I did the following:

1. Replaced winfast motherboard with backup winfast motherboard.
The backup motherboard is same model yet strangely enough missing one ethernet port, it only has one, while the other has two, also firewire pins missing but ok.

2. Put some new artic silver 5 on the cpu.

3. Struggled to get the scythe ninja heatsink on it, pulled it off then put it back on ? I know this is bad but how bad exactly ? Could this have created an air pocket between CPU and Heatsink ?

4. Re-connected everything, everything seems to be working fine so far, windows re-scanner hardware etc.

Except the following strange things are occuring:

5. On boot-up the CPU-fan does spin up and spins for a few seconds, like 10 or 20 seconds.

6. CMOS crc checksum failure continue with default, maybe battery dead could be.

7. CPU fan stops spinning after 20 seconds no matter if in bios or booting to windows.

8. The antec 1200 has huge airflow, and the heatsink of the scythe might be transferring enough heat away from CPU, CPU according to internal sensors are 34 to 37 to 38 degrees celcius or so. I am not sure if I can trust these sensors but ok.

9. There is again a weird smelling coming from somewhere....

I am not sure what this smell is some hypothesis:

9.1 Power supply went bad after many years and is leaking gasses from capacitators ?

9.2 Capacitators on motherboard are leaking gasses ?

9.3 The CPU is burning through the PCB ? I cannot check this.
There seems to be no heat transfer among the heat pipes and the cpu heatsink, it's all cool to touch ?!? PCB smell ?

9.4 The oil I used for the fans is old and is causing a strange oily-burn smell ?

Strange thing is the hardware monitor tool says CPU fan spinning at 16.000 rpm... which is not the case.

I re-oiled all the fans in the system, except the CPU fan because it seemed fine... maybe there is some dirty in it causing to get stuck ??? I doubt it though...

It's a pain in the ass to get off... and it doesn't make much sense to me... it does spin up and then it shuts down ?

9.5 There is also some artic silver 5 leaking past the cpu but I don't think it touches anything, maybe it's artic silver 5 smell ?

The smell is the same smell as before... but less intense... when there was no fan on nforce4 chip I also noticed this smell, but much more.

I could have taken the nforce4 fan from backup motherboard and maybe re-attached it to existing motherboard could have saved me a lot of trouble.

But it was kinda good I did this cause there was so much dust everywhere...

I would like to know from you guys:

What could be causing a CPU fan to stop spinning ?|??

I already tried unplugging and replugging power cords and resets...

Also what typically causes a burning smell is it the PCB ? Or could it be old oil ? Kinda strange...

All cables are taken care off, spin around each other here and there and made sure no cables are touching any hot components, nothing seems to be getting hot... except maybe cpu and gpu ?

The gpu/graphics card is quite new... GT 1030... maybe something wrong inside of it ? Maybe thermal paste dried up... quite weird...

Hard to pin-point where the smell is coming from.

My best bet would be either somehow PCB but most likely capacitors opening up on the top slightly.... or power supply is doing something weird or is old ?

Do PCs get smelly of old age ?

My older PCs also kinda smell a bit... but this one smells a bit harder... quite weird.

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

On 10/14/2021 3:18 AM, skybuck2000 wrote:
> I did the following:
>
> 1. Replaced winfast motherboard with backup winfast motherboard.
> The backup motherboard is same model yet strangely enough missing one ethernet port, it only has one, while the other has two, also firewire pins missing but ok.
>
> 2. Put some new artic silver 5 on the cpu.
>
> 3. Struggled to get the scythe ninja heatsink on it, pulled it off then put it back on ? I know this is bad but how bad exactly ? Could this have created an air pocket between CPU and Heatsink ?
>
> 4. Re-connected everything, everything seems to be working fine so far, windows re-scanner hardware etc.
>
> Except the following strange things are occuring:
>
> 5. On boot-up the CPU-fan does spin up and spins for a few seconds, like 10 or 20 seconds.
>
> 6. CMOS crc checksum failure continue with default, maybe battery dead could be.
>
> 7. CPU fan stops spinning after 20 seconds no matter if in bios or booting to windows.
>
> 8. The antec 1200 has huge airflow, and the heatsink of the scythe might be transferring enough heat away from CPU, CPU according to internal sensors are 34 to 37 to 38 degrees celcius or so. I am not sure if I can trust these sensors but ok.
>
> 9. There is again a weird smelling coming from somewhere....
>
> I am not sure what this smell is some hypothesis:
>
> 9.1 Power supply went bad after many years and is leaking gasses from capacitators ?
>
> 9.2 Capacitators on motherboard are leaking gasses ?
>
> 9.3 The CPU is burning through the PCB ? I cannot check this.
> There seems to be no heat transfer among the heat pipes and the cpu heatsink, it's all cool to touch ?!? PCB smell ?
>
> 9.4 The oil I used for the fans is old and is causing a strange oily-burn smell ?
>
> Strange thing is the hardware monitor tool says CPU fan spinning at 16.000 rpm... which is not the case.
>
> I re-oiled all the fans in the system, except the CPU fan because it seemed fine... maybe there is some dirty in it causing to get stuck ??? I doubt it though...
>
> It's a pain in the ass to get off... and it doesn't make much sense to me... it does spin up and then it shuts down ?
>
> 9.5 There is also some artic silver 5 leaking past the cpu but I don't think it touches anything, maybe it's artic silver 5 smell ?
>
> The smell is the same smell as before... but less intense... when there was no fan on nforce4 chip I also noticed this smell, but much more.
>
> I could have taken the nforce4 fan from backup motherboard and maybe re-attached it to existing motherboard could have saved me a lot of trouble.
>
> But it was kinda good I did this cause there was so much dust everywhere...
>
> I would like to know from you guys:
>
> What could be causing a CPU fan to stop spinning ?|??
>
> I already tried unplugging and replugging power cords and resets...
>
> Also what typically causes a burning smell is it the PCB ? Or could it be old oil ? Kinda strange...
>
> All cables are taken care off, spin around each other here and there and made sure no cables are touching any hot components, nothing seems to be getting hot... except maybe cpu and gpu ?
>
> The gpu/graphics card is quite new... GT 1030... maybe something wrong inside of it ? Maybe thermal paste dried up... quite weird...
>
> Hard to pin-point where the smell is coming from.
>
> My best bet would be either somehow PCB but most likely capacitors opening up on the top slightly.... or power supply is doing something weird or is old ?
>
> Do PCs get smelly of old age ?
>
> My older PCs also kinda smell a bit... but this one smells a bit harder... quite weird.
>
> Bye for now,
> Skybuck.
>

You can get an adapter cable, to run the fan from the power supply directly.

The problem is, for the CPU fan header, the RPM signal must be connected.
The adapter for that (a fan connector with just RPM signal), is not
that common at the computer store. I think just one fan I bought here,
ever came with the necessary adapter to run that way.

The rail used to power fans, has no fuse. The track has limited
copper dimensions. Drawing more than a couple amps from the +12V
on the fan connectors, can burn out the power track. But if this
happens, the fans would no longer spin, and the BIOS would
stop and tell you "fan too slow on CPU". That's one of the
BIOS jobs, is to detect fan speed below threshold. 16 RPM
is not the correct threshold. Some are 600RPM to 1200RPM or so,
and even for perfectly functional fans, they sometimes complain
they are too slow, when they're just fine. The threshold may not
be programmable in the BIOS.

If the CPU fan stops spinning, the power could be removed
entirely, or the variable voltage on the 12V fan, could have
dropped below 5V. The fan hub may not like operation with the
fan stalled, and ~5V still left on it.

When a fan does not behave well, I generally bypass it with an
adapter. My Typing Machine, which died about a week ago, had
a jumble of wires and circuits just to feed fans. Not all the
fans went to headers.

If you want to buy a professional solution, that would be a
"fan rheobus". This provides "rheostats" or variable power
sources for fans, complete with adjustment knob per channel.
A good one, can provide up to two amps per fan. But, they're
expensive, relatively speaking, and hard to find on this side of
the ocean. Sometimes, the Germans made some. It's a hard business
to make a living, because the product might be $50 to $100,
and not many will fork out money for fan controls. But, that's
an alternative control method.

With a clamp-on DC ammeter, you can measure DC power drawn from
the power supply, and detect excessive current draw.

You should check that the PSU fan is spinning.

The VCore circuit, has sufficient power capabilities, to "char"
or "burn" the area around the CPU socket. You can run your
finger over that surface and check for heat. Sending too much
voltage to the CPU can do that, cooking the CPU, cooking the
motherboard FR4 substrate material.

The smell could even be a tiny eight pin regulator chip somewhere.
Some motherboards, even when brand new, had such a chip running
at 100C. Which is ridiculous. You can spot stupid stuff like
that with an IR camera. Again, a FLIR multispectral camera is
not cheap (it overlays IR image on visual image, for correlation
by the user), but the enthusiast sites use that for evaluating
cooling. I saw a review in the last day, using pictures from
one of those.

And sure, bad caps make a smell, but when electricity is present
and they "outgas". I had little puffs of gray smoke come from
a PSU once, and that smoke was coming from leaking capacitors
on the +5V output rail. There were four caps in parallel,
all caps were leaking brown goo.

My Typing Computer had a flaw in onboard regulation. It blew
out the nice Marvell NIC chip. And at the end, it was
freezing while running Memtest, and I'd had enough of it,
so the computer case sits next to me, with the guts completely
cleaned out. Only the floppy drive and cable remain. There was no
smell from mine, but the motherboard was doing something naughty,
and a SATA port blew out a couple years ago, the Marvell NIC
a couple months ago, and something chipset related was the
last failure.

Paul

Paul used his keyboard to write :
> On 10/14/2021 3:18 AM, skybuck2000 wrote:
>> I did the following:
>>
>> 1. Replaced winfast motherboard with backup
>> winfast motherboard.

SATA port blew out a couple years ago,
> the Marvell NIC
> a couple months ago, and something chipset
> related was the
> last failure.
>
> Paul

The answer is MUCH simpler than that, Skybuck is
too stupid to own a computer.

There was indeed some brown stuff on the capacitators.

The weird thing was:

It was on the old motherboard but on the new one as well.

For now I dismissed it as a bit of rust but it could also be maybe some stuff from the inside ?

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

I also worry a little bit that the power supply fan is not spinning fast enough.

I just checked with some toilet paper to see if it could blow it away it did.

Plastic bag and paper did not get blown away, could this be a sign that there is something wrong with the power supply fan ?

Maybe I attached it wrongly, maybe it's rubbing against something, it does stop a bit soon when power is cut, little bit sooner than others.

I think it's ball bearing, it's a horizontal fan could that have something to do with it's potentially slight failure ?

Perhaps that power fan is slowly dieing or something...

Do fans die over time ? It seems to be happening slightly... the rest of the fans are going very strong...

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

On 10/14/2021 10:24 PM, skybuck2000 wrote:
> There was indeed some brown stuff on the capacitators.
>
> The weird thing was:
>
> It was on the old motherboard but on the new one as well.
>
> For now I dismissed it as a bit of rust but it could also be maybe some stuff from the inside ?
>
> Bye for now,
> Skybuck.
>

On the top of an electrolytic capacitor, is the letter "K" or "X" stamped
in the aluminum packaging. If excessive pressure builds up, the stamped
seams let go and the pressure is released from the top of the cap.

In capacitors with a corrosion problem, the seams up there allow
the brown material to escape. When the liquid electrolyte escapes,
the capacitors can let out a puff of smoke at startup. Eventually
the cap gets dry enough, it is not much of a capacitor any more,
and the circuit malfunctions.

The Wikipedia picture, shows the color of the brown material.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Al-Elko-bad-caps-Wiki-07-02-17.jpg

That motherboard needs to be "re-capped".

And you don't replace those with Sanyo OSCONs either. You use conventional electrolytics,
with midrange performance. That's because the circuit is designed with conventional
electrolytic capacitors in mind. If you use OSCONs, then some other component values
need to be changed, to adjust for the component differences.

Polymer caps, don't have pressure relief seams on the top. The industry started
using more of those on motherboards, because the electrolytic capacitor scare
made the aluminum caps a bad public relations item to be on a motherboard.

Aluminum caps do not rust. The brown color is electrolyte. You cannot
dismiss this component failure issue. The longer a consumer electronics
item with defective electrolytics is run, the more "collateral damage"
that can result. A MOSFET or an inductor near the cap, may be ruined by
trying to drive a bad cap for too long.

Caps have different roles. On a motherboard, some caps are part of an SMPS
power converter. Those are under stress. The ones near AGP or PCI slots,
those are known as "bulk capacitance", and are not under the same stress.

But the caps we might see from the year 2006, those aren't stress failures.
It's possible all the caps will leak at the same time. This is why people
recapping boards, replace so many of them. They're guessing these are "chemistry
failure" caps, and not "stress failures". On stress failures, you only replace
the capacitor bank on the SMPS. That can be, say, seven caps next to one another.

Paul

On 10/14/2021 10:27 PM, skybuck2000 wrote:
> I also worry a little bit that the power supply fan is not spinning fast enough.
>
> I just checked with some toilet paper to see if it could blow it away it did.
>
> Plastic bag and paper did not get blown away, could this be a sign that there is something wrong with the power supply fan ?
>
> Maybe I attached it wrongly, maybe it's rubbing against something, it does stop a bit soon when power is cut, little bit sooner than others.
>
> I think it's ball bearing, it's a horizontal fan could that have something to do with it's potentially slight failure ?
>
> Perhaps that power fan is slowly dieing or something...
>
> Do fans die over time ? It seems to be happening slightly... the rest of the fans are going very strong...
>
> Bye for now,
> Skybuck.
>

There are several different kinds of fan bearings:

ball bearing
sleeve bearing # 3dB quieter... but can leak oil
FDB bearing # these are the nice ones, also used in disk drives
ceramic bearing # used in a few fans, usually high RPM like 6000 RPM

Yes, they wear out. Some last 30,000 hours. Some last 50,000 hours.
Some last 60,000 hours (Ceradyne). The FDB ones, which have a
sealed bearing and oil circulation, theoretically could last
forever, but the oil leaks past the seal and then they fail.

The ball bearing ones, the bearing gets noisy as it gets older,
and that's how it tells you that it is worn out.

*******

With the power supply disconnected from mains power, you can check to
see if the fan blade moves freely. Because the brushless DC fans have
magnets in them, you can feel the pull of the magnet when you try to
rotate the blade. But other than the magnetic force, you'll find
the bearing is pretty good and the fan moves with very little force.

Bearings that fail completely, the shaft will cease to rotate and
the bearing is "seized". That's what a total failure would be like.

*******

Some ATX power supplies use demand cooling. The fan does not
spin, until the PSU gets warmed up, and then it spins a little.
It can do this, by applying less than 12V to the 12V fan motor.
Some of those fans, continue to spin (slowly) at 7V. Some work
all the way down to 5V. If you apply less than 5V, usually
it won't spin at that level.

Paul

On Friday, October 15, 2021 at 4:24:39 AM UTC+2, skybuck2000 wrote:
> There was indeed some brown stuff on the capacitators.
>
> The weird thing was:
>
> It was on the old motherboard but on the new one as well.
>
> For now I dismissed it as a bit of rust but it could also be maybe some stuff from the inside ?
>
> Bye for now,
> Skybuck.

Both motherboards were second hand/used by others, they were the only socket 939 motherboards I could get at the time.

My best guess is that the second/backup motherboard was probably in a very hot system. When it was sold to me it was removed from that system and immediately put into the static bag. Perhaps whoever did that did not wipe off enemy eletrolyte from the capacitator.

That would be my best guess to what happened to the backup motherboard.

Either that or the many summers somehow caused the electrolyte to also put pressure on those caps even while powered off in a box in a closest ??!?

Would such a thing be possible at all ?

For now explanation 1 seems more likely then explanation 2 :)

However there could also be a third explanation maybe some kind of chemical reaction maybe introduced by bacteria deep inside the capacitator/electrolyte.

This last explanation also seems somewhat reasonable. I am not sure if there are any bacterias that eat electrolyte and produce gas possibly making this brown stuff bubble up.

Though my best guess is bacteria will evolve to eat anything so it's a reasonable hypothesis.

It might even be a new bacteria that has adepted to our electronics/electrolyte, now that be be an interesting find ! ;)

Bye for now,
Skybuck.

Thanks for replieing Paul,

I just checked high-resolution images of the old motherboard with dust on it and such and brownish/black stuff on top of capacitators.

It does indeed look like damaged/failed/wonky capacitators.

One of them is near the south bridge/nforce4 chip where the tiny little ventilator is.

This could explain why the tiny little ventilator would stop spinning.

One or more of the capacitators near it failed/was wonky.

Unfortunately I didn't bother to take any pictures of the backup motherboard, but I can remember seeing the same kind of brownish blackish stuff on capacitators higher up probably near CPU.

So this again could explain why the CPU fan does not want to stay on for much longer. Capacitator is somehow bad ?

Maybe the capacitator cannot hold on to some kind of charge for too long and thus the CPU fan stops spinning as the capacitator is drained from power much more quickly.

This kinda makes some sense to me !

(I dont have filezilla on my laptop otherwise I could upload some pictures, but this textual description will have to do for now).

Bye,
Skybuck.

Addition:

(I did make a video of the backup motherboard, maybe I delete it but some are still there... so there is a chance I can find a video of it)

Later I will examine the videos if I still have them by that time, had to delete some to record my rank 1 victory in world of warships lol.

But I think there is a good chance there is a video of it there... and otherwise my memory will have to do.

It's starting to seem that pouring more time and money into this old PC is maybe not really worth it, but I do still need to PC to get all my data off, I already have data off, but those backups are a little bit older... could use some new backups.

Also lots of unbacked software on there.... software on new os might need updates anyway but I would still like to save this old system... what is most important is the harddisk, the rest is not so important, since those harddisk are safely inside that strong pc case I am in no rush...

It's nice to have a bootable old computer in case I need quick access to my information in case of emergency or so... so it's still somewhat valuable to keep this older PC working until I am finally statisfied with new PC technology.

I look forward to DDR5 and PCI Express 5.0 and USB 3.1C or USB 4.0

My DreamPC2006 was still DDR1 and PCI Express 1.0 and USB 2.0

Current laptop from 2012 is USB 2.0 still.

So such a new PC would be a big step forward for me, will be most interesting.

I look forward to BIG FAT bandwidth on new system mostly... cause I wont to multi task very heavily and such... and for that bandwidth across motherboard should help a lot.

I have not made up my mind yet what I will purchase but there are some candidates:

1. Further ryzen system, though mid 2022 is far off and not sure if I want to wait that long.
2. Threadripper is still very expensive and does not have latest technology on motherboard.
3. Alder lake is maybe still produced on older manufacturing would be kinda weird... perhaps too new and might be buggy.

So going to watch how this plays out.

I definetly do not want to purchase DDR4 because it's 2013 technology that would be backward though maybe well tested though perhaps that don't matter..

PCI Express 4.0 will somewhat sufficient it's going to disappear very soon so that also be weird.

USB drives I am a big fan of that not sure how long I will be a fan, but external SSDs come to mind for this USB 4.0 or something like it would be fantastic.

Plus PCI Express 5.0 will be necessary to heavily multi task between these storage solutions and also graphics cards so that is why I want PCI Expres 5.0 very badly.

It will also be the last technology without any compression, PCI Expres 6.0 might have all kinds of compression bugs.

So my hope is on PCI Express 5.0 working flawlessly ?! ;)

Bye,
Skybuck.

On 10/18/2021 3:55 AM, skybuck2000 wrote:
> Addition:
>
> (I did make a video of the backup motherboard, maybe I delete it but some are still there... so there is a chance I can find a video of it)
>
> Later I will examine the videos if I still have them by that time, had to delete some to record my rank 1 victory in world of warships lol.
>
> But I think there is a good chance there is a video of it there... and otherwise my memory will have to do.
>
> It's starting to seem that pouring more time and money into this old PC is maybe not really worth it, but I do still need to PC to get all my data off, I already have data off, but those backups are a little bit older... could use some new backups.
>
> Also lots of unbacked software on there.... software on new os might need updates anyway but I would still like to save this old system... what is most important is the harddisk, the rest is not so important, since those harddisk are safely inside that strong pc case I am in no rush...
>
> It's nice to have a bootable old computer in case I need quick access to my information in case of emergency or so... so it's still somewhat valuable to keep this older PC working until I am finally statisfied with new PC technology.
>
> I look forward to DDR5 and PCI Express 5.0 and USB 3.1C or USB 4.0
>
> My DreamPC2006 was still DDR1 and PCI Express 1.0 and USB 2.0
>
> Current laptop from 2012 is USB 2.0 still.
>
> So such a new PC would be a big step forward for me, will be most interesting.
>
> I look forward to BIG FAT bandwidth on new system mostly... cause I wont to multi task very heavily and such... and for that bandwidth across motherboard should help a lot.
>
> I have not made up my mind yet what I will purchase but there are some candidates:
>
> 1. Further ryzen system, though mid 2022 is far off and not sure if I want to wait that long.
> 2. Threadripper is still very expensive and does not have latest technology on motherboard.
> 3. Alder lake is maybe still produced on older manufacturing would be kinda weird... perhaps too new and might be buggy.
>
> So going to watch how this plays out.
>
> I definetly do not want to purchase DDR4 because it's 2013 technology that would be backward though maybe well tested though perhaps that don't matter.
>
> PCI Express 4.0 will somewhat sufficient it's going to disappear very soon so that also be weird.
>
> USB drives I am a big fan of that not sure how long I will be a fan, but external SSDs come to mind for this USB 4.0 or something like it would be fantastic.
>
> Plus PCI Express 5.0 will be necessary to heavily multi task between these storage solutions and also graphics cards so that is why I want PCI Expres 5.0 very badly.
>
> It will also be the last technology without any compression, PCI Expres 6.0 might have all kinds of compression bugs.
>
> So my hope is on PCI Express 5.0 working flawlessly ?! ;)
>
> Bye,
> Skybuck.
>

It boils down to money and your "plan".

There are refurbished PCs that run either Windows 7 Refurbisher
or Windows 10 Refurbisher. I have a Dell Optiplex that I
got for $200 CDN. That is a basic Windows 7 machine, suitable
for my Windows 7 era software.

This is the poster child for ugliness, but it has a quad core CPU
at a reasonable price for such things. Refurbs are available
world-wide, but not the same machines will necessarily be available.

CA$259.99 [Wait until Jan.15 for price to drop...]

https://www.staples.ca/products/2993248-en-lenovo-refurbished-thinkcentre-m92-tower-desktop-32-ghz-intel-core-i5-3470-1-tb-hdd-128-gb-ssd-8-gb-ddr3-windows-10-pro

This is the CPU in that machine, a 4C 4T.

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/68316/intel-core-i5-3470-processor-6m-cache-up-to-3-60-ghz.html

That's if you don't have money for expensive new stuff. That
won't run Windows 11 -- it's not even close to doing that.

*******

My normal Core2 Typing Machine died about a bit over a
week ago. Regulator failure onboard somewhere,
damaged the chipset. It was freezing in Memtest, but not
due to memory errors. Some hardware was interfering with
the test.

Windows reported "WHEA error" or something. Cooked.

So I put something else in the case, and now all my
software plan is ruined. It's like a train wreck
inside that PC. Ruination everywhere. At least
I got my USENET and Mail programs working on
the Test Machine, and that's what I'm typing on
at the moment, the Test Machine and its copy
of Windows 7.

I could not give a rats ass about the whizzy stuff
right now. I have too much damage to fix.

*******

It takes days and days and days of research, to build
a PC now. It took three or four days, to find a
motherboard with an aligned TPM module for it. All
the equipment has too many shortcomings, too many
issues. You must be very careful. Very careful.
It's not like the old days. They're trying to
screw you, at every turn.

I even had trouble during assembly. The Wraith Stealth
has screws for mounting. The plate falls off the motherboard
during install, causing the pre-applied thermal paste to go where
you don't want it to. Had to pull motherboard off
tray and start over. Go in bathroom near the lights,
hold motherboard and backing plate in one hand, cooler
in other hand, try and align spring loaded screws to the
plate, until finally I could get the screws installed.
Must have taken an hour of cursing and swearing.

That's an example of the usual assembly fun. And
I know how you enjoy that stuff :-)

Then, when I wanted to slide my removable motherboard tray
into place, the motherboard heatsink got in the way, and
I had to take the power supply out of the PC (again),
to fit the fucking tray.

Then, the CPU would not POST. Fortunately, the motherboard
has a USB2 "flasher port" and a push-button flasher button.
You don't need a CPU to upgrade the BIOS. I tried a USB
stick with FAT formatting and put "MSI.ROM" on it.
It didn't work. A red light came on. The manual doesn't say
what file system to use. Turns out that FAT32 works, FAT does not.

My memtest floppy would not work. Went into a boot loop!
The GOP video driver at BIOS level, is not compatible.

Needed a new memtest version from Passmark. That worked.

Linux booted on it, but did not know what driver to use
for graphics. Ran Prime95 on it under Linux, to prove
memory is OK.

That's the work so far. Hardware OK. Software comes next (Grrr...)

If I was doing this in the Skylake era, I would have finished
two hours sooner.

Summary: Some third-party coolers install easier (top-side, screw down)
Get a motherboard with "flasher port" for BIOS. Nice.

Paul

> I just checked high-resolution images of the old motherboard with dust on it and such and brownish/black stuff on top of capacitators.
>
> It does indeed look like damaged/failed/wonky capacitators.
>
> One of them is near the south bridge/nforce4 chip where the tiny little ventilator is.
>
> This could explain why the tiny little ventilator would stop spinning.
>
> One or more of the capacitators near it failed/was wonky.
>
> Unfortunately I didn't bother to take any pictures of the backup motherboard, but I can remember seeing the same kind of brownish blackish stuff on capacitators higher up probably near CPU.
>
> So this again could explain why the CPU fan does not want to stay on for much longer. Capacitator is somehow bad ?
>
> Maybe the capacitator cannot hold on to some kind of charge for too long and thus the CPU fan stops spinning as the capacitator is drained from power much more quickly.
>
> This kinda makes some sense to me !
>
> (I dont have filezilla on my laptop otherwise I could upload some pictures, but this textual description will have to do for now).

Actually it seems I lied but accident. I do have filezilla setup on this laptop, just not in c:\tools were I expected it to be.
It's in program files cause I do lazy installs on this laptop lol.

Anyway now I can provide some high-resolution images of the most suspicious capacitator on the old motherboard, kinda interesting to look at:

In case you want to look at the picture they are here:

http://www.skybuck.org/Hardware/DreamPC2006/SuspiciousCapacitator/

There is also one memory chip picture in there but ok.

Bye,
Skybuck.

On 10/27/2021 10:10 PM, skybuck2000 wrote:
>> I just checked high-resolution images of the old motherboard with dust on it and such and brownish/black stuff on top of capacitators.
>>
>> It does indeed look like damaged/failed/wonky capacitators.
>>
>> One of them is near the south bridge/nforce4 chip where the tiny little ventilator is.
>>
>> This could explain why the tiny little ventilator would stop spinning.
>>
>> One or more of the capacitators near it failed/was wonky.
>>
>> Unfortunately I didn't bother to take any pictures of the backup motherboard, but I can remember seeing the same kind of brownish blackish stuff on capacitators higher up probably near CPU.
>>
>> So this again could explain why the CPU fan does not want to stay on for much longer. Capacitator is somehow bad ?
>>
>> Maybe the capacitator cannot hold on to some kind of charge for too long and thus the CPU fan stops spinning as the capacitator is drained from power much more quickly.
>>
>> This kinda makes some sense to me !
>>
>> (I dont have filezilla on my laptop otherwise I could upload some pictures, but this textual description will have to do for now).
>
> Actually it seems I lied but accident. I do have filezilla setup on this laptop, just not in c:\tools were I expected it to be.
> It's in program files cause I do lazy installs on this laptop lol.
>
> Anyway now I can provide some high-resolution images of the most suspicious capacitator on the old motherboard, kinda interesting to look at:
>
> In case you want to look at the picture they are here:
>
> http://www.skybuck.org/Hardware/DreamPC2006/SuspiciousCapacitator/
>
> There is also one memory chip picture in there but ok.
>
> Bye,
> Skybuck.
>

The word is capacitor!

On 10/28/2021 5:58 PM, Bob F wrote:
> On 10/27/2021 10:10 PM, skybuck2000 wrote:
>>> I just checked high-resolution images of the old motherboard with dust on it and such and brownish/black stuff on top of capacitators.
>>>
>>> It does indeed look like damaged/failed/wonky capacitators.
>>>
>>> One of them is near the south bridge/nforce4 chip where the tiny little ventilator is.
>>>
>>> This could explain why the tiny little ventilator would stop spinning.
>>>
>>> One or more of the capacitators near it failed/was wonky.
>>>
>>> Unfortunately I didn't bother to take any pictures of the backup motherboard, but I can remember seeing the same kind of brownish blackish stuff on capacitators higher up probably near CPU.
>>>
>>> So this again could explain why the CPU fan does not want to stay on for much longer. Capacitator is somehow bad ?
>>>
>>> Maybe the capacitator cannot hold on to some kind of charge for too long and thus the CPU fan stops spinning as the capacitator is drained from power much more quickly.
>>>
>>> This kinda makes some sense to me !
>>>
>>> (I dont have filezilla on my laptop otherwise I could upload some pictures, but this textual description will have to do for now).
>>
>> Actually it seems I lied but accident. I do have filezilla setup on this laptop, just not in c:\tools were I expected it to be.
>> It's in program files cause I do lazy installs on this laptop lol.
>>
>> Anyway now I can provide some high-resolution images of the most suspicious capacitator on the old motherboard, kinda interesting to look at:
>>
>> In case you want to look at the picture they are here:
>>
>> http://www.skybuck.org/Hardware/DreamPC2006/SuspiciousCapacitator/
>>
>> There is also one memory chip picture in there but ok.
>>
>> Bye,
>>    Skybuck.
>>
>
> The word is capacitor!
>

And the picture is of a leaky capacitor.

The pressure relief seam is bulged and split a bit,
and the electrolyte stain is on top. The capacitor
cannot "live forever" in that state. It will dry out
and the capacitance value will then be incorrect.

The capacitor needs to be replaced.

Paul