Gluing coils down is done as commonly as gluing down capacitors. Totally normal standard procedure.

Oh JOY! Finding a cracked solder joint is the only major issue is just the best! I had a problem with my Honda - it wouldn't start occasionally and I had NO idea what it was, I thought maybe the key 'security' was a problem but no, there was cracked solder joints on the connector under the steering wheel that lets the key talk to the immobilizer.. I spent 10 minutes reheating and fixing the solder joints and it's been fixed for 5 years now. Free of charge! Yes, that's a GREAT feeling!

"Arrow keys stopped working!". Ah...the joys of using retro computers. Never ending repairs. LOL

I would glue the coil to the pcb

I remember GTA in 3Dfx mode. That was awesome.

6:50 if you had a story, as you always do!, and you were desoldering for 2 hours, I'd watch and listen and NOT be bored. You are a very interesting person with some of the absolute BEST humor (as hidden as it may be), your accent is enjoyable to listen to, very soothing to my ears, and you say it like it is. No worries!

Coil whine is not usually a 'fault' it's more of an annoyance, basically when the coil is working at high frequency, it can sometimes vibrate like a mini speaker at a harmonic of said frequency, you can get inductors that are designed not to, or yes, you can glue the Coil (doesn't have to be glued down, just dampen the vibration of the coils) - replacing the coil for a new same value could fix it - but that's only if the replacement is built a little better to not whine... Just glue it :)

If I remember correctly, back in the days when you wanted to play high color or high resolution in DOS games, you had to use an utility called "UniVBE" to activate some SVGA compatibility with most graphics cards...

Gluing the coil is an option. The kludge solution is to wedge something soft enough to damp the noise between the coil and something else. Another potential option is to put heat shrink over the coil.

"The pad has come off ... I hope that's not my doing." It happens. I've had a couple PSUs where the pad came off the board, even without electrolyte damage or anything like that. Especially those cheap single-sided phenolic boards, with large components and thermal stresses. This is just part of deal when you maintain old stuff. Some people will say it's a good reason not to re-cap if you don't absolutely have to. I say, if the pad failed that easily, I'm glad to have caught it early enough to fix it, before something _really_ bad happened.

Coil noise is a feature not a problem. Designing switch mode is a about compromise, gluing components is sometimes a design requirement

I seem to recall back in the day, numerous third-party cpu coolers that had configurations for socket 3, 4, 5, and 7

As others have pointed out, coil noise is very often not the result of a fault. It's electromagnetic induced vibration and needs some kind of anti-vibration the same way a fan can cause vibration and needs rubber dampers to stop the noise. Gluing down coils is one way to dampen the noise and probably the easiest for a hobbyist to fix it. You can buy new transformers that have been resin dipped during the manufacturing process as an anti-noise measure. In other words, gluing it down isn't a hack or bodge. It's actually proper maintenance. EDIT: However, it's fair to point out that noise _can_ indicate other problems as you discovered after replacing the caps. "Dirty" power can exacerbate coil noise. Replacing those caps cleaned it up enough to quiet that coil significantly.

Looking forward to the glue comparison!

I used to fix coil whine by adding a drop or 2 of crazy glue. Shut them right up. It's a common issue but not a "fault".

I sometimes rejuvenate the hot glue by running my hot air over it, to stick down new parts. Especially coils, big caps.

Nice camera work on the extreme close ups! :D

The noise is caused by the switching frequency being near the top of human hearing range, 15 - 20 kHz. Totally normal to glue it down to damp it 👍

That replacement PSU from Magnetek is most likely due to recap also. Those used some crappy capacitors. Some of them leaked badly, where others had really high ESR. I had to repair those a few times, some of them were used in PowerBook Duo Docks and in IBM Aptivas. Also about the coil whine, I had once repaired a PSU that had a nasty coil whine in standby by replacing the ceramic capacitor that was nearby it (I think it was 10nF). The original one was apparently acting as a piezo speaker for that specific frequency

Coil whine it’s more a mechanical problem than an electronic one. It’s caused by the copper wire resonating at a specific frequency and, being no more perfectly attached to the magnetic core due of aging, generates that whining noise. Nothing to be worried about though, it’s annoying but not unsafe.

I remember having a 486SX back then and playing GTA was simply not an option. My brohter had a 486DX-40 and on that machine it somehow works. I got a used Pentium 100 later that year, including an 2MB PCI graphics card with Cirrus Logic chipset. Guess what the first game was I tried out after assembling the new parts? It was just a blast seeing this game running in a playable state. You could even change resolution in this game when playing with high color mode, I think it was with pressing F11(?). Looking forward for the 3dfx-upgrade. Great video. 🙂👍

You said the PSU was a bit sooty. Meaning, there was something getting rather toasty, inside. Two common culprits in my experience are Diodes and Resistors.

I don't know about gluing the coil, but I do know that wax potting coils is very common. They do it to stop the very problem you seem to be having. I would remove the component and dip it in some liquid paraffin wax.

Option C would be to put a Meanwell inside. :-) Otherwise, I say glue it.

Coilwhine, the GTX 400 series had a major problem with coil whine. Should be ok to sound like that they said. Thanks for sharing, great vid :)

Fun fact I figured out for the heatsink on a socket 4; a pentium pro heatsink is perfect replacement. You just need to bend in the long end a little. Plus it looks cool as. :)

Forget that GTA crap, Try Carmageddon !

Gluing vibrating components IS the right way to do it.

i never played gta on the pc. but i did have it for ps 1

Woah there. SXE are low esr and part of the switching circuit. The replacements seem like general purpose, they’ll die pretty quick . I rebuild a lot of psus. I’ve had to recap smps before because someone used general purpose caps and the psu couldn’t bootstrap

Fun fact, "Marcon" would be pronounced Ma-Ru-Ko-N in Japanese, with Maru meaning round (Japanese love puns).

The other two transformers were at least dipped in resin so I guess that one should have received the same treatment as well. That wide yellow tape even seems to form a dam to contain the resin although perhaps they also ran out of thin tape at the same time... I bet it was made at the end of the last shift of the week 😜

In GTA when in game press F11 and choose a diffrent screen mode. Might work with a diffrent color depth or resolution.

I used to service some equipment that had a large (2" / 50mm) inductor on the output board, and if the inductor wasn't anchored to the board with epoxy or RTV, it would make an annoying high-pitched whine.

I'd say, glue the coil. Old glue between the windings might have draught up over time making noisy.

The reason gluing the coil tamps down on coil whine is because the coil is actually vibrating and the glue is damping the vibrations. Coil whine is not necessarily a real issue but if you find it really annoying that might be worth doing.

modern stuff uses glue on coils because they vibrate. It's normal even with modern electronics.

I had that computer, I got it very cheap back in the day at a market and it would crash sometimes, I think about after a year it stopped working so I went back to a 486.

ohh that sucks hahha your good i cant fix that at all very good fix

Did you test for the FDIV bug? I made it a business buying bad Pentiums off eBay circa 1999. Intel was legally required to replace their defective Pentiums and were running out of Socket 4's so I negotiated for Socket 7 233MMX! Great vid as usual

On GTA I if you tap either F10 or F11 you can change the screen resolution, certain cards go to 800x600x16 in hires mode and F8 disables the frame limiter and F6 or F5 pauses the game iirc

Just scope the PSU? If it's not too ripply under load, then there's no need to search for a fault, it's fine. Use silicone rated for power supply use to damp the offending magnetic, such as Silastic or Kafuter. There's nothing sketchy about that. Actually use it all over the place, like on that bodge capacitor, because why not. Look, when you look inside a PSU and it looks like a Peter North scene in there, that's for a reason, this is considered a high vibration environment due to all the large magnetics. When you don't gunk it all up, things break off, component legs and pads fatigue. Plus the noise. I think S3 Vision should work! Maybe it just needs UniVBE. Most games came with UniVBE on disk if the game supported VESA/SVGA modes. Try different versions too. My first PCI card was one of those i think and it needed a LIBERAL application of UniVBE all over the place, i wager a conclusion that the VESA BIOS on these was very incomplete. Oh i haven't looked carefully, i'm watching semi asleep on a netbook, so i'm sort of saying this blindly but the buzzing magnetic should be the SB power transformer. I know it's not ATX but given it has soft power, it must be built similar to an ATX PSU, with a secondary controller and whatnot. So that whole circuit doesn't need to work well, it just needs to work. You can also sort of stop looking across most of the PSU since that's all its own circuit, like you should be able to tell what belongs there though idk maybe not all people stare as much at PSUs as i happen to.

it's just coil whine, glueing them down is the right thing to do.

Gluing it will be fine.

Yes, gluing might feel sketchy, but that is how it is done these days. Since GTA supports Gravis, maybe get a PicoGUS to try out the GUS music. Also PicoGUS can emulate a few different sound cards, IIRC, since you are running low on soundcards :)

I think that now it is easier to buy PC XT than machine with Pentium 60/66 Mhz

Great video. But don't bend the legs :-)

One of the additional vram chips seems to be not fully in its socket. That may be the culprit, too...

Thermal paste isn't that big of a deal, especially for gold metal tops. These CPUs only have some watts of thermal output.

Time for some glue!

cool machine being a socket 4 are they rare considering the socket 5 and 7 wasnt that far away, weird socket 6 isnt in the Pentium scale its a socket 3 486 socket with 2 extra pin holes. i take it the coil doesnt simply need replacing in which case i would take the advise of gluing it down.

How about trying Display Doctor? Some video chipsets from that era don't fully support VESA graphics modes.

What is under the CPU, looks a bit like maybe a MMX voltage interposer - or maybe a 3.3V interposer as the P60/66 were 5V chips

Could you reduce flickering by reducing the monitor brightness and increasing the exposure time? Not as good as syncing, but it might help.

All electrolytics - even the good ones - fail eventually. God knows I replace them often enough. BTW, did you investigate whether your particular CPU was one of the early ones with the math error?

Regarding the power supply noise, coil noises often change with conditions. I'd suggest getting some kind of variable load and connecting it to one of the rails and fiddling it while the system is on. Does the noise go away if more load is put on one of the rails? edit: I see later you found the noise reacts to physical pressure on the coil. Glue 'em down!

Was there a video about this machine before? I don't remember it, what's that thing hanging off the side of the CPU socket?

You have the footprint on the PCB to mount the "bottom" cap, on a top side...

Isn’t a new AT PSU $35 on eBay? How much for all those caps? Is this a proprietary supply?

Haha, I have this same one but with a 100MHz DX4, model name is 330-100DX4

is that memory chip on the motherboard inserted fully?

What is that PCB between the Mainboard and CPU?

If the glue, duck tape, hammer or WD-40 fix it, then it's a win isn't it? 😁 Try gluing it, if it's electronic fault then it should not fix the problem, right? 🙃

You really need to be careful about removing PCBs on floppy drives. Many of them have the optical track 0 sensor on the PCB under the heads. If you so much as loosen the screws on that PCB, you will totally wreck the alignment, and I wish you the best of luck ever getting it back again. Don't ask how I learned this. Twice.

eeekkk.... those first vintage of the IBM PC 330/350 with flat face drive slide covers were, in my opinion, bad machines. The next generation of the PC 350 with slightly curved outward sliding drive cover doors were much better. I forget what MHz processors those began with.... Somewhere between 100 MHz and 166 MHz. Also decent (next) was the PC 300 XL which was a Pentium II processor in that same PC 350 model 2 case.

Am I the only one who can't hear the coil noise?