Haha, lucky you!

I won 200$ at lottery and the manager where I went to claim my winnings was very arrogant and told me I'd have to wait for him to have time to take care of me. When I got in the car I checked the money he gave me. 2000$. I freakin kept it.

It's called a theft.

@@warrax111 its not theft, its just borrowed until they call asking back for it, they probably won't call back after more than 20 years

@@monad_tcp They paid for it, so it's a theft. If you know the owner, and you keep it, you basically steal it. Theft it stopped to be, when you call back, and owner donate it to you.

Hehe, thanks!

Thank you! I believe this board should get a special place in my collection! Thanks for watching!

Or a computer museum, where you can watch the restoration video at the computer :)

it "vanished without a trace" 🤣

Thank you!

I hope we can get all six to work!

Thank you! Glad to hear that you enjoy the videos!

I totally agree with you. Spending north of 20 hours on this board has nothing to do with economic value. It is the knowledge and experience you gain from such a project. Even if it wouldn't have been successful, the value comes from the experience gained! Thanks for watching!

I think that using economic viability to determine worth is a terrible idea. There is much more to life than using money as a metric of should something continue to exist.

Thanks for the info!

Thank you!

Yeah, I am missing an ultrasonic cleaner... Some day, I'll get one

Thank you! Glad you liked the intro 🙂

Thank you!

Thank you 😊

Haha, good to hear that you like the video and enjoy the content!

Ah, I wish I could always do longer videos. Sadly, I don't think I will manage to stick to one video per week that is around 30 minutes.

Haha :) True!

Haha, I missed that opportunity! 😂

I spent the time to gain the experience working on such a board! As you said, it's good practice. Board number 3 is very similar, but with a lot less corrosion on the traces. So, I believe I'll need a lot less time to work on that one. Thanks for watching!

Thank you! Board #3 is similar to this one... So, we'll do some modification in the next video 😉

Thank you! I'm also looking forward to the other boards! I have a few extras planned including a small modification!

Thank you!

Thank you! I started work on number 3 😊

Thank you!

@@bitsundbolts You are welcomed, always.

Thanks!

Thank you so much for your support! Glad to hear that you enjoyed this restoration.

Thank you!

Thank you and you're welcome!

That's nice to hear! Glad you enjoy my videos. Hope it'll continue with board number 3!

Thank you very much!

Thank you very much!

Glad to hear!

Thank you!

Oh, it was such a let down when the POST codes didn't start counting. Luckily, it was just the CPU not making good contact. I am also surprised that the ASUS chip was working and that the rest of the board seems to be working fine too. I fixed all the obvious issues and that seemed to have been enough. Let's see for how long that board will work, but I have a feeling that it will be fine for many years!

Thank you! I'm very happy that the result was a working board! Glad you enjoyed it!

Thank you!

You're right. I should have used hot air to heat the donor board. Ah, I always learn something from the comments :) Thank you!

I tried fibreglass pencils, but I don't like the stuff they leave behind. For me, the electric pen works well, but you have to be very careful because you can cause a lot of damage in a very short time 😅

Yes you did! Thanks!

Thank you!

Hehe, I like your spirit! Since there apparently were clones of this board, there must be schematics and maybe even the files to just create new boards. But then it would just be a replica. I still prefer restoring the real thing instead of creating a clone.

It's a good idea, but it would probably takes days of soldering to transfer all the ICs then populate the rest of the board components, the Slot 1 SECC has 242 pins alone...

@@WelshProgrammer well... If you asked for all the passives and sockets to be populated, (and potentially modernised) you'd be left with maybe 10 ICs to transfer. The hardest would be the bga chipsets. You'd need a good rework station.

@@myne00 true, most if not all the passive, some of the active with modern replacements or successors and maybe some sockets like PCI and ISA and possibly AGP, EEPROMS etc but I doubt they carry the SECC, COAST or other special sockets like PGA370. Though it would probably get you most of the way.

Thanks!

Thanks! This was a tough project. At least I learned something from it!

Next video will have more grinding 😉

Thanks 😊

Glad you enjoyed it

Haha, glad you enjoyed it! And it did feel like a surgery!

@@bitsundbolts i bet it did! :)

Thank you for that interesting tip! I am sure it will come in handy one day!

I try to stay close to the original color of the board - yellow is the closest color I have that matches the board to some degree. Thanks for watching!

Haha, thanks 😅

Thank you! Good luck with Windows 10 - I wonder if you get 3.11 to talk to 10

@@bitsundbolts Well, i have no hopes about win 10, currently if i share a folder from win7, or xp, i can reach/Mount as a network drive (net use z: \\PCNAME\SHAREDFOLDER) even if the shared folder on a NTFS drive, but the same just not working under win 10. i tried even a 2gb usb stick, fat formatted. But hey! We having fun, aren't we? :)

Sounds very aggressive. I'm sure it'll work well, but it requires a lot of attention and probably a well ventilated room (or even outside?)

Very nice! You had access to all the great stuff back then 😉. Owning a computer store must have been amazing - and a pain at the same time! If you stockpiled hardware, you had to worry about it being obsolete within six months. At least this is what I always wondered when I visited local stores and they had tech from a year ago sitting on shelves. I don't know if they ever sold that stuff. I believe to have a P2L97 in the to-do pile 😉

@@bitsundbolts Indeed, I must admit it was very great time ;) As for the pain with stockpiled hardware, just like most partner or competitor in the surrounding we were all working in tight flow. Only stockpiling part with very stable prices like cases, keyboards, mouse, some basic CRT screen, etc... Only ordering GC, MB, CPU, RAM and HDD when clients ordering them. But at that time clients were much patient as now, we usualy had 1-2 weeks between clients ordering a computer and delivery time and oftenly calling clients to tell them "hey, we recieved it earlier, and it's ready waiting for his new familly :)" and clients answering "wow, but it's only been 1 week! You guys are fast !" :) For the pro we always kept a few crucial parts like HDDs in stock as mechanical failure were the most often one at that time. Choosing to work with only a few reliable brand like ASUS and DFI for MB and avoiding most other brands after trying a few different models (ABIT, Gigabyte, Epox, Aopen, etc) gave us almost no failure on MB. The only few MB we had to change were after very hard electric chocks or very bad handling by clients so almost never from manufacturer. I vagely remember a P3B-F refusing to boot and a couple of CUSL2-C refusing to boot with most SDRam brand we used at that time (single vs dual sided SDRAM was in fact the trouble). As main tech in the shop I often refused to buy or sell well known unreliable parts or parts we tried and caused us too much troubles for the few € saved like SIS, Nforce or ALI chipset based MB (exept the famous ASUS P5A). We still end up with very few unsold parts like a Fic MB for SLOT A AMD Athlon because the one we sold to a client failed like 3 times before he decided to listen and buy better stuff (special request from very big client that wanted to try it ASAP) . Main platform we were selling back in the days was slot 1 and S370 with intel PII and PIII, a few celerons (128kb cache only). But I realy enjoyed the K6 series and then Athlon XP series too. We enjoyed sponsoring or leading lan parties too with local partners. Biggest lan party I had to setup was a up to 244 gaming computers (including servers) people were comming with their own computers and we were linking them to the network we had setup for the lanparty made of 11x 24 port switching + 1 RNIS or DSL router for DHCP only (made it easier to link everyone ASAP) Anyway it realy reminds me that this was the best of time for computer fun :) Unfortunatly it was also a realy great time to make so much money that it got up to my associates head and they end up stealing so much money and burning the shop to try to cover up most of their traces. That the only part I realy regret from that time in fact :) BTW I may have a few old parts you could be interested in. Feel free to let me know how you want to get in contact in private sometimes.

Wow, what a nice story with some criminal energy at the end! And what a massive lan party that must have been! I remember how some of my friends almost made a household move on weekends, taking their gear to a Lan party - including CRT monitors etc! You can reach out to me using my email address showing up during the last 30 seconds of this video (during the "like animation"). Thank you so much for sharing your memories! It was a great read!

Yeah, true... This was a challenge to see if I can fix it. If no post code would have appeared after 10 minutes of tinkering with it, I would have stopped

I am currently working on board #3. It is very similar to this one, therefore, I will cut the restoration short in the video. Instead, I'll be working on a mod that may lead to what you're requesting ;)

Surprisingly, those boards came from a local classifieds website in Germany. I have had those boards for quite some time. I am ashamed to say that they were probably sitting in Germany for a good year (which probably made their condition worse!). A board in such a condition should cost you almost nothing! I paid about 6 USD per board including shipping.

I did, but there are a few problems I need to overcome or I'm not yet comfortable with. Those ASUS boards would take too much time to have an uncut version. I wanted to also live stream, but haven't had the courage nor the setup yet. But I'm working on all of those.

I agree! But it looks like the package prevented corrosion from attacking the inner copper.

Thank you so much for your explanation! So, whatever I read was correct about copper turning brown first. Also, in your last part, you speculate that tin may be the first to be affected. I can absolutely verify that since the corrosion on board number 3 (also on the ASUS chip), the thin tin layer on the legs of this chip can be removed like peeling an egg. Below that layer is pure copper which hasn't been affected yet.

Exactly!

I'll keep an eye on the socket. I need to find acceptable donor boards or order new ones if I can find them somewhere. Desoldering one (I believe 242 pins) is not fun!

😅

Found them on AliExpress. They usually advertise shorter sockets, but you can select the 98 pin version. I asked for pictures from the seller before ordering.

Good memories!

@@bitsundbolts Yup! time fly! If I could have keept all my old computers...I would have never think those old machine would have values 20 years later! I had a lot of XT Computer, 286, 386, I learned to work on computer with this "junk" that people was giving away for free!

Ahh, 300A overclocked to 450? I really like the board. The more I work on those six boards, the more I appreciate them!

@@bitsundbolts also abit bx6 rev2.0 is rival to this board.

Sorry 😉

Good question - drilling through the board to get rid of that fully corroded via was inconclusive. But I wouldn't be surprised if its a 4-layer board. I actually googled this and found a document from Intel covering the "440BX AGPset". In there, it seems to confirm to be a 4-layer PCB in their reference design at that time.

@@bitsundbolts That's good news with the board being 4 layers. If all else fails with inner layers, sometimes (with shorts) it is worth a try to go with a destructive and restorative approach instead of a conservative one (literally burning out shorts) - I've seen that on strongly damaged Amiga boards.

You can run Uniflash in DOS, no need for a programmer.

Someone else suggested this too. I don't know to be honest since I never used one. But it would require quite a big cleaner to fit such a board (i.e. liter wise)

Something for cleaning vias would definitely be great! Interesting idea you got there. Next time, I should ask my dentist how much he paid for his water jet - and yes, they have that powder too!

Haha, you work with what you have :) Those donor PCBs for the pad was actually also the donor for the serial ports I am going to use on those boards. All stuff I pick up at the scrapyard.

Yes, it's the FNIRSI HS-01. I also have a review on my channel about it. I only have issues with the power adapter that came with it. The Irwin reboots if I use it 15V or above. In this video, it's set to 12V. If I use a laptop usb-c charger, the iron works well without rebooting

I tried to clean every via that showed the green oxidation. I use the fine tweezers to get the air out while a drop of vinegar sits above it. I cleaned at least 10 vias that way. I'm sure it's not perfect, but I can inspect the board again in a few months. The board is most likely 4 layers

@@bitsundbolts i was mostly woried about that one hole showed in the middle of the videodo you know if those vias connect or branch to a different place. i dobt you can find a boardview schematic for it due to old age , but my biggest concern is not corosion at this point but severing some traces on the lower layers while cleaning the vias "too much"

Yes, I know what you mean. I was worried about going through the board, but there were no copper particles or more corrosion that surfaced. I guess I got lucky.

I added a link to copper wires in the description. The wires are enameled, but the coating burns away when in contact with a soldering iron for a few seconds.

@@bitsundbolts exactly what I need, thank you!

Such a model would definitely be beneficial for people to make their own! It will only get harder to find those in the future...

I don't offer repair services officially, but I have fixed hardware of viewers. It depends what it is. I cannot guarantee a successful repair and I cannot repair everything. But you can reach out via email and send some pictures. Then we can try to get your hardware to Dubai. I added my email address at the end of the video (the last 30 seconds or so).

I've seen on some sites that the tool is called a "cleaning pin". Most are sold in sets of different thicknesses.

I like "trace of a trace" 😅

That is weird. Have you checked the capacitors next to the CPU? What CPU are you using (and do you know the voltage requirements in case it's a Pentium III)? My next video (board #3) will deal with voltages. Maybe there is something there. But I'll also replace capacitors in a future video that might help you figure out what may be wrong with your board.

Opss sorry! I made a mistake, the faulty motherboard is an ASUS P4T-E... Thank You for the answer!