Another big "WHAT?!" moment

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Today I revived an old hobby of mine: Playing around with old computers.

Just recently I got a big beast; an old tower computer. (If anybody wants a picture of that thing I can upload one tomorrow.)

I hooked the computer up on a monitor, connected a keyboard and after some unsatisfied beeping it booted the BIOS. K5 Processor 133Mhz, 32MB EDO-RAM, (dead) Dallas Clock Chip. Only one HDD connected with only about 200MB. The hard disk started spinning -- and stopped -- started again and stopped. A few times it did this and finally did nothing more.

Sinchen: "What is wrong with the HDD? Now where is my screwdriver? Time to get that piece of sh.. data storage medium out of there!"

Felt like a mallet on the head: (Pictures together 1.3MB)
HDD1.JPG HDD2.JPG

One missing screw, bent PCB and the power connector was just loosely pushed against the contacts.

WHAT?!
Seriously, what do people do with their things??​

Edit:
Pictures of the RTC chip

DS_12887A_1.JPG DS_12887A_2.JPG
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Alexander1970
Very nice PC,Sinchen.:)

And the HDD except of the "loosen" Power Connector seemed also still working.:yay:
Can you fix it ?
I am curious which Operating System is on it.:D
 
KleinesSinchen
And the HDD except of the "loosen" Power Connector seemed also still working.:yay:
Can you fix it ?
Click to expand...
Nah… I couldn't care less. Not worth the effort to see an installation of MS-DOS 6.22 with Windows 3.1(1) – or some version of Win95.

Maybe the computer could be used for DOS games and Win95c with another HDD and some more EDO-RAMs (I have soooo many of them somewhere). But honestly: The Dallas chip is way beyond my skills and a computer without BIOS battery is a pain. Most likely this huge tower will just become part of "my little private museum" and do nothing.
 
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KleinesSinchen
alexander1970 said:
Maybe worth a Look...
https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2009-10-10-renovating-a-dallas-battery-chip.htm
Click to expand...
Oh dear… what a procedure… The chip on this motherboard is a DS12887A. Maybe similar enough? [YouTube] Dallas DS1287 & DS12887 RTC & other DS RTC Chip Repairs

The computer is pretty much unusable. I plugged in a 1.2GB HDD, it spins up and is detected normally. So no problem here. Then
CMOS checksum error – defaults loaded
CMOS battery failed
Press F1 to continue or Del to enter setup

BIOS setup seemingly works, but after save+exit the same error comes up (without turning off the computer). It is not possible to set anything.
 
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The Real Jdbye
Dallas chip looks like a through hole component so soldering it should not be a problem. It appears you can still find replacements, the downside being you have to replace the whole chip. That's just the way these things were designed.
Or you have alternatives like this one with a battery socket: https://monotech.fwscart.com/DS12887_RTC_Drop-In_Replacement/p6083514_19810725.aspx
 
Silent_Gunner
@The Real Jdbye Shit like this makes you wonder, considering that these parts were assembled in factories, why these companies didn't put sockets on their boards. Surely, it'd be easier to replace the individual part and then send it back as opposed to the whole, "we'll take your system/broken part and we'll send you a working one while we sell this broken one as refurbished," if the latter was even a thing companies did back in the day!
 
Localhorst86
Seeing as Molex power connectors can sometimes have a tighter grip on the power cable than blonde bombshell Crystal down the street in your local strip club has on the dancing pole, I can see how that happened.

I also often was trying to pull Crystal off the pole a power plug out of a molex connector and thought "damnit, that thing's going to snap on me any second now"
 
KleinesSinchen
@The Real Jdbye
There is no soldering involved in this case. The chip sits on a socket (new pictures attached)
When ordering a replacement I'd have to know: Are these old chips → battery (nearly) dead as well – or newly produced replacements?

Maybe I will try the modification someday.

It's not that I need that computer.
 
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