IBM Netvista 6790

[ratdude747]

I bought a complete IBM Netvista 6790 today... for $10.

I did a quick power-on test and saw that it the pwr LED and the HDD led came on, no beeps (no monitor to test it on).

Specs:

Pentium 4 Williamette 1.8ghz
256mb RAM
40gb 7200RPM ATA-133 HDD
CD_RW drive
Nvidia graphics of some sort.

Got it to my old house and took some pics:

(if you are using 56K, hit the stop button NOW... lots of inline pics ahead!)

All of these pics are internals or the like... who cares about front bezels; there are palenty of those online already.

General overview (partially disassembled, these pics were not taken in order):



The good news: there are pannies on this board. The bad news: most of the caps happen to be choyos, most of which are toast:









Aside from that, I am actually impressed by the design. everything is easy-acess; it was designed to be repaired and maintained.



The drives:







The PSU:



Here is soemthing weird:





That's funny, all 3 slots have plenty of clearance:



I didn't feel good trying to power it up again due to the blown caps, but I wonder if the RAM slot is disabled in BIOS? I checked, unless one is using ECC modules, the CD-ROM bay clears the 3 RAM slots... and the HDD is transverse mounted, so that's not it...


The only other defects besides the caps is a peeling bottom sticker and the fact that it only came with a win 2k COA (it came from a public school from what I saw on the stickers)

How did I do?

[RJARRRPCGP]

"6E0xxxx" is a bad Maxtor series.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by RJARRRPCGP

"6E0xxxx" is a bad Maxtor series.

i had one die on me before... i feel a tad dumb, as when i bought it i was hoping to at least get a hdd out of the deal... i am short a couple drives as it is.

[gerg]

10 bucks is a deal the last one I had I gave away after I recapped it and tested everything.

[ratdude747]

The recap seems to be successful... It fired up just fine.

Pics of the recap to come later...

I guess someone upgraded it to XP... I suspect that it was never reformatted or the like after it was taken from school use based on the setup.

I upgraded the GPU to a Nvidia GeForce 4 mx 64mb that I had in half-height...

The 3rd SDRAM slot is indeed disabled... I wonder if the minitower version's BIOS could be flashed to reclaim the 3rd slot...



I am installing mageia 2 Beta 3 (gnome) on it...

[b700029]

According to your chipset's datasheet it does support up to 3 DIMMs and a total of 3GB. However there may be electrical issues (it being the farthest from the chipset, has the longest traces) that prevented it from fully working so instead of risking data corruption the engineers decided to disable the 3rd slot, although the design was already too late to change. Enable it at your own risk.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by b700029

According to your chipset's datasheet it does support up to 3 DIMMs and a total of 3GB. However there may be electrical issues (it being the farthest from the chipset, has the longest traces) that prevented it from fully working so instead of risking data corruption the engineers decided to disable the 3rd slot, although the design was already too late to change. Enable it at your own risk.

Lenovo says that it is due to the form factor... they also made a minitower version using the same board (my middle school had some).

[ratdude747]

Time for pics.

First, a few of the PSU:



All of the secondary caps are either UCC or Rubycon.



The fan.



Plenty of primary guts.



Decent heatsinks. Also, the only design fault, 85C primary caps... granted, they aren't bulged.



The soldering is excellent.



The new caps:







Look good?

[momaka]

Looks great after the recap.

That 1.8 GHz Willamate has a TDP of 66W and tops out at 83W - kind of on the hot side for the amount of processing power it posseses. If you have a spare Northwood P4 CPU, it will run both cooler and perform better.

The PSU also looks very well made. Is the fan loud on yours by any chance? So far I've had 2 Astec PSUs from old computers, and both run the fans way too high and sound like jet engines. Kind of disappointing on Astec's part. Hope yours is nice and quiet.

[ratdude747]

The PSU fan isn't too bad... the CPU fan is nice and quiet due to temp based speed throttling.

It's limited to 400 MHz FSB CPUs... AFAIK that means Northwood Celerons? Or did they make Northwood P4s in 400 MHz?

[momaka]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

Or did they make Northwood P4s in 400 MHz?

They do. This is the highest you can get:
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentiu...2PC080512.html
Followed by this:
http://www.cpu-world.com/CPUs/Pentiu...2PC072512.html
That second CPU above has nearly the same power consumption as your Willamate, yet it's much faster.
If you want low heat, use the Nothwoods in the 2 to 2.4 GHz range.

[ratdude747]

I see... Idon't have anything else 400fsb that is both a p4 and northwood in 400FSB on hand... I'd imagine the 2.8ghz ones are pricey due to demand?

[pfrcom]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

both a p4 and northwood in 400FSB on hand... I'd imagine the 2.8ghz ones are pricey due to demand?

Not necessarily

I couldn't resist buying this http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/380418512105
after stumbling upon it, to max out this http://badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=6568

[ratdude747]

I have found out what a pile of crap the BIOS update CD is... after booting, it gets to the bios flash screen and hangs on "verifying BIOS checksum". Ive tried reburning it and still, the same issue.

I'll give it a half hour to figure it out... I wonder if they made newer IBM boards that fit the form factor? (I'd mod it to use a standard uATX but they used a screwball tiny USB header... )

[ratdude747]

I temporaily installed Xp pro to it so I could use the WinPlash utility to upgrade the BIOS

Turns out that another Netvista M41 submodel, the 6794 Mini-tower, uses the exact same mobo and bios utility, only it has all 3 RAM slots enabled. The utility had an option to also update the DMI to user defined settings int he advanced settings window. Under system, I chaned the model from "679021U" to 679431U" (a valid numer) and manually copied over the serial no. ; as I found out, you have to do it, or else it gets an "INVALID" string sent and the BIOS bitches about the serial not matching the model (if you do mess up, re-run the utility with the "Update DMI only" option).

After some more bios bitching over settings and finding out some of the RAM in the pile might be wasted, I got it to boot and accept 3 sticks of RAM... MOD SUCCESSFUL!!!

Now to find a p4 upgrade... this could be a slick little box...

[c_hegge]

What's up with the double post?

FWIW, I'm surprised you fixed it. If a board doesn't support an 800MHz FSB CPU, I don't consider it to be worth fixing.

[Scenic]

Originally Posted by ratdude747

Now to find a p4 upgrade... this could be a slick little box...

Ebay search:
http://goo.gl/ynh88

Manual search could give better results, as not everyone puts the S-Spec numbers in the description, but most show a photo of the CPU.

Just keep an eye out for CPUs with "/512/400" engraved in the headspreader, which would be 400MHz FSB Northwoods. Some also have "/1.5xxV" engraved additionally at the end.

[ratdude747]

Originally Posted by c_hegge

What's up with the double post?

FWIW, I'm surprised you fixed it. If a board doesn't support an 800MHz FSB CPU, I don't consider it to be worth fixing.

It's a Chromium browser glitch that results from using the quick reply function. I am deleting it now...

I fixed it because:

- I enjoy fixing stuff.
- It is SFF and of the kind that will even support CRTs.
- It is IBM made (read: well built)
- it was only $10 and I had the caps and parts already.

It's kinda like restoring old computers in a way... yeah, it ain't that old yet, but aside from choyo and GSC caps, It was built to last...

Besides, I may run an emulator and use it more or less as a homebrew game console... just an idea...

about the CPUs- I may ask in the looking to buy forum first... I like dealing with people I more or less know...