Snow on the ground, so what is on the bench today?

It is already the end of February, and winter is still clinging on by delivering a few centimetres of snow and a wicked wind that means shorts and sandals are out of the question, so a marginally warmer option is to hang around my bench in the garage and tinker with the compute thingies.

This was part of a lot I picked up at the weekend for what is becoming the usual amount of cash that tempts people to part with stuff they spent thousands on seven or eight years ago, the one hundred dollar bill.This post will be about the "not working" motherboard, cpu and ram, and the next blog entry maybe we will take a look at the magnificent Corsair ATX tempered glass case that came with this lot.

The computer had been stripped apart and the seller said the motherboard was probably the only thing not working and he also said there was no guarantee on anything, fair enough, I haggled him down and we agreed on that enormous amount of cash that won't even buy a decent pair of sandals nowadays.

The motherboard is an ASUS Maximus VI Hero Z87 and I was hoping it could be debugged as I expect it has a Windows 10 Pro licence in the UEFI and of course, proving something works when someone insists it does not is always a satisfying occupation. The motherboard has an Intel i7-4790k cpu installed, probably the best cpu for the era on this architecture with the Z87 chipset, and if I pair it up with a reasonable video card, this can be the basis of a good gaming machine for medium settings, 1080p.

I installed a stock cooling fan, reset the CMOS and used some known good ram, and it posted first time, then when I installed the Corsair ram that you see in the photo, initially it failed on post and subsequently after seating the ram correctly, it made it to the BIOS screen. This is my issue with the bulky ram that has aesthtic heat sinks attached, they are often difficult to seat correctly in the slots.

The next step was to test the EVGA 750W 80 plus bronze power supply that was bought as part of the lot, and yes, that too was good and the conclusion was that all the components bought at the weekend are working. The final step was to see if Windows 10 Pro was registered in the UEFI so I attached an SSD and installed the operating system, which always takes a little time.

I fully expected that a Z87 motherboard with an i7-4790k would have Win10pro, and that was correct and it was added to my online account, activated, and now it is time to take the assembly off my bench and file it away until needed. I have a case that I could install it in, however, there is currently no IO shield, so I need to buy one of those from the distant lands, to be loaded on a camel or donkey and for it to traverse the mountains and fiords before there can be any progress on the build.

I look out the window, the snow is still on the ground, perhaps when that IO shield arrives, spring will have sprung.

Yamaha RX-360 Backlight

In my gaming room I have "old faithful" which is a 30 year old Yamaha RX-360 Natural Sound Stereo Receiver. I use it for my CD Player, Turntable and gaming PC. I moved the amplifier a bit and the backlight for the display went off, I thought to myself that it was the end, a very sad moment. However, I did a little research and found out that it was probably just a tiny incandescant bulb that had failed, so I decided to replace it with one of the 5mm LEDs from the Arduino kit, which would require a bit of math and a modicom of soldering.

Taking the top of the case off showed the circuit board and the transformer, the voltage to the 4mm bulb was 14.4V and I did some research and the expected current required was 70mA. I removed the bulb and it was in bad shape, in fact the soldered contacts were deteriorated and broken. The bulb is shown here encased in a rubber grommit, but one contact was detached, and the second contact broke very quickly when I extracted the bulb.

I used a bread board to check out my LED fix, worked out a suitable resistor value using the magic formula of electrical loveliness and played about with a couple of resistors to obtain a suitable dimness. I am sure you will want to know the magic formula, and it went something like this : R = (V-Vf)/If and V being supply voltage 14.4V and forward voltage for the LED, Vf is 2.0V and then the forward current taken as 0.03 or 30mA. That gave me a value of 413 ohms for the resistor, but I decided to use a 1k resistor so the LED would be dimmer and perhaps last forever. It can be an exact science, but in this case, who dares wins.

It was then just a case of soldering the components to the power lines, using a little heat shrink and tape to keep things separate and safe. I was quite pleased that it was a tidy job and all that was left was to use the existing grommit and reinstall. I must admit that I am really quite crap at soldering, my hands shake, my eyesight is poor, even with reading glasses on, and I always feel the need to have at least one extra set of hands when doing something like this. You may notice that I did not put any tape, or heat shrink over the resistor, mainly as it may get a little hot under normal operation, I am sure there is another calculation to work the thermals out.

The resulting backlight is at a great level for my dark gaming room, and the entire process took about an hour, and I believe that this old brain learned a few new tricks in the process and I was suitably impressed with myself to want to show off again on the interweb here on the blog. The amplifier is reinstalled in my room and working fine. Happy days indeed and no money was spent.

Deep Clean

A happy time was spent in the garage today, removing all the innards from the hundred dollar computer I bought on Sunday and giving everything a real deep clean. I was reminded about the attention to detail my good friend Graeme used to give when detailing his Honda Accord on Saturdays back in Ontario, and I said to Karen that computers are my equivalent of a type of cleaning OCD and it is not a chore, just rewarding fun. I just don't wear wellies when doing this stuff, just socks and sandles, the West coast way.

Side panels, front panel, front and rear fans, all corners blown out with compressed air and then a paintbrush to get all the skin cells, dust, DNA and boogers out from crevices. Then a wash down with a soapy flannel and left to dry outside by the car, which also will be having some soapy water waved near it in the next few weeks, weather permitting. I have also ordered some cheap front seat covers from Amazon, so I may do a blog entry of how well/badly that goes.

Opening the garage door reminded me that Spring is just around the corner, it wasn't a really cold day and there was a little sunshine, great day for blowing out the cobwebs. I finished up the deep clean and the next steps will be to reassemble the fans to the front and back, then install the ASUS Z170 motherboard from the build I did last week, it is a repeat of effort, but I think it will go well in this Corsair case.

There is something very special about these older Corsair and Cooler Master ATX computer cases, the gauge of the metal is a lot thicker than the modern ones, sure they are heavier, but I see that as a positive and want to have my personal computers in a solid housing. In the next few years I expect to buy a few more of these type of bargain units, there may be quite an influx of them around the end of 2025 when support for Windows 10 ends. It is interesting that on the last day of January, Microsoft announced that they are not selling licenses any more, the writing is on the wall for all of us who love Windows 10.

Windows 11 has (apparently) hardware demands that cannot be met by older motherboards and CPUs, even those from just five years ago, so I expect that there will be quite a few bargains in the used market as the deadline looms, and slowly my personal computers will improve, but will still very much be considered "old" tech.

There will be an unseen musical chairs moment as I deconstruct the very recent Rosewill Intel i5-6600k build and move it into this preferred case. I was going to do a blog about it but other things, mainly a new starter motor on the car, became a priority.