I used to work on these as IT support. I always loved the way the curvy switch on the pc matched the switch on the monitor. I always wanted one, but never got one.
Thanks for the shoutout and for the video. Makes me curious what it was about the smoke as well. May be an insect on the flyback converter? Or some moisture, which started to evaporate? Could you smell it? Sometimes it helps to put the nose into it and try to smell the spot if you don't have COVID. And of course with pulled cables, if you like your nose :D
It did smell, was pretty sure it was a rifa but upon inspection I could not find a damaged / cracked on. The smoke had to have come from somewhere and if it came from the RIFA I imagine it would be visible. Will need to investigate further.
@@RetroSpector78 Yeah, RIFA is the most obvious reason indeed and you are absolutely right, it is usually clearly visible. Hm... may be there is a one out of 1000 case, where the damage is not visible from the outside?! Uncommon, but who knows...
@@RetroSpector78 Probably the RIFA fails open instead of short circuit?? 🤔.. and it does not prevent the monitor from working 🙂....... Power Supply's works without them.. are for filtering there.. rigth?.... maybe same here 🙄..................... with the HDD.. I think that the two yellow capacitors that you remplace in the other same model HDD.. are also damaged here 🤔....... Not enough to blow up yet 🤯.. but for pull down the 12V or 5V rail enough to prevent the HDD from start ...
If every computer was designed like this today, that would definitely be awesome! These were definitely the best of times back in the 80s / 90s. I still use my 30-year old 486 comptuer running Windows 95 after all these years, with the same hardware, except I installed a 7 GB Hard disk drive in my old one and installed 95 on it, and expanded my RAM to 64MB, as well as running BootMagic to run both Windows 95 and DOS 6.22. Has 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy drives, CD ROM and a good old Zip drive. Im surprise the monitor still works by the way.
In 1988, I was a computer geek whose parents were so poor they could not afford a TV with RC monitor input so I could use a Spectrovideo computer a friend had given me. I can only imagine me having this computer in my room back then.
Rifa caps are installed across the AC input to help filter out some of the high frequency RFI that switching supplies generate. When they fail they usually short across the AC. This results in a large surge of current, heating the shorted metal into a rapidly expanding plasma burning the dielectric and bursting the casing. In other words, BANG! and smoke. Once the metal is vaporized the short is gone and all is well. It happens so fast that a fuse usually doesn't have time to open.
Agree. A common BBC micro computer problem as well. Once blown, the unit normally still works fine. But it would be best to replace all of them. They tend to show cracking and distortion before they blow as well.
Considering how old this thing is, could it also just be accumulated dust blocking heat and the dust smoking or catching fire without really harming the electics?
@@3dmaster205 nope. Rifa caps (the transparent ones) will fail no matter what. their casing deteriorates and gets cracks which exposes it to air and lets in moisture, which in turn kicks the degradation into high gear. Then cue someone digging the device back out after 25+ years and applying power. Predictable results...
Classic Rifa caps. When I was younger, sometimes I tried to test an old PSU and I got that "explosion". I think I was courageous enough to re-test some of them and lo-and-behold, they worked! Never figured out why, but it's clear now that the RIFA caps (or similar) had something to do. I think it'd be almost essential to check for these before turning on any vintage equipment, just to prevent damages to the components near the RIFA cap, and the traces that lead to it.
That's because these caps are just filter caps. The power supply will work without them but it will cause more noise on the power line. Just recently, I tested a very cheap (new) PC power supply where the manufacturer left out these filter caps altogether to save some cost. It worked that way, but even just plugging it in made my power line network unusable. I added the filter caps and all was fine again.
@@EgonOlsen71 Yes, I forgot to mention that after graduating I understood the mechanism of this, but I didn't get it when I was younger. Yes, the noise coming out some of these PSUs will interfere anything that's on the mains, as many other things will also do.
Dust perhaps; dust gets into crevices heat builds up, it starts burning, and once it's either burned up or a shake and move and the dust is gone there is no longer anything the matter? If you're lucky enough it doesn't actually burn, or burns in a place it won't touch the elctric elements; there's nothing the matter?
I agree, it presents itself professionally as "highly functional machine", and "we're as good as IBM!". For their original PC, the Compaq Portable, there were many other companies that put out IBM "workalikes" with MS-DOSes that were incompatible with IBM's PC-DOS. Many of them had put out CP/M machines before, even put out PCs that were as "portable" as the luggable Compaq, but they didn't understand they needed full application compatibility with the entire catalog of software library that ran on PC-DOS. (Texas Instruments is a good example of those who failed to "get it"). The aesthetics mirror the underlying business plans. I kinda prefer DEC aesthetics myself, but they put three different incompatible desktops to try to compete with IBM, trying to please everybody and ending up pleasing no one.
I'm convinced Compaq had stock in Citizen. They used their floppy drives in everything until the mid 90s.
Před 2 lety
The monitor may of just been burning off dust. I have had a few monitors back in the 80's do the same thing, usually from the yolk. Great video! I love seeing these old PC still up and running after all this time. It amazes me how well built they were.
Well we meet again Compaq DeskPro 386s. I was lucky to be your user back in the day when I was working my first real job. I think you enjoyed running GEM on top of DOS. You were the envy of the office and so productive. After work hours you even entertained me with an occasional game of Populous. It took me until mid ‘89 before I saved enough money ($5k CND) to build a clone of you for my personal use but it wasn’t as pretty as you. I miss you. ;-)
My late uncle worked at Compaq so we had quite a few of them in the family. I still have 2 here, tried to power up my old 386 but blew something in the PSU. Oddly enough it's a different, bigger, deskpro with AT keyboard port and not PS/2 like this one; the other is a 286/12 in the same case as the one in this video! I really feel like booting these again. Love that rainbow Compaq logo to death.
RIFA line filter caps going out is pretty common in old computers and hardware. they usually fail in a way that do not prevent the use of the hardware, but are recommended to be replaced.
Vwestlife has a video about 2 bondwell laptops, he plugged a charger in 1 of the two with the wrong polarity, the laptop emitted smoke! But he got the laptop "working" (it ran but the display was toast), so yeah, smokey old tech that still works is amazing!
There’s something about the beeps as it starts up that feels nostalgic. I never had one as old as this, but my earliest experience was Windows 95 on my dad’s old gaming PC, I always knew when it worked thanks to those beeps.
If there are no visibly-damaged rifa caps or other components, my guess would be some shmutz that got onto something high-voltage somewhere, or possibly even onto a component that gets hot enough to create smoke, and in either case the shmutz had to burn-off before the smoke would cease.
Already subbed and thumbed up. Would like you to go the full monty on this one. Total monitor, case, drives all of it. As well as retro-briting everything. Just do it. Make it to a 10-15 part series
RIFA caps are not strictly necessary for the operation of the monitor, you could cut them out and the monitor will continue work unaffected. The Rifa caps go between mains live and neutral to stop interference going out of the monitor and back onto the mains circuit. Do replace them though or some neighbours may become frustrated trying to listen to their radio.
I ran into a 26 pin connector on a floppy drive from a piece of test equipment (CMM machine.) I think it was only standard density. Connor drives were really common back then. Alps were also common.
Connor Drives were specifically sought by Compaq for their "Compaq Portable" as being more rugged and suiting the "luggable" machines. It was the first hard drive for the first successful "clone".
@@squirlmy I used to work for Zenith Data Systems from 1990 to 96, starting in their contract service depot. The Connor drives hardly ever had problems. The Connor 20 and 40mb models were stock for the 286 laptops. I liked how they had the frame and case separate with bushings between them. An ALPS drive could run all weekend on burn-in diagnostics, get shut down while waiting for final test inspection, and chances were it might not spin up.
I know when I sense fire the first thing I grab is a camera and not a fire extinguisher;) Had a similar problem recently with a BBC micro PSU with a reefer failing in spectacular fashion.
Oh man, I knew it would come to this eventually. I had this as my first computer (specifically, a 386/20e) in 1992 or so, it was, well, awful in every way. 1 Mb RAM. VGA only, IIRC 256k of video RAM. However, I remember my sister sitting down with me at age 10 and showing me the basics of DOS. She left behind a DOS 5.0 workbook, which I read and understood front to back. I do recall installing Windows 3.1, playing a Star Wars vector based game on it, Solar Winds, all manner of Pool games, Wolfenstein, that kind of stuff. Why was it so hated? Absolutely no way to upgrade it, at least not in an allowance budget. Want more RAM? LOL - no SIMMS for you. Tiny 42 Mb hard disk, so there was constant floppy swapping. Hard disks had to be pre-determined, and no CMOS, which I found out the very hard way when I got a virus, and realized that the battery backup was supplying power to memory. So I disconnected it. And it had to go to the repair centre (a dude at a Sunday flea market) as it would no longer boot. I watched as the man produced a diskette (AAAH 13:14 there it is! I'll never forget that!!) and entered into a secret menu and restored the parameters. I spoke to him about why I disconnected the BIOS battery, he kinda laughed and explained to me that the virus was on the boot sector, and that loads it into the RAM, not the BIOS. After that, he removed the virus and put a copy of the virus removal and told me to scan every diskette in the house. I learned a lot, but nostalgia be damned, these machines were awful. My NCR 386 DX 16 was muuuuch better (4Mb ram for starters) Also, a flathead will undo those screws. ;) *edit Oh AND it has a Dallas on top of that. Wow. 2/10.
@@GuillermoFrontera When the computer was 4 years old, it would have been OK. Now, I'd agree with you. A Dallas mod is so easy to do, I've done dozens and haven't screwed one up yet. I have not been as successful with the repair of motherboards that have had moderate to heavy leaks on them.
@@hak1985org Now, I have two Compaq LAPTOPS (a 4/25 LTE and an Armada 1750) and those are SOLID.A.F. The battery in the Armada still holds a ONE HOUR CHARGE and I have two of them. For sure this thing is going to Korea (again) with me on vacation this spring :D
Never been a Compaq fan either. Got to give them credit for their role in history, but man there isn’t one single part in there that you can just swap out with something OTS.
You're kind of assuming earlier or contemporary IBM PCs or other clones were better. I also think you were comparing your late 80s Compaq to the latest generation of clone PCs coming out in the early 90s, so of course they were better! I had an Apple IIe through high school and college until graduation in '88, and I was not jealous of any PC of the time, but then again no-one I knew had ANY hard drive. And then my wife and I got a 68k Mac, so I sorta understand your sentiment against an old DOS PC. Also note at this time IBM went with MCA bus, where expansion cards were more expensive and incompatible with anything else. But then I also the next few years taunted by friends how their PCs had superior games, cheaper upgrades than Macs, and the advances on Win95 then 98 as the internet became big.
I don't remember how many pins are on the SIMMs but I remember those computers. Strangely enough, if they have a co-processor in them then they can run windows 95. I have seen this done back in the 90s. The only expansion ports in this PC are ISA slots. A higher capacity HDD from that era will work up to around 8 gigs or maybe a little more.
Normally 30pins for the era of computing. But on this one there is 1MB soldered on the motherboard, and 1MB soldered on the memory expansion card. There were lots of limitations on hard drive sizes (BIOS / operating system). in 1990 around 40MB was still considered "normal", albeit more expensive setups had 100MB or a little over.
Where do you get EIGHT GIGABYTES? The BIOS Int 13 theoretical 8.5 GB limit? Actually BIOS of that era were limited to 528 MB. It wasn't until 96' that some BIOS would accept 2.1GB, but even DOS 6.22 on FAT16 won't do more than 504 MiBs. Windows 95 on FAT 16 is limited to 2GB partitions, and that's really stretching the capabilities of this machine. Basically you're ignoring the many limitations of both the filesystems and OSes a machine of this era is capable of.
Those RIFA brand capacitors are usually part of the filtering and are typically polymer-film capacitors and usually placed across the "line"(USA, mains for UK) voltage. I'd just remove them with disregard to adding noise to the mains when I'd use such a monitor. The monitor will work fine without them.
i would suggest replacing the rifa caps before it gets any worse but usually rifa caps are to help filter stuff ouf i would pull them them and replace them with a modern equivalent
Eventhough I don’t mind the drive caddies that much, annoyingly the floppy drives seem to be proprietary without any good reason. I like the card edge connector solution, since it would make cable management with 5.25” drives easier and more convenient. Sadly the slim form factor caddy design prevents this from ever fitting unless you have some rare slimline drive. The card edge adapter thingy could have also been done with a regular off the shelve 3.5” drive. They made some weird choices here. The custom bezels also seem to be a pain in the neck if you have replace something. If I had been the industrial designer of Compaq I would at least have sticked with normal 5.25” height bays and use 3.5” to 5.25” adapter bezels. Also I would have implemented the card edge adapter board to work with any standard 3.5” drive. What was Compaq thinking?😅 It almost seem like a Johnny Ive way of designing things. It looks pretty and the idea seems nice but it’s execution is flawed.
Regarding the matter of smoking, this weird glue that was put at the bottom of capacitors is becoming conductive as a result of aging. Maybe it created a bit of short that got burnt out and now it seems OK.
Excellent video again! I have a very, very similar Compaq 386, but the proprietary power supply is busted. Do you have any information on the power pinouts for this one?
Any chance that maybe the tube heating up was just burning off years of dust or a substance that happened to find its way through the vents? Either way, once again, slick machine, dude!
Rifa caps go from the line and neutral (X type) and line to ground / neutral to ground (Y type). If you have a smoking cap from line to ground and the other cap going from neutral to ground is still okay, then if you turn the plug around and reverse the line/neutral polarity, then you will end up with the bad cap with no or very small voltage potential. Next time, just change those RIFA caps. I've had equipment work fine for hours, then I just went out to get a tea for few minutes, when I came back, the whole room was filled with thick smoke.
Whether it works fine or not, if there’s a Rifa in there, or a NiCad battery, it’s gotta go. Just assume that this is part of your introduction routine to a new piece of equipment. Wipe off the dust, replace the Rifa, power it up.
hey.. I found a bunch of setup disks for the old deskpros and presarios... any ideas on how to get them archived as i bet people are going to want hem lol
Hmmm… RIFA caps? Actually, as a beginner-repairer, they are one of my favourite repairs. The can be so dramatic, yet easily replaced. Also, my understanding is that they are "suppression capacitors", Maning they reduce the RF interference and emissions. I believe, although I've not tested it, that they are not critical to the circuitry, which can run just fine even after they've blown-out. I'm sure that's not always the case. However…?
They're pretty much exclusively used as suppression caps across the AC line (90% of the cases) or more rarely as suppression caps across switch contacts to minimize arcing (I've seen this in some turntables across the internal power switch actuated by the arm. they were partially shorted causing the TT to run all the time at slow speed.. if they were across the AC line instead they would've exploded). Their casing deteriorates and gets cracks, which lets in air and thus moisture, which kicks the degradation into high gear, with predictable results when someone then decides to plug the device in after sitting for at the very least a quarter of a century. And yes, they're technically not needed and can just be desoldered and left that way, though that's not really the proper way of doing things (I mean.. they're there for a purpose, even if it's just one that is insignificant to the general function)
I have a 486 Deskpro and several early Pentiums Deskpros. I don't have any Compaq monitor. I have them for several years now (they belonged to a company and I bought them really cheap), unfortunately I still couldn't find the time to clean them and restore them :( They come with Windows NT. Last time I turned them on (a few years back) they all worked.
The capacitors may be dying, and batteries leaking! Usually the type of caps in these PCs burst with a bit of smoke, but the caps in Macs of the era will slowly leak and dissolve neighboring leads and components. You want to take the barrel batteries or Dallas units out, even if you have to clip wires to remove them. It's pretty easy to find adapters for CR3032 button batteries, but just check the present ones aren't ruining the motherboard!
@@squirlmy Hi. That's true, I totally agree with you. I've removed all the possible leaking components right after buying the computers, because I knew I would take some time until properly clean and restore every computer, and I didn't want the computers to deteriorate while waiting for me. I have them stored in my attic, and the humidity levels are low. When life gives me time, I'll restore them properly knowing that at least they are not worst than when I've bought them.
once a RIFA completely burns up it should no longer be a real issue since they are made to fail in an open condition. you probably finished it off since the smoke and noise wasn't severe
This looks very similar to my Compaq Deskpro 386e, except mine has a 386DX 16MHz processor with 8MB of RAM and it came with a tape drive where your hard drive is at. Unfortunately the Dallas chip in mine seems to be soldered and my soldering skills are terrible due to my shaky hands.
Sell it! Necroware (EDIT, sorry I called him Nercomancer!) has a method of putting a hole in the side of the Dallas, and soldering a wire to that, then another a wire to one of the legs to attach a CR2032 socket or similar button battery holder. The Dallas unit (which is a chip+battery, not just the chip!), will drain the piggyback battery fast, but it's a lot easier than desoldering the many pins of the Dallas. You could even get money for the motherboard without worrying about shipping the entire computer.
I’m disappointed that you felt you had to prove to me that there was smoke that made you concerned. You have nothing to prove to us - do your thing, mang
It could have been dust burning off one of the few resistors that get really hot inside a CRT? I've had that quite a few times. RIFA caps are sealed and when they go, they typically pop and either have a visible crack or hole
i dont know if you seen it in the video editing but at 1min 17sics throw 1m 20sics you can see smoke (what looks like coming from the monitor) coming from the monitor.
It seems that Conner hard drives sometimes have problems with the spindle motor driver. The sound you're hearing is that driver circuit that can't go past the soft start phase and is unable to spin the motor. It happened to some of my Conner drives too, failure mode was similar to yours and in one case the motor driver was actually able to start the spindle motor, but it wasn't able to stabilize its speed after reaching the nominal RPM. That one was my 486's Conner CFS420A hard drive. Usually replacing the controller card with another one from an identical donor drive solves the problem, at least until that'll fail too. Probably that is due to some capacitors which need to be replaced on the disk's controller board. It could also be that the heads are stuck so hard to the platters that hitting and wiggling the drive doesn't free them, and the driver circuit tries repeatedly to spin the motor without any success. In this case the hard drive is pretty much doomed, as as soon as you try to free the heads by opening the drive and manually rotate the platters, those will be ripped out from their suspension arms. Been there, done that, it didn't work and I finally destroyed the drive.
@@NickDalzell I'm not sure it was "common", but... I think one of the reasons Woz got pushed out of Apple, is that he made the II and III machines repairable, and Jobs wanted a locked box you had to pay Apple to repair. His dream has come to fruition with the iPhones.
The older iphones up until he died were much easier to take apart. No glue just a few screws. Didn't disable touch ID either like a screen replacement does today
The Compaq 286SLT is a nightmare compared to this machine. Sure it's the first laptop to have both VGA and a Hard Drive, but: -Dallas RTC which isn't socketed for the reason of there not being enough space for a socket -BIOS only accepts Conner hard drives and not even all of them, and then it doesn't have a custom drive type either -POST takes like 2 minutes no kidding -Proprietary RAM expansion (which wasn't uncommon back then though) (luckily both of mine were owned by an incredibly rich person, they have 5 and 6 MB of RAM installed and both have the 287FPU, but one had the hard drive rubber seal melted into the platters and I ran out of 40 MB hard drives and 20 is just too small to be useful). I drilled a hole into the RTC modules without desoldering it and soldered a battery to them. That way I can replace the battery when it dies instead of having to replace the entire module. I also have that monitor and it hasn't started smoking yet.
Why not a ISA XT CF card adapter? After upgrading my SATA drives to SSD, it seemed very natural to upgrade classic PCs to CF cards. Back-up the ancient hard drives and don't touch them until you can sell it as a museum piece!
@@squirlmy Because the Compaq 286SLT is a laptop computer and only has an ISA BUS accessible in the docking station and I prefer to have it luggable - I don't just keep these old things for collecting, I actually use these from time to time - sometimes I actually do some real work on these, like write a small program to help with stuff. (I didn't check though if the machine will power up without a hard drive at all) There is two things that can happen if you power up the machine with a Non-Conner hard drive: Either there will be vertical lines on the screen, no backlight and the machine will appear completely dead, or it will POST but not initialize the hard drive (on the 286SLT, the HDD won't start spinning until the BIOS tells it to).
Compaq possibly went with the non-standard 3.5" floppy drive for the same reason Sony and Apple go with non-standard stuff - so you have to buy replacements from them. Did I miss where you tested it after PC reassembly? I'd worry that that disk shutter damaged the heads.
possible, but mostly only small companies we're trying to sell these upgrades before it became apparent consumers would pay to upgrade the entire PC, when Windows 95 came out, for example. So, you're looking for a rare, and probably rather expensive commodity, which may be missing any documentation online or otherwise. I'd say possible; but probably not worthwhile.
Disappointing packaging from RS. They usually do a solid job. After all good packing is why we're paying the per/chip uplift over the cost of buying a tube of the things. 😠 Hope you got a refund from them, support is usually pretty good.
I used to work on these as IT support. I always loved the way the curvy switch on the pc matched the switch on the monitor. I always wanted one, but never got one.
Thanks for the shoutout and for the video. Makes me curious what it was about the smoke as well. May be an insect on the flyback converter? Or some moisture, which started to evaporate? Could you smell it? Sometimes it helps to put the nose into it and try to smell the spot if you don't have COVID. And of course with pulled cables, if you like your nose :D
It did smell, was pretty sure it was a rifa but upon inspection I could not find a damaged / cracked on. The smoke had to have come from somewhere and if it came from the RIFA I imagine it would be visible. Will need to investigate further.
@@RetroSpector78 Yeah, RIFA is the most obvious reason indeed and you are absolutely right, it is usually clearly visible. Hm... may be there is a one out of 1000 case, where the damage is not visible from the outside?! Uncommon, but who knows...
@@necro_ware that's why they call it "magic smoke!"
@@RetroSpector78 Probably the RIFA fails open instead of short circuit?? 🤔.. and it does not prevent the monitor from working 🙂....... Power Supply's works without them.. are for filtering there.. rigth?.... maybe same here 🙄..................... with the HDD.. I think that the two yellow capacitors that you remplace in the other same model HDD.. are also damaged here 🤔....... Not enough to blow up yet 🤯.. but for pull down the 12V or 5V rail enough to prevent the HDD from start ...
@@RetroSpector78 Plot twist: burned RIFA was down in the system unit's PSU and the monitor just picked that smoke up by CRT convection air stream
If every computer was designed like this today, that would definitely be awesome! These were definitely the best of times back in the 80s / 90s. I still use my 30-year old 486 comptuer running Windows 95 after all these years, with the same hardware, except I installed a 7 GB Hard disk drive in my old one and installed 95 on it, and expanded my RAM to 64MB, as well as running BootMagic to run both Windows 95 and DOS 6.22. Has 3.5 and 5.25 inch floppy drives, CD ROM and a good old Zip drive. Im surprise the monitor still works by the way.
The case honestly looks more modern than I'd expect for 1988.
In 1988, I was a computer geek whose parents were so poor they could not afford a TV with RC monitor input so I could use a Spectrovideo computer a friend had given me. I can only imagine me having this computer in my room back then.
This is one of the rare occasions where an yellowed case looks actually good.
I know. Luckily I have lots of matching yellow compaq peripherals :)
It goes from cream to yellow depending on the scene
Rifa!
Rifa caps are installed across the AC input to help filter out some of the high frequency RFI that switching supplies generate. When they fail they usually short across the AC. This results in a large surge of current, heating the shorted metal into a rapidly expanding plasma burning the dielectric and bursting the casing. In other words, BANG! and smoke. Once the metal is vaporized the short is gone and all is well. It happens so fast that a fuse usually doesn't have time to open.
Agree. A common BBC micro computer problem as well. Once blown, the unit normally still works fine. But it would be best to replace all of them. They tend to show cracking and distortion before they blow as well.
Considering how old this thing is, could it also just be accumulated dust blocking heat and the dust smoking or catching fire without really harming the electics?
@@3dmaster205 nope. Rifa caps (the transparent ones) will fail no matter what. their casing deteriorates and gets cracks which exposes it to air and lets in moisture, which in turn kicks the degradation into high gear. Then cue someone digging the device back out after 25+ years and applying power. Predictable results...
Classic Rifa caps. When I was younger, sometimes I tried to test an old PSU and I got that "explosion". I think I was courageous enough to re-test some of them and lo-and-behold, they worked! Never figured out why, but it's clear now that the RIFA caps (or similar) had something to do. I think it'd be almost essential to check for these before turning on any vintage equipment, just to prevent damages to the components near the RIFA cap, and the traces that lead to it.
That's because these caps are just filter caps. The power supply will work without them but it will cause more noise on the power line. Just recently, I tested a very cheap (new) PC power supply where the manufacturer left out these filter caps altogether to save some cost. It worked that way, but even just plugging it in made my power line network unusable. I added the filter caps and all was fine again.
@@EgonOlsen71 Yes, I forgot to mention that after graduating I understood the mechanism of this, but I didn't get it when I was younger. Yes, the noise coming out some of these PSUs will interfere anything that's on the mains, as many other things will also do.
RIFA caps and old tantalum caps in particular are bastards for exploding, usually quite violently for the latter of the two
Dust perhaps; dust gets into crevices heat builds up, it starts burning, and once it's either burned up or a shake and move and the dust is gone there is no longer anything the matter? If you're lucky enough it doesn't actually burn, or burns in a place it won't touch the elctric elements; there's nothing the matter?
I've always loved the mid-late 1980's Compaq design cues. They're awesome machines.
Ugh - I have the totally opposite opinion :P
@@the_kombinator Well, you know what they say about opinions... :-)
@@dennisp.2147 Certainly - that everyone forms their own based on their experience.
I agree, it presents itself professionally as "highly functional machine", and "we're as good as IBM!". For their original PC, the Compaq Portable, there were many other companies that put out IBM "workalikes" with MS-DOSes that were incompatible with IBM's PC-DOS. Many of them had put out CP/M machines before, even put out PCs that were as "portable" as the luggable Compaq, but they didn't understand they needed full application compatibility with the entire catalog of software library that ran on PC-DOS. (Texas Instruments is a good example of those who failed to "get it"). The aesthetics mirror the underlying business plans. I kinda prefer DEC aesthetics myself, but they put three different incompatible desktops to try to compete with IBM, trying to please everybody and ending up pleasing no one.
@@the_kombinator where do you fall on green monochrome vs amber monochrome? It's actually kinda relevant, IMHO.
i love seeing the retro community support each other. keep it up
I'm convinced Compaq had stock in Citizen. They used their floppy drives in everything until the mid 90s.
The monitor may of just been burning off dust. I have had a few monitors back in the 80's do the same thing, usually from the yolk.
Great video! I love seeing these old PC still up and running after all this time. It amazes me how well built they were.
Very nice little 386 machine. Brings back memories of when my friend had one in '88 or '89, I was amazed at how good Test Drive looked in VGA.
Do you mean test drive 3? I was pretty sure the original test drive was cga, not VGA.
@@marccaselle8108 Yes that’s probably the case.
Compaq PCs were the best engineered computers i've ever worked on. I still have my old screwdriver :)
Proprietary stuff was the only drawback.
Well we meet again Compaq DeskPro 386s. I was lucky to be your user back in the day when I was working my first real job. I think you enjoyed running GEM on top of DOS. You were the envy of the office and so productive. After work hours you even entertained me with an occasional game of Populous. It took me until mid ‘89 before I saved enough money ($5k CND) to build a clone of you for my personal use but it wasn’t as pretty as you. I miss you. ;-)
There was a lot of those square boxes in my company when I began to work. I loved them.
My late uncle worked at Compaq so we had quite a few of them in the family. I still have 2 here, tried to power up my old 386 but blew something in the PSU. Oddly enough it's a different, bigger, deskpro with AT keyboard port and not PS/2 like this one; the other is a 286/12 in the same case as the one in this video! I really feel like booting these again. Love that rainbow Compaq logo to death.
I had this computer as a kid and I'm so nostalgic right now and regretful we got rid of it. I want it back.
RIFA line filter caps going out is pretty common in old computers and hardware. they usually fail in a way that do not prevent the use of the hardware, but are recommended to be replaced.
Correct, only this time I was expecting to see the damage on the rifa. But I didn't
you have the best retro computer show of all....
The DeskPro peaked with the Pentium era desktops that were made of pure razor blades. An adventure every time you opened one.
Amazing machine! I love the 80s esthetics. I hope you will be restoring it.
Nice machine, and great video! Thank you
the magic smoke has escaped
That floppy looks like a GCR one adapted to run in a PC (Apple GCR drivers had less electronics on the drive, thus less pins).
Very nostalgic for me, remenber read magazines and newspapers about this machine
Another fine video, sir!
Vwestlife has a video about 2 bondwell laptops, he plugged a charger in 1 of the two with the wrong polarity, the laptop emitted smoke! But he got the laptop "working" (it ran but the display was toast), so yeah, smokey old tech that still works is amazing!
Deskpro was first PC computer, which bridged the ISA bus from the CPU bus. Called Compaq Flex architecture.
great stuff bro! inspiring
Wow, you can really see the aesthetic influence of IBM's MCA setup software here
There’s something about the beeps as it starts up that feels nostalgic. I never had one as old as this, but my earliest experience was Windows 95 on my dad’s old gaming PC, I always knew when it worked thanks to those beeps.
If there are no visibly-damaged rifa caps or other components, my guess would be some shmutz that got onto something high-voltage somewhere, or possibly even onto a component that gets hot enough to create smoke, and in either case the shmutz had to burn-off before the smoke would cease.
Already subbed and thumbed up. Would like you to go the full monty on this one. Total monitor, case, drives all of it. As well as retro-briting everything. Just do it. Make it to a 10-15 part series
RIFA caps are not strictly necessary for the operation of the monitor, you could cut them out and the monitor will continue work unaffected. The Rifa caps go between mains live and neutral to stop interference going out of the monitor and back onto the mains circuit. Do replace them though or some neighbours may become frustrated trying to listen to their radio.
Good old Rifa cap blowing it's top
Lets hope smoke is just dust burn off, had a Deskpro in the 90's but SFF was cool to see one again.
Greetings from argentina
Hola !
Nice to see another fellow Argentinean enjoying this awesome channel!
Please consider populating the rest of that memory card with similar chips.
Great stuff ! *80's Stuff, awesome and well built !*
(Apart from those caps 😁)
Greetings from Holland 🇳🇱👍
They were much better than the Lenovo crap nowadays
They are torx screws, but they're made so you can use a flathead as well.
As long as it's the exact right size since the ends are closed off
Computer designs used to look so unique lookin' to be quite honest. 💯✅
Early tech is always unique. Even early smartphones we're unique. Then everything gets homogenized and boring :(
It’s beautiful
Hi from México!!
I ran into a 26 pin connector on a floppy drive from a piece of test equipment (CMM machine.) I think it was only standard density.
Connor drives were really common back then. Alps were also common.
Connor Drives were specifically sought by Compaq for their "Compaq Portable" as being more rugged and suiting the "luggable" machines. It was the first hard drive for the first successful "clone".
@@squirlmy I used to work for Zenith Data Systems from 1990 to 96, starting in their contract service depot. The Connor drives hardly ever had problems. The Connor 20 and 40mb models were stock for the 286 laptops. I liked how they had the frame and case separate with bushings between them. An ALPS drive could run all weekend on burn-in diagnostics, get shut down while waiting for final test inspection, and chances were it might not spin up.
I remember those darn screws
I know when I sense fire the first thing I grab is a camera and not a fire extinguisher;) Had a similar problem recently with a BBC micro PSU with a reefer failing in spectacular fashion.
Haha exactly :)
I of course know why the monitor haven't burst in flames. That's because YOU'RE DAMN LUCKY! :D
I always liked the Compaq (I guess you could call it design language?) of the 80s and 90s. They're a symbol of my childhood.
I'd call it an "aesthetic". Sounds nicer if you put it up for sale. 😄
a very good video!!!!
Oh man, I knew it would come to this eventually. I had this as my first computer (specifically, a 386/20e) in 1992 or so, it was, well, awful in every way. 1 Mb RAM. VGA only, IIRC 256k of video RAM. However, I remember my sister sitting down with me at age 10 and showing me the basics of DOS. She left behind a DOS 5.0 workbook, which I read and understood front to back. I do recall installing Windows 3.1, playing a Star Wars vector based game on it, Solar Winds, all manner of Pool games, Wolfenstein, that kind of stuff.
Why was it so hated? Absolutely no way to upgrade it, at least not in an allowance budget. Want more RAM? LOL - no SIMMS for you. Tiny 42 Mb hard disk, so there was constant floppy swapping. Hard disks had to be pre-determined, and no CMOS, which I found out the very hard way when I got a virus, and realized that the battery backup was supplying power to memory. So I disconnected it.
And it had to go to the repair centre (a dude at a Sunday flea market) as it would no longer boot. I watched as the man produced a diskette (AAAH 13:14 there it is! I'll never forget that!!) and entered into a secret menu and restored the parameters. I spoke to him about why I disconnected the BIOS battery, he kinda laughed and explained to me that the virus was on the boot sector, and that loads it into the RAM, not the BIOS. After that, he removed the virus and put a copy of the virus removal and told me to scan every diskette in the house.
I learned a lot, but nostalgia be damned, these machines were awful. My NCR 386 DX 16 was muuuuch better (4Mb ram for starters)
Also, a flathead will undo those screws. ;)
*edit Oh AND it has a Dallas on top of that. Wow. 2/10.
Well, I prefer a dallas instead of a NiCd Battery mess.
@@GuillermoFrontera When the computer was 4 years old, it would have been OK. Now, I'd agree with you. A Dallas mod is so easy to do, I've done dozens and haven't screwed one up yet. I have not been as successful with the repair of motherboards that have had moderate to heavy leaks on them.
@@hak1985org Now, I have two Compaq LAPTOPS (a 4/25 LTE and an Armada 1750) and those are SOLID.A.F. The battery in the Armada still holds a ONE HOUR CHARGE and I have two of them. For sure this thing is going to Korea (again) with me on vacation this spring :D
Never been a Compaq fan either. Got to give them credit for their role in history, but man there isn’t one single part in there that you can just swap out with something OTS.
You're kind of assuming earlier or contemporary IBM PCs or other clones were better. I also think you were comparing your late 80s Compaq to the latest generation of clone PCs coming out in the early 90s, so of course they were better! I had an Apple IIe through high school and college until graduation in '88, and I was not jealous of any PC of the time, but then again no-one I knew had ANY hard drive. And then my wife and I got a 68k Mac, so I sorta understand your sentiment against an old DOS PC. Also note at this time IBM went with MCA bus, where expansion cards were more expensive and incompatible with anything else. But then I also the next few years taunted by friends how their PCs had superior games, cheaper upgrades than Macs, and the advances on Win95 then 98 as the internet became big.
I don't remember how many pins are on the SIMMs but I remember those computers. Strangely enough, if they have a co-processor in them then they can run windows 95. I have seen this done back in the 90s. The only expansion ports in this PC are ISA slots. A higher capacity HDD from that era will work up to around 8 gigs or maybe a little more.
Normally 30pins for the era of computing. But on this one there is 1MB soldered on the motherboard, and 1MB soldered on the memory expansion card. There were lots of limitations on hard drive sizes (BIOS / operating system). in 1990 around 40MB was still considered "normal", albeit more expensive setups had 100MB or a little over.
Where do you get EIGHT GIGABYTES? The BIOS Int 13 theoretical 8.5 GB limit? Actually BIOS of that era were limited to 528 MB. It wasn't until 96' that some BIOS would accept 2.1GB, but even DOS 6.22 on FAT16 won't do more than 504 MiBs. Windows 95 on FAT 16 is limited to 2GB partitions, and that's really stretching the capabilities of this machine. Basically you're ignoring the many limitations of both the filesystems and OSes a machine of this era is capable of.
Those RIFA brand capacitors are usually part of the filtering and are typically polymer-film capacitors and usually placed across the "line"(USA, mains for UK) voltage.
I'd just remove them with disregard to adding noise to the mains when I'd use such a monitor.
The monitor will work fine without them.
If it was a RIFA he would have said it stunk to high heaven... it's unmistakeable.
I'd love to see the ram maxed out just because I love seeing ram maxed out.
@ Sadly my little 10 year old dell can only take 32Gb.
i would suggest replacing the rifa caps before it gets any worse but usually rifa caps are to help filter stuff ouf i would pull them them and replace them with a modern equivalent
Eventhough I don’t mind the drive caddies that much, annoyingly the floppy drives seem to be proprietary without any good reason. I like the card edge connector solution, since it would make cable management with 5.25” drives easier and more convenient. Sadly the slim form factor caddy design prevents this from ever fitting unless you have some rare slimline drive. The card edge adapter thingy could have also been done with a regular off the shelve 3.5” drive. They made some weird choices here. The custom bezels also seem to be a pain in the neck if you have replace something. If I had been the industrial designer of Compaq I would at least have sticked with normal 5.25” height bays and use 3.5” to 5.25” adapter bezels. Also I would have implemented the card edge adapter board to work with any standard 3.5” drive. What was Compaq thinking?😅 It almost seem like a Johnny Ive way of designing things. It looks pretty and the idea seems nice but it’s execution is flawed.
"Stressed it out for hours and the monitor wouldn't burn!" Well, you tried at least. Hehehe...
inb4 Druaga's "Hey smokers..."
Haven’t seen him in a while. Hope he is doing fine.
Regarding the matter of smoking, this weird glue that was put at the bottom of capacitors is becoming conductive as a result of aging. Maybe it created a bit of short that got burnt out and now it seems OK.
Crispy.
Excellent video again! I have a very, very similar Compaq 386, but the proprietary power supply is busted. Do you have any information on the power pinouts for this one?
Any chance that maybe the tube heating up was just burning off years of dust or a substance that happened to find its way through the vents? Either way, once again, slick machine, dude!
Rifa caps go from the line and neutral (X type) and line to ground / neutral to ground (Y type). If you have a smoking cap from line to ground and the other cap going from neutral to ground is still okay, then if you turn the plug around and reverse the line/neutral polarity, then you will end up with the bad cap with no or very small voltage potential.
Next time, just change those RIFA caps. I've had equipment work fine for hours, then I just went out to get a tea for few minutes, when I came back, the whole room was filled with thick smoke.
Whether it works fine or not, if there’s a Rifa in there, or a NiCad battery, it’s gotta go. Just assume that this is part of your introduction routine to a new piece of equipment. Wipe off the dust, replace the Rifa, power it up.
@@nickwallette6201 NiCads can be left in for bit longer as they will not burst into flames. But Rifas, yes these must go
Plot twist: burned RIFA was down in the system unit's PSU and monitor just picked that smoke up by CRT convection stream
Why make it so complicated?? Well technicians get paid by the hour probably.. :D
Nice video, lovely machine. :)
hey.. I found a bunch of setup disks for the old deskpros and presarios... any ideas on how to get them archived as i bet people are going to want hem lol
Hmmm… RIFA caps? Actually, as a beginner-repairer, they are one of my favourite repairs. The can be so dramatic, yet easily replaced. Also, my understanding is that they are "suppression capacitors", Maning they reduce the RF interference and emissions. I believe, although I've not tested it, that they are not critical to the circuitry, which can run just fine even after they've blown-out. I'm sure that's not always the case. However…?
They're pretty much exclusively used as suppression caps across the AC line (90% of the cases) or more rarely as suppression caps across switch contacts to minimize arcing (I've seen this in some turntables across the internal power switch actuated by the arm. they were partially shorted causing the TT to run all the time at slow speed.. if they were across the AC line instead they would've exploded). Their casing deteriorates and gets cracks, which lets in air and thus moisture, which kicks the degradation into high gear, with predictable results when someone then decides to plug the device in after sitting for at the very least a quarter of a century. And yes, they're technically not needed and can just be desoldered and left that way, though that's not really the proper way of doing things (I mean.. they're there for a purpose, even if it's just one that is insignificant to the general function)
we miss you buddy, come back to youtube
I have a 486 Deskpro and several early Pentiums Deskpros. I don't have any Compaq monitor. I have them for several years now (they belonged to a company and I bought them really cheap), unfortunately I still couldn't find the time to clean them and restore them :( They come with Windows NT. Last time I turned them on (a few years back) they all worked.
The capacitors may be dying, and batteries leaking! Usually the type of caps in these PCs burst with a bit of smoke, but the caps in Macs of the era will slowly leak and dissolve neighboring leads and components. You want to take the barrel batteries or Dallas units out, even if you have to clip wires to remove them. It's pretty easy to find adapters for CR3032 button batteries, but just check the present ones aren't ruining the motherboard!
@@squirlmy Hi. That's true, I totally agree with you. I've removed all the possible leaking components right after buying the computers, because I knew I would take some time until properly clean and restore every computer, and I didn't want the computers to deteriorate while waiting for me. I have them stored in my attic, and the humidity levels are low. When life gives me time, I'll restore them properly knowing that at least they are not worst than when I've bought them.
once a RIFA completely burns up it should no longer be a real issue since they are made to fail in an open condition. you probably finished it off since the smoke and noise wasn't severe
I have seen dust bridge something and start smoking, because dust can be conductive. It can be hard to find after the fact.
This looks very similar to my Compaq Deskpro 386e, except mine has a 386DX 16MHz processor with 8MB of RAM and it came with a tape drive where your hard drive is at. Unfortunately the Dallas chip in mine seems to be soldered and my soldering skills are terrible due to my shaky hands.
Sell it! Necroware (EDIT, sorry I called him Nercomancer!) has a method of putting a hole in the side of the Dallas, and soldering a wire to that, then another a wire to one of the legs to attach a CR2032 socket or similar button battery holder. The Dallas unit (which is a chip+battery, not just the chip!), will drain the piggyback battery fast, but it's a lot easier than desoldering the many pins of the Dallas. You could even get money for the motherboard without worrying about shipping the entire computer.
I’m disappointed that you felt you had to prove to me that there was smoke that made you concerned.
You have nothing to prove to us - do your thing, mang
It could have been dust burning off one of the few resistors that get really hot inside a CRT? I've had that quite a few times. RIFA caps are sealed and when they go, they typically pop and either have a visible crack or hole
I was going to suggest a filter cap venting. The monitor was still working so it wasn't a critical part
I believed the monitor possibly stopped smoking because the offending Rifa capacitor ran out of smoke.
Yeah but I was expecting to see a cracked / ripped / scorched RIFA in there. Didn’t find one.
Any plan on what to do with the CP-341i?
i dont know if you seen it in the video editing but at 1min 17sics throw 1m 20sics you can see smoke (what looks like coming from the monitor) coming from the monitor.
1:08 It's not just a monitor, it's a grill! What an ingenious idea. Make steaks while doing spreadsheets. Is there room for kabobs, too?
There’s always room for kabobs, man.
Old tube tvs used to get hot enough to smoke if dust collected on the tubes. Also got hot enough to heat a room
Where do I get such a nice state of the art computer from?
Wow, a rifa that actually failed open as it should!
It drives me crazy to see a Ram card with empty spaces like that.
Hasta donde se puede expandir esa memoria?
It seems that Conner hard drives sometimes have problems with the spindle motor driver. The sound you're hearing is that driver circuit that can't go past the soft start phase and is unable to spin the motor. It happened to some of my Conner drives too, failure mode was similar to yours and in one case the motor driver was actually able to start the spindle motor, but it wasn't able to stabilize its speed after reaching the nominal RPM. That one was my 486's Conner CFS420A hard drive.
Usually replacing the controller card with another one from an identical donor drive solves the problem, at least until that'll fail too. Probably that is due to some capacitors which need to be replaced on the disk's controller board.
It could also be that the heads are stuck so hard to the platters that hitting and wiggling the drive doesn't free them, and the driver circuit tries repeatedly to spin the motor without any success. In this case the hard drive is pretty much doomed, as as soon as you try to free the heads by opening the drive and manually rotate the platters, those will be ripped out from their suspension arms. Been there, done that, it didn't work and I finally destroyed the drive.
Ah, the good old days, when you had a schematic inside of the machine...
Back then you didn't need right to repair, it was a common skill taught to kids growing up. Sadly forgotten today
@@NickDalzell I'm not sure it was "common", but... I think one of the reasons Woz got pushed out of Apple, is that he made the II and III machines repairable, and Jobs wanted a locked box you had to pay Apple to repair. His dream has come to fruition with the iPhones.
The older iphones up until he died were much easier to take apart. No glue just a few screws. Didn't disable touch ID either like a screen replacement does today
The Compaq 286SLT is a nightmare compared to this machine. Sure it's the first laptop to have both VGA and a Hard Drive, but:
-Dallas RTC which isn't socketed for the reason of there not being enough space for a socket
-BIOS only accepts Conner hard drives and not even all of them, and then it doesn't have a custom drive type either
-POST takes like 2 minutes no kidding
-Proprietary RAM expansion (which wasn't uncommon back then though)
(luckily both of mine were owned by an incredibly rich person, they have 5 and 6 MB of RAM installed and both have the 287FPU, but one had the hard drive rubber seal melted into the platters and I ran out of 40 MB hard drives and 20 is just too small to be useful).
I drilled a hole into the RTC modules without desoldering it and soldered a battery to them. That way I can replace the battery when it dies instead of having to replace the entire module.
I also have that monitor and it hasn't started smoking yet.
Why not a ISA XT CF card adapter? After upgrading my SATA drives to SSD, it seemed very natural to upgrade classic PCs to CF cards. Back-up the ancient hard drives and don't touch them until you can sell it as a museum piece!
@@squirlmy Because the Compaq 286SLT is a laptop computer and only has an ISA BUS accessible in the docking station and I prefer to have it luggable - I don't just keep these old things for collecting, I actually use these from time to time - sometimes I actually do some real work on these, like write a small program to help with stuff.
(I didn't check though if the machine will power up without a hard drive at all)
There is two things that can happen if you power up the machine with a Non-Conner hard drive:
Either there will be vertical lines on the screen, no backlight and the machine will appear completely dead, or it will POST but not initialize the hard drive (on the 286SLT, the HDD won't start spinning until the BIOS tells it to).
Could the monitor issue be a heat issue? I noticed you had the cover off when it wouldn't burn.
Misschien was de rook veroorzaakt door wat stof op een hete weerstand. Heb dat ook al voorgehad.
Compaq possibly went with the non-standard 3.5" floppy drive for the same reason Sony and Apple go with non-standard stuff - so you have to buy replacements from them. Did I miss where you tested it after PC reassembly? I'd worry that that disk shutter damaged the heads.
Will do it in part 2. Used about 10 disks (installing msword, playing some games, configuring windows) and seemed to work fine. Got lucky
part 2 sound card or cd-rom external maybe
Beige beauty
yo tengo la compaq deskpro 2000 que repare pero no consigo windows 98 para instalarle
What brand of tools do you use
needs a good air blowing
would that floppy drive be compatable with a ibm ps2 floppy drive?
Can a 486 be added to this?
possible, but mostly only small companies we're trying to sell these upgrades before it became apparent consumers would pay to upgrade the entire PC, when Windows 95 came out, for example. So, you're looking for a rare, and probably rather expensive commodity, which may be missing any documentation online or otherwise. I'd say possible; but probably not worthwhile.
i use the same model of keyboard, as my daily driver. They just dont make them like this anymore.
Intel 386SX?
The burn marks come later...
It's possible you were just cooking an insect.
Disappointing packaging from RS. They usually do a solid job. After all good packing is why we're paying the per/chip uplift over the cost of buying a tube of the things. 😠 Hope you got a refund from them, support is usually pretty good.