I've noticed corrosion tends to follow copper traces and vias through a pcb. I'm not sure whether this is capillary action or just a result of the chemistry. Its astonishing how far it can travel along a trace without any effect on the intervening sections of pcb
Exactly, there was such board recently on Adrian's Digital Basement channel. Corrosion travelled through traces throughout entire board. I'd assume not fixable easily without hundreds of patch wires.
Yes, i played X-Wing and its successor Tie Fighter in 1993 and 1994. I had the floppy disk versions and i completed both games. For X-Wing i also bought the two Addons B-Wing and Imperial Pursuit. With X-Wing i've ruined my joysticks multiple times. After the first one broke, I bought a second one. Until that one broke too. Then I changed my strategy and unscrewed the joystick and tried to fix it. That was one of my first repair attempts, I was still a child. The joysticks were constructed quite cheaply and did cost less than 40 DM. The dealer didn't have any others for sale either. Back then the choice was very limited. The cables from the ground plate to the buttons on the stick were torn apart. So I routed new cables through the very tight stick. But they were too stiff, so that the joystick was quite stiff and uneven. Fortunately, at some point a new joystick the CH Flightstick was offered. It had to be good, because it was three times as expensive at over 120 DM. This joystick has lasted far longer. But since it used 50k potentiometers with sliding contacts for the axes, these also broke at some point. Luckily those were a lot easier to repair because I just had to buy new potentiometers and swap them out. I did that 2-3 times and then also played through Tie Fighter with this joystick. The CH Flightstick was basically a good joystick, but it only had 2 buttons and 2 axes and lacked USB and was therefore no longer suitable for later games. Oh, one more thing. I also bought X-Wing Alliance sometime around the turn of the millennium, but I haven't played through it until today. I didn't have the time and inclination for that anymore. But I still have my old savegame files, so I could finish the game at any time.
Not only is an external battery connector an option, but there is a PCB you can make called not a varta which plugs into where the Varta Battery would go and has circuitry to allow the use of a cr1220. It's a cool project.
I destroyed the death star. It was so much fun, that i repeated that mission several times. The best thing you can do, when you are inside the death star trench is to put all power into your speed and fly at 400 speed to the goal. To reach that speed you have to stay in the trench. It doesn't work if you leave it.
I spent countless hours on X-Wing, and before that, Rebel Assault. I re-acquired them a year or two ago when all Star Wars games on Gog went on sale. :)
I still have the original Rebel Assault CD-ROM. But i sold my DOS X-Wing games in the 90s. I do still have X-Wing Alliance on CD-ROM and of course i also bought the sold DOS X-Wing games on GOG again. Sadly they had a quite nice packaging box. That's something you don't get with GOG.
I played Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter from 1997 for many, many hours. It was the first game that I played in multiplayer over the internet. Microsoft offered the Zone as an online matchmaking service/community and although it could be rough getting it going with dial-up modem, it was lots of fun.
As always, check if there is a MR-BIOS for this chipset on the motherboard. If there is, i strongly recommend to switch out the bios. Amongst other things, you will get support for multi-gigabyte HDDs, too.
There is a better way than a new BIOS. Just buy a SCSI Controller and use SCSI devices. They don't have that 512 MB limit and are btw much more comfortable and they also relieve the CPU of work. That's what i did in the 90s.
The solder mask, or lacquer or transparent nail polish can add more physical structure to badly damaged traces/mobo surface, reducing chance of breaking the connection if used heavily, or accidents happening. IE the tinned trace separating from M/B. NB if I were fixing a power trace, IE higher current. I would solder a bare copper wire on top of damaged/broken solder track. And still varnish it afterwards.
I have an identical motherboard which I fixed on a video on my channel. It works but every time I run DOOM, it's like one of the keyboard keys gets stuck. I attempted many things but never managed to fixed it. It would be great if I could borrow your keyboard controller chip - as the one installed is not compatible with one of the "generic" installed in similar boards. I will send you an email. Great job with the yellow solder mask, my solution was much less accurate than yours! :)
Really cool restoration. Sadly my very first computer a Dell P90 is long gone to the obsolete electronics landfill. The 1990's were exciting times with computer advances and the new fangled thing called the internet! I got into computer just as 3D gaming became a reality with consumer voodoo hardware. Doom was mind blowing when it came out.
Im currently working on my 386. Same thing. Ive re tinned the taces and just waiting for my formal coating to arrive. Nive video Should point out i have a motherboard that only has external battery connector and it does have charging on it. It was by design i guess
I've never actually seen even a badly abused, dead and swollen cr2032 leak! And it's easy enough to re-engineer the circuit so it does't try to charge it. I'm also fairly confident in NiMH replacement cell types being OK in the leakage department. It's spectacularly difficult to leak them. The leaky cells were all NiCd. But it's also perfectly fine to have a different risk assessment.
I agree on the NiMH. If they leak, then they leak hydrogen. That's a gas and shouldn't be a problem for the motherboard. I would never trust NiCD, Zinc-carbon and Alkaline batteries, they tend to leak and if they do so, it will get a mess. But i never had this with NiMH cells.
I did play it on a 16mhz 386sx. Now that computer has suffered the same fate as your motherboard with a leaking battery. I hope I can fix it because it was my first PC.
Did you play the special edition version? This one came with SVGA support, texturing and gouraud shading. The original version had only VGA with gouraud shading but no texturing.
It is called Mechanic UVH900-YY (yellow). I got a bundle with Yellow, Blue, White, Red, Green, and Black. Is this something you are looking for: "Mechanic SU3 Transparent Curing Solder Mask"
Thanks for sharing this! I have the exact same motherboard. The corrosion damaged the trace that connects the C2 capacitor (5:37 on your video) to the 2nd pin of keyboard controller. I fixed the trace and also removed all the components starting from keyboard connector going all the way until the resistors just right after keyboard controller. Continuity is there, no broken traces. ISA is having all the correct voltages but when using the POST analyzer card I am getting indication only on +12V rail. I am running out of ideas of what else might be broken there. Capacitors look ok. There are two transistors, both between ISA 8bit and ISA 16bit slot. I cannot identify them though. Maybe this is the problem? Any ideas how to identify them?
Do you get +5v and +3.3v on the AT power connector? Maybe there is a short somewhere. If you're using an ATX power supply, it should shut off due to it hopefully having an overcurrent protection. In that case, you're using an ATX to AT power adapter. Make sure all pins of the adapters work. Sometimes, the pins get pushed out from the plastic housing and they don't make proper contact. If none of this helps, then it's probably a broken trace or faulty component. I'd first try to find broken traces.
@@bitsundbolts Thanks for you reply, I appreciate it. I tried both AT and ATX psu with adapter. I can also measure with a multimeter all voltages on ISA which is weird since the POST card LED is not showing indication. POST card works on other boards though. Almost ready to give up on this one. I believe the problem might be in the two transistors, tried to measure them with multimeter set to diode mode, on one of them getting voltages on both directions which is wrong I think
I have fiberglass pens, but to be honest, I like the engraving pen much more! Plus, it doesn't cause any health problems that come with fiberglass residue you can inhale.
The voltage of the battery pack I use is around 3.95v and it works fine at the moment. I thought this voltage is actually on the high side. There is nothing mentioned in the manual either.
@@bitsundbolts If you continue to get the low battery warning during POST and would rather not, you could try using AAA alkaline cells or a four cell AAA holder with the rechargeables. There are usually two diodes in series with the external battery connection to prevent the motherboard from charging an external battery. Each diode will drop the voltage by approximately 0.7 volts. Originally, the most common external CMOS/clock batteries were the Rayovac 840 and 844. These were a cube with three rectangular, flat prismatic alkaline cells sealed inside. They had a nominal voltage of 4.5v and an initial voltage of closer to 4.7v. With two diodes in series, the CMOS/clock circuit is supplied with 3 to 3.3v from a new battery. If your fully charged 3xAAA NiMh cells are at 3.95v, that's likely being dropped to about 2.55 volts, which is close to the lower threshold of operation for the circuit.
After the first boot, I never got the low battery warning anymore. But I see your point. If I get the time, I will check around the battery connector and see where those traces and the supply power goes.
Using an engraving pen is a great idea to remove small areas of mask. I should buy one. Thanks.
It worked quite well. I got this idea from RUclips channel NorthridgeFix.
I completely agree with the "bios must be blue" sentiment. Great job! It's always fascinating to watch this hardware come back up life.
I did not know those ugly colours could be changed!!!! LOL!
Always a joy to see an old board brought back to life.
I've noticed corrosion tends to follow copper traces and vias through a pcb. I'm not sure whether this is capillary action or just a result of the chemistry. Its astonishing how far it can travel along a trace without any effect on the intervening sections of pcb
Exactly, there was such board recently on Adrian's Digital Basement channel. Corrosion travelled through traces throughout entire board. I'd assume not fixable easily without hundreds of patch wires.
I hope you can keep this machine running for many years
I have no experience with 386 bios menus, but I really like the colorful default colors. Clean works as always!
Yes, i played X-Wing and its successor Tie Fighter in 1993 and 1994. I had the floppy disk versions and i completed both games. For X-Wing i also bought the two Addons B-Wing and Imperial Pursuit.
With X-Wing i've ruined my joysticks multiple times. After the first one broke, I bought a second one. Until that one broke too. Then I changed my strategy and unscrewed the joystick and tried to fix it. That was one of my first repair attempts, I was still a child. The joysticks were constructed quite cheaply and did cost less than 40 DM. The dealer didn't have any others for sale either. Back then the choice was very limited.
The cables from the ground plate to the buttons on the stick were torn apart. So I routed new cables through the very tight stick. But they were too stiff, so that the joystick was quite stiff and uneven.
Fortunately, at some point a new joystick the CH Flightstick was offered. It had to be good, because it was three times as expensive at over 120 DM. This joystick has lasted far longer. But since it used 50k potentiometers with sliding contacts for the axes, these also broke at some point. Luckily those were a lot easier to repair because I just had to buy new potentiometers and swap them out. I did that 2-3 times and then also played through Tie Fighter with this joystick.
The CH Flightstick was basically a good joystick, but it only had 2 buttons and 2 axes and lacked USB and was therefore no longer suitable for later games.
Oh, one more thing. I also bought X-Wing Alliance sometime around the turn of the millennium, but I haven't played through it until today. I didn't have the time and inclination for that anymore. But I still have my old savegame files, so I could finish the game at any time.
Not only is an external battery connector an option, but there is a PCB you can make called not a varta which plugs into where the Varta Battery would go and has circuitry to allow the use of a cr1220. It's a cool project.
Excellent repair! I did play x-wing as a kid but never managed to finish the first level. I just remember the first fmv.
I destroyed the death star. It was so much fun, that i repeated that mission several times. The best thing you can do, when you are inside the death star trench is to put all power into your speed and fly at 400 speed to the goal. To reach that speed you have to stay in the trench. It doesn't work if you leave it.
Nice, like ! Those old 386 / 486 motherboards look so different from later ones from the Pentium 2 / 3 era.
The main reason is THT vs. SMD. And the switch from ISA to PCI.
these old boards and works of art.. thanks for the video.
I spent countless hours on X-Wing, and before that, Rebel Assault. I re-acquired them a year or two ago when all Star Wars games on Gog went on sale. :)
I still have the original Rebel Assault CD-ROM. But i sold my DOS X-Wing games in the 90s. I do still have X-Wing Alliance on CD-ROM and of course i also bought the sold DOS X-Wing games on GOG again. Sadly they had a quite nice packaging box. That's something you don't get with GOG.
I played Star Wars: X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter from 1997 for many, many hours. It was the first game that I played in multiplayer over the internet. Microsoft offered the Zone as an online matchmaking service/community and although it could be rough getting it going with dial-up modem, it was lots of fun.
Great job!, and you remember me when I was young and play that game. 😅
Nice Cyrix math on board! ))
As always, check if there is a MR-BIOS for this chipset on the motherboard. If there is, i strongly recommend to switch out the bios. Amongst other things, you will get support for multi-gigabyte HDDs, too.
Thanks for reminding me. I'm reading up on it. Would be nice to have larger HDDs and other updates!
@@bitsundbolts or you could use a bootloader to get larger disks they are still on websites.
oh that sounds very interesting thanks for mentioning that! I'll look up!
The thing is what bios not very much mr-bios outside there!!
There is a better way than a new BIOS. Just buy a SCSI Controller and use SCSI devices. They don't have that 512 MB limit and are btw much more comfortable and they also relieve the CPU of work. That's what i did in the 90s.
Replacing solder mask after tinning is not needed. Solder itself does pretty good job at protecting copper traces from oxidation.
The solder mask, or lacquer or transparent nail polish can add more physical structure to badly damaged traces/mobo surface, reducing chance of breaking the connection if used heavily, or accidents happening.
IE the tinned trace separating from M/B.
NB if I were fixing a power trace, IE higher current. I would solder a bare copper wire on top of damaged/broken solder track. And still varnish it afterwards.
I have an identical motherboard which I fixed on a video on my channel. It works but every time I run DOOM, it's like one of the keyboard keys gets stuck. I attempted many things but never managed to fixed it. It would be great if I could borrow your keyboard controller chip - as the one installed is not compatible with one of the "generic" installed in similar boards. I will send you an email. Great job with the yellow solder mask, my solution was much less accurate than yours! :)
Really cool restoration. Sadly my very first computer a Dell P90 is long gone to the obsolete electronics landfill. The 1990's were exciting times with computer advances and the new fangled thing called the internet! I got into computer just as 3D gaming became a reality with consumer voodoo hardware. Doom was mind blowing when it came out.
You always get a like from me. Once again a perfect job, keep it up.
Thank you!
Im currently working on my 386. Same thing. Ive re tinned the taces and just waiting for my formal coating to arrive. Nive video
Should point out i have a motherboard that only has external battery connector and it does have charging on it. It was by design i guess
I've never actually seen even a badly abused, dead and swollen cr2032 leak! And it's easy enough to re-engineer the circuit so it does't try to charge it.
I'm also fairly confident in NiMH replacement cell types being OK in the leakage department. It's spectacularly difficult to leak them. The leaky cells were all NiCd.
But it's also perfectly fine to have a different risk assessment.
I agree on the NiMH. If they leak, then they leak hydrogen. That's a gas and shouldn't be a problem for the motherboard.
I would never trust NiCD, Zinc-carbon and Alkaline batteries, they tend to leak and if they do so, it will get a mess. But i never had this with NiMH cells.
All those button cell holders people use have a diode so they don't recharge.
I had this & Tie fighter . Thise games cist me a fortune in broken joysticks . . 😂
I never played X-Wing, but I loved Tie Fighter.
Very nice. Good job 👍
Thank you!
Thanks for your sharing
I did play it on a 16mhz 386sx. Now that computer has suffered the same fate as your motherboard with a leaking battery. I hope I can fix it because it was my first PC.
Best of luck and hope you will succeed!
love tie fighter, played it on my cyrix pr166mx in 98
Did you play the special edition version? This one came with SVGA support, texturing and gouraud shading. The original version had only VGA with gouraud shading but no texturing.
@@OpenGL4ever original in vga
What brand is that solder mask and where did you get it? I've been looking for translucent but can't seem to find it.
It is called Mechanic UVH900-YY (yellow). I got a bundle with Yellow, Blue, White, Red, Green, and Black. Is this something you are looking for: "Mechanic SU3 Transparent Curing Solder Mask"
Thanks for sharing this! I have the exact same motherboard. The corrosion damaged the trace that connects the C2 capacitor (5:37 on your video) to the 2nd pin of keyboard controller. I fixed the trace and also removed all the components starting from keyboard connector going all the way until the resistors just right after keyboard controller. Continuity is there, no broken traces. ISA is having all the correct voltages but when using the POST analyzer card I am getting indication only on +12V rail. I am running out of ideas of what else might be broken there. Capacitors look ok. There are two transistors, both between ISA 8bit and ISA 16bit slot. I cannot identify them though. Maybe this is the problem? Any ideas how to identify them?
Do you get +5v and +3.3v on the AT power connector? Maybe there is a short somewhere. If you're using an ATX power supply, it should shut off due to it hopefully having an overcurrent protection. In that case, you're using an ATX to AT power adapter. Make sure all pins of the adapters work. Sometimes, the pins get pushed out from the plastic housing and they don't make proper contact.
If none of this helps, then it's probably a broken trace or faulty component. I'd first try to find broken traces.
@@bitsundbolts Thanks for you reply, I appreciate it. I tried both AT and ATX psu with adapter. I can also measure with a multimeter all voltages on ISA which is weird since the POST card LED is not showing indication. POST card works on other boards though. Almost ready to give up on this one. I believe the problem might be in the two transistors, tried to measure them with multimeter set to diode mode, on one of them getting voltages on both directions which is wrong I think
good tips, great video.
12:30 What is the name of that tool, you are using here?
Soldering time! 😊
Nope, never played X-Wing. My first SW title was TIE Fighter on my cousin's P100 ;)
Tie Fighter is better, but it doesn't have a death star trench run. In X-Wing this is the last mission of the campaign.
You could had used ML2032 instead, those are rechargeable CR2032 used in the sega dreamcast
X-wing collector CD.
i played some tie figher. i was more of a dark forces fan though
OOOOOH maybe this can help me repair my 286.
Use fiberglass pen to remove solder mask
I have fiberglass pens, but to be honest, I like the engraving pen much more! Plus, it doesn't cause any health problems that come with fiberglass residue you can inhale.
External battery voltage must be higher than 3.6v, afair 4 to 6 volts
The voltage of the battery pack I use is around 3.95v and it works fine at the moment.
I thought this voltage is actually on the high side. There is nothing mentioned in the manual either.
@@bitsundbolts If you continue to get the low battery warning during POST and would rather not, you could try using AAA alkaline cells or a four cell AAA holder with the rechargeables. There are usually two diodes in series with the external battery connection to prevent the motherboard from charging an external battery. Each diode will drop the voltage by approximately 0.7 volts. Originally, the most common external CMOS/clock batteries were the Rayovac 840 and 844. These were a cube with three rectangular, flat prismatic alkaline cells sealed inside. They had a nominal voltage of 4.5v and an initial voltage of closer to 4.7v. With two diodes in series, the CMOS/clock circuit is supplied with 3 to 3.3v from a new battery. If your fully charged 3xAAA NiMh cells are at 3.95v, that's likely being dropped to about 2.55 volts, which is close to the lower threshold of operation for the circuit.
After the first boot, I never got the low battery warning anymore. But I see your point. If I get the time, I will check around the battery connector and see where those traces and the supply power goes.
I use a CR2032 battery with no problems for years, the battery pack will last even more.
Guys, my copper cord doesnt absorb the tin, do I need flux?
Yes, you do. Apply some flux and then try to tin it. It will be like painting, the flux does all the magic and guides the solder on the copper
386 boards is new bitcoin
I should try an MS-DOS miner :) See how many hashes I get...
Mmm nice and early.
You got away rather unscattered with this board...
Yes, I got lucky that it was not that bad.
@@bitsundbolts Mine on the other hand has all kinds of damage, missing components, burnt pcb etc
Ouch, sounds like your board went through quite a lot!
the next step will be xt-ide on an ethernet card ))
Yes! Some day, I will do that :)