Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-10-27, 13:19

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice :) I wonder what to do with my second Presario 1800 hinges. They both just shattered while opening the laptop, because they got stuck (lid was stronger than the hinges, looks like the lid is made of magnesium or at least some composite material). Inside screen casing i found some white powder, …

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Re: Open-air testbench that fits AT motherboards

Posted on 2020-10-27, 11:29

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It should be possible to modify existing ATX bench (if it is made of acrylic) by drilling additional holes and pushing (with soldering iron) heat-set brass threaded inserts into them. Modifying metal bench is also possible, but requires more tools.

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Re: Desperate BGA reball repair on Riva 128 and Geforce 2 GTS

Posted on 2020-10-26, 20:44

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Preheating is important with such repairs. You could try using electric cooking stove (don't put the card directly on top of it, raise it few cm) and a temperature sensor on the board... BGA replacement is kind-of doable with primitive tools when you are dealing with leaded solder (I only reballed …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-10-25, 23:37

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does Compaq Presario 1800 with ES1946S Solo-1E support General MIDI natively? I just tried Doom and Sim City 2000 under Windows 98 DOS mode, with MPU401 GM option, but there was no music. Music works only with sound blaster or adlib mode. That sound card doesn't have built in wavetable samples. But …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2020-10-25, 22:58

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The A22p had the Rage chip on the bottom of the case, with no airflow. Presario 1800 also does that. But it has thermal pad which helps spreading heat to the case, although the case is plastic. presario-bottom.jpg Maybe doing something like this would be a good idea? Mabe there is enough space to …

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Re: Compaq N600c laptop - no sound devices detected anymore

Posted on 2020-10-25, 10:48

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You might look for shorted capacitors (tantalum, ceramic). But maybe it is a problem with that IC. If you have hot air station you can desolder it, if not you can carefully cut the pins with razor (near the body of that IC) and desolder them one by one. If a replacement IC is cheap.

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Re: Compaq Presario 1800 notebook - soldering additional VRAM?

Posted on 2020-10-21, 21:49

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

All right, after waiting several years i finally did the mod :D i just desoldered two 4-megabyte chips off Rage 128 Pro AGP card (KM4132G1120-7) with hot air and soldered them to the mainboard. Extra memory was instantly recognized on the notebook, nothing else was necessary :) 3dmark99 score is now …

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Re: Compaq N600c laptop - no sound devices detected anymore

Posted on 2020-10-21, 13:40

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You could check components marked F and L for continuity. You could also try measuring the voltage on VCC pin of sound chip, to see if it gets any power when the board is turned on. But here you would need to be careful too, in order to not cause more damage by touching multiple pins. Maybe the VCC …

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Re: Compaq N600c laptop - no sound devices detected anymore

Posted on 2020-10-20, 10:37

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have a multimeter? You can look for the fuses on the motherboard and check the continuity. I don't know where they are on that motherboard, some high resolution photos would be helpful. It would also be helpful to mark where exactly you put the knife on the docking connector when you saw the …

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Re: ISA card identification

Posted on 2020-10-18, 13:22

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What do people use for scanning books? I saw a professional setup used for archiving very old books and it was something like this: https://www.imageaccess.de/_Scanners/Photos/BE4V2_PROFESSIONAL_RENDER_DIAGONAL_BOOK.png The one I saw had a regular DSLR camera mounted on top. It also had glass …

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What is causing such trippy image artifacts? (Presario 1800 + Rage 128)

Posted on 2020-10-17, 21:33

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What is causing such weird image behavior? I got that after running Windows 98 setup.exe off possibly corrupted hard drive on Presario 1800 laptop (P3, ATI Rage 128). The system obviously has frozen, but instead of rebooting or getting a black screen, the screen just began displaying more and more …

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Re: 486 PSU questions

Posted on 2020-10-17, 21:03

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Too add to that comment: A lot of 486 mainboards fail in surprising ways if you use EDO RAMs. Yeah, this is how my 4DPS works with EDO RAM (when it actually manages to display anything on the screen): edo4dps.jpg 2-1_bootblock.mp3 and there are some different results ocasionally: https://www.vogons …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2020-10-16, 19:47

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just made an 26 pin (laptop) to 34 pin floppy drive adapter, so I can use a laptop floppy drive in a small case. Works fine after I found out that I need to connect Drive Sel A to Drive Sel B on the other side and Motor Enable A to Motor Enable B. Filename IMAG2605.jpg File size 519.8 KiB Views …

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Re: ATX PSU with -5v

Posted on 2020-10-16, 01:16

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can also solder LM2662 module to +5V line, it will turn it into -5V. It should provide 100mA. Here i soldered it directly to pico psu, I also added a protective Schottky diode on -5v output (it may drop the voltage a little as side effect), to minimize risk of passing positive voltage in case of …

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Re: 4DPS BIOS problems? All 3 UV-EPROM chips suddenly got bad?

Posted on 2020-10-13, 00:55

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

All right, problem solved, all of this was caused by EDO RAM modules... i was aware that 4DPS requires FPM memory and I thought that I was actually using FPM. I tried many different modules and the result was the same. But it turned out that all of them were EDO and I stored FPM in different place …

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Re: History of a dump went wrong :cry:

Posted on 2020-10-12, 18:33

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had a box of 100 unusable floppies which caused that problem. They smelled bad and it looked like there was mould on them. To fix dirty floppy drive I used two brand new floppy disks, I sprayed isopropyl alcohol into first floppy disk surface and gave it a spin for a while in floppy drive. Then I …

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Re: Locating belt for Citizen W1D floppy drive belt.

Posted on 2020-10-12, 10:01

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wonder about another solution, did anyone ever managed to replace W1D with another drive (with direct motor)? I know that plugging in other drives makes the activity LED constantly lit and they just don't work, but is making other drives work just a matter of matching the pinout (by manually …

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4DPS BIOS problems? All 3 UV-EPROM chips suddenly got bad?

Posted on 2020-10-11, 20:22

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Looks like I have two of my ZIDA 4DPS boards bricked now, all 3 BIOS chips I have (one spare) seem to have gone bad which seems weird, so I would like to get some opinions on that - is it really just a BIOS problem and bad coincidence, or should I look for another cause. V2.1 board with TVGA8900: …

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Re: pico ATX PSU... anyone tried them in a retro system?

Posted on 2020-10-06, 19:00

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by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I almost exclusively use them, generic Chinese ones rated 180W. Make sure that your model has overvoltage protection chip - you can read markings of the chips on the PCB and look at datasheets. But if you are using branded and expensive ones I guess you can trust the description. I had no problems …

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Re: Help identify this DB25 to DIP16 cable please!

Posted on 2020-10-05, 14:30

by

by adalbert

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is there a female dip socket on the other side? If so, it could be a logic analyzer of some kind

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