Re: Anybody selling recapped/checked power supplies?

Posted on 2021-11-24, 18:54

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@RaiderOfLostVoodoo - If you hook up a PSU to a motherboard without the main power hooked up to it and then turn the power switch on, it should completely drain any charge that the capacitors have left in them. This is also recommendable to do before changing cards. With good PSUs, the standby …

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Re: Old monitor EDID reading and linux

Posted on 2021-11-24, 17:30

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Definitely the EDID is not (read) completely. It might be because of the cards' BIOS limitations which, on Radeon, freedesktop calls iirc. So, maybe it could be worth to check whether your card has the latest BIOS on it. But as you didn't tell which kind of "radeon" video card, I have no idea which …

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Re: Old monitor EDID reading and linux

Posted on 2021-11-24, 16:58

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

May I ask, what does xrandr --prop output?

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Re: Old monitor EDID reading and linux

Posted on 2021-11-24, 16:34

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I feel a bit confused now. 1. Did you connect the VGA monitor directly to a VGA output or did you use a HDMI-VGA converter? 2. Have you tried to manually set up the monitor using one (or more) modeline(s) for higher refresh rates?

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Re: Old monitor EDID reading and linux

Posted on 2021-11-24, 15:44

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

read_edid does not work well even with the LCD monitors I tested it with. Use xrandr --prop instead.

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Re: Polymodded DFI P2XBL Slot 1 motherboard: Did I go too far?

Posted on 2021-11-24, 12:18

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Maybe check out the PSU for its ripple... the worst stress these mobo caps have to endure is when they are constantly under high currents from charging/discharging due to a high-ripple PSU. This can kill even top-brand caps quite quickly. On the other hand, if the PSU has (almost) no ripple and …

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Re: Anybody selling recapped/checked power supplies?

Posted on 2021-11-24, 11:08

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Does anybody have a solution? What do you do in this situation? I built my own test bench . Regarding sellers for checked PSUs, forget it. There are none, there is no market. I tried to sell the surplus good PSUs from my bench testing, and I was surprised that, despite the fact that people do know …

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Re: IBM 5151 Horizontal Linearity Adjustment

Posted on 2021-11-23, 14:26

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If @maxtherabbit's suggestion does not help, maybe look at the linearity coil closely. In the very old TVs their limiter, limiting how deep you can turn the ferrite screw into, were made of wax, like the windings themselves. Sometimes, when a circuit was borderline, it was necessary to screw the …

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Re: What's the dumbest retro mistake you've made?

Posted on 2021-11-23, 14:03

by

by retardware

in Milliways

in Milliways

Ah I see! Well, I never had a game console, and just assumed that they just work like computers, eg, game speed independent of frame refresh rate. To me it was much more fun to share and enjoy many games with my friends on cassettes for the PET 2001 and then with Apple II diskettes. The Atari 400 …

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Re: Are Acer fanboys a thing?

Posted on 2021-11-23, 12:50

by

by retardware

in Milliways

in Milliways

IMHO it's a mixed bag: While ALi chipsets were praised on SS7 MB, most DIYers I know disliked Acer's complete systems for their proprietary designs and sub-par components (when compared with Asus, Gigabyte, MSI, i.e. companies selling components in retail). A typical example was the ... Aspire …

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Re: What's the dumbest retro mistake you've made?

Posted on 2021-11-23, 12:08

by

by retardware

in Milliways

in Milliways

PAL is trash. Screw whoever thought that giving us Europeans 17% slower games with squished graphics was a good idea. PAL is not trash. You obviously haven't experienced Never The Same Color. This was why PAL and SECAM had been developed in the 1960s as alternatives which didn't, for example, show …

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Re: What's the dumbest retro mistake you've made?

Posted on 2021-11-23, 00:01

by

by retardware

in Milliways

in Milliways

Another mishap: Late in 1980 I was making my own Apple II language card replacement (using a 74LS14 to save me from using the stupid cable that was only used to generate CAS from RAS). While testing it I slipped with the oscilloscope probe. Don't remember to which 4116 voltage supply pin the short …

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Re: What's the dumbest retro mistake you've made?

Posted on 2021-11-22, 20:48

by

by retardware

in Milliways

in Milliways

40 years ago I lent my Apple II to a friend during my vacation. His mom placed a flower pot onto it, let the water pour over, and it killed the PSU. Well, it was not my mistake, and his parents paid the replacement PSU, so no problem, and it was not even retro (at least back then), but I still find …

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Re: V30 Motherboard doesn't work

Posted on 2021-11-21, 12:18

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm really curious what's in those BIOS chips. The board is using two 256kbit EPROMs, which seems like a lot for an XT. I guess it might have a setup dialog, which ofc blows up BIOS size. Regarding the 1.44MB floppy support, it depends on the data separator on the particular controller whether this …

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Re: AHA-1542CF Floppy Controller Problem

Posted on 2021-11-21, 10:25

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What should go wrong flashing a pair of 27256 and trying them out in the controller? To my knowledge the 1542 have no EEPROM. The "F" means "fast", in the sense that the BIOS is copied into an onboard RAM which is then used for the BIOS routines instead of the slow ROMs. So this also means, the …

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Re: Floppy 3 & 4 without BIOS support

Posted on 2021-11-20, 18:06

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, in mid-80s... wasn't that with an XT-style, DD-only controller? I need HD, of course! Controller (765 core) is same, it's just a better data separator. Recently there was some talk about FDD controller, mentioning that the AHA-1542 FDC is one of the best ones available, also works with 2.88MB …

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Re: Floppy 3 & 4 without BIOS support

Posted on 2021-11-20, 17:32

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just do what is described in the article linked above. It works fine, I did this already in the mid 1980s to connect 4 drives. Nothing more needed than driver.sys and drivparm. And uniform and/or xenocopy if your intent is to transfer from other systems' diskettes. You just have to make sure that …

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Re: Any use for dedicated word processor computers? I guess none.

Posted on 2021-11-20, 17:20

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Registered on that forum and posted there but a week later no answers, maybe these computers aren't so interesting after all. Yes, their fan community is small. These guys also don't visit that forum regularly. I guess you'll get a reply sooner or later. Probably does not matter if you salvage CPU, …

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Re: how tough is 286 processor

Posted on 2021-11-20, 16:59

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

... i did put a 24mhz crystall in it for a 12mhz processor but nothing is alive. ... Always upclock in small increments... eg 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, ... and watch chip temperatures and do some stability tests before you decide that the next step could still be functional. In my experience it is …

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Re: how tough is 286 processor

Posted on 2021-11-20, 13:36

by

by retardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do this with 4116 ( 3 supply voltages!) please please. In my youth I did this several times, and if I remember correctly, Hitachi chips were outstanding... if the chip survived, it was usually a Hitachi.

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