Re: Reviving a 286 board

Posted on 2016-04-11, 21:48

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good job! It's such a satisfying feeling when you manage to rescue someting that would be an useless piece of junk otherwise :) A couple of tips for the future. Single strand ethernet cables for fixed installation (as opposed to multi strand patch cables) are a good source of wire for that kind of …

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Re: CF-Card testing?

Posted on 2016-04-10, 03:03

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hah, cool! I'm astonished anything happened and there's any difference at all :D What happens if you power cycle the card? Still no bad sectors? 1: Can't boot from the card. 2: It's a 32mb card. 3: I have just bought a new 32mb IDE+Flash compatible card from eBay... Shure... Why not torture it a …

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Re: CF-Card testing?

Posted on 2016-04-09, 23:44

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hah, cool! I'm astonished anything happened and there's any difference at all 😁 What happens if you power cycle the card? Still no bad sectors?

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Re: CF-Card testing?

Posted on 2016-04-09, 22:15

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I can only speculate, but is it even possible to get the needed level of access to a CF card to do the things you're suggesting? The internal controller handles the low level stuff afaik, and just emulates/presents something looking like an IDE hard drive with a PC compatible low level format to the …

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Re: What's the best FM music you've heard?

Posted on 2016-04-07, 01:58

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Perhaps a bit mainstream and boring, but I really loved the Doom series soundtracks. If I have to pick favorites from them, it's gonna be the E1M8 tune from Doom 1, and that pretty blatant Them Bones ripoff from Doom 2.

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Re: IntelliMouse TrackBall roll speed and care

Posted on 2016-04-06, 03:03

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, I haven't taken the shell apart yet, and I'd need do that to get directly at the roller assembly. However, after using it a bit more, it's not really as bad as I originally implied. Increasing the sensitivity further, and using the option to do the same with the cutemouse driver makes it much …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2016-04-04, 17:55

by

by kaputnik

in Milliways

in Milliways

Just picked up a brand new Gigabyte G1.Sniper 3 Z77 board for peanuts, was like 1/5 of the original retail price from a few years ago :) Yes, its design is clearly aimed at gamer kids, and it looks terrible (not as bad as the earlier Sniper series boards though), but hardware wise it's a great …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2016-04-04, 17:36

by

by kaputnik

in Milliways

in Milliways

Just picked up a brand new Gigabyte G1.Sniper 3 Z77 board for peanuts, was like 1/5 of the original retail price from a few years ago :) Yes, its design is clearly aimed at gamer kids, and it looks terrible (not as bad as the earlier Sniper series boards though), but hardware wise it's a great board …

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Re: IntelliMouse TrackBall roll speed and care

Posted on 2016-04-04, 16:51

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, it's not like you have anything to lose by trying. Just clean it off again if it doesn't work :) I'd use a silicone or PFAE grease, those works well with most plastics. Don't overdo it, you don't want excess grease for debris to stick in, a minuscule amount is enough. PFAE grease is preferable …

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Re: Old Conner Hard Drive having trouble spinning up

Posted on 2016-04-04, 13:17

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks, I think I will try the benchmark app method first. If the drive does die completely on me, then I might try opening it up and see if I can "grease" the parts a bit :lol: Well, if it is the bearings, it's gonna be hard to replace the lubricant in them. As mentioned, they're double shielded/ …

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Re: Old Conner Hard Drive having trouble spinning up

Posted on 2016-04-04, 12:50

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yeah, might be. The grease in the bearings is somewhat perishable too, might have "dried up" during the years. Never seen gas tight bearings in a HDD, it's always regular ZZ (dustproof) ones. Getting a new drive is probably the best idea after all, just about anything will be more reliable and less …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-03-27, 10:58

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well... It could have been a PPro with a weird slot layout, a lot of those had six SIMM slots. But no, it is indeed an Nx586, a Rev C version of the board Vetz posted. It comes with an Nx586-P90 processor and 8MB of RAM - I'll probably try and add another 8MB - obviously, no FPU and I was a bit put …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-03-27, 10:29

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

3DFX Schwag! :cool: Been grabbing some 3DFX-related items over the last few weeks. A buddy of mine hooked me up with some 'must-have' items since I purchased the V5-6K. Hopefully I'll get a chance to fire up the Epox board + new PSU + AMD 3000 XP + V5-6000 next week. I plan on making a new thread …

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Re: Windows 98 SE general advise and care.

Posted on 2016-03-27, 10:14

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A few things I keep in mind and do on my W98 rigs: * Keep the registry clean. Only install what you know you need. Do your research instead of just installing stuff to try it out, the uninstallers aren't perfect, and will leave registry entries behind in most cases. There are good registry cleaning …

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Re: Biostar MB-8433UUD-A External Battery?

Posted on 2016-03-21, 12:20

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks everyone.I'll bite the bullet and order an RTC off Ebay. Not impressed that they're all from China, so I'm a bit worried they're counterfeits or NOS. Feipoa, grinding away at the chip isn't feasible as it's too close to other components. I do have a desoldering iron with a built-in hand pump …

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Re: Biostar MB-8433UUD-A External Battery?

Posted on 2016-03-18, 13:45

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Perhaps not the answer you asked for or want, but even if it's possible to use an external battery without mods, I wouldn't want to leave that RTC with a dead battery just sitting there like a time bomb waiting to begin leaking or otherwise screw stuff up. I'd definitely replace the RTC. If you …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-03-18, 11:11

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have bought a Sparkle Nvidia TN2 M64 32MB PCI (~10 Euro) for my Compaq DeskPro EN 6333 SFF running Windows98 and guess what - I'm more than happy with it. Definitely much better than the integrated Rage PRO 4MB. I have given up searching for Voodoo2 in a decent price so the performance of M64 in …

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Re: Remove Pentium 1 heatsink

Posted on 2016-03-16, 16:23

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've removed a few epoxy glued heatsinks in Xboxes using a heat gun back in the days. A hair dryer just won't reach the temperatures needed to weaken the glue sufficiently. Begin with heating the heatsink up to ~80deg C. Try twisting rather than prying it off. If it doesn't come loose, heat it up …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-03-14, 14:22

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These little babies arrived in the mail today: DSC_0043.JPG One to replace the incredibly noisy reference heatsink on the GF4 Ti4600 in my Athlon XP rig, and a spare one that might go on a GF FX 5900 I got in store, haven't really decided yet. Not really a steal at ~$12 each, but those are getting …

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Re: will 2 Sound cards work if installed in a single PC?

Posted on 2016-03-13, 13:01

by

by kaputnik

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Using more or less the same configuration in one of my retro boxes, an AWE64 Gold and a Live. Selected the Live card as default sound device in Windows, it happily coexists with the AWE64 there, and simply not loading any driver for it in DOS where the AWE64 is used. No conflicts or other problems …

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