Re: How important is having a turbo button?

Posted on 2022-07-03, 19:15

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Next step is to find a nice lil 286 computer at 12-16MHz :p Personally I think the turbo button is overrated. It sure works to slow down the system pretty well and you might get to 286 speed grade. You can also loosen ram timings, disable cache L1 and L2 seperately, lower the fsb and find yourself …

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Re: Modern ATX cases for older AT motherboards?

Posted on 2022-06-27, 18:40

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Basically you still can put an old AT board into the newest ATX case. Putting up drives is also less needed if you want to walk the CF route 😀

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Re: 486DX2 SX955 and compatibility problem

Posted on 2022-06-24, 18:49

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I've got three SX955 CPUs, all working fine. Doesn't matter which board I plug them onto, they just work. If the board dues not support our is not set for WB the CPU just runs, identified as DX2 and runs in WT mode without any died difference. When WB is enabled (P24D) it's actually a little faster …

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Re: DOS 6.22 on 486 crashes after any command?

Posted on 2022-06-21, 17:31

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some thoughts. Since you have 8 and 32MB I suspect you're using 72 pin ram. Are you sure you're using fastpage and not Edo? Lots of 486s have trouble with Edo. Could you set the timings to their slowest? Our at least fail-safe settings? You say you disabled external cache. How about internal? Just …

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Re: Computers in disguise, do you know any?

Posted on 2022-06-19, 11:59

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

At work we had a Kyocera Mita plotter, when it finally deceased it was taken apart. From it's remains I harvested an AMD Duron with unknown brand mobo, ram an Seagate HDD. It ran some linux/Unix os.

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Re: Octek Fox II 286 Invalid Switch Memory Failure

Posted on 2022-06-10, 11:05

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You may also check if the ram had a parity chip and if parity is set in bios.

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Re: Measure PSU voltages directly on motherboard?

Posted on 2022-06-07, 17:18

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

(...) Could it be that the PSU is producing voltages that are too high/low? That could be. You only know when you measure. Some thing I do to measure when plugged in, is turn the system on and gently press the pin heads from the multimeter into the connector from above, next to the cable. This way …

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Re: Compaq Prolinea 5120E (i think)

Posted on 2022-05-31, 14:19

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The video chip looks like a GD5436 or 5438 (not exactly sure which one) with 1MB ram. Highly vesa compatible and provide fair Windows acceleration. With a Pentium 120 you surely don't need anything more. If you'd like to have higher resolution in Windows you may want to upgrade video ram, but DOS …

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Re: How do I turn these on?

Posted on 2022-05-21, 19:42

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yes, the CPU board is 20p ATX. Nothing AT there. I wouldn't be surprised if the pins right of the cf slot, to the edge of the cart, indeed would be for front panel usage. Like LEDs, power, reset...

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Re: Ooops I updated the BIOS and now my compact flash doesn't work (Tulip TC-48 motherboard)

Posted on 2022-05-21, 19:35

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have a backup from the old bios? You could put that one back and see what it does. Maybe boot from a floppy and run sys c: could help? If not, you may try fdisk/mbr to make sure the card is bootable (no data loss) And maybe need to reset all partitions as well (losing all data). Is the cf …

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Re: Building Retro 486

Posted on 2022-05-18, 22:17

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You may check the battery. When turning the system off, the system uses the bios to keep the data. With some too low voltage, but high enough to save some of the bits, data may end up corrupted with a reset or power cycle. Since you're using the cr2032 replacing is as easy as it gets, as is …

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Re: Serial mouse worked only for a day on DOS machine

Posted on 2022-05-17, 12:06

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sometimes you can see if a cap fails. It shows cracks or seems a bit burned black/grey-ish. But more than often they fail without any sign and you can only tell with a multimeter or other testing gear. In you're case I can't see any evidence so they might just fall internally. Given the age and …

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Re: SX955 is the BEST 486DX2 CPU?

Posted on 2022-05-15, 22:16

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For that I haven't noticed any weirdness do far, but I haven't tested it purposely.

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Re: Serial mouse worked only for a day on DOS machine

Posted on 2022-05-15, 19:45

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have three identical multi io controllers from Vtech. These all have two serial ports on our. Jumper settings are on th9o and are confirmed to be set as requested. One card refuses to detect anything from the serial port. I think t saw two or three bad caps on it. That may be the reason for my …

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Re: SX955 is the BEST 486DX2 CPU?

Posted on 2022-05-15, 19:39

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To me the SX955 is the ultimate DX2-66. I've got three of them. They all do run fine art 3,3v and without fan they keep cool to the touch. WB does require bios support. If the bios does not explicitly support it, chances are high the CPU runs WT (nothing wrong with that, runs just fine, but a waste …

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Re: SX955 is the BEST 486DX2 CPU?

Posted on 2022-05-15, 19:06

by

by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To me the SX955 is the ultimate DX2-66. I've got three of them. They all do run fine art 3,3v and without fan they keep cool to the touch. WB does require bios support. If the bios does not explicitly support it, chances are high the CPU runs WT (nothing wrong with that, runs just fine, but a waste …

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Re: FDD controller failure and keyboard error

Posted on 2022-05-08, 17:28

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The cable should do. The twist should be closer to the drive than to the board. Not all cables were fit with 2 floppy connectors. I second the drive 1 / drive 2 jumper should be on drive 2 position. If it's the choose between drive 0 and drive 1 it should be drive 1. Very early floppy cables cable …

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Re: 1GB vs 2GB for gaming XP build

Posted on 2022-05-08, 14:16

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my opinion, if the costs are low, max it out. Put in 4x1GB or 2x1GB+2x513MB if possible. Just make sure it runs dual channel. It sure will help to prevent a lot of swapping if you provide enough ram. And if not all ram is used... Who cares?

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Re: Floppy Drive capability question.

Posted on 2022-04-27, 22:07

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My question is, can I use a 1.44mb 3.5 drive, to read/write floppies of that capacity or lower, and same for 1.2mb 5.25 drives to read/write floppies that are that capacity or lower? Or do I need dedicated drives for the smaller capacities? I may have to format the floppies as well, so the same …

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Re: Floppy Drive capability question.

Posted on 2022-04-27, 19:26

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by waterbeesje

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There was this issue with 5,25 drives. The DD (360kB) drives spin at a different speed then a HD (1,2MB) drive. Some HD drives do have the capability to spin at the speed, but not all. Besides that, the 360k disk should be formatted in a 360 drive (I prefer twice) before writing data to it in a HD …

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