Re: Fujitsu hard drives

Posted on 2020-09-22, 16:57

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sample size of 1, but my 3.5" 528 MB Fujitsu drive looks to be very well built and has no operational issues or obvious signs of deterioration. It DOES have a Cirrus Logic chipset, funny enough. I've often read that various drive makers have periods where they've more focused on quality, eras where …

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Re: Your 'formula' for system specs and operating system matching

Posted on 2020-09-22, 16:42

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by radiounix

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I know this is nominally a gaming subforum, but the situation changes a bit if you're more trying to capture the nostalgia of various PCs. People were totally running Windows 3.0 on slow 286s with MFM disk drives and EGA or 256KB VGA. Word 2 and early desktop games like Taipei, Chips Challenge, …

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Re: My set of rules for perfection

Posted on 2020-09-22, 01:44

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Do you have any links to such PSUs? There's some industrial ATX PSUs that are still made with a strong 5V rail and a -5V rail, however they aren't cheap. https://www.ebay.com/itm/Seasonic-SS-200PS-Power-Supply/181050381832?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 I just bought one …

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Re: My set of rules for perfection

Posted on 2020-09-22, 01:41

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I don't have too many standards, per say, but my bugbears are preferring to use a traditional ball mouse, a CD-ROM with a proper spin rate like 2X or 4X, and a hard disk no bigger than a plausible upgrade for a machine. E.g, a 340MB drive in a 386SX, or a 1.6GB drive in a later 486. If I had …

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Re: Replacing an AT power supply with a 3.3V rail

Posted on 2020-09-21, 18:47

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ok, so I figured what's going on. A small number of late AT power supplies included a third motherboard plug, named P10 or AUX. It does supply 3.3 volts, and was a thing on a few OEM systems from Compaq, Zeos, Unisys, and probably various other. I could not find such a power supply on Ebay, and …

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Re: Replacing an AT power supply with a 3.3V rail

Posted on 2020-09-21, 13:51

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Apparently, Zeos had the same arrangement on their Pentium machines, and it seems I do need power supply with a third plug supplying 3.3V, or some kind of adapter.

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Replacing an AT power supply with a 3.3V rail

Posted on 2020-09-21, 13:13

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

So I'm pretty sure the power supply in my Unisys 486 has failed. Within the span of a day, the machine went from instability in Windows, to locking up in DOS copying files or running a benchmark and sometimes failing to complete the boot, to not posting and not sending out a VGA signal. I've got it …

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Re: Old computer game forensics

Posted on 2020-09-19, 16:42

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by radiounix

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

You clearly had some kind of PC like a PS/2 or a PC clone. Something pretty new for 1990 if it was running EGA games like Number Munchers. Schools wouldn't yet be running Windows 3.0, but since DOS was seen as kid unfriendly they likely had installed some kind of a 16 color program frontend for DOS. …

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Re: Where can I buy vintage hardware other from eBay?

Posted on 2020-09-19, 16:30

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by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I wish there was another venue, but truth is, there really isn't. Amibay is good if you're in Europe, but I am not. There's VCfed, but that's mostly interesting if you want really old stuff from the pre-PC era. And there's some Facebook groups, but they have low activity and a lot of junk. I also …

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Re: Windows 95 optimization and 486DX2 performance

Posted on 2020-09-18, 21:18

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by radiounix

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

This is a Unisys 486 made in late 1995. It actually has LBA, power management, ... and an intel PCI chipset. In fact, I'm pretty sure the Cirrus GD5228 video is hanging off the PCI bus. I think it works so well because Unisys was a PC of choice for serious businesses willing to pay a premium for …

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Windows 95 optimization and 486DX2 performance

Posted on 2020-09-18, 14:45

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

So I just installed Windows 95 OSR 2.5 on my 486 DX2/66 with 16MB of RAM. On a fresh, untouched install it was snappy like a modern PC with an SSD. Really quite impressive. Now I've got the official Microsoft runtime library and system updates installed, and have installed a bit more than a dozen …

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Re: Can't get Media orte 16 FMP-03 with Vibra chip to work in DOS

Posted on 2020-09-18, 13:44

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

I fixed it. Looks like I really do need to be running diagnose.exe /s like the other person with said card found. Not just running diagnose.exe and letting it update my autoexec and config.sys files. That's not enough; looks like the card needs to be initialized under DOS, and diagnose.exe does …

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Can't get Media orte 16 FMP-03 with Vibra chip to work in DOS

Posted on 2020-09-18, 02:37

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The MediaForte uses a Creative Vibra chipset, but has a fake OPL3 chip, an amplifier and an FM tuner onboard. It's not a Creative product, best as I can tell, but It was also made in Singapore. I don't know either. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=45837&p=461078&hilit=media+forte#p461078 …

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Re: Until when PC used 10 function keys, instead of 12?

Posted on 2020-09-17, 20:04

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The IBM PC/XT and AT shipped with what are now known as 83/84 key layout keyboards. The PC/XT keyboards are electronically incompatible with anything but an XT class machine, but the AT keyboards should be compatible with any AT keyboard controller -- even if the computer uses a PS/2 socket. You can …

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Re: Old CD-ROM drives and CD-Rs - try Taiyo media

Posted on 2020-09-15, 20:01

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

CMC is a garbage company. I'd be shocked if their "Taiyos" were as good They have excellent optical media. Using early CD-burners (1x, 2x, 4x), they were the only discs I could use that wouldn't fail a burn when performing a validation. I've also had zero issues with compabitility of burned media …

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Re: Anyone sold their collections / parts on... any regrets?

Posted on 2020-09-15, 19:21

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Absolutely. I tossed dot matrix printers, a 386 notebook, several 486s complete with matching monitors, a 286 lunchbox, a Macintosh Plus .etc about ten years ago. And a bunch of SCSI cables, AT dome slider keyboards, early multimedia speakers .etc about five years ago. Couldn't give the stuff away …

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Old CD-ROM drives and CD-Rs - try Taiyo media

Posted on 2020-09-15, 01:55

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I was worried when I bought a 4X IDE CD-ROM drive for my 486, because so many people can't seem to get the older models to read CD-Rs. I think I know what's going on. My drive, the CR-581 from Matsushita, would error out on the discs I burned on normal, sold in stores Verbatim Vinyl by CMC. Straight …

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Re: What specs should a PC speaker have?

Posted on 2020-09-13, 22:52

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ Sound

in Marvin \ Sound

The typical PC speaker is a 3" cone speaker, like you'd find in an old AM transistor radio. So 8 ohms, as little as .1W power handling, harsh sounding and not really capable of reproducing music. A better speaker with a rolled surround won't make square waves less primitive, but it will make PWM and …

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Re: Tandy 1400 LT alternative storage

Posted on 2020-09-13, 22:10

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

https://texelec.com/product/lo-tech-cf-xt-ada … 00-laptops-pcb/ Such a thing does actually exist, but I cannot speak to its usability. The classic XT option would be using a parallel port ZIP drive, but that is unreliable and means more wires and bulk.

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Re: What is the purpose of "Restart into MS-DOS mode" for you ?

Posted on 2020-09-03, 13:38

by

by radiounix

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Software which works with hardware at a low level is likely to want a pure DOS environment. Tools like Spinrite and Partition Magic which talk directly to the disk controller, tools which query the hardware like MSD or Navratil, early DOS games that talk directly to video card registers aren't going …

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