PC Archeology: Let's explore the Samsung S5200 and attempt a repair on the gas plasma screen

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PC Archeology: Let's explore the Samsung S5200 and attempt a repair on the gas plasma screen

Рет қаралды 193,146

Күн бұрын

In the first video on the Samsung S5200 I had to do some repairs on the power supply to get the computer running. In this part, it's time to put the computer through its paces, see how fast it is and see what is on the original hard drive. (If anything) Then I want to tear apart the screen to see if there is any possibility of repairing that screen.
Part 1: • Does this dead "laptop...
Part 2: This part!
0:00 Intro
1:57 Computer disassembly
12:19 Testing the original 31mb SCSI drive
19:49 Running diagnostics and software
52:09 Screen disassembly and repair attempt
1:09:22 Running software on the original screen
-- Links
Joe's Computer Museum:
jcm-1.com/prod...
/ @joescomputermuseum
BlueSCSI:
bluescsi.com/
Samsung S5200 Assets on Archive.org:
archive.org/de...
Adrian's Digital Basement Merch store:
my-store-c82bd...
Adrian's Digital Basement ][ (Second Channel)
/ @adriansdigitalbasement2
Support the channel on Patreon:
/ adriansdigitalbasement
-- Tools
Deoxit D5:
amzn.to/2VvOKy1
store.caig.com/...
O-Ring Pick Set: (I use these to lift chips off boards)
amzn.to/3a9x54J
Elenco Electronics LP-560 Logic Probe:
amzn.to/2VrT5lW
Hakko FR301 Desoldering Iron:
amzn.to/2ye6xC0
Rigol DS1054Z Four Channel Oscilloscope:
www.rigolna.co...
Head Worn Magnifying Goggles / Dual Lens Flip-In Head Magnifier:
amzn.to/3adRbuy
TL866II Plus Chip Tester and EPROM programmer: (The MiniPro)
amzn.to/2wG4tlP
www.aliexpress...
TS100 Soldering Iron:
amzn.to/2K36dJ5
www.ebay.com/i...
EEVBlog 121GW Multimeter:
www.eevblog.co...
DSLogic Basic Logic Analyzer:
amzn.to/2RDSDQw
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Magnetic Screw Holder:
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www.harborfrei...
Universal ZIP sockets: (clones, used on my ZIF-64 test machine)
www.ebay.com/i...
RetroTink 2X Upconverter: (to hook up something like a C64 to HDMI)
www.retrotink.com/
Plato (Clone) Side Cutters: (order five)
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Heat Sinks:
www.aliexpress...
Little squeezy bottles: (available elsewhere too)
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--- Links
My GitHub repository:
github.com/mis...
Commodore Computer Club / Vancouver, WA - Portland, OR - PDX Commodore Users Group
www.commodorec...
--- Instructional videos
My video on damage-free chip removal:
• How to remove chips wi...
--- Music
Intro music and other tracks by:
Nathan Divino
@itsnathandivino

Пікірлер: 696

@johnpetruna8888 6 ай бұрын

In a video about a grey computer with an orange display, you wore a grey flannel that features orange stripes, and I applaud you. Nice.

@JMPDev 6 ай бұрын

Haha, I did not notice this. That’s awesome

@MatthewHill 6 ай бұрын

Might have more to do with the ice storm!

@mkonji8522 6 ай бұрын

I have another gas plasma system from compaq (portable 386) but I managed to fix the lines by carefully taking my hot air soldering station for short bursts in the targeted area. 2 lines poped back up after about 2 years but repeating that method fixed it again for me. Super scary doing that but I had a secondary system I was using for parts that had a good display so I figured what could I lose if I killed it. This samsung is super cool though.

@rillloudmother 6 ай бұрын

i feel like hot air might be worth trying on adrian's gas plasma..?

@D-K-C 6 ай бұрын

good

@clavius5734 6 ай бұрын

What temperature were you using?

@MothKeeper 6 ай бұрын

3 Billion Kelvin.

@fisqual 6 ай бұрын

I volunteered at a recycler 20 years ago and the amount of this stuff we threw out as useless hurts my soul to this day. You're such a good steward to this old tech. Thanks for doing what you do and especially thanks for sharing it with us!

@pelculator 6 ай бұрын

I curse myself and my parents everyday for the stuff we threw out over the years…

@KAPTKipper 6 ай бұрын

I worked for a School district in the late 90's the amount of old Commodore PETs we had tossed in to landfills seems criminal now.

@JamesHalfHorse 6 ай бұрын

Same. The stuff we just threw in bins to be melted down ugh.

@NuntiusLegis 6 ай бұрын

And actually I never threw away a working or only slightly damaged computer, still have my C64 and my 486.

@kelvinstokes996 6 ай бұрын

I don't. I simply didn't have the space to hold onto things, with the anticipation of 20-30 years. I'm glad I got rid of things and didn't have to hold onto the clutter!@@pelculator

@olivierdebonne5173 6 ай бұрын

35:16 Hey Adrian, when you connected the SCSI hard disk to your bench PC and noticed that it was ‘almost’ empty you could see only 3 MB of free disk space instead of 30-ish MB. I assume the ‘dir /a’ command would have revealed the DoubleSpace container, which is more than likely a large hidden file. At least, that is how Stacker worked, and most likely DoubleSpace too. DoubleSpace was later renamed to DriveSpace as the result of a Stac Electronics lawsuit, that was in DOS 6.22.

@GeomancerHT 6 ай бұрын

I remember doublespace killing my DOS drive in the late 90's (we were poor so our computer was old), I had the first digital pictures of my sister in a school play, my mother would never forgive me about the incident.

@jameshughes258 6 ай бұрын

This is my thoughts exactly. Doublespace worked by creating a file and then 'zipping' everything within it. The doublespace driver would need to be loaded for you to see the 'drive' contents within the file. When you boot from the drive - it's loading it and then the drive is visible.

@nickwallette6201 6 ай бұрын

Scrolled down looking for this comment. ^ Adrian, this is your first stop. 3MB free on a 31MB partition with nothing but command com? I don't think so. :-)

@JORGETECHJorge 6 ай бұрын

That Xilinx chip is actually an FPGA, not a CPLD, and it's actually the first one the company ever made!

@rarbiart 6 ай бұрын

1:02:40 this type of ribbons can be reglued. at work we had to do this to some embedded LCDs 2 decades ago due to EOLed parts. but it's a process which needs a lot of chemicals (desolving old glue, cleaning, new glue) and mechanical tooling (screwing jigs with silicone covered clamps). and even longivity of the repair is more like 90% over the next 2 years. (and please DO NOT try any of those hacks like "brushing with silicone sock over soldering tip to reheat existing glue". it will not last and deform the flexboard in a way that prevents any future repair)

@forbiddenera 6 ай бұрын

Yeah I think strange parts? Has a video on repairing LCDs or oleds or something in a factory, like in a way most would have thought impossible!

@davidkane4300 6 ай бұрын

The military still uses gas plasma displays in very old mission critical systems, so there must be a supplier still making them. Not saying they'll be compatible with this, but the tooling and parts should still exist.

@rarbiart 6 ай бұрын

@@davidkane4300 those gas plasma displays of fire solution and fuse timer computer in the gunners hatch in german gepard tanks still seem to work without stripe issues, at least in the videos which we see coming from Ukraine.

@davidkane4300 6 ай бұрын

@@rarbiart exactly... I saw these displays used in very old NATO communication systems (teletype?) That are used 24/7. I doubt they are 35+ year old parts since Adrian mentioned they will become unreadable with heavy use. A company must be making replacements. They may not be cheap enough for an individual like Adrian to purchase, but military equipment is often auctioned when it becomes surplus, and that is affordable... Sometimes brand new (or low hours) equipment is auctioned.

@dominikschutz6300 6 ай бұрын

I thought fiddling with a heat gun could improve the picture, but the process with the regluing sounds more appropriate. Maybe an instruction could help Adrian out :)

@mattdavala3790 6 ай бұрын

I was watching another video and I fell asleep. I then woke to you doing a continuity test and I thought my fire alarm was going off. I leaped out of bed only to realize it was you and not my house burning.

@JMPDev 6 ай бұрын

Better a false alarm there than the opposite 😅

@bouuigigw 6 ай бұрын

Love the shout outs to 8 bit guy, LGR, and Tech Tangents.. This is truly a great community to be part of. :)

@somethinggeeky 6 ай бұрын

That plasma display archeology was actually super interesting. Don't feel bad if you replace it with a modern display. A usable busy not authentic computer is better than e-waste 100% of the time.

@JMPDev 6 ай бұрын

I totally respect his feelings there though, he’s made it clear from the beginning that his main draw of this machine was that unique display, so replacing it would defeat the point for him.

@BilisNegra 6 ай бұрын

Well, the computer is usable with an external screen so it would not have to necessarily go to e-waste.

@RocketRenton 6 ай бұрын

Mitsumi are still going strong, after all these years, the OG maker of the NES, SNES, and Duke Controllers, also Vic 20, Amiga keyboards, and many other OEM products.

@anthonyblacker8471 6 ай бұрын

Wow that thing a SERIOUS blast from the past.. Laplink, I remember using that to copy from computer to computer back in the 90s.. man.. what memories!!

@ferrellsl 6 ай бұрын

Yeah, between the years of the sneaker net and LANs, that's all we had. The version I had on hand had the ability to transfer files via the COM: or LPT: ports. It was great for moving large amounts of data that simply wouldn't fit on floppies or for people who didn't want to sit for hours feeding floppies from one PC to another.

@MarianoLu 6 ай бұрын

100% laplink, pw (professional write) disk doubler and windows 3.1 a big blast from the past.

@macgeek21 6 ай бұрын

a tech radio show i listen to had a caller a few years ago trying to get laplink working to transfer files to a new i think windows 8 machine. i had hysterical laughter as the host explained why thats not possible anymore. macs had a similar feature called target disk mode which apple abandoned when it switched to intel.

@TonyHamlyn 6 ай бұрын

I still have a laplink cable, db9+db25 connector both ends (null modem cable essentially).

@anthonyblacker8471 6 ай бұрын

You're absolutely correct, as soon as you found the drivespace (or doublespace) on the HDD, I knew you were missing the container file by not booting that drive directly!! At least you found it!!!

@macgeek21 6 ай бұрын

i used to run into this issue all the time with old(new at the time) computers. weird how they did that? i can't see that it saved any space and it would just confuse people saying where did my files go.

@coronelkittycannon 5 ай бұрын

That Raspberry Pico probably has more computing power than the entire laptop, funny how tech evolves.

@michaelallen1432 6 ай бұрын

Doing a quick search, I found 3M 7303. That might be what is needed. It's a thermally curing anisotropic conducting tape. (This is why reheating the adhesive does not work. It cures with heat and won't "reflow") To bond it you need around 18 bars of pressure at 140C (around 260psi, so a hypothetical 1"x0.25" connection might require it to be clamped with about 60-70 lbs of force) The temp can apparently be 150 or 160. It's not super critical that it be exact, just got enough it seems. To do it your going to need to build a device to apply the heat and pressure and find something to practice on. Im thinking of some sort of copper block with a geater element like used in a 3d printer and a thermocouple, with a silicone pad so you dont have metal on glass. You'd need to make a mechanism to clamp it with appropriate force. Some sort of pliers maybe with one jaw being the heater and both jaws on pivots lined with silicone pads so they will sit flat. Then maybe a spring between the handles eoth a screw to tighten. Then calculate the force on the jaws from the dimensions of the pliers and the smount the spring stretches.

@rarbiart 6 ай бұрын

21:00 silicone mats and cutting boards do a wonderful job of preventing shorts during partial assembled testing. (cardboard and hard plastic seems constantly moving all over the place, which can become risky sometimes.)

@kaiyoshi2243 6 ай бұрын

Remember that DOS 6.22 can only see hard drive partitions up to 2.1gb. So that 4gb SD card won't work unless you partition it into two drives. Unless of course the computer has further limitations. 528mb is another limitation for some systems. So there's another size you can try. Love your videos, always look forward to the next video.

@migsvensurfing6310 5 ай бұрын

To complete your info DOS3.3 32MB

@andykillsu 6 ай бұрын

I would still love to see you try to repair the plasma display. It already has vertical lines, so if you end up breaking it more, it doesn’t really matter.

@nicholas4839 6 ай бұрын

Me too can't make it worse

@Pulverrostmannen 6 ай бұрын

I would not have given up that easy either, I would at least try to reheat and press the ribbon against the screen anyway

@Aeduo 6 ай бұрын

@@Pulverrostmannen Probably just waiting to get a feel for whether people would be upset about trying and ruining the monitor more or not. I'd say try, personally. it's likely just going to get worse if just left to be otherwise, and even if it's short term, just showing it off working as intended would be some interesting documentation.

@Pulverrostmannen 6 ай бұрын

@@Aeduo yeah I suppose. It is the same issue with the original Gameboy too and to re-heat an even very bad screen have a pretty high probability to be recovered. Probably about 80%. But the possible corrosion can be a problem but if the contact surface would be completely gone it would not flash rows of pixels by itself. Some are really close to work

@der.Schtefan 6 ай бұрын

To be honest, this was a much more interesting dive into this machine than I had anticipated.

@j__r0d 6 ай бұрын

Nice to see a shoutout for Joe's Computer Museum. I recently had an order from him that had an issue, and he was super responsive and even sent me a free sticker! 8-bits are all you need!

@rbtgmnstcs 6 ай бұрын

IPA will dissolve many adhesives and make the removal sooo much easier. Once the IPA has dried, the adhesive use to be fully functional again.

@andrewlittleboy8532 6 ай бұрын

Double Space came with Dos 6.20 but then was changed to DriveSpace for 6.22 for licensing reasons I believe.

@michaelhall4626 6 ай бұрын

DoubleSpace actually came out with MS-DOS 6.0. Then after the release of MS-DOS 6.2, Microsoft was sued by Stac Electronics, who made the Stacker disk compression software, for patent infringement. So they brought out MS-DOS 6.21, which removed DoubleSpace, then introduced DriveSpace in MS-DOS 6.22.

@miss_lisa 6 ай бұрын

For that hard drive, the early Norton Utilities included an unformat utility that searched the drive for the partition table mirror and directory entries and used that to attempt to recover from a format. It didn't always work, but the kind of files you are looking for would generally not be fragmented, that would make them more likely to be recoverable with that utility.

@jwhite5008 6 ай бұрын

if unformat didn't work - probably only r-studio or similar sector-search recovery software may help. there is a free clone called r-linux which is not very advanced but might be enough for a simple task.

@user-pk8im2ix8g 6 ай бұрын

8 was going to recommend the Norton utility before Peter sold out and was the goat. I couldn't recommend Norton utilities now as it grabs hold so thoroughly that you can never totally get rid of it.

@JamieStuff 6 ай бұрын

My exposure to a gas plasma display "laptop" was in the mid-'80s in the Army; I got to play with a GRiD Compass. It was XT-class, with nonvolatile bubble memory.

@macgeek21 6 ай бұрын

exposure? i hope you wore gloves ;) ive never seen or used a plasma display. i can't remember although i can't remember using any in big box stores as a kid.

@macgeek21 6 ай бұрын

the big tv purchase we made when i was in elementary school(4th or 5th grade) was a 20'' tv. it was huge and took up almost the whole wall. it was a mitsubishi that cost over $1000.

@TonyHamlyn 6 ай бұрын

We had Grid laptops in the Australian telco I used to work at for field equipment commissioning because we had a few ex-us military guys working for us who said it was bullet proof lol. They were heavy and way overpriced, most had monochrome screens (not sure it was plasma) except the senior managers who forked out the big bux for a colour one. This was about 1994-1997.

@jeremychrzan 6 ай бұрын

Oh the lives that these computers (and their users) must have had. Thanks for the deep dive exploring this old machine.

@JerryEricsson 2 ай бұрын

I remember reading the Computer Shopper, which was a HUGE magazine you could buy of nothing but computer adds, and drooling over machines like this. At long last I saved a few pennies and bought a crapola 386SX25 and VGA monitor, it came via truck shipping, I used it till I found a good 486, at the time Workers comp sent me to college after a crash sent me to rehab as I could no longer be a cop, a girl in college bought my 386 with the slowest Windows 95 installed on it, 95 ran great on my 486

@Fir3Chi3f 6 ай бұрын

It's always so satisfying to hear more of this lost software has been backed up on Internet Archive!

@BloodBlight 6 ай бұрын

Gotta pay attention to that free space counter. ;) I instantly thought it was odd you only had like 3MBs free. But for drives that aren't Double Spaced... :) There was an old Norton program that would rebuild the FAT from scratch. I think it was just called "unformat" and would scan the whole disk for files, it worked really well. You can zero a small IDE flash card, then DD the old disk image image onto the blanked card and run the tool tool on that. For a modern option (and more aggressive), on a Linux system install a package called "testdisk" and try the application called "photorec". It won't recover directory structures or file names, but it's free and works!

@melkiorwiseman5234 6 ай бұрын

There was an old program intended for emergency data recovery on floppy disks (and I think it even would only work on the A and B drives in order to prevent it from being used on a HDD). It was named OHMYGAWD and it would simply find out how many root directory entries could exist then fill the entire root directory with equally sized files containing the entire contents of the data space on the disk, replacing any file names already in the root directory. The program was an emergency last resort. If you lost something and undelete could not recover it, you could use the program and then explore the files it created in order to try to find what you had lost. Fairly obviously, it wasn't really intended for the recovery of programs, but data, and generally of textual data.

@KG4JYS 6 ай бұрын

I worked in a computer shop in the 1990's and we used laplink 3 to build every computer. We would install the hardware, and use LL3 to copy over the operating system from a "server" over the parallel port since that was far faster (vs serial). It was still pretty slow, but once you started the transfer, it was completely hands-off so you could disconnect the KB/Video and move on to the next machine. One of the other nice things about using laplink is that it didn't matter what kind of other hardware the machine had. Every machine at that time had a parallel port, so it worked 100% of the time regardless of the generation or configuration of the machine.

@stephenoliveau 6 ай бұрын

Adrian: Put pressure on 200v to test?! no thanks! Also Andrian: I'm doing the thing. 😂

@JMPDev 6 ай бұрын

I’m so glad he was able to talk himself into doing it 😂 while remaining safe of course.

@macgeek21 6 ай бұрын

the first thing or the second thing?

@RetroNora7734 6 ай бұрын

1:10:30 I also got such laptop that got pretty no info about it online -STM5500. And recapping the PCB on the back of plasma screen helped with poor brightness and contrast.

@JMPDev 5 ай бұрын

Forget if you mention it in this or the previous video, but found out today that the same exact screen is also used in the Toshiba T3200SX. A friend of mine owns one and luckily the screen is working perfectly on his. He had bought two, one with a cracked screen and one that wouldn’t boot, and combined them for one fully functional unit.

@user-hb8sq6ce9u 4 ай бұрын

And very similar Panasonic plasma screen was in Compaq Portable 386. More info if you seach 'The Chronicles of Gas-Plasma'

@FariSamSoli 6 ай бұрын

Few yeas ago I got a bag of NOS Tantalum, half of them were shorted in spite of never been used

@alanbarker2279 6 ай бұрын

16:19 Love that you describe LGR as a CLITN - he really is... 🤣

@rommix0 6 ай бұрын

Greetings folks. Bull Clitn, the president of LGR here...

@nneeerrrd 6 ай бұрын

Ikr 😂 He's also known as CLINT when LI forms U

@mwk1 6 ай бұрын

@@nneeerrrd not cool

@Cherijo78 6 ай бұрын

Given all of the problems with plasma displays and the way they are essentially a non-starter these days, I would be interested personally in seeing an LCD panel replacement. 3D printed mounts are not difficult to do, there's a ton of space in that machine, and it seems worth it to me. You could get EGA color graphics on it, and it would make the machine actually usable. I think it would be a fun hack to watch you do, and it would save the machine in a usable state. The original plasma display could be set aside without being thrown away if someone with skills wanted to take a crack at fixing it later, but I really don't think it's even worth saving at this point. These displays were far too finicky, and it's why they didn't last long in production. I think replacing this machine's display with an LCD panel would be in line with what you've done previously with the TV set, and it could help everyone with these older machines further our understanding of how to do it. It beats having broken machines sitting around IMHO. No, it's not ideal, but plasma displays aren't coming back.

@mikafoxx2717 6 ай бұрын

Plasma displays were expensive and way too power hungry. So for laptops with batteries it didn't make sense, and for desktops, crt's were better and cheaper.. plasma TV's stuck around until 2013 or so. I'm watching this video on a 1080p pioneer plasma. For TV's it was weight and expense that made them fall out of favor. They were the OLED of the time. My TV would have cost 8k in 2008..

@IntegerOfDoom 6 ай бұрын

Plasma displays were really nice. Unfortunately the half second of latency made them useless for everything.@@mikafoxx2717

@chickenfizz 6 ай бұрын

@@mikafoxx2717 I'm guessing you have a Kuro? I have one too and I absolutely love it.

@mikafoxx2717 6 ай бұрын

@@chickenfizz Yep, the big 60" it's a great TV, built very well. If it ever has a problem, it's probably even fixable with new power supply caps.

@jagdtigger 6 ай бұрын

12:31 I am very much of a fan of the idea of the debian logo on that cpu fan...... :D

@Stormer47 6 ай бұрын

I almost wept when I saw you run hdir. As a kid, I found this tool back in 1987. By 1988 I had written my own version in C called "domdir".

@SebMcC2007 6 ай бұрын

I always use either test disk/photorec when it comes to restoring data. It also work on images, made with DD, I think. My old T3200 I referenced to in the comment in your previous video also used doublespace. I case you haven't been able to restore the doublespace thing, I remember helping a friend of mine, back in late 90's who had a virus on machine. Apparently the virus had deleted his doublespace image. An undelete (from MS-DOS 6.20) undeleted the missing files and the pc worked back like a charm. I did remove the virus with some antivirus from McAfee for DOS. Which was kindly provided by my IT teacher. Love these videos, keep it up!

@YarisTex 6 ай бұрын

The EGA modes added to Planet X3 were done by Benedikt Freisen, not David. Of course all done with David’s blessing

@carlg5838 6 ай бұрын

Those two circular glass projections on the back of the display that you wondered about might be cavities for getters inside the glass envelope. These would contain compounds such as barium which 'clean up' the impurities remaining inside vacuum tubes of all kinds. Otherwise, the impurities would quickly poison the display gas. When a getter cannot be integrated into a single path high voltage electrode (such as on a neon sign), a common mass production strategy would be to inductively heat the metallic getter substrate from outside the tube, until the getter is red hot (so it can't be too close to other parts inside that might be damaged by its short but intense heat). This chemically activates the getter. But it needs to be done at the factory somehow, after the tube is sealed.

@jandjrandr 6 ай бұрын

I remember DoubleSpace back in the day which they did rename DriveSpace later on. It most definitely only has some key boot files uncompressed in the root of the filesystem to facilitate initial booting of the system required for the doublespace loader to open the compressed part of the drive. Some files are still left uncompressed within the compressed volume if they didn't compress well which is probably why you could see some of them even within the compressed volume. This info can be found on Wikipedia as well. What I especially remember was that it was notoriously buggy and often caused data corruption that could cause you to lose all of your data, so you are fortunate to have imaged that drive and booted successfully.

@jwhite5008 6 ай бұрын

Not as much buggy as not enough resistant to corruption during crashes or unexpected reboots. If you reboot while a file is being written that file might be corrupted and/or lost. But if the filesystem is compressed, the compression metadata may become inconsistent and then anything can happen. There is chkdsk for FAT corruption, but no similar utility to fixup the compressed container.

@jandjrandr 6 ай бұрын

@@jwhite5008 yes, it often happened when playing games or using software if you experienced a hard lock when the disk was being written to the only recourse was to reboot the computer. Usually it was fine, but occasionally it would corrupt the file system and due to the fact that so many files are compressed together it would affect more than the files you were working on (corrupting metadata), sometimes with devastating effects.

@matt1834 6 ай бұрын

When you were checking the hdd, i was going to come into the comments and say you should have typed "dir," or "dir /a"! Happy to see it all working (kind of) now! Good work :)

@JMPDev 6 ай бұрын

Thank you for doing a followup episode! Was a treat getting to see that panel and so awesome that otherwise you got everything working. I hope some viewer might reach out that has some experience re-adhering fiddly screens like this, or has an extra screen they might donate. It would be awesome to see this fully restored without the screen defects. What a cool machine, thank you again 🧡

@oliverer3 6 ай бұрын

Apparently I started watching this video and fell asleep, so I guess I'll encourage the ol' algorithm with doubling my watch time!

@michaelmiller641 6 ай бұрын

Wow! That was a marathon repair, very interesting ! Thanks!

@GermanAracil 6 ай бұрын

I always save a backup of EPROMs (from video card, BIOS) before all. It’s very important and can be very difficult to find. Nice video. Thanks a lot.

@mikafoxx2717 6 ай бұрын

Plasma screens were only discontinued in 2013, mostly due to being expensive as heck. When OLED became good, it was the direct replacement. Huge glass screens in 1080p with millions of tiny vfd cells.. pricey! I'm watching you on a 2008 pioneer kuro plasma right now. It died in computers early because of the energy for portable laptops, and the price for desktop when color crt were cheaper.

@grumpyoldwizard 6 ай бұрын

That music really sets the mood. Great tune!

@roysigurdkarlsbakk3842 6 ай бұрын

SCSI was way faster than the alternatives in the eightees and way into the ninetees as well - that's a good reason for using it, even without an external connector.

@ncc74656m 6 ай бұрын

The PC version of Revenge of DOH is one of my favorite game theme songs of all time. It's a strong association with my dad because he was always playing it when I was little.

@cameramaker 6 ай бұрын

The glue on the outside is rather serving as a strain relief - to avoid excessive bending / sharp edges of the flex-to-glass joint. The glass-flex connection is made by "soldering" at specific temperatures - you can google "chip on flex" parts for LCD panels, its very similar technology.

@Helltormentor 6 ай бұрын

What a joy, after sauna I found out there's a new video. Gonna drink some beer and watch. Cheers from Finland!

@JMPDev 6 ай бұрын

Lived in Finland for two years and definitely miss the Sauna lifestyle, we even had one at work! Terveisiä Suomeen!

@eayuwna 6 ай бұрын

Congratulations? Very nice repair vid too as usual.

@michaelkaliski7651 6 ай бұрын

I had one of these and the display was fantastic compared to LCDs of the time. The ability to change the palette for the best contrast with various programs was pretty much essential. With a maths coprocessor chip fitted, these portable machines were the equal of pretty much any desktop of the time. The plasma display could get pretty toasty at high brightness and contrast settings and there were warnings in the manual to keep things dialled back to avoid display problems. Obviously when these computers were used in a commercial environment where the users weren’t footing the bill, the display and contrast sliders were always pushed all the way to the right. The software loaded and legacy versions of DOS pretty much prove this was used in an office and not treated with a great deal of consideration.

@MrDuncl 6 ай бұрын

Mousetrails had to be added to Windows to make it usable on LCDs. Otherwise you would lose the cursor as soon as you moved the mouse.

@janchristensen9858 6 ай бұрын

Hi Adrian. Try to change those axial capisator on the back of the plasma screen. They look very toasty and then you get more brightnes again ☺️

@davidkane4300 6 ай бұрын

200+ volts can definitely be dangerous, whether DC or AC. I was an electrician and was shocked by up to thousands of volts, both AC and DC. Most was an emergency electronic fluorescent ballast trying to start my fingers in lieu of a lamp with thousands of volts (very low amperage), which hurt a little. Regular circuits was a 277V AC circuit when changing out a switch while hot (no longer allowed), which caused my arms to extend and throw the tools in my hands. For DC, I was in a server room, and it's widely known that less than 50V is not dangerous, but I beg to differ as I was twisting a hot 48V DC wire to put a wire nut on, and I must have been grounded somewhere... It didn't "shock" me like an AC circuit (or the tingling sensation like a 9V battery to the tongue), instead it made my finger get really hot like a soldering iron, burning through the first few layers of skin. Lastly, I've been shocked by a couple different types of capacitors, notably one in a disposable camera for the flash (caused me to throw it), and one in a CFL that held a residual charge (it was the most painful of all as I now have a titanium pin in my arm, which seemed to concentrate everything right there to cause some of the worst pain I've ever experienced... Then, like an idiot, I did it again lol). So yeah, I'd lean towards being safe than sorry. Oh, and it wasn't me, but my supervisor was decommissioning a large battery bank that fed multiple UPS units in different buildings. Never assume someone else properly disconnected something and then try to cut through with ratcheting cable cutters... Once the short was made, there was nothing that could be done until it burned through enough to open the short. I feel for firefighters who inadvertently cut a high voltage DC line in electric cars... It's bad news.

@PaulinesPastimes 6 ай бұрын

Masterful fault finding as always. It's just crying out for an LCD screen conversion, isn't it? Plenty of room in there. 😊

@seancurtin6103 6 ай бұрын

I've got a cheap 10" TV from Amazon with its own battery and HDMI/VGA/Composite inputs that would fit in there without even taking the case off! 😅

@ad5mq 6 ай бұрын

Commonest cause of failure is temperature, the voltage withstand decreases with higher temp. 16v cap on a 12v rail has very low tolerance for heat, and being closed in a warm/hot environment causes the aging rate to increase very rapidly, eventually the dielectric fails and the cap shorts, in the worst case this can cause it to draw enough current (and generate enough internal heat) to explode.

@Solidst8dad2112 6 ай бұрын

This is very true. When i was in EE school in the early 90s we were taught to go with a 3x margin of voltage on caps(35v for a 12v rail, 16v for 5v rails) (this was prior to 105C caps being easily available. The biggest challenge was cost and size increase for the higher voltage rating.

@Retroguyuk75 6 ай бұрын

Very interesting to see more about SCSI drives. I've only ever used IDE.

@jwhite5008 6 ай бұрын

I'm especially interested in the question - how can it boot dos which shouldn't support them natively?

@crgd23 6 ай бұрын

@@jwhite5008SCSI adapters with a BIOS, like this one, are natively supported in DOS.

@anthonyblacker8471 6 ай бұрын

Interesting you think (and you may well be correct) that HEAT was the devil to those connectors up top as heat has been know to rise and considering the lower lines seem to still be perfect, then you're probably correct. Funny because as you were looking at it taken apart, I was thinking maybe applying some direct heat right where those connections are, even being under the glass, that maybe some heat right on the bad areas would re-connect or almost reapply the connection to the glass.. Oh well, this was a very cool find of yours, I'm glad you took it down as far as you did and showed us... very neat, and I'm SURE the 500 something dollar replacement "replacement" screens are JUST AS BAD. Shame, glass plasma displays are actually VERY gorgeous. An ex gf of mine and I purchased a television from Sears many many years ago, it was a plasma screen, and it looked a million times better than the old LCD screen from back in the day (early 2000's).. it was a gorgeous screen, very expensive original price but still, a beautiful home theater screen for its time!!

@GDLarcade 6 ай бұрын

That was a fun series, thanks! I enjoy seeing you do your detective work on these old PCs. A lot of pinball machines in the early 90s like Addams Family had a gas plasma display in the backglass for showing the scores and animations. I'm sure they weren't exactly the same tech as what was in that laptop, but similar. Problems with the pinball ones over time were burn in and "outgassing" which is just what it sounds like. Fortunately you can buy an amber or full color LED replacement panel these days, but it isn't cheap.

@keithbeard7133 6 ай бұрын

Thanks for a most adventurous journey Adrian, I look forward to the next one.

@slightlyevolved 6 ай бұрын

About the floppy drive. Citizen did make electronics, so it possible that it is a Citizen drive. Also, IIRC (and don't quote me on this AT ALL) , Citizen and Seiko have partnered together before, so it possible that it is an Epson (as they are a subsidiary of Seiko) drive, which were quite common.

@MrDuncl 6 ай бұрын

I was going to say that Citizen used to make printers, but a quick Google showed that they still make printers, mostly of the Point of Sale variety.

@webfischi 6 ай бұрын

Talking about large drives, I actually had issues updating an old TV, one of the first to even support USB Update, with a flash drive. The flash drive was 8GB USB 2.0, which weren't that uncommon around 2010, just expensive, and the TV recognized the update but was unable to install it. I called the manufacturer because of the issue and they said it should work, but they weren't sure either. Luckily I still had a 128MB stick flying around, update went through without any issues.

@FightingForceSoulless 6 ай бұрын

Well if you can't fix it, and a replacement costs 700 USD, you should iPad swap it. Just letting it be like this is kinda sad, but hey, I'm glad you figured it out with the double space, that was a cool moment!

@TheSimTetuChannel 6 ай бұрын

Very comprehensive teardown! I love it!

@clhessiv 6 ай бұрын

Since there appears to be a bonding issue, I would apply heat (heat gun) across the top then strategically clamp the panel. That might solve the issue

@Unfinished80 6 ай бұрын

That display is unlike anything I've seen before. Wow! Thanks for sharing!

@prsklenar 6 ай бұрын

Adrian, back in the 1980s I was a mainframe DBA and did most of my work on the various displays of the 32xx family. Including the 3290 Gas Plasma Displays. We had them running 24x7 and they didn't get warm. They got HOT! 🤣

@Wormetti 6 ай бұрын

Love your work, oh hey it's one of my submitted benchmarks at 43:18, didn't expect to see that!

@DorineOckimey Ай бұрын

Wow, it's really good. It's very attractive and the AD is very interesting

@todayonthebench 21 күн бұрын

Tantalum capacitors have an oxide layer internally. It provides a rather nice amount of capacitance for its area if polarized one way. Reverse the polarity and the oxide layer breaks down and forms a permanent dead short in the capacitor. As some people in the electronics community say, "Tantalum capacitors are strongly polarized." Unlike aluminium electrolytic capacitors that also don't like reverse polarity, but aluminum electrolytic caps just build up gas internally until they explode from the resulting pressure. I have seen ESD alone kill tantalum capacitors. Not to mention any negative spikes on the power bus during start up or shut down. (a couple hundred mV spike and its dead and will burn up when power is applied.) And that screen assembly is surely something interesting. I agree that it doesn't seem all that fixable. But interesting. Also, that doesn't look like a soldered interface, but rather a "Z tape" interface. Ie, just like a zebra strip, but 2 dimensional. A thin sheet that only conducts vertically through it. Really popular for bonding flat flex to glass, like we see here. Heating it won't help, and might in fact make it worse as the tape "curls up" from the heat and makes even worse connection. And yes, conformal coatings are fairly common for high voltage applications. Or if one wants to reduce the risk of tin whiskers, especially in lead free solder. Can also held ensure that conductive dust doesn't lead to problems. But for this screen I suspect the main reason is to ensure that sparks doesn't jump between the pins. At work I conformal coat quite a few boards for various applications. In my experience some brands of conformal coatings never really hardens fully, partly as a feature to not crack over time, but it sure can make boards get glued together if they rest on each other for a while.

@BenjaminSchollnick 6 ай бұрын

God, the "trace rot" reminds me of Laser Disc rot, where the bonding wasn't completely air tight, and overtime some oxygen got in a reacted to the laser disc metallic material.

@gusbert 6 ай бұрын

Tantalums are a massive problem even today. My company has banned their use in any future products due to their high failure rates! In my experience, even upping the voltage rating will not stop them from failing.

@sebastienproulx8704 6 ай бұрын

About the recovery of the old hard drive partition. I remembered there is an utility in the old version of Hiren boot CD or in the Ultimate Boot Cd. I don't remember the name but it will allow you to recover previous partitions and or recover file from that.

@sebastienproulx8704 6 ай бұрын

The utility is called Ranish partition manager. Hiren boot version 7 also have a copy of Norton Disk Editor 2002 that will allow you to manually recover files.

@LunchboxNobodies 6 ай бұрын

Very nice, Love Old Laptops 😊😊😊 Thanks for the post.

@NivagSwerdna 6 ай бұрын

@7:44 and the good news is they don't leak... the bad news is they tend to catch fire!

@SeeJayPlayGames 6 ай бұрын

especially if you issue the HCF instruction

@Lazyman1975 6 ай бұрын

I am subscribing. You are a true genius with these old machines.

@denispgakelly 6 ай бұрын

Amazing show as usual, Adrian. Thanks for sharing

@samshort365 3 ай бұрын

Hi Adrian. I enjoy your videos. I once owned a Toshiba 286 Laptop. It had a monochrome LCD and was build like a tank. Back in 2000 it adorned the front desk of my office, mainly because it looked cool, not because it was actively used. However, having said that I used Chiwriter 4 on it to very good effect. Eventually, the lines appeared on the screen, just like yours and the power supply started acting up. So it ended up in landfill along with most of my collection, much to my disappointment because I was running out of space. I regretted that decision and still do. If you can't find a plasma display I would urge you to give this PC a modern screen and bring it back to a useful stated. I understand that you have no particular feelings towards the laptop, but that's what I would do rather than keeping it in a perpetually "broken" state.

@dant5464 6 ай бұрын

Did you get engaged? Perhaps weird to notice, but hey, your hands are in shot all the time :)

@mackoftrack 6 ай бұрын

I too noticed and was curious 🧐

@wearwolf2500 6 ай бұрын

MS DOS 6.0 and 6.20 use DBLSPACE which was removed in 6.21 and replaced with DRVSPACE in 6.22 due to a copyright infringement lawsuit. I believe they use different algorithms, so it's possible that DOS 6.20 can read the drive fine but 6.22 can't.

@mikebarushok5361 6 ай бұрын

DOS 6.22 could read the DBLSPACE format and also would offer to convert to the DRVSPACE format.

@Serafino97 6 ай бұрын

The display flex cables remind me of Nintendo virtual boy lasers, they were flex cables held on by glue and that’s why most of them no longer work.

@indirektdjs 6 ай бұрын

Ugh … we used to call it “troublespace” as it has the tendency to go wrong in some pretty spectacular ways. If you had an inopportune power outage or application crash you could end up with a corrupt file system. Of course it also introduced some overhead and had the potential to bog down the system for drive intensive use. A better option in that day was the third party tool “Stacker”.

@JoesComputerMuseum 6 ай бұрын

Oooh! BlueSCSI for the win!

@Darxide23 6 ай бұрын

Makes me wonder if that glue could be softened up and allowed to "reflow" as it were to bond back together. If it were me, I'd try putting a cloth over the glass and running a clothing iron back and forth along that edge with some slight pressure. It's already basically useless as it is, what's the worst that could happen? The heat could cause it to delaminate even more?; but it's already unusable in it's current state. No harm, no foul honestly. Also, DoubleSpace and DriveSpace are the same thing, just different versions. DoubleSpace was using code owned by someone else and Microsoft were successfully sued. They removed the copyrighted code and renamed it to DriveSpace. I think this was one of the main differences between Dos 6.2 and Dos 6.22. Doing a dir/a command will show you all files, including hidden and system files. You'd see the container file that way and you'd know for sure it was a compressed drive. That is, if the 3MB free didn't already give it away. ;)

@nicholas4839 6 ай бұрын

I was hoping he was going to try to fix it

@ropersonline 6 ай бұрын

14:53: 32MB HDDs were pretty par for the course when this machine hit the market. I distinctly remember attracting playground ridicule when my new PCs HDD was 50MB, which seemed impossibly large to (probably secretly envious) classmates who owned 20MB HDDs. "50MB?! You're never going to need or fill that!" There also was the factor that older DOS versions didn't actually support hard drives (or at least single partitions) larger than 32MB. In short: MS-DOS 1.0: _no_ HDs, 2.0:

@jacobc436 6 ай бұрын

So those two larger nibs you see - you're probably right! They look like getters. From what I've seen of people building tubes, they don't paint it on and instead have a metal ring of getter material sit inside the tube that is later heated via an induction heater. When it becomes red to white-hot, the material diffuses from the source material, flies through the near-vacuum, and splatters onto the glass producing a thin film of silvery material that is ready to absorb oxygen & other impurities. The only thing I don't get about this display is why it's so transparent. It could be a very thin film? It's usually a total mirror in other tubes.

@ultrametric9317 6 ай бұрын

You would use SCSI in 1989 so you could get a big fast disk. You might put XENIX on this computer. A lot of things were in flux. This is really a pretty interesting computer. They may have had OS/2 in mind. This was obviously intended as a very high-end system. CAD capable.

@ryanianm 6 ай бұрын

That was really neat. Never seen a screen like that before, thx Adrian!

@mlongval 6 ай бұрын

Thanks Adrian. Really interesting episode. Great work.

@rod370 6 ай бұрын

Hi, Adrian. I love this video. Thank you for making it. Stay safe to you and your loved ones.

@Clavichordist 6 ай бұрын

AccPac is an accounting package. My brother's company used the accounts receivable module, they could be purchased separately, and it did what it was supposed to do. Like other similar software, it's no longer supported or available.

@gloria10be 6 ай бұрын

i have 2 Toshiba T3200 and see a lot of similarities. I powered them up and both started crackeling with a lot of smoke and weird smells. It are the RIFA capacitors in the power supply that blew up. Ordered new ones. I ll keep you informed.

@Thelemorf 6 ай бұрын

The 3mb free space on a 31mb drive with just a command com on it kind of told you it were something there. 😊

@1kreature 6 ай бұрын

There must be a hidden file.

@rommix0 6 ай бұрын

@@1kreature Yeah like a swap file

@nurmr 6 ай бұрын

`dir /a` should show all files (might need to make it `/ash` to show system files).

@ropersonline 6 ай бұрын

14:58: Yes, UNFORMAT was a good idea, but if anyone is in a similar situation WITHOUT the DBLSPACE stuff you went on to discover, I suggest they try running old MS-DOS 5.0 UNFORMAT or UNDELETE on (their dd/image copy of) their drive. Not any newer UNDELETE/UNFORMAT programs that do all kinds of "let me help you with that" nonsense, but the bare old commands whose functionality relied on only a quick format having been performed or on only the first letter of the filename having been erased (probably replaced with NULL?). And if none of that helps, people could still try bigger guns like _foremost_ or some other file carver. Good luck to whoever needs it!

@DoItMyselfGarage 6 ай бұрын

I've never used Unformat, but UNDELETE was a great utility. Most of the time files were deleted just by removing them from the file list. As long as they were never overwritten, files were easily recovered with UNDELETE. It worked in double-space also.

@michaelrose1814 6 ай бұрын

Keep it up, love the long form videos

@ravewulf 6 ай бұрын

It wasn't needed here but recommend TestDisk and PhotoRec as two open source utilities (DOS, Windows, Mac, and Linux) for data recovery. TestDisk can both undelete files and attempt to recover entire file systems (in-place partition and file table restoration) while PhotoRec extracts files based on their signatures.

@arnlol 6 ай бұрын

I wasn’t sure what the deal was with the partition on the drive, but it looked like it had only 3MB free on a 30MB drive so I figured there was at least some kind of hidden files on there. I wanted to say that but you figured out what was going on later. The Seagate drives that look like this are pretty nice, they probably are some of the best stepper based drive, though they sometimes suffer from stiction (that one spun right up, so it probably doesn’t have that problem). I wish you kept the drive in the machine but I guess not risking to blow up the PSU again is probably a good idea. Bummer that the screen isn’t fixable as it looks pretty interesting.

@ekstrapolatoraproksymujacy412 6 ай бұрын

There is a double sided conductive tape that conducts only in Z axis, it could be used for this display, but you would have to non destructively disassemble it first