again, not guaranteed. It depends on what combination of things actually caused the stripes you saw, once or multiple times. And if it was multiple times, then was it with the same combination of hardware? When you run into this again, try taking note of what combination of: * graphics card * monitor * display mode (you should be able to let a reasonably modern monitor tell you what resolution and refresh rate it thinks it gets) * display driver caused this phenomenon. A picture of the effect on the monitor would also be helpful. If it is vertical stripes, then it could even be that the driver got confused with the colour space or bit ordering needed to feed the ramdac correctly, and then messed up how the pixels are stored in display ram, and how it reads them out of ram. In this case, the issue would entirely be on the graphics chip side, but it was triggered by the driver incorrectly dealing with the pixel bus for ramdac. External ramdacs do not have to be bad, they just add a bit of driver complication which then leads to more driver bugs.

[@necro_ware]

@@luc_libv_verhaegen Your last statement is what I actually wanted to say. With external RAMDAC a probability of stripes is higher. They are of course not a guarantee for a bad picture quality. For example Trident 8900 cards have external RAMDAC, they always have stripes, no matter which monitor, who made the card, which RAMDAC is used. Trident 9000 have integrated RAMDAC and never have stripes, just as Cirrus Logic. I tested dozens of TFT monitors and cards. Tseng ET4000, well eh 50/50. Newer PLCC packaged RAMDACs, like the Winbond on that PB410 mainboard usually are good, I saw them on multiple WD90C31 doing stripes, but on ET4000 never. However older RAMDACs especially in DIP28 form factor quite often produce stripes even on the ET4000. If I have a choice between Cirrus Logic CL-GD542x and something else and I want that it just works, I'd always go with the CL. Regardless of that, of course I have a lot of ISA VGA cards and I like to experiment with all of them, so Cirrus Logic is not always what I use eventually. It depends.

[@nickwallette6201]

This has always puzzled me. (Well, in the 5 or so years since I got back into playing with retro computers on modern displays.) What is it about LCDs that makes these vertical lines visible, where totally analog displays didn't? I had assumed maybe it was a sampling thing, where the color signals aren't actually steady-state for the entire period, and just pulse on for a time in the middle of their window. So, sampling that for conversion to digital might miss the color value, or just capture the decaying tail of it. I suppose, if it happens at a high enough frequency, on a CRT, it would blur into the phosphors on either side of the pixel. It's something I've been meaning to put a scope on.

[@luc_libv_verhaegen]

@@nickwallette6201Hrm, you too? What graphics cards are you seeing this with? Is this with any mode with a specific driver, is this with a specific mode, is it always like this with a given card?

[@lisandro3614]

Dead motherboard: «I have broken traces, I cannot be repaired. Leave me alone.» Necroware: «I missed the part where that's my problem.» Magnificent work, beyond impressive.

[@ricargoncalves]

Sometimes almost looks like tinning is enough to restore the traces (if the gaps are not too wide). But even though you use a wire. Is it necessary? Great video, glad you are back!

[@necro_ware]

Thank you. I had bad experience with tining only, where after reassembly the cracks reapeared. Probably because of bending the board, temperature changes etc.

[@pete8475]

Great video, as usual.

[@naib_stilgar]

Which dremel tip do you use to file off oxidation?

[@tetiwhitton]

I would love to know too!

[@jaybird57]

I currently have the 430 board running a dx2-66 in a PB... It runs as well as any dx2-66 ive had.. mine had a leaking battery also, and I had to remove the serial port buffer ic's.

[@biffzinker7994]

Thank you for the video

[@ochykysh]

Great to see you alive and well!!! Btw, why one can't joing your patron anymore?

[@necro_ware]

I usually deactivate my Patreon account if I have no time to do videos. I try to stay at least a little bit fair ;)

[@ErrantMasa]

Our family's first PC was a Packard Bell 486SX/33 iirc ~1992

[@ljrretropcs]

I really really dont want to sound condescending here because you are literally the GOAT of these retro repairs.... But.. My Dell of similar vintage has a BIOS option for boot speed Fast/Slow. Did you check if the PB has similar?

[@geddeeee]

He's good isn't he? 😁

[@TomStorey96]

Life does indeed happen, but don't ever feel like you need to apologise for it! 🙂

[@tiemanowo]

14:56 this wire here. Rather a thick one. Maybe a thinner one will be better to repair those traces?

[@necro_ware]

It's 0,2 mm. Microscope makes it's magic ;)

[@ChrisR3tro]

Did you try to install L2 cache chips to see if the deturbo does anything with them installed?

[@pd3ct]

finally......

[@joeedmunds8414]

I had a PC with the same mainboard with the Headland graphics chip. No onboard RAM though and only a 2MB SIMM. Was so upset I had to throw out the old module when I upgraded the RAM as it was so expensive at the time; there had been a fire at a semiconductor factory in asia which meant supplies were limited. The VLB Headland graphics was pretty good in DOS as far as I can remember. Only 8 bit though, so 256 colours max.

[@SachinKumar-wx3up]

Can you explain what point to check if motherboard is not posting of Corse Pentium 1

[@wishusknight3009]

I wonder if kicking turbo up or down at the command prompt rather than in app would make a difference?

[@necro_ware]

Nope, details will follow soon ;)

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

What kind of microscope are you using?

[@evandrochaves9596]

If I'm not mistaken it's the one he reviewed some videos ago

[@MarcoGPUtuber]

@@evandrochaves9596 Damn. I gotta go check that out. Thanks!

[@necro_ware]

Yes, that's the one.

[@k4be.]

Do you connect that CR2032 directly to the original battery pads? That's not a good idea. Original battery is rechargeable the motherboard recharging it whenever powered on, and CR types should not be ever allowed to be charged. Maybe it can be isolated using a schottky diode, or (better) the charging circuit (possibly a single resistor, good luck finding it!) can be removed from the motherboard. Also, try using a thinner wire to fix broken traces. It will likely make your work much easier. Such wire can be extracted from some old pre-USB mobile phone charger cable (for example Sony Ericsson, Nokia). Tin these wires quickly after stripping their insulation.

[@necro_ware]

No, of course I modify the circuit, when I connect a CR2032. I made a video about such modification a long time ago. The wire I use are thinner, than what you even have in 80-pin IDE cable. They just look so thick through the microscope, but they are 0,2 and 0,3 mm

[@k4be.]

@@necro_ware 0,2mm is still pretty thick. The ones i'm suggesting are something between 0,04 and 0,08mm in diameter.

[@fft2020]

@@necro_ware there are some CR2032 rechargeable batteries LIR2032, I bought a few and was planning in replacing them directly with the old varta one

[@necro_ware]

@@fft2020 Be careful. Rechargeable Li-Ion batteries need a charge control circuit. Without it the battery will be overcharged, get warm and can even explode.

[@fft2020]

@@necro_ware You are right! thank you so much I would be doing some terrible mistake, I better use them as external batteries