ASUS P2B Restoration: Board #1

ASUS P2B Restoration: Board #1 - Counterfeits?

Рет қаралды 9,333

Күн бұрын

I have 6x ASUS P2B which someone offered me in some time back in Germany. He didn't have enough time to restore them, but still wanted someone to look after them. So here we are, at the beginning of a motherboard repair series! We will have a look at all six boards to understand what type of work we have ahead of us. Furthermore, we are going to learn more about this motherboard from ASUS. In this video, I am going to tell you how all of those boards may be counterfeits.
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▬▬▬▬ Timestamps ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
00:00 Intro
01:24 Board No.1
02:10 Board No.2
02:53 Board No.3
03:53 Board No.4
04:36 Board No.5
05:20 Board No.6
06:20 Cleaning with water
08:00 Restoration
12:22 Test No.1
13:00 Further investigation
14:49 Continue repair
15:56 Test No. 2
16:22 Outlook & Preview

Пікірлер: 183

@KG4JYS 3 ай бұрын

Motherboard number one likes long walks on the beach and going out to the pub on Saturdays. It's looking for a nice cpu to settle down with.

@drewnewby 3 ай бұрын

A six P2B board repair video, this may be a first that I've seen.

@tellyjoossens4186 3 ай бұрын

Still use this type today with a p2-333Mhz for retro gaming. Never died out, not even leaking capacitors.

@enilenis 3 ай бұрын

Oh yes! This is my favorite series boards (provided they're not counterfeit). I'd prefer higher end revisions, but anything genuine that starts with P2B is pure gold. To be broken, these ones really had to have been mistreated. Then again, time is passing, and things do fail. Many of my 90's motherboards are on their 2nd recap, because everything ages. And when internal multi-layer traces go bad, or there is delamination - goodbye computer! P2B's were the motherboards of choice over at IBM, where my friend worked, so I know they had thousands upon thousands of them. Hopefully they sold them off afterwards.

@datainoit 2 ай бұрын

Excellent technique and use of quality products and the repair becomes an interesting video. Congratulations also for your communication skills

@RedStar-dz5tc 3 ай бұрын

Very nice educational video! I bought my very first PC in 1998. It had an Asus P2B board and a Pentium II 350 processor. Of that system I still have the Pentium II 350 processor, the Seagate Medalist HDD (not working), the Altec Lansing ACS 91 speakers and the later added external US Robotics 56k Message modem. I am only able to recall this because I still have the receipt for the purchase of the system.

@john_qw 2 ай бұрын

I have my P2B-DS on display right next to my Gravis UltraSound. This video makes me want to get it working again!

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

Wow - very nice! You should get them working again. Both are quite valuable in working condition!

@deepblueskyshine 3 ай бұрын

P2B-F was my first purely personal motherboard with the first PIII 450MHz - very nice (still keeping it stored in a dry dark place inside antistatic bag with several bags of silicagel ;). A russian developer had a series here nearly a decade ago where he has run it with the latest fastest Taulatin through a modified socket adapter - unexpectedly, it would have worth the effort back in the days.

@Choralone422 3 ай бұрын

I am in for the rest of this series! The Asus P2B almost became the mainboard I chose back in somewhat early Slot 1 days. In the end I went with an Abit BH6 and a Celeron 300A that was OC'd to 464 MHz for a number of years. Unfortunately that combo died rather spectacularly after I had given the machine to my parents. Bulging and leaking capacitors caused one or more of the power MOSFETS to literally explode one day while the machine was in use. There was quite an impressive amount of damage done not only to the components on the MB that failed but also to the MB as well with quite a bit of charred PCB!

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I wish there would be an easier way to identify damaged caps. Some may not even swell or show any signs of fatigue, but they still need to be replaced. A plan was to check if I can measure a difference in current draw before and after recapping such a board.

@alnoorratansi9364 3 ай бұрын

Can't wait for more videos on restoration of these motherboards

@janpedersen9120 3 ай бұрын

best series, loves to learn this skill by seeing others do them

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Thank you!

@2dfx 2 ай бұрын

Built my first computer in 1999 with a P2B-F. It was a P3-450 with 64MB of RAM. Installed Win95 OSR2.5 on it lol. Good times.

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

Wow, I would be jealous about your system back in 1999!

@Eyetrauma 3 ай бұрын

Nothing but love for having patience to fix those broken traces, that’s the kinda fiddly work that’d just make me junk the thing I think.

@fft2020 3 ай бұрын

In this video we can see your love for this iconic old technology! Thank you so much for bringing this boards back to life that someone can enjoy them You are a true artist ! and your skills are getting better with every video !

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Thank you! I do enjoy saving hardware from that time. So many memories from my childhood!

@BeniD82 2 ай бұрын

Considering all the work you have done over the years I'm sure you'll be able to rescue all of these boards. I used to have a P2B-F board back in the day and I had a lot of fun with that particular build, so these are quite close to my heart :)

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

I am happy to hear that you put so much confidence into my abilities! I'll do my best to rescue all of them if possible! I can imagine that you enjoyed having a P2B-F.

@TradieTrev 3 ай бұрын

I had one of these when I was a teenager! Wasn't a bad gaming mobo in its day and was cheap (I probably had a clone myself) Seems like this lot was from a salty environment.

@collectingretrotech 3 ай бұрын

Great content. Looking forward to the series

@Constantin314 3 ай бұрын

awesome repair, BuB. i enjoy this series

@Ale.K7 3 ай бұрын

Great repair! Board #2 looks... complicated. I hope there's no corrosion on internal layers of the PCB! Looking forward to the rest of this series :-)

@sparki_ 3 ай бұрын

excited to see board 2! loving the idea of it being a series

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Thank you!

@tony359 3 ай бұрын

Mountain Motherboard strikes again! :) Nice! The fact that the regulator still had copper at the back seems to suggest that it was never properly soldered at the factory, nice! Excellent job!

@tigheklory 3 ай бұрын

For those rusty serial and parallel ports I recommend you try using Rust-oleum Rust Dissolver. It's active ingredient is phosphoric acid which when applied to rust converts iron oxide into iron phosphate which is white in color and can then usually be easily washed or brushed away.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Let me see if I can get this here. Thanks for the tip!

@drewnewby 3 ай бұрын

If a particular commercial product isn't available in your area, there will be another very similar. The faster removers are stronger acid mixes like hydrochloric or phosphoric. A milder acid can be used also, like citric acid (often comes powdered) or acetic acid (vinegar). I use citric often, and neutralize with sodium bicarbonate (baking soda).

@tigheklory 3 ай бұрын

@@drewnewby The only thing about vinegar is it converts iron oxide to iron acetate with is harder to remove and is black.

@tigheklory 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts There should be some rust converter that contains phosphoric acid where you live. If not Coca-Cola has phosphoric acid in it. It would be messy though.

@jamesrdgrs 3 ай бұрын

Wow... board 2 is in bad shape, but you can do it. Watching your videos for as long as I have, your skills have definitely gone up considerably. Your a ninja with that soldering iron and SMTs !

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Thank you! I hope you're right! Saving board #2 would be a great victory!

@drPeidos 2 ай бұрын

Those boards behaved very nicely during bath time, they look so sweet :) Thanks for compiling more information about the topic of fake boards on your website, it's nice to read unusual stories from retro times. Since you started to use a microscope that I want to buy one as well, but it's still too much for my purse :( I'm using my phone with a microscope app and a cheap chinese tripod, it's not great but it helps sometimes.

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for checking out the site!

@Tuxon86 2 ай бұрын

I had a P2B-D back in the day, the dual CPU model.

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

Nice! Back then, dual CPU systems were so exotic (at least to me)! I always wondered how much faster things would be, but you needed at least Windows 2000 to take advantage of two CPUs. I also pulled a dual slot board from the scrapyard a few month back. I still need to have a look at that one too!

@jonsmith5087 3 ай бұрын

Loved this and the series your going to do - your repair skills are very good - and i learnt i can resolder the ground of the mosfets with just the iron instead of hot air which is always risky around plastics - thankyou

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

You're welcome! Glad you enjoy the motherboard repair videos! I'm also learning along the way. I don't like to use hot air - it's always messy 😅.

@aaron96244 3 ай бұрын

Enjoyed the video. I am enjoying the inspiration for repairing this board in front of me that looks perfect but won't post. The magic of editing makes it look quicker than it is. :)

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Oh, absolutely! I probably spent about 10 hours on this board. There were so many traces that started getting bad. Removing the ISA slot and the ports took some time too. Good luck with your board! Sometimes it can be as easy as a loose voltage regulator. It could also be a deep scratch that severed some traces.

@user-wy6iy7ij1z 3 ай бұрын

Nice restoration

@thetailgunner777 2 ай бұрын

I had this one ages ago and I did have much money, some of the caps got bad and I had to replace them with something slightly better specs and it was a it bigger, pretty tight fit.

@rodhester2166 3 ай бұрын

thanks for sharing.

@foxxy46213 3 ай бұрын

I wish I'd kept doing stuff like this before it got popular... I was just a geek with a hot iron an no KZfaq but dam I loved fixing an volt modding things within an inch of its life

@JohnSmith-iu8cj 3 ай бұрын

Seeing these poor guys, I am happy I have a healthy 1.04. running over here.

@GodzillaTeenageRiot 3 ай бұрын

Thank you for this video and the new series! These Boards are looking so nasty that I'm curious how they will (or not) be revived. Thank you for your efforts!!!

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Thank you

@Vermilicious 3 ай бұрын

Once you start, you can't stop.

@NaoPb 3 ай бұрын

Good job

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Thank you!

@TheDimsml 3 ай бұрын

9:00 You have misread the note from ASUS, it says that the company has not shipped v 1.04 since December 1998, but that just means that real boards with that revision number were shipped by ASUS themselves before that date. Now there is a question if there is a manufacturing date somewhere on the boards, that might help.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

But why would they not compare the fake rev 1.04 with their real 1.04? Instead they compare it with rev 1.10. The PCBs have a manufacturing date of 9845 to 9848 ( November 1998). I should go check some manufacturing dates of the ICs on those boards...

@looks-suspicious 3 ай бұрын

Yes, that's how I would understand it as well. The note also seems to imply that all real boards have a dot after the revision number, while the fakes do not. This means Asus made boards marked "1.04." in 1998 and then switched to "1.10." in 1999. Any board marked "1.04" and made in 1999 must therefore be fake. The six boards in the video are all marked with "1.04." and from 1998, so I don't think they are fake. As for why they compared 1.04 with 1.10. in the document - whoever was responsible for that release may simply not have had an older 1.04. board at hand, because that revision was no longer in production.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Then those boards could be real boards from ASUS they claim to be quite rare. However, all other points listed in that document suggest they are fake. I'll dig a bit deeper! Thanks for clarifying!

@chris-tal 3 ай бұрын

I have an older revision "1.02." bought new in it's original box around 1997. I have checked and can confirm that the ending dot really exists. It ran for many years even after it became obsolete, still using it sometimes for retro gaming. It was even abused for years by cranking up the FSB, etc. Once in a while when not using it often it has contact issues with the CPU and DRAM slots (plating might be wearing off) I wonder where these six boards have been stored to become so corroded. Could be just victims of the "capacitor plague" that started around that time, ASUS switching suppliers or really fake /w el cheapo caps?

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Interesting! I just saw on eBay a listing of an ASUS P2B 1.04 (without the dot!) - along with a Pentium 2 and the USB breakout cable. My ASUS boards all have the dot at the end of the revision number.

@aleksandardjurovic9203 3 ай бұрын

Thank you!

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

My pleasure!

@emmettturner9452 3 ай бұрын

When mine died in the early 2000s I literally put it on my wall. When people asked me why my response was…

@ninedogs2418 3 ай бұрын

but why?

@SireSquish 3 ай бұрын

@@ninedogs2418 Indeed, for those of us who *don't* know?

@JohnSmith-iu8cj 3 ай бұрын

Legends never die

@emmettturner9452 3 ай бұрын

@@ninedogs2418 When you know, you know. **coolshades**

@emmettturner9452 3 ай бұрын

@@JohnSmith-iu8cj This man gets it.

@bobbymak6964 3 ай бұрын

I have this board. It is my DOS machine.

@awilliams1701 3 ай бұрын

So #1 didn't surprise me. I figured you'd get it. Board #2, that chip is dead. Maybe the board itself can be saved, but I honestly doubt you can save that chip. How hard is it to find replacements? That's what will determine if you can get it running again or not.

@RacerX- 3 ай бұрын

Fantastic. NIce work on the first one. These are in such bad shape I think some people would not bother with some of these so cheers for attempting. Iooking forward to the other videos. These boards certainly don't look fake but I have not read the proofs. Perhaps they were made in the same factory as the originals? I know this was common but they usually removed all the branding. Interesting.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Yeah, I wanted to set a time limit and here we are - I already spent about 12 hours on board #2. I do it because I learn something from trying to restore it. I agree, those boards do not look nor feel fake. I think they're from the same factory other ASUS boards were made.

@jmpiv4 3 ай бұрын

I prefer the P2L97a with the 5v agp mod

@DefenderOfBoston-yo2tl 3 ай бұрын

Aah, the good old P2B. Had one of them for a long time and loved it - except for the slotted CPU, I always found that to be a profoundly stupid decision, especially with regard to the clunky cooling solutions. It's a bit harder to tell without being able to hold them in one's own hands, but they absolutely look the part to me. I highly doubt that they are fake. I predict that you'll be able to revive most of them and will leave it at that. 😉 Godspeed!

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Those boards feel legit, but that document still exists. Maybe someone will be able to shed some light into this. I'm working on board #2 right now...

@harukaapl 3 ай бұрын

As always nice job :) Hope rest of the boards will not have dead ASUS Super IO only cleaning and soldering will be enough, find one new or donor is bit annoying :/

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I guess if board #2 works, the rest shouldn't be much of a problem. But you never know - somewhere something is hiding throwing a wrench in the process.

@seritools 3 ай бұрын

The bend at 12:30 hurt me haha

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

All part of testing the endurance of those boards 😅

@GeFeldz 3 ай бұрын

Probably the second best 440BX motherboard after the ABit BH6.

@parandersson6541 3 ай бұрын

This video was a little bit too short I think, but it was very good.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Thank you. Oh, I had a lot of more footage, but I didn't want to make the video too long. The video for Board #2 may be longer.

@JARVIS1187 3 ай бұрын

Never give up, even when it looks as bad as with board #2! You fixed such bad things before, you can do it again! Let your magic work! :)

@M8R3rojcq 3 ай бұрын

Nice video. I also went down the 3.3V rabbit hole with a P2/P3 board... Where did you source the DIMM clip from? A spare board?

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Yes, plenty at my local scrapyard. I basically take them whenever I find boards that aren't interesting.

@alexbinder 3 ай бұрын

I had a P2B as my first PC built, used the famous Celeron 300A running at 450 MHz. Fond memories. But I don't remember what revision the board was.

@SianaGearz 3 ай бұрын

You're going to electrolytically clean the corroded serial and lpt sockets and then electrolytically nickel plate them, that would be my guess.

@ogland6482 2 ай бұрын

Use Deoxit D5 for the corroded parts!! Will fix those up quick!

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

I have never heard of or used Deoxit D5. Unfortunately, I have already finished my work on board #2, the heavily corroded one. If D5 is just a contact cleaner, I doubt it will be able to dissolve heavy corrosion. But I may be wrong. Maybe let tech out once more after the next video and let me know if I should give it a try. I can get a can of D5 for about 30 USD here in the UAE.

@Luca.Diablo 3 ай бұрын

An incredible job! Compliments. Is it possible to know what model of soldering iron you are using? I was impressed with how quickly it freed up the parallel port :O

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

This was a desolding station with a vacuum pump. I'll include a link to the exact model I use here. Feel free to check it out. I added the link to the description.

@Luca.Diablo 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts unfortunately aliexpress replies that this link is not available in my country and indicates it as a page not found :(

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Sorry, that happens sometimes. I don't know how to fix that, but look for a desolding station 'SS-331H'. That is the one I used in the video. I haven't used it a lot, but so far, it does a good job. It does struggle however with pins connector to big copper planes. Necroware uses a hot air station to additionally heat up the board in such cases. I used a wick to clear the solder on those connections, but I want to try hot air next time.

@mesterak 3 ай бұрын

4 of 6 will get repaired minimally is my guess. I look forward to the upcoming videos!

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Would you change your estimate if I'm able to fix board #2? 😅

@mesterak 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts with you anything is possible. I only wish I had your skill. I have a whole box of faulty boards and GPUs that I’d like to fix, so I watch content like yours to learn so I can some day.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I am certain anyone can learn those skills. I am learning along the way. Learning by doing so to speak. Some day, just take a board that doesn't look too bad and start trying - you may be surprised about yourself and your skills!

@mesterak 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts I do try but have not had any success yet other than replacing bad caps. Would you be willing to go over some basics for troubleshooting AGP graphics cards? That’s probably what a lot of people would appreciate including myself. There’s tons of videos on PCIe GPU repair but next to nil on AGP GPUs. Either that is true or I really suck at searching KZfaq lol.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I'll be honest with you - I have zero experience with finding faults on AGP cards. Most stuff I find at the scrapyard works 😅. The ratio of working vs defective ratio is definitely better with the items I find at the scrapyard. If I do find something defective, I'll definitely try to repair it. But I don't know when this is going to happen.

@glenncaughey5044 3 ай бұрын

“Back in the day” I assembled hundreds of computers with this board. Pii-350 128MB i740 w98se

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Ha, I have all those parts! It would be fun to make a video with hardware you remember from back then.

@evandrochaves9596 3 ай бұрын

Hmmm would love to see some contribution from necroware, that's his area haha I was ready to see a squarespace advertisement after he spoke about his website. Hello Squarespace, sponsor this guy

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Haha, no sponsor for this video.

@kokodin5895 3 ай бұрын

i once had trash picked ecs board with bit rot corupted bios and broken p2b with working bios, so i swaped bioses and booted ecs from asus bios and other than keyboard it worked well wnough to boot from a floppy and self repair fy flashing the correct bios back and it worked for 5 years runing windows xp on p3 500 768mb of pc100 ram and soundblaster pro 2 on isa :P

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Yeah, this board has 3 Isa slots and works with faster models of Coopermine (maybe even Tualatin with further mods)

@SianaGearz 3 ай бұрын

Whoa that's an entirely legendary repair, given the lack of proper tools.

@kokodin5895 3 ай бұрын

@@SianaGearz i was 19 :P and youtube was still privately owned company running on flash player. proper tools back then were flat screwdriver and another computer to write autoexec .bat on a floppy along with a proper bios and flasher files

@SianaGearz 3 ай бұрын

@@kokodin5895 IC programmers have always been around. But you could just boot some different computer with BIOS caching, pull the flash IC, insert another one, and just flash it.

@fritzbox8231 2 ай бұрын

Wie immer sehr gute Arbeit machst Du. Ich mag deine Videos, leider ist mein Englisch nicht so gut.😊 Deutsch wahrscheinlich auch, Hauptschüler halt 😂

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

Vielen Dank! Vielleicht schafft es ja KZfaq bald, die autogenerierten Untertitel auf deutsch per AI zu synchronisieren! Danke fürs vorbeischauen!

@rogiervanlierop 3 ай бұрын

Thanks again! I have a P2B-F rev 1.04 myself and I am very curious if it's legit😊. But it works great with a P3@550.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I think the P2B-F is not affected. However, there could be fakes too. Counterfeits were more common than I thought back then.

@Oerg866 2 ай бұрын

I wrote the paragraph on the TRW page for 1.04. A dot at the end to me is an indicator that it is a genuine 1.04, as the "fake models" are all showing a 1.04 without a dot at the end.

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

Nice! Thanks for letting me know. All the boards I have show the dot at the end of the revision number. I am leaning towards those boards to be genuine - and apparently not that common? I am just assuming because of what's written in that document how to identify fake boards.

@Foga001 3 ай бұрын

Amazing, my retro pc board. (rev 1.04) My only problem with it, that i can't get irq5 (gives irq 10 for a creative ct4170 pnp) Sound is working in dos, but not in win3.1, strange. Have a Pentium III 450 and 512 sd innit. Currently working on Lan for Dos 6.22 and 3.11. 3com950B-tx

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Good to know - maybe I'll run into the same issue with IRQ5 when I experiment with that board later. For now, I will focus on recovery. You are running windows 3.11 on a Pentium iii? Isn't that system too fast causing all sorts of issues?

@Foga001 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts Doom 1, 2?; quake 1, Dune 1; 2, Warcraft 1 runs perfectly on my fake p2b board. Yes, apparently mine is one of the fakes, with the 3 bus speed jumpers, and at the power connector the inductors are far from eachother.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I somehow believe that rev 1.04 was an official ASUS board, but they decided to cancel it in favour of rev 1.10. They couldn't do 1.05 because the previous rev would be missing. So, I believe they are real ASUS boards, but were not supposed to be shipped. Maybe someone didn't want all those PCBs to go to waste after they were already made.

@1337Shockwav3 3 ай бұрын

#2 (Corrosion on the smaller Asus IC) and #3 (same, while less severe way more widespread) look "very high effort, low chance of success" especially on multilayer boards - but who knows. #6 probably is fine or fixable with some effort considering how little logic is likely to be set in the corroded area. Let's hope those BGA south bridges are ok on all boards - I had an Asus K7M back in the day and in 25+ years of owning computers this was the only fatal point of failure I've encounter with my main PCs so far.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I totally agree with your high effort and low success rate estimation. If this were a commercial effort, nobody would work on the heavily corroded boards. I, on the other hand, want to learn and see if I am able to restore such a heavily corroded board. I'm almost done getting all the footage done for board #2. And I can tell you that I spent north of 20 hours on that board so far - and I'm still not done (serial ports are pending). Next video will be a long one! There was so much to do! I hope to finish it by next Friday and that all that effort is rewarded with a fully working board!

@1337Shockwav3 3 ай бұрын

That detached mosfet is wild ... any idea how that might have happened?

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Probably a weak solder connection from the beginning. Add a bit of flexing the board and the environment those boards were stored in that caused the corrosion, you may end up with detached MOSFETs. But that's just my speculation.

@herauthon 3 ай бұрын

I got one - does it support P3 - yes - i just once tried and it worked - board was a wandering item - after this i checked and behold.. it was documented fact.. - counterfaits.. do they support P2 and P3 ? - do i see one AGP slot a bit larger (longer) or is it a parallax ?

@herauthon 3 ай бұрын

Soap cleaning - oh dear i am stuck in a mindloop not doing this.. because..

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

It should support any CPU requiring 1.8v or up. Unfortunately, the P2B does not support Coopermine (P3, 370) CPUs out of the box, but I want to mod it so it does.

@SzymekCRX 3 ай бұрын

7:56 nice balcony view ;) 10th+ floor?

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Very close! 9th floor. Perfect for drying and curing solder masks! And to hang out of course, but the weather is changing to super hot very soon 😔

@JohnSmith-iu8cj 3 ай бұрын

I have one of these. Currently with P3 700mhz slotket and geforce3 Ti200. Might change for a 1000mhz celeron or GeForce 4 4200ti that I have. Which gpu would you use? AGP is 3.3V only, so I believe GeForce FX would be fastest.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I am not sure if it's true, but I've heard that you need to be careful regarding the power consumption of the GPU. If I get the time, I'll try different cards and monitor the voltage regulators and their temperatures. Get a card that works for the games you play on your retro PC. It doesn't have to be the fastest, just something that works well.

@arnlol 3 ай бұрын

How many of the boards will you fix? I wouldn’t be surprised if you fixed all of them, unless that ASUS chip is dead as I assume finding a replacement might not be easy. That second board repair will certainly be interesting with how bad it looks.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I am working on board #2 at the moment. I think this is the hardest restoration I've ever attempted! I hope the countless hours pay off in the form of a boot screen!

@quittessa1409 3 ай бұрын

What're the chances that Asus discovered a flaw in their 1.04 boards, fixed the flaw with the 1.10 and to avoid any recall/liability designated the 1.04 boards as "Counterfeit"

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Interesting theory

@SianaGearz 3 ай бұрын

Unlikely. They were making fat stacks of cash on those boards, they could eat the rework cost no problem. They had a very good reputation back in the day. Imagine someone dug up that they're trying to scam their customers and resellers by claiming the boards as not legitimate? The damage to the business would be immense. The fakes problem was well known, I had a fake Asus 430hx board, apparently made in India. I think all boards of the era should be manufactured by them in house, so I don't think "supplier dispute" aka night shift product is it, I think there really were independent factories building fake Asus boards. It's not that difficult to reverse engineer and copy a mainboard.

@Roadkill7878 3 ай бұрын

I have a P2B Rev 1.4 and couldn’t really care less that it is supposedly fake. It works perfectly with no issues

@looks-suspicious 3 ай бұрын

Does it say "1.04." or just "1.04"?

@Roadkill7878 3 ай бұрын

@@looks-suspicious 1.04.

@CallumRepairs 3 ай бұрын

My guess is that you'll be able to fix one, four and five. Six may be salvageable but I'll be very surprised to see boards two and three work with how bad the corrosion is on them.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Then I'll work very hard on board 2 😉

@TheDemocrab 3 ай бұрын

Doesn't the P2B fit around the time of the capacitor plague, which was due to counterfeit name-brand capacitors? Maybe that's what the counterfeit warning was, rev 1.04 had the affected caps but rev 1.10 doesn't among other changes.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Surprisingly, except that one cap I show on this one board, all others seem to be fine. I can't say anything about their condition, but none bulged or leaked.

@Ironclad17 3 ай бұрын

I'm trying to figure where the corrosion around the ASUS chip on all the boards came from. I didn't see any capacitors nearby and it's far from the cmos battery too.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I have a feeling it is due to how those boards were stored. I'm working on the second board right now and I cannot explain where all this corrosion is coming from 🤔

@SianaGearz 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts dog urine, probably. Wash your hands.

@zuldanfpv4634 3 ай бұрын

Anyone know where he gets those grinding heads from? So nice and small for grinding away the corrosion on those traces.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

The grinding heads came with the engraving pen. However, they are poor quality (they're not straight). First, I had to spend about 10 minutes to alight the one I'm using in this video. I'm looking for replacements because they also wear out. Most of the other 20 heads are useless because they're too big or the wrong shape.

@zuldanfpv4634 3 ай бұрын

Thank you so much for the response. I really enjoy these repair videos. Everyone learns so much. If you find some good ones please link them in the description :-)

@eusebiosksipolitos2524 3 ай бұрын

Great video....Nice...But can it run Crysis?

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Probably not 😅

@MrFathead 3 ай бұрын

That is fascinating if they are all fake, I have never heard of anything like that before.

@squeeeb 3 ай бұрын

If one of the boards doesn't make it, at least you'll have a donor :)

@bitsundbolts 2 ай бұрын

I'll work hard to not get a donor board from these :)

@awilliams1701 3 ай бұрын

I wouldn't waste my time with parallel ports. lol So far board #4 seems like the best contender. hmmm or board #6.....or not. I do think it's fixable though. So #4 might actually just work. I think 2 maybe 3 are beyond repair. Especially ones with corroded chips depending on how hard it is to find replacements.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I am working on board #2 - already spent 12 hours on the board and haven't powered it on yet... Corroded solder is like cement! I may just waste my time on this one, but I am learning a lot along the way. Especially reconnecting corroded vias.

@drewnewby 3 ай бұрын

desoldering alloy sometimes helps with corroded solder. Works well on power connector pins that dull from current / heat stress.

@harrycanyon6061 3 ай бұрын

5:04 broken pin inside the parallel port?

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I think this is just some dirt or something like that. It went away after washing the boards.

@SpeedIng80 3 ай бұрын

It were 478 likes, and mine is the 479th - nice 😉

@JamieBainbridge 3 ай бұрын

Wouldn't blame you if you made at least one of these a donor board. I guess they had some expansion card which had a battery over the Asus chip.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I'm not sure about the expansion card, but it looks like those boards have a common history considering their condition and dirt pattern.

@Firestorm2900 3 ай бұрын

1, 4 & 5 look feasible. 2 and 3 look concerning, not sure if they can be fixed quickly. 6 looks like it's more annoying than trouble.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I am on board #2 now - you are absolutely right! They are not fixed quickly! But I'm learning a lot trying to revive it!

@Firestorm2900 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts very interested the see how 2 turns out. The pins on that Asus chip looked pretty nasty. Which made me wonder if a pin falls off, can you try to reattach it or if there's a way around that? Like using a wire to what part of the pin is still left.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Yes, I can attach a wire and reconnect the chip to the board. It is a bit tricky though because you have two solder joints very close to each other. So, when you heat up one end of that tiny wire, chances are the other joint melts and disconnects again. With practice, it is not a big issue. I reattached some pins on Voodoo and Voodoo 2 cards the same way - I had to drill the housing though because there wasn't enough exposed metal left to attach a wire.

@simoneviviani9819 3 ай бұрын

i bet you can revive at least 5 of them

@ninedogs2418 3 ай бұрын

so all 1.04 boards after 29 dec 98 are fake. Just check manufacture date on components (any ICs on board). If there are chips from 1999 - board is fake, according to asus pdf.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Good point. I'll check if I can find a date on one of the ICs. The board PCB manufacturing date is all in November '98. I don't know how long it would take to be on shelves, but I somehow have a feeling that about a month is quite short to be sold before 29th December as Asus states in that document.

@peteregan9750 3 ай бұрын

3 fixab;e

@Melechtna 3 ай бұрын

Oh, I don't come to this channel for motherboard repair, or any kind of repair, I'm here for the soldering porn.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Haha. The next one will be nasty! 👍

@aspinx 3 ай бұрын

Looks like asus really screwed something up, so they had to call they own board as "fake", so people won't buy it AND asus won't have to take losses by recalling it (effectively dumping the cost of the issue on distributors). Otherwise, how could someone make a "fake board" that looks and behaves exactly like the real one and even has asus chip on it?

@awilliams1701 3 ай бұрын

"this video is already long" not really. I don't mind hour long repair videos. This was only 18 minutes. That's short.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Ah, I could easily make hour long videos, but without voice over. It takes me a long time to do those 😞

@looks-suspicious 3 ай бұрын

Compared to Adrian's Digital Basement, this video was basically like a KZfaq Short or a Tiktok.

@awilliams1701 3 ай бұрын

@@looks-suspicious LMAO he goes the other way. He focuses on areas where I'd be happy to skip. I've lately put him on 1.5x speed and it helps a lot, but sometimes I skip things in the video. He explains things I got like 20 minutes ago. To be fair, he's beginner friendly. I get why that's important.

@ruthlessadmin 3 ай бұрын

Wow another fake board situation...I'm only learning about such scams decades later. PCChips with their fake cache and now this. Makes me wonder if I ever owned a counterfeit product or how many others are out there.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

I wasn't aware of these fake boards either. I just discovered it now when looking for BIOS updates on "The Retro Web".

@dyslectische 3 ай бұрын

I hate that board. Power problems and kill my cpu and memory . And not to a power unit .

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Sorry to hear that you have bad memories about this board! Never nice when one component takes another with them when they fail.

@dyslectische 3 ай бұрын

@@bitsundbolts its by switching the gpu. The gpu just works fine in a other systeem. The problem is how the power controller on the board is use The voltage regulator are use for the cpu , memory and gpu for the agp slot. It had cheap controller in that time.

@bitsundbolts 3 ай бұрын

Ah, good to know. So, better to avoid GPUs that draw a lot of power over the AGP slot. Or risk it and monitor the temperature of the components on the board.