Re: [repair advice] Gigabyte 5AA Rev 2.2

Posted on 2021-07-02, 23:39

by

by gca

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Never had trouble with W2K on the rev 1.0 of this board (mine is currently dual booting XP SP3 and DOS) but I guess it does depend on what cards you have inserted. Are you running the latest BIOS version?

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

Posted on 2021-06-19, 20:33

by

by gca

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally found the driver for a stubborn Unknown device on my ThinkPad X20. Managed to drag the hardware ID out of it at last and found it was the PCMCIA Fast Eject driver. Never anticipated a PCMCIA issue because its been working perfectly.

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Re: The worst motherboards you have had to work with

Posted on 2021-06-07, 22:08

by

by gca

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Trigem Cognac, for some bizarre reason installing anything newer than Windows 2000 causes one hell of a headache until you change the Computer driver to Standard PC rather than ACPI (or whatever the default is called, I forget). If you don't do that then any optical drive access just results in a …

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Re: Weird problem with CRT monitor

Posted on 2021-04-20, 22:55

by

by gca

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Maybe the display is set for the wrong refresh rate. Had that problem once, did a factory restore on a machine and it would only work with a CRT until I got it adjusted to a rate compatible with newer screens. Though that would only cause the problem when running Windows, DOS shouldn't have that …

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Re: Why DOS died...

Posted on 2021-04-17, 20:18

by

by gca

in Milliways

in Milliways

I was still using DOS at work in the early 2000s. It was built into the Janus 2020 handheld bar code scanners we were using. Seemed fast and reliable enough at the time for that purpose.

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Re: office suites and business software

Posted on 2021-04-08, 23:33

by

by gca

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I miss WordPerfect, used the DOS version (5.1) back in my college days. The other WP/spreadsheet we used a lot was SAMNA Pro running on AIX. So glad to see the back of that monstrosity. It was hellish even by the standards of the time (don't get me started about the spreadsheet aspect of it just ... …

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Re: First computer-related job?

Posted on 2021-04-08, 21:53

by

by gca

in Milliways

in Milliways

First job, straight out of college back in the mid 90s working as a code monkey for a small software house in Stirling. Working on a line of business suite written in BASIC on a Linux system. Oh, and it was an INTERPRETED version of BASIC. So anyone who bought the suite would also have needed to buy …

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Re: Your saddest retro computer pictures, a feel bad topic

Posted on 2021-04-08, 21:46

by

by gca

in Milliways

in Milliways

Sadly no pictures but when I was working for SUN two Storedge (no, not a typo its the brand name) racks got dropped while being loaded onto a plane for shipping. That was one hell of a week pushing the replacements through test to refill the order.

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Re: Booting FreeDOS from a vinyl record (YouTube video)

Posted on 2020-11-24, 14:32

by

by gca

in Milliways

in Milliways

Impressive indeed. And I thought loading 8-bit software from a C15 was retro. Maybe for his next trick he could try a wax cylinder? Or these ancient music programme sheets that were once used for automatic pianos? The only older technology I can think of is the one that served in ancient weaving …

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Re: Booting FreeDOS from a vinyl record (YouTube video)

Posted on 2020-11-23, 22:25

by

by gca

in Milliways

in Milliways

Impressive indeed. And I thought loading 8-bit software from a C15 was retro. Maybe for his next trick he could try a wax cylinder?

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

Posted on 2020-11-15, 19:40

by

by gca

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I found time to test a 386 motherboard that I recently purchased, with a 386SX 25MHz CPU. Inserted a couple of 30-pin SIMMs and powered it up and happily it POSTs ok - https://i.imgur.com/TTTyLw7l.jpg https://i.imgur.com/lUM6zvEl.jpg Motherboard seems to be from some kind of Ambra-branded LPX …

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Re: 386DX-33 Help! Mouse stopped working

Posted on 2020-11-04, 23:19

by

by gca

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you tried the obvious and changed the mouse for a known good one and if so does the problem persist even with the new rodent in place?

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Re: Windows 95/98 games you never get tired of?

Posted on 2020-10-23, 17:33

by

by gca

in Windows

in Windows

Starcraft/Broodwar I'm so lame that I only started playing it on Vista. Now 10 years later and on Windows 7 I'm still stuck half-way through the Brood War campaign... Just wait until you hit Omega (very last level in Broodwar) then the struggle really begins. Took me an age to get through that one.

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Re: Windows 95/98 games you never get tired of?

Posted on 2020-10-23, 12:44

by

by gca

in Windows

in Windows

I was never much of a Windows gamer TBH but for me the titles I did play were: Starcraft/Broodwar Mechwarrior 3/Pirates Moon Freecell

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Re: Programming on DOS/Windows 95/98

Posted on 2020-09-02, 11:30

by

by gca

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

On DOS mainly Borland Turbo C++ 3.0 and a couple of the Turbo Pascal compilers. Then migrated to DJGPP because it made code easier to port between DOS and Linux platforms. Free Pascal compiler is also handy because its very similar to Turbo Pascal (you can just move code directly between them …

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Re: Anyone got an Ambra Sprinta 386 Motherboard Manual?

Posted on 2020-08-15, 20:41

by

by gca

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi GCA. Sorry I haven’t been back to Vogons since the beginning of lock-down and have only just read your response. I’m busy again of course but I’ll find time to dig out these details for you and send on what I have. B/w Dave No rush, I know how it is right now with lock down and other Covid …

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Re: XCOPY problem

Posted on 2020-06-20, 17:44

by

by gca

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Did you try using the /s switch, like this: xcopy /s d:\abc123 c:

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Re: MicroProse Resurrected!

Posted on 2020-05-17, 20:49

by

by gca

in Milliways

in Milliways

A couple of new games from Drakeling Labs are being published by them on steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/793560/Warfare_1944/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/736590/Ope … Harsh_Doorstop/

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

Posted on 2020-04-12, 21:43

by

by gca

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Did some final work on my breadbin C64 Rev. B from 1983. Added a heatsink to the SID chip, removed some rust from the tv modulator, and also removed the C9 cap from the modulator to improve sharpness of the picture. Had not much effect, however, as it is using an R1 VIC II. Just saw a couple of …

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Re: Proprietary software in MS-DOS

Posted on 2020-04-05, 15:12

by

by gca

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

I think it was called Amstrad Program Manager, you can find it buried somewhere on the Amstrad PC4386 disk images that you can find here: https://banjosmods.wordpress.com/2019/01/28/a … tom-win3-shell/

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