Project: Reviving an HP e-Vectra SFF Desktop PC

Back in 2020, I opined my love for the HP e-Vectra small form-factor desktop PC from 2000. Perhaps by now, there may not be many fond memories remaining, but after covering it in some detail back in 2020, I rediscovered it sitting on my shelf looking rather sad.

There comes a time in one’s life when they start to realise they have too many things to do and not enough time, and/or too many physical things and not enough space. In spite of my love for this box, in its present state, it had little practical use aside from reminding me of its rather novel design for the time.

So I resolved to either fix it … or junk it. There was no point hanging onto it if it wasn’t going to be useful, seeing it has already had one blog post.

Fixing the e-Vectra

The problem was that the board makes only the slightest “blink” of the LAN LEDs on a power-up attempt but otherwise, no action to note. I’ve already speculated that bad capacitors are the cause, in spite of none physically being bulged or leaking.

Having previously disassembled and photographed the machine, it was an easy job to get back in there and start tallying the board up.

Using an “embossed” black-and-white image of the board above, I started to note the capacitor values and locations – it turns out there are 11 types of capacitor and a total of 43 of them. As I was not sure which ones were bad, I decided it would be safest to replace them all.

I did not pay much attention to heights and diameters of capacitors at the time – I made some rough measurements of some, but then gave up halfway. I decided to pilfer my existing stock of capacitors …

… while ordering in some new capacitors for the values I didn’t have to hand (and couldn’t shoehorn a higher-voltage capacitor in its place). This adventure would not be cheap, especially because there are supply-chain difficulties which meant capacitors coming in from the UK, with few selections and a week’s waiting for shipment. If I had to buy all the capacitors new, I don’t think I’d have much change from AU$50.

Recapping was completed with the assistance of a PCB holder, which proved just big enough for the small motherboard. Because of the multi-layer construction of the board and the fact I still don’t have a desoldering gun, I didn’t want to do the soldering iron and one-leg-at-a-time trick as a slightly-too-cool joint could easily cause the through-hole plating to be torn out. I didn’t want to try snapping the capacitors off the board and extracting the remnants either, because I wanted to do a bit of a post-mortem to understand which capacitors were to blame … assuming they were to blame in the first place.

So, this time, I used the hot air gun from the back and heated up the board from behind until both joints were molten and then smoothly extracted the capacitor, while quickly feeding in the new one and letting it cool. Later on, I’d come back with the iron to touch-up all the joints and clip the legs. This is not a risk-free procedure, as the heat of the hot-air-gun will cause the board to exceed its glass-transition temperature, which causes it to become soft and bendy. This could lead to damage to the board if it is stressed, but also, could easily lead to charring the board itself if the temperature gets too high. Weakening of the epoxy would lead to the board’s structural strength being compromised. In the above, some discolouration of the solder resist and possibly board pre-preg material is visible, but being localised, I felt this was acceptable.

This left me a nice pile of capacitors which were potentially suspect. I would say this process would have probably taken about two-to-three hours to map out and do, but I couldn’t do it all in one sitting due to the need to wait for the arrival of missing parts.

The Moment of Truth

Putting it together was not quite as easy as I first thought – I made a mistake with my 1500uF capacitors and ordered ones which were thinner but taller. This caused one of the capacitors (CT32) to interfere with the fan cooling shroud. As a result, I had to cut a slot into the shroud to make it fit – this was easier than trying to change the capacitor again. Nevertheless, I plugged it all in as per before … pushed the button and …

… yay! It’s alive – those BIOS messages are encouraging. The keyboard error? That was me mashing <DEL> to try and get into the BIOS.

I had forgotten that such an old machine had a full-screen BIOS logo … it feels more modern than it actually is.

While originally shipped with Windows 98 SE, I had an install of Windows 2000 Pro on it that booted up just fine. It’s a bit of a time-capsule of programs – many of which were not really ideal for this particular machine and were installed anyway just for fun. Who remembers MSN Messenger with the “Plus” modifications so you could run multiple instances?

The original 80mm fan still sounds perfectly fine and the CD-ROM still functions perfectly. The hard drive is a bit noisy … but they all were from that era. It still functions fine and a full-surface check did not reveal any additional reallocations from the 49 it had when I first accepted it as second-hand stock. Of course, I could possibly change it up for a nicer IDE drive, CF card or SD-card, but it’d be less authentic as a result.

A Capacitor Post-Mortem

With all the capacitors in-hand, I decided to measure them using the B&K Precision BA6010 Battery Analyser as a 1kHz LCR meter.

The results show that many capacitors were getting close to the -20% tolerance of electrolytics, but only a few were really truly unserviceable – the I.Q. branded 1000uF 10V capacitors were all toast and the Choyo XR 330uF 6.3V capacitors were a mixed bunch. The other capacitors actually seemed to be serviceable for now, but being from the same questionable vendors, I decided not to risk it.

This time, I used calipers to measure the actual dimensions of the extracted capacitors, in case anyone else who is doing this job needs the information to order the right capacitors, unlike me …

Sizing it Up to a Modern SFF

As much as I loved the e-Vectra and believed it to have potentially inspired the likes of Shuttle XPCs and later SFFs such as the Intel NUC, Gigabyte Brix and other clones, I actually acquired another “refurb” SFF just this week for a little more than AU$116. The machine in question is a Lenovo ThinkCentre M700 Desktop Tiny from 2017, with an Intel i5-6400T CPU, 8GB RAM and 2.5″ 500GB Hard Drive.

Putting them side-by-side, it’s clear the Lenovo has a smaller footprint of about half the area.

From the front, it’s clear that the unit is quite a bit thinner too – this is in part as the HP e-Vectra has an optical drive which the Lenovo Tiny does not.

The rear of the Lenovo Tiny shows a layout that eschews virtually all legacy ports in preference for DisplayPort, USB 3.0 and Ethernet, with the only exception being a 3.5mm audio jack. The HP e-Vectra has a mix of legacy and “new” for the time USB 1.1. This is what 17 to 18-years of progress gets you.

However, if one stops and thinks a little – the e-Vectra’s accomplishments get even more amazing. Seeing my previous post, you may have realised that the e-Vectra has a full desktop CPU and chipset, uses a full-size DIMM, houses a full-size 3.5″ half-height hard disk. The only thing that’s small is the optical drive which is a slim-line laptop CD-ROM, and the power supply which is a laptop one as well. Knowing this, what HP and FIC managed to achieve in 2000 was quite amazing – to the point that these lived on for years after their useful lives as “carputers”.

The cost of reviving the e-Vectra is probably bad value compared to buying the Lenovo Tiny. The unit came very clean and the hard disk inside only had 43 hours on it. Chances are, many of these hours may have come from the data destruction process and these units didn’t actually see much in the way of any actual use. The fans are completely dust free! I’ve since upgraded the RAM and swapped in an SSD into the Lenovo Tiny, using parts I had left over from other laptop/desktop upgrades.

Conclusion

It seems that the HP e-Vectra failed due to the classic culprit of bad capacitors. With a bit of persistence, it is possible to replace all of the capacitors and bring it back to life. I tried a new technique with a hot-air-gun which seemed to work, but did leave some discolouration on the board and may have been stressful to the substrate of the board. It was, probably, better than using a single iron and a one-leg-at-a-time rocking technique which I used to use … but ideally, perhaps a desoldering gun is the best way. Only two values seemed to actually test bad – but replacement of all capacitors is recommended for reliability reasons. This is something you might undertake out of “love” for the unit, rather than practicality – newer refurb SFFs are plenty cheap and much more capable.

It was by comparing the e-Vectra to a newer SFF that I am reminded of what HP and FIC achieved – the ability to shoehorn a full-fat desktop CPU, chipset, full-size DIMM and full-size hard drive into a box with a laptop optical drive and a laptop power adapter. Many of the later SFFs such as the NUC and even the Lenovo Tiny are based around laptop parts which are inherently low-power and compact, with some performance and cost disadvantages. The e-Vectra seems to have been quite compact, without any of these downsides, which is why I loved it so much back then … and still have a soft-spot for it today.