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Tsunami Virgo

[July 2023] Back in the early 2000s (the picture above is from 2004) I was responsible for maintaining computers at a small "cyber cafe" of sorts. While I was there the computers got upgraded from one sort of beige box to the systems you see above, all dual-booting both Windows 98se and XP because we needed to cater for people using either of these operating systems at the time.

The PC cases were manufactured by a company called Tsunami (the heading at the top of the page is from their website as found using the Wayback Machine), and these were of the "Virgo" model (hence the name for this project). They were pretty cheap with flimsy power buttons and flaps covering the front USB ports, but they looked smart all being the same. Originally they included Tsunami-branded keyboards, mice and speakers, but gradually these cheap accessories failed one by one and were replaced by more reliable ones.

When the internet place where I worked closed down I was offered some of the systems, by which point they had been upgraded (by me) to Windows 7.

To this day I still have a few of these cases, and although the original innards gradually got lost to the sands of time, the cases were re-purposed to house systems taking part in SETI@home. Now though, I've stepped back from such shenanigans and, for this page's case in point (no pun intended), I have refitted one of the cases with a more "period-correct" system using parts I have gradually acquired.

 - Asus A7V333 Socket A Motherboard
 - AMD Athlon XP 2200+ CPU
 - AeroCool CPU Cooler
 - 512MB DDR 333 RAM
 - Nvidia FX5200 128MB AGP Graphics Card
 - 80GB IDE Hard Drive
 - DVD-ROM IDE Drive
 - CD-RW IDE Drive
 - Floppy Drive
 - C-Media 5.1 Sound Card
 - PCI USB 2.0 & Firewire Card
 - Hauppauge TV Card

The Asus A7V333 Motherboard...

This board had a couple of issues and limitations.

Firstly, one of the CPU cooler mounting "lugs" on the CPU bracket had snapped off, meaning that using a typical cooler that hooks onto a single lug on either side is no longer possible.

A bit of hunting around online landed me with the snazzy AeroCool heatsink which could hook onto all of the remaining lugs (see image below). It's actually missing a couple of fan screws, but it's ok for now. The board itself actually has 4 x mounting holes for a suitable CPU cooler, so that could be a further option.

The next issue was that the system would struggle to startup from cold; it would get into Windows but then do a hard crash or lockup. After two or three reboots things would settle down and it would stay on. I could see that a few of the motherboard's capacitors looked problematic so I set about replacing these (I'm pretty sure I had ruled out a possible PSU issue at this point).

I've become pretty proficient at replacing capacitors; my process is as follows:

  • With the board removed from the case I remove the RAM, CPU and CMOS battery from the board.

  • I make a note of the orientation (and type) of the capacitors to be replaced.

  • I gently pull off each of the capacitors to be replaced with a pair of long-nose pliers, giving a back-and-forth twisting motion as I gently pull. The idea is to leave the capacitor's legs behind in the board. On this occasion a couple of the legs actually snapped off short at the board, not ideal but it was ok.


Two blank spots where capacitors once stood. Some legs remain.

  • I add some flux to each of the remaining bits of leg on each side of the board.

  • I tin the heated soldering iron.

  • I grip the leg on the top side of the board with the pliers and apply gentle pulling pressure while I hold the iron to the nub of the leg on the back of the board. Each leg pulled smoothly out in turn. For the couple that had broken short I used a drawing pin/thumb tack with plastic cap to push the leg through the board while applying the heat to the nub on the back.

  • I cleaned off the flux from the top of the board with isopropanol.

  • I then prepared the replacement capacitors by snipping their legs short (approx. 4mm).

  • I applied a blob of flux to the holes on the back of the board.

  • Taking a capacitor and lining it up with the holes and applying gentle finger pressure, I put the tip of the tinned soldering iron to each of the two holes in turn; the flux sizzles and the short legs sink through, my gentle finger pressure seating the capacitor's base flat. I check each protruding leg is sufficiently soldered and trimmed short where necessary.

  • Clean the flux off the back of the board with isopropanol.

With this process I don't have any unnecessary difficulty in de-soldering the old capacitors from the board and potentially causing damage. The board's holes being blocked with solder are generally not an issue this way; cutting the replacement capacitor's legs to length first means the legs can be pushed through while applying heat without long legs bending.

With the board's 4 x 3300uF 6.5V capacitors replaced I reassembled everything.

I then tested the system to find that it's now stable - success! The board also has a few 1500uf 6.5V capacitors of the same dubious type although visually these all looked fine so I left them alone on this occasion.


A blurry shot of everything reassembled.

Further notes:

I have Windows XP installed on the system. The Asus A7V333 Motherboard is a full-size ATX so it fills the case nicely (originally these cases had micro-ATX boards in them so they looked pretty empty back then). This motherboard lacks onboard sound, hence the addition of the sound card. The AGP slot is only 4X rather than 8X, but I'm not interested in gaming. The Hauppauge TV Card is something I've owned since new, from my Windows 98 days, not that I watch TV per-se, but it can tune into FM radio too. There's something satisfying about filling as many slots as possible...

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