Today’s post is a not-yet-complete restoration and testing of a few motherboards. 3xA motherboards. Thankfully it’s not a “trzy razy tak”, which majority of Poles should be aware of. This took me way more than a week, so details might be quite lackluster compared to other posts. Sorry.
Case 1: ASRock K7NF2-RAID
Let’s start with the easiest one. ASRock K7NF2, socket 462. This one has arrived to me in its original packaging, along with some of the original accesories.
As You can see, ASRock was modern even 20 years ago. Hardly any accesories and packaging that makes me yawn. What doesn’t make me sleepy is the motherboard itself.
… right.
This honestly looks worse than it is in reality.
Only flux residue, no bad traces here.
This is the only thing wrong with it as far as I can see. And even then this is capacitor across SB voltage supply. There are so many other ones that I don’t need to replace it.
I didn’t say that this is the weirdest thing with it though. Capacitors have clearly been replaced, but date code on some was somewhere in the end of 2008 and early 2014 on others. It either has been recapped twice, by the same person, or recently using some old capacitors.
Which I’d semi-condone if they used quality caps and not Jackcons.
Not like I care, as long as it works.
The werdict is… DEAD.
Okay, 00 POST code means no code is being executed, so I started with checking voltages across the entire board. Everything looked fine, so I moved to the next step – hotflash some new BIOS.
939Dual just casually saving another motherboard.
Woah, would You look at that! It’s alive!
OK, let’s give it some love – new thermal paste on the NB and clean flux off the PCB.
ASRock didn’t make the best packaging, but look at that. NF2U400. In a budget board. They like to party hard, and I’m all about that.
At this point I was considering some serious mods to this motherboard – 12V EPS mod, Vcore/Vdd/Vdimm mod, but considering that this is my only K7NF2 I decided to stop on a modded BIOS.
During testing I didn’t find anything else wrong with it, so back to the box it goes.
Case 2: Abit NF7
Truly a cliché motherboard here. However, I like socket A enough to break my “no duplicates” rule.
No damage per say, but I see both the NB heatsink and BIOS EEPROM missing. Well contrary to most repair guys I have more of a problem with obtaining a heatsink than a 512K PLCC32 EEPROM.
I looked what IC my other NF7 is using and flashed a second IC.
Only NF2 sized heatsink cooling wise I have left. Obviously it doesn’t fit, but it’s better than nothing.
During flashing the EEPROM I looked closer at the differences between the NF7 and NF7-S. It seems like I need to look for a SiI3112.
It seems like I forgot to take a picture, but this motherboard works just fine. It obviously needs a better NB heatsink and maybe a SiI3112.
Case 3: ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe
There has been a post here about a M2N32-SLI Deluxe that didn’t have CPU Vreg enable signal. Since then I didn’t find any clues about a fixed IC, but I found a newer one and it arrived with lead-free balls. Since the Chinese reball using leaded balls I have my reasons to believe that this bridge is brand new.
I’m not a fan of using this much foil, it makes me look like I’m baking a cake. There are electrolytic capacitors, which don’t really like this much heat put into them, so it’s necessary.
Look at the Nvidia logo – new vs old one. Newer IC is from early 2007 and has a different substrate.
OK, new bridge is in, let’s see if my diagnosis was correct.
It’s almost like I know something about electronics.
Quick Memtest test shows no problems, but I’ll need to do some more tests on it later. For now it’s fixed.
Bonus 1: HDD from a XBOX
I found a locked 10GB Seagate disk from a console in my closet and wondered if I can unlock it.
I didn’t have the serial converter was asking for, but I had a adapter that I use for syscon reading on PS3 consoles. It’s serial, so I see no reason why it wouldn’t work.
…
No, no epic foreshadowing this time. It just worked.
S.M.A.R.T. looks good. Less experienced technicians can look at the #1 and #7 parameters and think that this HDD is trash, but it’s not. Parameter 1 indicates sector count and 7 is total numer of seeks.
Number of spin-up times seems too low for power-on time, but I’ve no idea how was this disk used.
Surface scan is perfect, so I have no reason not to chuck this drive into some retro machine.
Case 4: ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
Again, ASUS and again a continuation of a previous repair.
Last time I checked it had a 00 post code and a disease called Nvidia SPP.
It still does that. I noticed something different though – CPU didn’t heat up. I consulted the boardview then.
There was no PWM1-4 from the controller.
On the other hand pin 11 – Vcore_EN was high, which meant that SB was alive and kicking. I managed to find a different driver IC, solder it and that’s when a disaster struck. CPU VRM exploded.
You can’t really see that, but low side MOSFET on A phase is shorted. Also, the capacitor exploded.
I managed to find a replacement MOSFET, soldered it and…
A second capacitor exploded. This time without a dead MOSFET.
I desoldered it and CPU magically got its VRM back.
Fixed VRM section. I’ll admit, not my prettiest work out there, especially since I managed to rip a pad during desoldering of a MOSFET and had to do a botch wire to fix it. Anyway, MOSFETS are all on the same height, so hopefully no problems with cooling.
The motherboard had still a 00 POST code, so let’s swap the NB.
…
I’ve got no words for that.
I specially paid more to get a 2011 IC, and here we go, it’s a 2006 one, even with the old Nvidia logo.
I managed to get a refund for it, but noone will give me back my wasted time.
Despite this minor setback I managed to find another one, from middle of 2011, still with lead-free balls, so likely a new one.
Okay, looks more or less fine. Let’s see if it fixed it or not.
YES! That’s what I’m all about.
It obviously doesn’t like my RAM sticks, because why not give me one more problem. On different sticks that’s what I saw:
Man, that feels good.
One heatsink assembly and Memtest later I have my reasons to think that it’s back from the dead. Again, more test are needed, but for now it’s fixed.
Bonus 2: ROG poster thingy
It’s that LCD poster I got with the STRIKER II NSE. It turns out that time got it. Some segments were missing from it.
The method to fixing this is kind of sketchy. I had to lower my soldering’s iron temperature to ~100°C and gently run along the LCD ribbon.
This is not a difficult repair, but it’s definitely hit or miss. I had to ‘solder’ the ribbon a few times.
