Home		Like		Comment

Failing 3.0GHz Pentium IV - Final Update Summary: Over several posts, I have been reporting my efforts to recover a failing 3.0 GHz Pentium IV system that I have had over 21 years. This post completes that series, identifying the culprit and the solution. Post Body: I hate it when I lose one, but I have definitively lost this one. After methodically working through every option, I was left with the motherboard as the likely cause of the fault that was hobbling my trusty 3.0 GHz Pentium IV system, a robust and reliable system for over 21 years. Careful visual examination of the motherboard revealed, if not THE culprit, A culprit: three leaking capacitors, part of a four capacitor row, which had spilled toxic venom onto the areas around them. This is clearly visible in the photo below: Taking a VERY long shot, I got out some rubbing alcohol and Q-tips and carefully cleaned off the damage that I could see. Of course, the capacitors themselves are probably seriously compromised, but I have at least temporarily recovered more than one machine with this gambit. To make a long story short, it didn’t work this time. The machine became even more unreliable after the cleaning, not even producing a POST beep most of the time. I managed to get it into the BIOS just once, and on that occassion it froze before I could do anything useful anyway. The capacitors in question are surface mounted, and removing and replacing surface mount components is simply beyond my skillset and available equipment. This means that the only solution to this issue is to replace the entire motherboard, both an expensive and a time consuming operation. A quick check of eBay showed none of this particular motherboard was available for sale. This implies the need for a different, more available motherboard, and if I need to go with a different board, I am essentially designing a whole new PC, albeit with the majority of the mass media components (disk drives, DVD/CD drives, etc.) pre-selected. So... for now, this long time and faithful contributor to the work of the Retro Computing lab is being moved off to the sidelines. I will put a standing search on eBay for the specific motherboard it uses and wait. Eventually, I should be able to get a new one and restore the PC to its former “glory”. Until then, the work that was being done on this machine will be moved to my custom designed/built 1.6 GHz Pentium IV machine. This particular machine has always been a favorite of mine - I designed it and built it with only the fastest and quietest of components from end to end. I have always had the impression that the resulting machine was/is subjectively faster than the 3.0 GHz machine that is the main topic of this post. The fact that this 1.6 GHz machine runs Windows ME, a lighter OS than the Windows XP run on the 3.0 GHz one, probably contributes to that impression. However, the machine triple boots Windows ME, Windows 2000 and openSuSE 10.0, and all of them feel very, very snappy. For now then, it is “curtains” for an old friend, but it will be back ... in time ... and in the meantime, the 1.6 GHz PIV will carry the load.