PhilCs blog / the latest things hes broken(fixed)

[rubber_jonnie]

@exxos @rubber_jonnie the chip is unrecognisable that blew and then there was also smoke from under the heatsink of the main chip for the intel chipset. So unfortunately not an easy repair if it was possible to even get the parts.

I managed to snag another motherboard for £15 plus postage though and also a couple more servers for peanuts, so once its up and running again it'll be maxed out on ram etc. Why do I need all that ram? Why not? I think the max is 192gb or something daft like that. It was 96gb before it blew up and then just used 4 - 10%

Sounds like a fairly terminal failure! But pictures

Looks like you'll be back up and running soon enough though.

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie I'd have to fetch it out the wheels bin as it got thrown in the with frustration earlier on.

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie I'd have to fetch it out the wheels bin as it got thrown in the with frustration earlier on.

[PhilC]

So all of my server bits have arrived and now the ML350 has been reassembled. So as well as killing the motherboard it also killed 40GB of ram sticks whilst it was at it, so just down to a measly 80GB installed at the mo.

Whilst I was at it I bit a silly amount on an old HP ML330 G6 which was about 5 miles away. I was going to strip that for parts but its actually too good to do that to. Amusingly it has a quad core CPU and 96GB or ram installed, so I took it to work and will be using it to upgrade my test PC in the R&D bay.

[rubber_jonnie]

So as well as killing the motherboard it also killed 40GB of ram sticks whilst it was at it, so just down to a measly 80GB installed at the mo.

Ouch, that's a lot of dead RAM!!

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie 5 x 8GB sticks. Just happy it didn't kill anything else like my CPUs and HDDs

[rubber_jonnie]

@rubber_jonnie 5 x 8GB sticks. Just happy it didn't kill anything else like my CPUs and HDDs

I guess the 5 sticks can be considered a lucky escape!!

[PhilC]

Now that the weather has cooled down a bit and the wife has gone out I’m just knocking up three or four of these ST536 R5s

42249321-C2A7-4353-B927-7812AEB25727.jpeg (384.34 KiB) Viewed 1641 times

[exxos]

Nice!

[PhilC]

Not posted much on the blog lately, I've just been busy mainly with work or real life.

So the wife has been away this weekend and I've had a bit of "geek time" as she would call it. She also calls my workshop the "geek room" so geek time fits I guess.

This week I've had a couple of new arrivals in the form of a BBC micro, a BBC Master and a Vic-20. (pictures to follow)

The BBC Micro is an issue 7 but has a nice Ram/Rom board inside allowing up to a further 128kb sideways ram and some extra rom sockets. This came as not working. Well it was certainly true. First up was to replace the rifa in the power supply, which surprisingly hadn't blown but I didn't fancy setting the black smoke free, so it went I n the bin. On the power up the Beeb would just do a continuous beep and that was it. So I lifted all of the socketed chips to find that there was a fair bit of surface corrosion on the sockets and chips. Cleaned these up and reinserted them to still get the dreaded continuous beep. So checking out the 6502 and its actually dead. Quick swap of the 6502 and away she went with the Boo Beep. At first she was a bit unreliable but a bit more playing around with the sockets and the Beeb runs like new. Next was a bit of a clean up and then it'll have a dose of peroxide gel and UV later on, although its not really that bad in the first plac
The BBC Master is a standard 128 but a bit dirty externally and someone had chopped off the power lead, leading me (excuse the pun) to presume the PSU or computer were dead. So the first thing was to take it to bit and see what its like inside. So I don't think anyone else had had a look at the Master as there was a few bits of fluff about but at some point it had had the battery swapped over for 3 x AAs which had also gone rusty. Swapped them out and then removed the PSU to find what is probably the cleanest unmarked and unused Beeb power supply I've ever seen. I then decided to take a chance and replace the chopped offf lead with a new one and see what happens. (No rifas in the PSU). And ......... No, it Boo Beeped at me and off it went. Kind of leaving me disappointed as I was looking forward to a bit of Beeb fault finding again but the Master just sat there, did everything it should, like it was giving me the middle finger and ran everything I threw at it. So it had a bit of a clean up and I put it next to the Beeb B.

The Vic-20 was a different kettle of fish. `On power up all I would get was a white foreground and a light blue border. Doing a bit of googling left me with a possible character rom issue. Well this was ruled out by me shorting two of the pins on one of the larger ram chips on boot which left me with a lot of random characters all over the screen, so the character rom is definitely working. So far I've had the scope out for half a day trying to narrow down what's going on. The CPU is starting for a few seconds and then freezing, sometimes with the words "Press play on tape" displayed, so its trying to work and then crashes. Changed out the 2114 ram as I was getting some spurious signals on the datalines but still the same. SO far I've traced the dodgy signals from the CPU to the 6522s and through the ram, so next up is the Vic chip to test. There are a few 74 series chips in the way. One of the LS245s had died, so I'm expecting to find something like that causing the issue. I'm actually quite happy that the Vic still doesn't work as it makes up for the Master above working.

Once the Vic-20 is fixed its then time for it to have a peroxide gel and a UV light bath. as its more bright yellow than it every was cream.

If anyone would like to buy the BBC Master once it's been cleaned then please contact me.