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

Posted on 2016-09-03, 04:36

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I remember my brother having an early iPod like that. Cool that you were able to save it. I fooled around some more with imaging some disks that I knew were bad. I was comparing how well a few different drives could read them. I was surprised that an Epson SMD-300 conventional 1.44MB floppy drive …

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

Posted on 2016-09-02, 13:23

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Actually had to make a special trip to Goodwill to rummage around for a standard USB A->B cable. I couldn't believe it, but every single USB cable I had turned out to be for mini or micro-USB. Anyway, I finally got a late 90's Visioneer 7600USB scanner hooked up. The install procedure for Win2k and …

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Re: Need help reviving a V5 5500...

Posted on 2016-09-01, 13:18

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

I'm looking at the 100uf 16v cap - I only had the small one pictured above - although it has the same rating as the original sanyo cap, there might be other differences... Are you sure that (and the original) are 100uF? Sometimes those surface mount caps encode the capacitance differently. 100 can …

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Re: 8GB of DDR1 in a socket 939 system

Posted on 2016-09-01, 03:55

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Will either of these work on my Asus A8N-SLI Premium with my overclocked Athlon 64 X2 4400+? http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/3ycAAOSwZd1Vdv8U/s-l1600.jpg http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/H4oAAOSwubRXK1YH/s-l1600.jpg I don't know about the second picture with the heatsinks, the chips aren't visible so …

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Re: Any interest in collecting old game system requirements?

Posted on 2016-08-31, 08:48

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I haven't looked at mobygames but yes, it would be very convenient to have this info collected somewhere. I'll try to remember mobygames in the future. Many times (including just a few minutes ago) I've gone looking for requirements for games from the 90s and it's not as easy to find as I expect. …

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Re: My Socket 7 "circa 1997" build

Posted on 2016-08-30, 01:38

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Great build. I've been in the mood for a build of this time period as well. I ran into some obstacles and fell back on a later system, but ~1996-1997 really hits the spot for me. my power supply model is labeled as "ATX-300GU", under the brand "Hi-Q Power", but I googled a bit and it seems these …

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Re: Looking for confirmation - is my LS120 drive faulty?

Posted on 2016-08-29, 17:42

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The seller's identity is somewhat apparent from the photos and info I posted, so in fairness to them I want to update this thread. I contacted the seller about the drive symptoms and they quickly sent another drive, and that drive booted right up in my super7 machine without issue. I haven't used it …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-08-29, 05:13

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The Dell is a Socket 370 Coppermine Celeron 533MHz on an i810 motherboard with onboard video (no AGP slot). Other than that, I kind of like the Dell. Really compact case, and what looks like an Intel manufactured motherboard. The Windows licence sticker on the case is for NT Workstation 4, but is …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-08-29, 04:28

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just a matter of time, then? I have a BFG 6800GT wih the same cooling that is dead. Another one works fine. That's why I've always been afraid to buy those cards. Consumer level video card fans were pretty crappy back then as it is, and these cards have 2 of them. I have little faith that I'll get …

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Re: Socket 7 heat sink + fan (thermal paste?)

Posted on 2016-08-28, 06:57

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think it's critical, but the first CPU where I actually started to notice a heat issue and used thermal paste for the first time was a K6-3 450MHz. As I recall it dropped the temperature about 5C versus being dry, which is how I had always installed heatsinks prior to that time. Prior to …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-08-27, 15:26

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Picked up a partial spindle of Sony "Supremas" CDRs that were probably made about 10 years ago. They looked identical to some discs I bought back then, and I later confirmed they have the same ID code. They're very good discs, compatible with picky drives. They're old but that hasn't been an issue …

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Re: Bought these games today

Posted on 2016-08-27, 14:08

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Myst III: Exile in a big box. Small manual is in good condition, disc case and CDs are nearly mint. Box is torn though. Included some stapled printouts of GameFAQs walkthroughs and a tech support README. The latter was full of handwritten annotations of all the previous owner's detailed system specs …

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Re: Optiplex from my office

Posted on 2016-08-25, 14:49

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

http://wp.xin.at/archives/829 scroll down to part 5 - that utility lets you run TRIM on WinXP. An alternate way to mitigate the issue for any OS without TRIM support is to overprovision (underprovision?) it. First TRIM the whole drive (running a secure erase command will accomplish this), and then …

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Re: What will we look like in 30 years?

Posted on 2016-08-25, 04:04

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I think for most people the interest in old PC hardware will be derived from their interest in video games. There will continue to be a decent enough number of people who are interested in games from decades past. The most convenient way to play them will be with emulators, but some people will …

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Re: Whats a good way to repair a CD-DVD drive thats not reading disc?

Posted on 2016-08-24, 11:35

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I agree that earlier CDROM drives are the most sensitive to disc quality, not having been designed with any special tolerance for burned discs at all. IMO DVD drives usually aren't much of a problem, although my first DVD-ROM drive (which was a 16X so it wasn't even that early of a model) seems to …

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Re: Whats a good way to repair a CD-DVD drive thats not reading disc?

Posted on 2016-08-24, 05:26

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some older drives cannot read burned media, only pressed, but on the other hand I have had some 4x cd roms have no problems with any disks. Does anyone know if there are specific brands of CD ROMs and DVD ROMs that are better quality than others, and are older drives built better than newer ones. I …

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Re: Whats a good way to repair a CD-DVD drive thats not reading disc?

Posted on 2016-08-23, 01:58

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Errors reading a file in the Windows install can actually be caused by system instability, such as bad RAM or an unstable overclock, etc. I've been bit by that before. The behavior in those cases can be surprisingly consistent and make you think it's surely a disc issue when in fact it's not. If …

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Re: Last good PSU with strong 3,3/5 volt?

Posted on 2016-08-23, 01:37

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You mentioned not wanting to change capacitors. I don't know of any models that meet that requirement. Not saying there aren't any, but I haven't come across them. Maybe some of the premium brands were consistent in using good caps, but I don't know. The good news is that PSU circuit boards aren't …

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Re: Strange problems with DOS memory.

Posted on 2016-08-23, 01:03

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by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you're familiar with linux you can use 'dd' to do a full wipe of the entire disk, rather than relying on whatever the 'format' command does or doesn't do. Then you'll know for sure that everything on the disk is wiped out of existence. Another tool that should have the same effect is DBAN ( …

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Re: What is this card?

Posted on 2016-08-23, 00:33

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't know anything about that card but I think it could still be a MIDI connector just with an unusual choice for the connector type. Maybe it even breaks out into a normal joystick port, but even if that's the case you'd probably never find the original breakout cable. The only chance would be …

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