component level repair manual needed
Hi, first post 
though you guys sounded very knowledgable on all manor of stuff, so it seems a good place to start asking questions, I think I'm not too bad with hardware, but I want to know what makes a computer tick, so I've decided to start messing about with some of my older hardware at component level to see if I can do any fun hacks and things this way if I burn stuff up or make it go bang, it won't matter too much.
Two small problems, one, I haven't got a clue where to start, and two I haven't got a clue where to start. I know that technically this is the same problem twice, but it seems like such a good problem it needed stating twice. Now, a little search has produced no joy on technical manuals, which would be a great start, anyone know any sites?
And a good site on how to find what's up with a motherboard would be good as I've set one up and all is well untill the damn thing doesn't put anything onscreen, psu is working fine, and the monitor and graphics adapter are working fine as well, I've read elsewhere in your forums that cmos batteries may get shorted, and it's been lying around for a while so this is a possibility, I'll try swapping it later on.
hope you can help,
dave
though you guys sounded very knowledgable on all manor of stuff, so it seems a good place to start asking questions, I think I'm not too bad with hardware, but I want to know what makes a computer tick, so I've decided to start messing about with some of my older hardware at component level to see if I can do any fun hacks and things this way if I burn stuff up or make it go bang, it won't matter too much.Two small problems, one, I haven't got a clue where to start, and two I haven't got a clue where to start. I know that technically this is the same problem twice, but it seems like such a good problem it needed stating twice. Now, a little search has produced no joy on technical manuals, which would be a great start, anyone know any sites?
And a good site on how to find what's up with a motherboard would be good as I've set one up and all is well untill the damn thing doesn't put anything onscreen, psu is working fine, and the monitor and graphics adapter are working fine as well, I've read elsewhere in your forums that cmos batteries may get shorted, and it's been lying around for a while so this is a possibility, I'll try swapping it later on.
hope you can help,
dave
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Comments
It would also help us to provide you suggestions if you would let us know what 'old' hardware you have lying around.
This ought to be a fun thread. Please have a digital camera handy to capture an image of any smoldering PCB board or component circuit!
I'm going on holiday at the end of the week which is as good an excuse as I need to get a digital camera, but I've left it a bit late to do any web shopping, so I'm just going to head on down to the shops tomorrow and get ripped off
and yeah it would be nice to have it to get some help identifying bits.
I'll see if I can't locate the book suggested in e-book form, ask around my friends and see if any of them has had it if I HAVE to part with some cash to get it, I'll be most dissapointed, 'cos I really wanted to do this for as cheap as possible, (found the 8th edition online at http://cma.zdnet.com/book/upgraderepair/index.htm for anyone that's interested, considering the age of the hardware involved this will more than likely be sufficient at least in the short term) by buying old knackered things off of e-bay and doing them up. hell, if I do it right I may even make a profit (but I'm in it for the fun so I'm not too bothered) needed sleep last night so I forgot to try out the cmos thing, but I'm on slow turnaround today so I'll definately try it later
I might be a bit dissapointed if that's all it is (it's another socket 7 board, details will follow), I'm kinda itching to get some use out of this soldering iron thats been kicking around unused since I was a kid and all I used it for then was burning things. It might be nice to create something for a change
thanks for the responses, keep 'em coming and please find me some good sites to start learning from if you can
have fun
dave
right onto the list of hardware:-motherboard1 (the one that's not working)
socket 7
T15vg +-1.00 [then its got another 1.00 written inside a box(thats what's written between the isa slots I think) ]
it has 3 black (that's DIMM right?) ram slots and 2 white (SIMM?)
5 x pci, 2 x isa and 1 x agp slots,
2 x usb ports
2 x com ports
1 x printer port
the bios is award pci/pnp 586 dated 1998
the switches appear to allow a clock speed of up to and including 100 * 5.5
Motherboard 2 [this one works :o) ]
socket 7
T15vgf-1.00 (stated on booting:t15vgf-e2-0730, but come to think of it, the 1 could be an I, I'll have to double check, then edit this post accordingly)
it has 3 black (that's DIMM right?)
5 x pci and 1 x agp slots,
2 x usb ports
2 x com ports
1 x printer port
the bios is award pci/pnp 586 dated 1998
the switches appear to allow a clock speed of up to and including 100 * 5.5
the vga graphics card that that I tried to get working on motherboard 2 is a Trident 3d Image 9750, I'm pretty sure its working as the onscreen test came up telling me to get it set up in the control panel, but when I tried, things went pear shaped
B CEE01
9842/42T RH1
Fastware
AG11og
any hint as to what these are and mean would be appreciated, but as the card appears to be working, i'd be reluctant to take it apart at the moment
it looks like it was born in 1997
there are a couple more display adapters kicking around, one fairly well known is the Diamond stealth II g460 from 1998 my notes say vmi port a port b, any ideas what these are? (I think that's the one that I'm using on the working board ar the moment, but I'll have to confirm that)
and there's this one, that nobody has even heard of, perhaps I'm looking at the wrong marking, but I don't think so it' a CADACES CLVO - 1
other markings
94V - 0
9704
here's an old one for ya, there's an isa card, looks like it does joystick and souncard in one, by creatvelabs, model ct2800 made in 1995, I would like to see if it still works.
the cd drive that's confirmed working(ish) is a cdr - 7730
the fdd that's working is a mitsumi d359m3
hard drives (I'll save the best one till last)
Working seagate st320014a [20gb, I had suse linux kicking around on what would be drive f by windows nomenclature installed on an entirely different machine, I thought it was kerputt, but accidentally plugged it in much later on to discover i was wrong
Quantum pro drive, ELS COMPAQ (yeah, I thought quantum pro was the company, but all this appears on the hdd) and its a whole 120mb!, perhaps thats why i couldnt get win98 onto it hahahaha, any suggestions of an operating system that might be some fun in just that amount of space?)
heres one thats bugging me, a seagate st31276a 1280mb, I tried to format it in dos, and got insufficient memory message, I tried using f disc to format, it appeared to work, set a new primary partition, and blow me all the old windows files were still there! then I tried a low level format through the bios, little did I know how long that was going to take, 3 days! and the stuff was still there! then I got a program to run ofrom a couple of floppies from seagate, a low level format utility specifically for the drive mentioned, it took ages, and I still cant put windos on the damn thing! I'd be quite happy to take this thing apart now as it appears to be utterl useless, apart from the usual paperweight suggestions is there any good stuff in these that I might make use of?
oh, lets not forget the processors, there's an amd k6 2/300 and an amd k6 2/400 (so I guess I wasn't overclocking just yet afterall)
think I'll buy my digital camera in athens when I get there, so the instructions will be in greek, what else is new?
have fun
dave
Anyhoo while I'm writing this the thought occured, and it may be dumb, but that's why i'm here, to ask people dumb questions and get berrated for my lack of knowledge, eventually, hopefully learning new things on the way and coming to a new more advanced understanding of how computers work.
Now on the topic of the switches that I moved to change the thing from a 300 to 400 mhz machine, the limit on that is 550 mhz (dip switches?). As far as I can work out, the "speed" of a machine isn't how fast the electricity flows (that remains constant at roughly the speed of light yeah?), but it's a frequency, of fluctuation? So inside all comp's are AC then I suppose of varying frequencies depending on how the current is manipulated with various resistors, transistors etc?
So I've come to some decisions about my first mod, and some ideas bout further mod's are starting to form, but i think they need development, so I'll write a little about it and you can let me know your thoughts on the idea...
1. I should get some cooling in order, I think this is a priority job, because if I don't get it right it's going to burn the board, I'm going to push it to 550 mhz as soon as possible, but I would appreciate any ideas on cooling, has anyone got any good sites on the subject to point me to, anyone done something similar themselves?
2. If I can replace those little black boxes with something to make the frequency a little higher than it was designed for, that might be fun, perhaps someone knows a thing or two about them and could help me out on this one, do those switches direct the current to other places on the board? or are is the frequency changed internally? In either case, how is it changed?
3. Does anyone know what the fastest available socket 7 processor ever produced was? I think I should get one just to be on the safe side, and it should cost peanuts these days.
OHHH, NEW THOUGHT..... now when I turned on my computer, the statrup screen seemed to know the new speed of the processor, how does it know that? Is there something internal that measures and then reports the speed to something else so it can write it on the screen? I know that was a bit of a vague discription, but something "knows" the new frequency, does anyone know how this happens? Presumably I need to know how this info is gathered and displayed if I want to make any changes and push the thing further than the board allows, I'll look into it anyway, and I might take the switches off of the board that doesn't work to see what's goin on inside them.
Hi there,
I am new here.I am a A+ Certified technician.When I get past my trail period here.I am going to post links to my to my large list of desktop laptop service manuals..I am going to share this link with the members of this forum..stay tuned..Also I have found in the past its just easier to replace a troubled motherboard..just my opinion..
Tuffy
Master tech
Web Dev-In training