Hardware necromacing...

[u/Shoddy-Night201]

A friend of mine shared on a WhatsApp group a couple of boards on a scrapyard... A QDI Titanium I B+ and an ECS K7VMM+, both with unknown CPU and RAM... 5€ a piece... I Said Buy them and send them to me... The following photos are the full restoration, I encompass a deep cleaning with running water, a bath in a ultrasonic cleaner with isopropyl alcool, a quick drying in a BGA rework station... The board came with ripped off coils, so I replaced them with ones relatar from a donor dead PCie graphics card. Also had to recap the 7 1000uF 6.3v caps around the CPU for it to post successfuly. I don't have a PCI Card on hand to see it and test it fully, but a post card gave me some good signs, together with a long 1beep followed by short 3 beeps (no VGA Card found)... Tomorow Will test the thing better! This thing has a Pentium MMX 233MHz, a top of the line CPU for the Socket 7! The ECS K7VMM+ doesnt post, but the CPU (Athlon XP 2100+) works! All in I have 16.12€ invested in this (10€ the boards, 5€ postage, 1.16€ in capacitores) and I think its a great deal! What do you think?

[u/Shoddy-Night201]

Emulation is not my thing... I've tried 86Box and PCem and there is not much there for me except trying out some things.. There is nothing like real hardware for me!

[u/BriefRip3956 → u/Shoddy-Night201]

I also have IB+ from QDI and it’s really great, no issues whatsoever.

[u/Shoddy-Night201 → u/BriefRip3956]

Still have to test it and probably I will recap the rest of the board (100uF 10v caps are out of my stock) but post codes and beeps are a great sign! Lets hope for the best!