Re: 5.25 floppy drive jumpers

Posted on 2020-08-16, 09:52

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thank you for the manual and image Horun, I have tried the drive with the IU jumper removed, then also with the TD and terminator resistor pack removed in case that's not required with the 3.5" floppy drive that's installed too. Unfortunately still no joy. On closer inspection there appears to be a …

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Re: 5.25 floppy drive jumpers

Posted on 2020-08-15, 20:00

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi Horun, It would appear to be a Mitsubishi MF504C-318 UG . The motor has a label on it for Mitsubishi U288Y073 as well as JVC AA01JF, the PCB on the top has the code MDK 3IIV-O. Hopefully that is helpful. Jim

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Re: Anybody know if this BIOS supports hard drives over 540MB?

Posted on 2020-08-15, 14:23

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just a quick update: I bought a 3.2GB WD Caviar drive, although a little modern for the computer it's going in I have used EZ Drive to create a 2GB partition for drive C and a 1.2GB partition for drive D. All appears to be working well on it. Thank you both for your help, it is much appreciated.

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5.25 floppy drive jumpers

Posted on 2020-08-15, 14:17

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi all, I have been trying to get a 5.25 floppy drive working on a 486 PC and am not sure if there is an issue with the drive (possibly not finding track 0). The drive appears to be a 1.2MB drive as selecting 360k in the BIOS gives a mismatch error. For context, the setup is: * 1.44MB 3.5" drive as …

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Re: Anybody know if this BIOS supports hard drives over 540MB?

Posted on 2020-08-10, 07:18

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello Jake, I don't recall seeing any options in the BIOS which would imply large disk support. I can't even see an option to manually set cylinders/tracks/heads, the BIOS allows selection from a list or auto detect. Although I'd be surprised if the BIOS has large disk support I would be interested …

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Re: Anybody know if this BIOS supports hard drives over 540MB?

Posted on 2020-08-09, 13:04

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The bios needs to match the board An XTIDE rom in a cheap network card would get you round the bios limitation Thank you Squelch41, I'd heard of XTIDE for older XT systems but never considered it's use on a 486 era computer. I will search for an XTIDE BIOS and appropriate network card that can …

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Anybody know if this BIOS supports hard drives over 540MB?

Posted on 2020-08-09, 11:13

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello all, I have what I believe is an Acer A1 based computer (some info about the motherboard here ). The BIOS chip in it is labelled "486SX/DX - BIOS - U20 - V1 . 2R1 . 7I - Copyright Acer Inc 1993". I am having difficulties finding much in the way of information about this BIOS and wondered if …

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Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.75b

Posted on 2020-08-04, 14:24

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

Do you mean MIDI as in the MPU401 functionality, or the ability to play MIDI files through the OPL synth? If you mean the second, you probably need to install a driver that does that. I was referring to playing MIDI files in Windows using the OPL chip. I will have a look into drivers to cover that …

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Re: UNISOUND - Universal ISA PnP Sound Card Driver for DOS v0.75b

Posted on 2020-08-04, 06:49

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I have to say this tool is pretty amazing, I bought a 486 desktop the other day and the only sound card I had on hand was an Aztech 2320 based card which I'd never used before (didn't even know it worked). After trying many different drivers with it I only had success with Unisound. Under Windows …

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

Posted on 2020-02-26, 18:23

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I bought a set of 5 1/4 floppy disks on ebay, it's probably been the best part of 20 years since I've held one of them. They're for a drive that I've had for a few years and have never tested. Hopefully it works!

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

Posted on 2020-02-01, 08:15

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A little late (mainly because I finished really late last night and needed to sleep). I managed to get a Dell XPi CD keyboard working again by cleaning the contacts on the connectors/cable then after discovering that a few of my vintage HDDs are dead I found a 540MB drive that works fine (a bit …

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Re: ESS688 Win 3.11 Sound Drivers

Posted on 2020-02-01, 08:09

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Strangely enough I installed Winodws 95 onto a Dell XPi CD last night with ESS688 sound, the drivers listed on vogonsdrivers.com didn't work for me, they installed but the device didn't work properly. In the end I managed to find a download of the DRV and VDX files so I could install it manually via …

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Re: Repairing flat flex cables

Posted on 2020-01-31, 16:54

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Update: I tried cleaning the contact on the ribon cable on an offchance, the XPi CD keyboard is now working perfectly fine, unfortunately this didn't work for the Latitude XP. The Latitude XP actually has a slightly different issue, all the keys work but some keys type multiple letters, such as …

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Repairing flat flex cables

Posted on 2020-01-31, 12:45

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi all, I have a Dell Latitude XP (486) and an XPi CD (Pentium 1) laptop, they both seem to have the same issue with the keyboards where some keys work and some don't. Testing with a multimeter I can see that some of the connections on the flat flex cable have gone bad. If this was copper clad flat …

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Re: Strange behaviour from SD to IDE adapter

Posted on 2019-08-16, 16:04

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Most of my tests were with the SD-IDE being the only device on that IDE channel (either in the primary master or primary slave position), when I tested in on the secondary channel it was on the same channel as a DVD-ROM drive. The adapter doesn't have any jumpers on it for setting CS/master/slave so …

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Re: Strange behaviour from SD to IDE adapter

Posted on 2019-08-16, 15:45

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I did create the MBR on the SD cards, although that was using fdisk again. In one of my attempts I tried installing Windows 2000 and using it's partitioning tool with no joy. I'm going to put my money on it being a duff adapter, typically I'm unlikely to find the time to try it on another desktop …

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Re: Strange behaviour from SD to IDE adapter

Posted on 2019-08-16, 11:54

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe its not that compatable overall.... perhaps you could try the adapter that uses compact flash cards. Example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWfTgga7rmA That might be the case, when I get a chance to pull it out I'll try it in my modern desktop as it's still got a single IDE controller on …

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Strange behaviour from SD to IDE adapter

Posted on 2019-08-16, 10:29

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hi all, I purchased an SD to IDE adapter for use in a P3 based Dell T500, the adapter is an SD35VCO. https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/k1oAAOSwiOVc42Ru/s-l1600.jpg When installed it is recognised in the BIOS, looks fine and has the correct size listed. Fdisk will only see the drive if I turn LBA and …

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Any way of getting 2 floppy drives on Dell Dimensions XPS T500

Posted on 2019-08-05, 17:00

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I picked up a Dell Dimension XPS T500 the other day (PIII), it has a 3 1/2" drive in it and I am attempting to add a 5 1/4" drive as well. After a few attempts it will only recognise 1 drive at a time. If only one drive is installed then it will work fine, if both drives are installed it only …

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Re: Old photos of old rigs thread

Posted on 2019-08-05, 15:29

by

by thevdm

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

These are the oldest I can find for now, surely there should be some photos somewhere going back to my 386/486 era. This is around 2007, so would likely be a C2D. What I've learn't from these photos is that my cable management was bad, I'm glad I quit smoking, phones were better back then (Nokia …

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