Re: wd discontinues its green drive lineup
Eh, good riddance I say. All green drives are a waste of money as they really don't save any power (in fact, once you force-bludgeon their overly-aggressive and performance-stymieing "power reduction" settings off, they're even less efficient than regular mainstream 7200 drives, even though they spin at 5900 rpm. Complete rubbish!) Good to know that Worthless Drives is integrating the reprehensible Green line into their mediocre Blues - now I have a reason to avoid the Blue line completely!
I don't plan on ever...
UraBahn
Scrapheap Hound
Last Activity: 11-22-2015, 12:50 AM
Joined: 11-11-2004
Location: Woodland, CA
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Re: Windows 10 Mail: disabling app access to calendar causes problems
Guess I'll be going to SteamOS. (Yeah I know, but anything's better than W10.)
Windows 10 breaks some of my legacy programs and I really don't like the privacy implications.Leave a comment:
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Re: DFI PM12-TC recap (but failed)
The capacitors (probably) won't have much of an effect on that, it looks like there's a noise issue (maybe even a grounding loop) on or near the onboard video. It could be that some grounding pins on the VIA BGA went bad and are letting excessive noise into the video output.
You can try a heat gun to fix that, but be careful. (Sometimes mucking about with heat guns only makes things worse.)Leave a comment:
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Re: MOBOs worth repairing or trash?
Hilariously I've personally never seen an MCP61 die on me, that wasn't already dead when I pulled it out of the bin. But then I like to make sure everything is ventilated well.
I've had more problems with discrete NVidia cards based on the bumpgated chipsets.Leave a comment:
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Re: Sega Genesis recapping and stuff
For reference, the RAM memories in a Genesis are either PSRAM or SRAM, but both are accessed/tested the same way (test as SRAM.) The only DRAM in the system is the video memory, and that's VRAM (dual-ported.)Leave a comment:
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Re: Sega Genesis recapping and stuff
Alas I am not familiar with the Fujitsu MB3514 or PAL systems, but yellow bleed-through could be a sign of a noisy or drifting colorburst clock (which is what plagues the KA2195 in NTSC systems.) You could try replacing the caps near the video encoder (and especially every cap that filters 5v to ground.) You can replace 10uf with 22uF and 47uF with 100uF in most cases and get slightly better performance, but don't push it too high from its original value (I once replaced a 10uF with a 100uF, and was horrified to have the system...Last edited by UraBahn; 10-29-2015, 12:13 AM. Reason: Answered Heihachi's question re: MB3514 PAL systemLeave a comment:
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Re: Sega Genesis recapping and stuff
Well, don't use _too_ low ESR caps on a Genesis, otherwise you might wind up increasing the ripple in areas you really don't want to. I wouldn't recommend anything lower ESR than Chemi-con KY, Rubycon ZL or Nichicon PM in a Genesis. (Yes, I know I used a ZLH somewhere but it was what I had on hand... fortunately it doesn't seem to be doing anything bad. Yet.)...Leave a comment:
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Sega Genesis recapping and stuff
Hi everyone, it's been a long while but I've been very busy what with my job and with my hobby. Learned a *lot* since I last posted here, I also found out what happens when you increase the uF value of a capacitor in a circuit too high (it often ain't pretty.) Learned that too low ESR can be undesirable in some circuits as well. Also I pay a lot closer attention to permissible ripple current and ESR, etc. now better than ever before.
Bleh, enough about my misadventures, onward to the good stuff...
So I got a bunch of Sega Genesis systems, all of which had some pretty... -
Re: Creative Sound Blaster 16s with incorrectly capped TEA2025 amplifiers
I've replaced the bootstraps with 100uf bi-polars, as the datasheet's diagrams (see 'Stereo Audio Circuit' in the ST TEA2025B datasheet) specifies to use bi-polars there. Haven't heard a lot of difference though. (I surmise the bi-polar application is to prevent distortions at some point.)
Considerable improvement in the treble range for both amplified and direct line-out, however, comes from replacing the small 1.0uf caps near the CT1745 chip with 1.0uF metalized polypropylene-film caps (requires...Leave a comment:
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Re: Creative Sound Blaster 16s with incorrectly capped TEA2025 amplifiers
OK, sorry for resurrecting this old thread, but I've made a few further discoveries here: ST (repeat, NOT NatSemi... :P) specified .22uf non-polarized caps on the TEA2025's inputs, so what I did is I replaced the 1 uf film caps I was using with .22 uf film caps. The end result was a very noticeable increase in treble, allowing my CT1770 to finally almost match my modded CT2230 in the high-range. The bass did decrease slightly, but this was offset by the improvements made elsewhere (eg. the 47uf feedbacks being...Leave a comment:
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Re: Creative Sound Blaster 16s with incorrectly capped TEA2025 amplifiers
Oh yeah, derp. ST made the TEA2025, my bad. (Typed all that whilst under the weather.... glowry be pertussis, with hints of pneumonia and fever!) I'm a little bit better today (thank goodness for azithromycin), so now I can think somewhat clearly.
Oh, the cheap ELGEN and Wincap capacitors degraded over the years for sure, making most Sound Blasters sound even worse as they age. Of particular importance is the SVR (ripple reject) cap and the two feedback capacitors connected to the...Last edited by UraBahn; 07-13-2014, 01:02 PM.Leave a comment:
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Re: Creative Sound Blaster 16s with incorrectly capped TEA2025 amplifiers
"i dont think the pedophiles - sorry, audiophiles would give a damn, they would start with a turtle-beach or some other stupidly expensive card."
Well, this article is for the rest of us who went the SoundBlaster route back in the 90s.
With the exception of the SILMIC (which were purely out of morbid curiousity than any kind of audio-phoolery BS) everything I am recommending here is just typical, plain-jane stuff you can order from digi-key or, in the case you are really fortunate to have...
Last edited by UraBahn; 07-13-2014, 12:46 AM.Leave a comment:
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Creative Sound Blaster 16s with incorrectly capped TEA2025 amplifiers
I've made a bit of a discovery regarding the old Sound Blaster 16 sound cards which use TEA2025 amplifiers. Seems Creative, the penny-pinching shonks they are, wasn't entirely following the datasheet for the TEA2025 and substituted improper capacitors in a few places. This resulted in much of the Sound Blaster 16 line sounding muddy and muffled, a lot worse than they could and should sound.
According to NatSemi's TEA2025 datasheet, the two 1.0uf input capacitors and 470uf 16v output capacitors should be bi-polar, not polarized. Creative, of course, used plain old polarized caps... -
Re: Are any of these psu's worthy?
1. CWT aka. Fuhjyyu Special. Keep your eyes wide open for crap caps and lousy fans.
2. ISO is the same as Channel Well. Usually worse than usual for CWT as well.
3. Don't let that POS within 100 miles of your computer. Likely an over-rated PowMax, L&C or Linkworld in disguise.
4. Fix the Delta. It will be worth the effort (usually) unless it's starting to squeal.
5. FSP = tendency toward shonky undersized components and heatsinks. Older units had a disturbing tendency to burn dummy load resistors, and also had quite...Leave a comment:
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Cardexpert Tseng ET4000AX VL-Bus Recap
Paid way too much for this card when I got it. It's indeed very fast in Mode 13 (gotta love Tseng's awesome host FIFO!) but the output was too bright and slightly fuzzy on top of it. (Soft VGA outputs drive my eyes insane!)
First, I replaced all the ancient 10uf grounding/decoupling tantalums with 10uf 50v Chemi-Con KY. That alone yielded a noticeable improvement in picture quality - finally I could make out the edges of the pixels, and also just tangibly reduced the amount of noise going over my sound card. (Tantalums may not lose much capacitance over time during use, but the... -
Re: SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 recapping
With regard to capacitor 'sound color', here are my observations, going by ear listening to my various SB16's connected to my 1980s vintage Realistic STA-720 stereo (Tandy RatShack for the win!) using 3 ohm Magnavox speakers:
Regarding SILMIC, Theokretes is right in saying that they have a rather neutral sound. Clearly not ideal for OPL-philes like myself, though ironically SILMIC are a godsend for YMF289B-based cards (CT2910, CT2900, etc.) since they make the 49716->44100 hz resampling artifacts much less brutal to the ear. They...Leave a comment:
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Re: Post your system.......
My current main system:
Dell Inspiron 600m laptop (I keep going back to this one...)
Pentium M 2.0GHz
2.0GB RAM
60GB Hitachi 7200rpm HDD
14" matte LCD screen @ 1024x768
19" IBM Thinkvision L200p @ 1600x1280 (primary monitor)
Windoze Vista (ugh...)
Current plans:
- Get something more substantial
- Failing that, find a way to adapt a faster desktop HDD to the system (using an external psu... I've a Maxtor DM Plus 9 120GB with awesomely loud seek that would be streets...Leave a comment:
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Re: The Hall of Shame - Badcaps Photo Montage
Ah, the joys of eBay! :P This time the seller was 'lpfixparts310'.
The item:
[url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/280680668117?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649[/url]
...And you can see what I got in the attachments. Concentric bungs, slightly sloppy printing, you know what to expect. Kinda hard to see in the pics, my camera really sucks. I cut several open and they bubbled slightly. Wonderful, they're pre-pressurized.
Raised a stink over it. They claimed they got their goods...Last edited by UraBahn; 09-26-2013, 02:23 PM.Leave a comment:
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Re: Failed MCZ rubycons
Erm, can we stop this before it erupts into a flame war? Please?
Some people like Nichicon, some don't. Some prefer Elna, others... would rather want to save money and/or use something else that may be closer to home or in stock.
Each to his own. Either way's fine by me. Just as long as nothing pops in huge numbers (or cause fires, data loss, hair loss, sterility etc.) I got no beefs with anyone's choice.
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I was hoping to collect date codes on the borked MCZ. Perhaps some pics of the hardware...Last edited by UraBahn; 09-04-2012, 09:11 PM.Leave a comment:
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Re: Failed MCZ rubycons
Perhaps. Oh well, I don't really care that much, at least it's a US seller so I won't be waiting four weeks for them just to arrive in port. Besides, I have my reasons for going with ELNA here (mainly curiousity).Last edited by UraBahn; 09-04-2012, 06:39 PM.Leave a comment:
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