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

Posted on 2022-05-02, 11:40

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Tested a "crappy" Mendocino CPU I had laying around for some time. Turns out, it's not as worthless as I thought. It's the king of the Mendocinos. 8x66MHz. Is it a good overclocker or why pay people up to 20 bucks for this? It might be the fastest some 440LX boards will take, stuck into a slotket. …

---

Re: Win98SE Pentium 4 Project

Posted on 2022-05-01, 22:21

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

You're a big boy now, how much shit can a proprietary box give you?

---

Re: How can I safely transplant a 160-pin QFP chip?

Posted on 2022-05-01, 19:22

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

How much do you like the donor board? Cutting out the chip from the board leaves you a lot less ground plane pain. ... and if there's nothing else of value left on the board, taking a blowtorch to the backside and banging on it until the chip falls off can work.

---

Re: Socket 5/7 underclock! Aiming for the abyss!

Posted on 2022-05-01, 14:53

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I just had a thought... while Cyrix 6x86 and MII class might have a functional 1x multiplier (Implemented multis can vary with time, fab, and OEM version, apparently identical ST/IBM/Cyrix versions of same model have shown differences.) ... it might not be slower than a P54 or P55 at 1.5x ... …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-05-01, 14:39

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't think joystick mechanics have gotten better, but you can specify a center dead zone in many drivers/utils now.

---

Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2022-05-01, 14:08

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an M537 and could run a K6-2 on it, with lowest "stock" voltage on the board of 2.5V, didn't try for undocumented or modded voltage... but in that config, it wouldn't go much over 350 without the voltage regulators getting "scary" hot. It might end up running a K6-III 350 I have booting …

---

Re: More than 2 FDDs?

Posted on 2022-05-01, 04:15

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

IMA go for the record sometime... 4x FDD interface FDD, 4x LS-120 1.44, 6x USB 1.44 and 2 Tandy parallel port 5.25 🤣.

---

Re: old big scary monochrome monitors

Posted on 2022-04-30, 21:32

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wonder how many got slurped up for props for Stargate Atlantis, for Genii tech. 🤣

---

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

Posted on 2022-04-30, 20:46

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not that it couldn't happen, but I have not encountered any gum-like glues or epoxies that have shown signs of corrosion. I'm hesitant to say that all glues must be soft or malleable and to be wary of anything that is not. There are plenty of rock hard epoxies that aren't corrosive either. The …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-04-30, 20:21

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thrift pickup... Should be alright if it's alright, right? PX-708A

---

Re: Some eBay sellers are assholes

Posted on 2022-04-30, 02:52

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had a similar experience on my local classifieds site. A guy was selling a bunch of GPUs, including an FX5900, but had no photos of that card in the listing. When I asked to see some pics, he demanded more money. I said that I might consider it if he would test the card to show me that it was …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-04-29, 22:14

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe it was laser ink or a similar form of carbon, which is conductive, so giving it copious flushing with a pressurized source, or sticking it in an ultrasonic cleaner for a bit might rejuvenate it, if miracles still happen.

---

Re: The best old graphics card

Posted on 2022-04-29, 22:06

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

https://www.vogons.org/download/file.php?id=136299&mode=view It would seem that bit is either slang for a measure of liquor or that "zweiunddreissig bit" sounds like something else when said in the right accent of German. So the literal sense I get is. Windows 95 can do everything with 32 bit, when …

---

Re: The best old graphics card

Posted on 2022-04-29, 17:21

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

While you could get Win95A itself running pretty nicely on a 386 with 16MB, there would be not a lot of "Win95" specific stuff that wouldn't bog it down to a crawl. So mostly a Win95 386 would just be for running older and newer Win 3.11 stuff that works on 95. There's maybe a 2 year overlap of " …

---

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

Posted on 2022-04-29, 03:25

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Look at this real interesting hole though, the eZ80! 🤣

---

Re: Popular games that you don't much care for and why?

Posted on 2022-04-29, 02:40

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Another thing I really dislike about escort missions is the scripted failure. You know, where you have to escort someone, and if they die then it's game over. So far, so normal. But with the scripted failure missions, when you reach a certain point, then the person you are escorted gets killed, and …

---

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

Posted on 2022-04-29, 02:06

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

They are easy to kill with excessive heatsink force or displacement while trying to assemble. edit: oh and if you try a super weak spring clamp and it's not sitting exact they'll cook themselves as soon as you apply power... no finger testing, they're done by the time you go ouch.

---

Re: What was the most surprising/odd thing you've found on an old computer?

Posted on 2022-04-27, 16:01

by

by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

What astounds me though, here, is that I've been through at least 50 machines/HDDs which have still had personal stuff on like resumes, random docs, sheets, decks, pics etc etc.... and only 1 had any porn. ... okay unless I also count one that was either used heavily for BBS or was a small BBS, …

---

Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2022-04-27, 01:37

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Bancho wrote on 2022-04-26, 20:59: Its in lovely clean condition. Oh don't worry about that, just leave it sitting on top of something in the kitchen for a few months, soon develop a lovely vintage patina. 🤣

---

Re: FIC VA-503+ serial ports not working

Posted on 2022-04-26, 17:00

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

There was a FIC board I did "15 rounds" with back in the 90s as regards serial port functionality.... and with the onboard disabled and an ISA multi i/o with only the serial enabled it STILL wouldn't work. Narrowed it down to a BIOS issue in the end, but on that particular board, it did not have a …

---