TrashPanda wrote on 2022-05-15, 08:12:

framebuffer wrote on 2022-05-15, 07:59:

Technically I did this the last weekend, anyways I checked pretty much all my non-in-box mainboards for bulged capacitors and did a re-organisation in the storage to make them more easy to identify
Also found few CPUs I forgot in the socket how knows when 😁

Find any bulging ones ? Im curious how storage affects "Cap Plague" era boards and if we as collectors can store such boards in a way that either reduces the chances of caps going bad or stops it.

I'm thinking that cool dry storage conditions would help a lot along with discharging the board before storing it.

Most of the mainboards with bulged caps were already checked at the purchase time with a general note in the inventory and from what I can tell what was supposed to fail, already failed years ago
I didn't noticed any board that, while in storage, got worse than I remembered (but since they are many I can't say it with 100% certainty)

If it's of any interest, here is the list of bulged caps and affected mainboard model after the check

11000uF 10v	40mm	7x
21000uF 16v	40mm	6x
31000uF 6.3v	40mm	24x
41500uF 10v	50mm	1x
51500uF 6.3v	40mm	10x
61800uF 16v	50mm	1x
71800uF 6.3v	40mm	5x
82200uF 6.3v	50mm	2x
93300uF 6.3v	50mm	20x
10820uF 6.3v	40mm	2x
111000uF 10v	50mm	1x

1ASUS	A8N-E
2ASUS	P4S533-E
3ASUS	TUSL2-C
4ASUS	P4P800-VM
5ASUS	A7V400-MX SE
6ASUS    A7N8X-E (2x, were new in box, sealed, never used and full of 3300uF 6.3v completely exploded)
7ASRock	K8NF3-VSTA
8COMPAQ	UWAVE
9OEM	AM39L
10HP  	MS-7184
11MSI	845PE Max (MS-6580)
12MSI	MS-6385
13MSI	K8T Neo2 V2.0 
14MSI	K9MM-V (MS-7312) 
15MSI	K8T Neo 2 (MS-6702 v1) 
16DFI	CA61
17DFI	nF4 LANParty SLI
18GIGABYTE	GA-M61P-S3
19GIGABYTE	GA-8IDML

(the list includes also the full-in-box boards, not only the one you see in the photo)

framebuffer wrote on 2022-05-15, 07:59:

Technically I did this the last weekend, anyways I checked pretty much all my non-in-box mainboards for bulged capacitors and did a re-organisation in the storage to make them more easy to identify
Also found few CPUs I forgot in the socket who knows when 😁

Nice house, fine furniture 😉
I usually put some paper under the motherboards to avoid "punches" from caps and other pointy components.

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-05-15, 03:00:

NyLan wrote on 2022-05-12, 11:46:

Setup a triple boot on my IBM A20M with System Commander 7 […]
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Setup a triple boot on my IBM A20M with System Commander 7

- Windows 98SE
- Windows 3.11 ( on top of MS-Dos 6.22 )
- Ms-Dos 6.22 alone

I preferred to do it that way so I can have different setup of MS-Dos 6.22 for Windows and alone.

There's no MS-Dos only drivers. need to install Windows drivers to get MS-Dos drivers. And Windows 3.x drivers for the sound card are not working that well under pure DOS.
So for MS-Dos alone I'm using Windows9x Drivers grabbed from Windows install.

I may have decided to buy this exact model earlier ...comes with a nice metal case too and it looks to be in excellent condition due to being stored in that case. Didn't cost me a lot either which was a bonus, now I just need to buy a new battery for it and the base station. (Funny thing . .the postage to Australia was stupid but to be expected since the case alone would weigh a bit, postage costs are now one of the prime evils along with death and taxes!)

Your super clean pad inspired me to grab one.

Getting a battery is very complicated. Had to buy like 10 to get 2 working.
Lot of brand new batteries come with 50-75% charge, are working but are not charging at all.

Cleaning off battery corrosion off of this proprietary LPX motherboard which i found in the dumpster yesterday. I will need to repair a few traces but it looks a lot worse than it actually is.

framebuffer wrote on 2022-05-15, 07:59:

Technically I did this the last weekend, anyways I checked pretty much all my non-in-box mainboards for bulged capacitors and did a re-organisation in the storage to make them more easy to identify
Also found few CPUs I forgot in the socket who knows when 😁

Man I hope you don't lose your balance when you're walking through there!

NyLan wrote on 2022-05-15, 16:59:

TrashPanda wrote on 2022-05-15, 03:00:

NyLan wrote on 2022-05-12, 11:46:

Setup a triple boot on my IBM A20M with System Commander 7 […]
Show full quote

Setup a triple boot on my IBM A20M with System Commander 7

- Windows 98SE
- Windows 3.11 ( on top of MS-Dos 6.22 )
- Ms-Dos 6.22 alone

I preferred to do it that way so I can have different setup of MS-Dos 6.22 for Windows and alone.

There's no MS-Dos only drivers. need to install Windows drivers to get MS-Dos drivers. And Windows 3.x drivers for the sound card are not working that well under pure DOS.
So for MS-Dos alone I'm using Windows9x Drivers grabbed from Windows install.

I may have decided to buy this exact model earlier ...comes with a nice metal case too and it looks to be in excellent condition due to being stored in that case. Didn't cost me a lot either which was a bonus, now I just need to buy a new battery for it and the base station. (Funny thing . .the postage to Australia was stupid but to be expected since the case alone would weigh a bit, postage costs are now one of the prime evils along with death and taxes!)

Your super clean pad inspired me to grab one.

Getting a battery is very complicated. Had to buy like 10 to get 2 working.
Lot of brand new batteries come with 50-75% charge, are working but are not charging at all.

I’ve found some from a supplier I’ve used in the past for other laptops, unless there is something weird about thinkpad batteries.

Going to use the larger capacity battery they have, fingers crossed!

Nexxen wrote on 2022-05-15, 14:56:

framebuffer wrote on 2022-05-15, 07:59:

Technically I did this the last weekend, anyways I checked pretty much all my non-in-box mainboards for bulged capacitors and did a re-organisation in the storage to make them more easy to identify
Also found few CPUs I forgot in the socket who knows when 😁

Nice house, fine furniture 😉
I usually put some paper under the motherboards to avoid "punches" from caps and other pointy components.

thanks, it's just some IKEA stuff 😉

Brawndo wrote on 2022-05-16, 03:37:

framebuffer wrote on 2022-05-15, 07:59:

Technically I did this the last weekend, anyways I checked pretty much all my non-in-box mainboards for bulged capacitors and did a re-organisation in the storage to make them more easy to identify
Also found few CPUs I forgot in the socket who knows when 😁

Man I hope you don't lose your balance when you're walking through there!

hahah imagine keeping safe for years and years all those precious SS7, Slot1/A, S370/A etc boards and then destroy them by falling on them 😁 😁

Powered on my dot matrix printer (Panasonic KX-P 1180) to print some adhesive labels on tractor-feed paper.

Also... I've been noticing that there are more than a few hobbiest ISA card designs around, but no PCI cards? It seems that the official PCI spec is not freely available but I found something nice to get the ball rolling (includes signal descriptions, timing and state diagrams)

https://flex.phys.tohoku.ac.jp/riron/vhdl/up1 … ra/an/an041.pdf

The reason why you see ISA cards instead of PCI is because the vintage ISA cards from the old days are often in poor condition/non-functional, expensive, poorly designed, in short supply, and so on. There's a sizeable demand for ISA cards because there's so few in great condition and a large number of retro PC enthusiasts with ISA slots to be filled. On the PCI side, there's really no shortage of vintage cards - generally speaking - because the Windows 95-XP era saw a massive number of products - particularly cheap soundcards - and stock come from the Chinese/Taiwanese factories and much of it is still sold today in foreign markets or in good enough condition to be resold to retro hardware buyers.

All the PCI specs are available for free through third-party sources, so there's no real secrecy or block to making a PCI/PCIe/PCI-X card.

These, I pulled from academic sources, freely available for anyone to download....

ISA cards are fun, working with PCI at low level is like kicking dead whales down a beach, to use a hardware hacker phrase used for something both disgusting and requiring extreme effort for small result. Part of that extreme effort is the additional work of resource allocation and writing much more complex drivers. PCI speeds need a few thousand bucks worth of tools for troubleshooting, ISA speeds, mere tens, ergo most hobbyist shops are underequipped or on the raggedy edge for PCI testing.

Then we have the "Whoa, my favorite card is over $50, so someone should build a new one for $30, despite the rare NOS chipset costing $50 a pop by itself and the rest of it costing $40, and engineers who could do this should do it for free and not expect to recover development costs either. Because I ain't paying a real world price of $150 for a new one even if it reflects actual parts cost and labor with a small reasonable profit margin." ... and most of the ppl going "But I would pay $150 for a brand new X..." have a substantially more complicated X in mind with substantially higher part and production cost.

"Oh you can't get the part, just emulate it in FPGA" yeah, the FGPA capable of it may be somewhere in the hundreds of dollars (If available at all at the present time with shortage issues)

"But I can emulate the entire machine on a $50 Pi type board" so emulate the whole machine on a $50 Pi type board cheapskate.

Most repros are passion projects, the guy doing it was/is intensely interested in the board and did it for personal satisfaction... nothing very immense will come of "Someone should..." unless the someone is halfway there already.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-05-16, 18:15:

Then we have the "Whoa, my favorite card is over $50, so someone should build a new one for $30, despite the rare NOS chipset costing $50 a pop by itself and the rest of it costing $40, and engineers who could do this should do it for free and not expect to recover development costs either. Because I ain't paying a real world price of $150 for a new one even if it reflects actual parts cost and labor with a small reasonable profit margin." ... and most of the ppl going "But I would pay $150 for a brand new X..." have a substantially more complicated X in mind with substantially higher part and production cost.

Oh, you're no fun anymore.

But seriously, you hit the nail squarely on the head there. People who don't know the work/effort involved to do things in the 32 bit era (ex PCI) at a hobbyist level are quite numerous and vocal. Which doesn't exactly discredit them, but I just tend to ignore these people. 😜

Me, on the other hand - I'm a skeptic, but I do enjoy seeing people new to electronics who are willing to put in the time and effort to learn how to do what they want.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-05-16, 18:15:

Most repros are passion projects, the guy doing it was/is intensely interested in the board and did it for personal satisfaction... nothing very immense will come of "Someone should..." unless the someone is halfway there already.

Spot on. Another pet peeve of mine is the phrase "we need" when it is only one person or a select few that are interested in whatever is proposed.

framebuffer wrote on 2022-05-15, 07:59:

Technically I did this the last weekend, anyways I checked pretty much all my non-in-box mainboards for bulged capacitors and did a re-organisation in the storage to make them more easy to identify
Also found few CPUs I forgot in the socket who knows when 😁

I need to do this as well but it's just so much stuff to go through! How did you motivate yourself?

More Youtube Recordings of the NES and Atari 2600. It's about all I have time for currently with all the other bullshit going on.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-05-16, 18:15:

"But I can emulate the entire machine on a $50 Pi type board" so emulate the whole machine on a $50 Pi type board cheapskate.

A week or so I decided to use a USFF Dell for something instead of a Pi because while I might get a Pi with enough money, the shortage has rendered them more dear than a 3rd gen i3.

Everything else is piling up plus more medical annoyances so not getting much done. Still slowly selling surplus but my server remix is on unofficial hold. Planning to make up some labels for early 80s multiuser office machines for my servers, if I get the labels looking good enough I'll upload them. Going to make a Sord label for my main gamin PC, I think, and one for my keyboard which has a space for it.

I am consolidating my computers.
I want to be like LGR and just have a few main computers for playing retro games.

These are the ones I am working on.
0) “Made in USA” build , 386-33 ( DOS )
1) Ultimate 486dx4-100 build ( DOS/Win3x )
2) Intel 430tx with Pentium 233mhz. ( Win95 )
3) IBM AMD K6-333 ( Win98 )
4) Mega-Aluminum Monster with AMD K6-lll+ and Voodoo-3000 ( Win98 )
5) Mini Mega-Aluminum build with AMD K6-lll+ and Voodoo-3000 ( Win98 )
6) Intel Pentium lll@933 with Nvidia GeForce 2 ti. ( Win98 )
7) Intel 1.4ghz Tualatin with Voodoo-3000 ( Win98 )

These will be my Main 1990’s computers for games and apps.
DOS/Win3x/Win95/Win98

The more I think about it I might just need 4 or 5 computers.

I would like to get a MIDI Mountain creation like LGR but these devices are hard to find today.
So maybe just ONE or TWO MIDI Modules.

I would like to thank all the retro computer community for helping me better understand and build
Retro computers for DOS game play and best performance.
You people really help me allot over the years.
This is something I have always wanted to do in the 1990’s but never had the time.

Thanks Everyone.

Well turns out the memory in the NEC EXPRESS 5800 coffee machine is actually FPM SIMM memory with parity, so .. its back to eBay to buy 512 MB of it since I dont own any of this odd ram besides the 32mb stick the machine came with.

Ouch, 70 USD per 128mb stick NOS which seems to be about average for this memory with parity.

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2022-05-17, 10:30:

I would like to get a MIDI Mountain creation like LGR but these devices are hard to find today.
So maybe just ONE or TWO MIDI Modules.

From a practical standpoint, just having a Roland MT-32 and SoundCanvas SC-55 will cover all the bases for MIDI support for classic games.

There are individual general MIDI modules that sound good with certain soundtracks, but those tend to be edge cases.