cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
so, I got the $15 computer, and it's more broken than described - nothing happens when I hit the power button, power rails aren't brought up, but I can see that 5VSB is active. Gonna need to check the signals from the PSU tomorrow, maybe manually trip PS_ON if the circuit is bad, and see if I can't get it to boot.
Worst case I have a dumpster dive PSU i could splice in to replace the proprietary one
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woo, we've got life!
as in the EC (yeah sorry not super I/O) seems to be working, but unable to bootstrap the BIOS, but it's better than before!
it might be booting into bootblock recovery mode, which is a thing where it recognizes the BIOS is fucked and tries to find an image on a USB drive to flash, apparently - although this is early enough that the EC just straight up doesn't have the ability to show things on the display, so I can't tell, lol
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also, because I forgot to mention it - the fix for the EC was to yank the power cable, yank the RTC battery, hold the clear cmos button for a minute, and hold the power button for a minute, this resets all settings and forces everything to completely discharge, including the EC which otherwise is usually quite a pain to force a reset of
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
of course I can't get a good connection to the flash, because the clip i bought is made of genuinely the softest plastic I've ever seen
it gets chewed up by the IC leads
gonna wait until tomorrow, pop in some RAM and see if I can't convince the EC to flash it for me, and if not, see if I can't just straight up glue the clip in a good position to get pin contact
I really don't feel like desoldering a SOIC-16 chip next to plastic
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RAM is here, still doesn't boot and doesn't react to trying to trigger boot block recovery.
One thing that's completely possible is that it's not my garbage clip not making good contact with the flash that made the reads fail, but rather that the flash has failed! Good thing I ordered that spare. All of that should be here in the middle of next week, which should let me figure things out.
It could also be the broken inductor, since this board supports out of band management through that NIC, and IIRC that means a failed network can cause the system to fail to boot entirely when it's trying to initialize.
end of cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles?
i'll be honest - might call it here, I won't get a replacement mobo until after christmas (at which point it's too late) and replacing it with a regular mobo would involve a new PSU as well, and so on, and so on. I don't feel like rushing that before the end of year, especially with my energy being the way it is right now.
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so, it turns out one of the missing pins was not missing, but rather just incredibly mangled and smashed to the bottom!
before tossing the machine into the recycling I decided to just feel around the missing pins with some tweezers to see if there was a short, lo and behold, there the VCCIO pin was! With incredible luck I managed to put it back to where it belongs
one of the pins is still gone, but it's most certainly connected to the pin right next to it, so that is fine
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
@ChlorideCull oh my gosh! Good luck on the resuscitation efforts!
not the end of cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles!
@ChlorideCull heyyyyyyy
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
@ChlorideCull this build sounds amazing
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
@shyra yeah, over here $100 doesn't get you much, so I thought I'd go for an extreme bang for the buck build
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
@shyra Spoiler: it was not a complete failure, and I'll have to argue for an edge case not being a cause for disqualification
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
@ChlorideCull hahahahaha
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
@ChlorideCull oh no!
cheap computer challenge 2022 chronicles
I premptively ordered a new clip, a replacement inductor, a new flash IC if need be, and some other stuff from Mouser.
I've now crossed the €100 mark on tools alone, although it's not included in the budget. Pain.