Re: So a friend plugged his laptop directly into the mains back in the day

Posted on 2023-04-20, 23:04

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A lot of conscious effort has to go into a mistake like that. And your friend is still standing? Managed to get through life ok? :D I'd assume a good chance of terminal damage, but I'd also be keen to dig it out for a look. Well, he recently took his kid to a homeopath, so I assume there was some …

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So a friend plugged his laptop directly into the mains back in the day

Posted on 2023-04-20, 21:25

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, a friend of mine has a Zenith Data Systems Z-180 laptop with 8088 7MHz. When he was a kid, he couldn't find the power brick so he plugged the computer directly into the mains. I don't know how exactly he managed to do that. Now it's sitting at his garage. I haven't been able to find the …

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Re: Missing operating system

Posted on 2023-04-20, 09:25

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by songoffall

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Microsoft says it originates in the BIOS, and suggests the following reasons: The basic input/output system (BIOS) does not detect the hard disk. The hard disk is damaged. Sector 0 of the physical hard disk drive has an incorrect or malformed master boot record (MBR). An incompatible partition is …

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Re: Missing operating system

Posted on 2023-04-20, 09:18

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by songoffall

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Credit where credit is due: superfury suggested fdisk /mbr first. My primary suggestion was to make sure that the correct partition is active. I stand corrected. One more thing: fdisk /mbr will rebuild the MBR on the current disk, which might not be the one used for the Windows installation (like …

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Re: Missing operating system

Posted on 2023-04-17, 21:54

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by songoffall

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

MBR is damaged or missing. As mentioned by mkarcher, booting from a Windows 95 recovery disk or an MSDOS disk and typing in fdisk /mbr will rewrite your MBR without altering the partition table. Credit where credit is due: superfury suggested fdisk /mbr first. My primary suggestion was to make sure …

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Re: Missing operating system

Posted on 2023-04-17, 20:49

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by songoffall

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

This is quite interesting. I'm more used to the "No Bootable Device, Insert Boot Disk and Press Any Key" error. But I would assume the error still originates in the BIOS, because this is not an MSDOS error I've ever seen. So while I agree with the advise provided above, let's just walk through some …

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Re: Adventures in restoring an old Compaq DeskPro 2000 computer

Posted on 2023-04-14, 23:15

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The video chip is a Matrox MGA Mystique 220, with 2Mb SGRAM. There's an add-on board with 2Mb more. The part number is 007213-001, it is available on EBay, but quite expensive, tbh. Do not confuse with the other board available for Pentium I machines - the right board has staggered M/F connectors, …

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Re: Adventures in restoring an old Compaq DeskPro 2000 computer

Posted on 2023-04-13, 13:22

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If anyone needs to restore a Deskpro 2000 with a dead hard drive, the latest BIOS/System setup Softpaq is this one: SP16085.EXE "Compaq Personal Computer Diagnostics", 10.40 Rev A, English (US), December 07, 2000 I'm doing a full cataloging of Compaq SoftPaqs here: https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic. …

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Re: A definitive guide to Compaq/HP SoftPaqs

Posted on 2023-04-13, 13:00

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another one: SP5991.EXE "Contura 420/430 ROMPaq Upgrade (23 December 1997)", 486K2_122397 Rev A, 2 February 1998, supersedes SP1651 (04/29/96 ROM) [/s] Applies to Compaq Contura 420, Contura 430 laptop computers. UPDATE: SP12245.EXE "Contura 420/430 ROMPaq Upgrade (September 23, 1999 Version)", 4K2. …

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Re: A definitive guide to Compaq/HP SoftPaqs

Posted on 2023-04-13, 12:55

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One very important SoftPaq I dug out: SP16085.EXE "Compaq Personal Computer Diagnostics", 10.40 Rev A, English (US), December 07, 2000 This is the latest ROMPaq/System setup for the following computers (at least the latest I was able to find): Deskpro XL: 590, 6150, 6200, 575, 566, 560, 5160, 5133, …

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Re: A definitive guide to Compaq/HP SoftPaqs

Posted on 2023-04-13, 09:21

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some interesting discoveries: going through the documentation has been an enlightening experience. E.g. if you were restoring a computer with Compaq CD-ROM adapter and NEC CDR-38 drive, the SP0477 allows you to do make it work. Except having it all on a spreadsheet, while it will have to do for now, …

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Re: Doing a custom machine with 86Box

Posted on 2023-04-12, 23:25

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by songoffall

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Duh, I missed that your are on MAC. 86Box can be used with different VMs by specifying it in the command line: 86Box -C config.cfg or 86Box -P path/to/vm The default name for the config is CONFIG.CFG but you could rename it so you could multiple configs and launch the one of your choice. This is …

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A definitive guide to Compaq/HP SoftPaqs

Posted on 2023-04-12, 10:21

by

by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

With HP support for older Compaq products being somewhat unavailable, turns out making sense of the Compaq SoftPaq updates is quite the ordeal. There's a large amount of them archived on archive.org, with somewhat incomplete descriptions, so I decided to compile them into a Google Sheets file so …

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Re: Doing a custom machine with 86Box

Posted on 2023-04-11, 23:41

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by songoffall

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

That's not possible, you are restricted to the ones included. It's quite a huge list, you can probably find something very close to your target machine. There's no way to switch machines, you need to use a manager such as Winbox. https://github.com/86Box/WinBox-for-86Box That's quite unfortunate, …

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Re: Adventures in restoring an old Compaq DeskPro 2000 computer

Posted on 2023-04-11, 18:44

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have almost the same Compaq DeskPro 2000 and mine battery still holds charge. Try to search the external battery by Copmaq PN, I think it is 4.5V and you can use 3x1.5V AA/AAA batteries. batt.jpg Well, I guess I jumped to conclusions too early. Sometimes it works, sometime it doesn't, but it's …

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Re: Adventures in restoring an old Compaq DeskPro 2000 computer

Posted on 2023-04-11, 14:12

by

by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have almost the same Compaq DeskPro 2000 and mine battery still holds charge. Try to search the external battery by Copmaq PN, I think it is 4.5V and you can use 3x1.5V AA/AAA batteries. I decided to follow your advice and leave the PC on for some more. Lo and behold, you were right, friend! I …

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Doing a custom machine with 86Box

Posted on 2023-04-11, 13:41

by

by songoffall

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

I've been using 86Box to test things on my M1 MacBook Air for a while, but maybe I'm dumb, but I haven't figured out two things: 1. Say I wanted to emulate the Deskpro 2000 6233MMX I'm restoring. How would I do a custom virtual machine like that on 86Box? Is it even possible? 2. How do I switch …

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Re: Adventures in restoring an old Compaq DeskPro 2000 computer

Posted on 2023-04-11, 13:34

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by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

BR2335 is rechargeable lithium battery, give it some time, maybe it will hold some charge. I mean I've powered it on multiple times and even left it running for like 30 minutes (it POSTs fine, but doesn't boot without an HDD and I don't have the floppy disks yet). Each time I get the CMOS and clock …

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Re: Adventures in restoring an old Compaq DeskPro 2000 computer

Posted on 2023-04-11, 13:28

by

by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

BR2335 is rechargeable lithium battery, give it some time, maybe it will hold some charge. I'm not optimistic about that, because the computer hasn't been powered on since, I think, at least 1999. But while consulting the manual, I found out there's an external battery header, so I might not need …

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Re: Adventures in restoring an old Compaq DeskPro 2000 computer

Posted on 2023-04-11, 10:26

by

by songoffall

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So here are the gut shots I promised. The internals were caked in dust, but nothing an old toothbrush and some isopropyl alcohol couldn't fix. Thankfully, all the electrolytic capacitors look healthy. https://i.imgur.com/P76isb1.jpeg There's the Adaptec OEM SCSI adapter and a PCI modem installed on …

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