derSammler wrote:

Upgraded my CD32 with a TF328. 😁

Nice, I always wondered if those CD32 consoles could be modded/upgraded to run Workbench & regular Amiga software. How well does it work with regards to games?

I wish I still had mine, but it's long gone.

Had some misadventures with my XT build today.

Decided to try upgrading the BIOS by programming some spare EEPROMS with the later 1986 BIOS images.

It sort of worked, but my 5160 motherboard, being a 64-256K board, doesn't seem to like the 2nd (U19) ROM chip being 32KB like the first. It boots, but with a non-functional BASIC ROM ("Divide Overflow" when trying to run BASIC in DOS too) and CTRL, ALT & DEL simply freezes the system instead of resetting. It also wouldn't format any floppies on my 3.5" drive. Shame really, as the faster POST memory count was certainly an improvement.

I had some trouble reinserting the original ROM chips too, the U19 ROM had some rusting/corrosion and the system would boot with a ROM error and non-working BASIC. I set about cleaning that ROM chip only to be a bit careless and ended up snapping 1 of the legs. 😠

Luckily I have many spare EEPROM chips and set about programming the original NOV 1982 U19 BIOS to 1 of them. I filled the 32KB chip at first (4x8KB), which the XT didn't like - ROM error again. So I simply wrote the image to the last 8KB of the chip instead and it's now working great again. Phew, thank god for EPROM programmers!

PTherapist wrote:

Nice, I always wondered if those CD32 consoles could be modded/upgraded to run Workbench & regular Amiga software. How well does it work with regards to games?

All WHDLoad games I tried worked without any issues. I tried a couple of ECS, AGA, and CD32 games. It's as compatible as an A1200.

To run the Workbench, no mod/upgrade is needed at all. WB 3.0 was released on CD-ROM for the CD32 (http://www.vesalia.de/e_workbench30cd.htm).

Not sure if that retro, but I painted (using permanent markers 🤣 ) the upper half of a PSone I had around in black and drew one of my favourite characters (anime 😀 ) on it.

Not the best result and I still need to find a solution that will remove fingerprint marks from it.

Here's a picture of it, next to my other PSone. A funny thing is that you'd normally expect that the painted one is chipped and all the goodies and that the white one is completely stock. Well, it's actually the opposite. 🤣

The case was in pretty bad shape so I'd say it deserved this. It was yellowed, and was still dirty even after I cleaned it with medicinal spirit beforehand. It didn't help that it sat in the rain before I got it though, so I guess this at least covers up the unremovable dirt.

Decided to rebuild my Pentium 233 MMX rig to something faster. I have Asus P2B-DS board lying around, bought this recently. Unfortunately the first CPU slot is damaged beyond repair and the whole board took a lot of beating in the past it seems. As it turned out CPU can be installed in the second slot 1 and works just fine. Also AGP, PCI and ISA slots are working even though they have some scratches.

For a start I've used PIII 700, even slightly overclocked to 7x112=784 MHz works perfectly (this board is revision 1.06 btw, so native coppermine support), single stick 256/133 SDRAM, GF2 GTS, V2 SLI and from the MMX build AWE32 CT3980. Everything is up and running, good for now. But later the plan is to install Tualatin Celeron (probably 1200 MHz). Upgrade RAM to 512MB, possibly by using some "trash" 128MB PC100 sticks, which are otherwise useless, but good fit for 4-slot low fsb board. Also the GF2 might be a little too slow for Tualatin build, so maybe I'll use something faster. And last thing - my AWE32 has 8 MB of RAM at the moment but will be upgraded to 32 MB at some point.
And of course (I almost forgot 🤣 ) the biggest strenght of this board is the onboard SCSI controller. I have some 10k and 15k SCSI drives here, so that will be part of the build as well.

Other project is this one here: GA-686 DLX Dual Pentium-2 from a very cheap scrap lot:

It looks to be in perfect conditions, but it didnt start to POST. First replaced two caps that were damaged on the surface. Still nothing. After checking CPU+RAM in another board the BIOS got my attention:

Its a 40-PIN chip labeled "MB-300E GREEN 9451". Didnt find that type of Eprom and my guess was that they put a ROM on the board to save some money. Put it in my TL866 and wasnt able to read anything with various settings.
Compared with other pictures of this board I found in the internet. There the Chip looked totally different...as usual a BIOS with a silver hologram.

Now I got it..."MB-300E GREEN 9451" is a 486 keyboard BIOS as shown here...!!! Nothing to do with a P2 board.... 😵

But I dont have a 40-PIN EEPROM Replacement and they seem to be difficult to get.

Therefore I am thinking about desoldring the socket and put a 32-PIN socket on it. The soldering points are there...and I think it should be working without further modifications?

EDIT: There should be a P28F002BC in it, but its not available any more...

HAH - running again 😎 😎 😎 😎 😎

Couldnt wait...removed the DIP-40 Socket, soldered a DIP-32, flashed a V29C51002T I had in spare...and bump 😎

Like to know who put that 486-Chip on the board....!

^^ haha, "well it fits in the socket so it must be the right chip!!" Seen a few of those.

Good job getting it going! That's a cool board.

Hehe, thanks, I also think this board looks cool and was the main reason to buy the lot.

However, while playing around it wondered why my two P2-400 power up with 266 MHz regardless of the Jumper-setting. Explanation: The Chipset has a fixed bus speed of 66 MHz and the Multiplier of the CPU is locked at 4x. Thats 4 x 66 = 266...

But thats retro, dont always need to have the fastest PC. But would be happy about some more flexibility.

I had an AT case with a speed display that would not retain its values when the case was disconnected from power. I always assumed it got its power from the BIOS battery (somehow.. wow that was so DUMB) but after opening the case up for cleaning I found an LR41 battery in the display that had terribly leaked.

Lots of vinegar and scrubbing later, it is now fully functional and retains its speed values! Hurray.

I've been busy with retro stuff lately. My HP Vectra 66XM was acting funny so I decided to put it back on the pile and setup a different 486 system. I tested several boards. One had bad battery leakage and seemed like it might be dead although I got a beep code on one attempt. I got one with 2 VLB slots labeled "Contaq" to boot, but it was missing some of the SRAM chips and seemed slow. There was a PCI board with fake cache, it came to life and then asked for a password (I saw a list of default BIOS passwords here on Vogons but I didn't try to find the right one). Finally I got to a Genoa X4 VLB board with SiS82471 chipset. It is extremely picky about what RAM it will work with. I looked up the manual online to find the jumper settings but I kept getting beep codes until I finally put the right SIMM in the right slot. Later, I managed to find one other SIMM that would work (out of 12) and get it up to 24MB of RAM.

I put it in a Trinity Works 5x86 chip (running at 33x3 for now, with WB enabled), Trident 9440 1MB VLB, Promise EIDE2300+, SB16 CT-1740, NE2000 compatible ISA NIC, and a Quantum Fireball 2.5GB. It all fits nice and snug in a mini tower AT case. The BIOS is Award dated Nov '94, it detects the HDD and mistakenly displays the size as 430MB but seems to run fine otherwise. Appears to have some Y2K problems though.

I also tried out an Athlon XP-M in a Biostar M7VIP-pro board. The CPU is supposed to run at 133*12.5 (1.66GHz). For some reason it boots up at 133*6, but I guess this is actually a good thing because then I can crank up the bus speed and set the multiplier with a utility after booting. I already verified that it works at 166*10 and even 166*11. I don't really know where the voltage is running yet, since I've only booted DOS so far and have no way to check (the register contains 0x0B but I'm not sure what that translates to on an Athlon XP-M).

I tested power consumption on my 286. I wasn't sure what to expect, it has 5 ISA cards, 1 HDD, and 1 FDD. It only pulls 36W from the wall, which is slightly less than my "low power" Win2K box (an Athlon X2 4850e and Radeon 4550) at idle. Later I tested my 486 build and it came in even lower! Only about 32W.

Leaving this here incase anyone ever goes looking for the info:

Creative branded Matshita Quad Speed drives are NOT compatible with the VIDECDD.sys CD ROM driver.

Been testing my latest big batch of old cards (mainly VGA). This time I've re-learnt an important lesson: check who you're buying from and what their probable reasons are for dumping the stuff, and set your expectations to match. The previous lot was amazing - lots of pretty unusual stuff, and almost everything worked perfectly. I found several cards that I could use myself and I've already sold enough of what was left to cover both purchase and shipping for that lot.

That came from a computer shop dumping stuff they couldn't possibly sell or re-use in modern systems. This lot was different. A similar number of cards (30), but they came from someone who turned out to be a fellow retro-computing enthousiast. So basically this was pre-selected crap with all the cherries picked out of it. Most cards were low-end PCI or AGP cards (lots of TGUI9440 PCI and S3 Trio 3D AGP), with any RAM expansions already stripped. The exceptions to this rule were invariably dead or dying. Case in point: the one PCI card with socketed 512kB chips still in it failed X-VESA VRAM testing. I'm about half way through testing so far, and even if it's a bit disappointing after last time, it's not terrible: I've found three cards that seem to work and are interesting enough to keep myself (an ISA TVGA8900CL - which turned out to be twice as fast as my previous all-round ISA thingy, and an Asus V3400TNT ViVo that was battered but seems to work, and an Aztech / Packard Bell Rocky 2.5 modem/AZT2320 sound combo in pristine state) and about half of the rest passes testing with no issues. Given the low price I paid for the lot, that's more than good enough. I might even break even if I can sell a few of those Trio3D cards off cheap. And testing the stuff is fun. Once I finish the first run, I'll see what can be done with the failures. For starters one Leadtek Gf4MX has a row of leaking caps, so that should be easy enough to fix.

Still, makes me yearn for the next box I can find that is still in virginal state. Really hoping to find one with period motherboards some time soon...

Took the 22" IIyama 510 out of the closet(73lbs of huffy puffy),
and tested it again with a BNC cable and the picture is outstanding. The monitor has some good milage on it so there are weaknesses but as a playtime CRT it is as fine as it gets.

General weakness is that the picture has a magenta hue to it which is now less obvious than it was with the standard VGA cable. Sync On Green + BNC further helped but the tint is still there. There seems to be no defect as white in Windows is beautifully white and by playing with the desktop color profie one can set a totally green picture so the signal is there and is strong.

In low res VGA the tint is the most obvious especially in Doom and Quake which reminded me that these games had a strong reddish/brownish tone when viewed on many CRTs(we had at those times... used to play on LAN and 3 out of the 5 had slightly too strong slice of red in them. One was greenish and the other blue-ish despite all adjustments).

The Sun/Sony GDM has a more neutral picture with slightly better geometry and color reproduction but the brilliance of the IIyama in Windows is pretty astounding - great buy.

Predator99 wrote:

Hehe, thanks, I also think this board looks cool and was the main reason to buy the lot.

However, while playing around it wondered why my two P2-400 power up with 266 MHz regardless of the Jumper-setting. Explanation: The Chipset has a fixed bus speed of 66 MHz and the Multiplier of the CPU is locked at 4x. Thats 4 x 66 = 266...

But thats retro, dont always need to have the fastest PC. But would be happy about some more flexibility.

Very well done getting the board working 😀

It's a 440LX chipset board so 66MHz is its max FSB, why not try 2x Celeron 533 Mendocino processors with suitable slockets?
(assuming the BIOS can support the mendocino celeron, otherwise the PII-333 is your max)

Had a crack at installing Windows 98 on the Asrock 4CoreDual board i picked up a couple of weeks ago. Managed to get through the install and add some drivers. The gfx card installed is currently a 6800LE but i do have a 7800GS i could add later on. Also testing out the new monitor which is sweet!

Good looking monitor, man. It's cool to see Windows 98SE running on more modern hardware. Doom would run faster than a speeding waistband.

Did a very period-incorrect thing this evening, but oh so worth it: the AT minitower I picked up recently has a 200W PSU in it. Pretty crappy thing, but it works. The same cannot be said for the 80mm fan in it - bearings completely gone and noisy as hell. So opened up the beast (er, beastie - not very well-endowed in the components or heatsink department), removed the offending fan and rummaged around in my spares box. All I could find in the 80mm department was a few Arctic Cooling double-height temperature-controlled fans. Normally they wouldn't fit into a PSU, but in this case the thing was so empty one fit easily, so it was as simple as cutting through the wires, splicing together and covering with some heat-shrink tubing and screwing it all back together. Now, apart from a very low hum if you listen closely to the back of the case, the only noise from the system is from the 1.6GB Fireball ST.

Now, bed time - tomorrow time to figure out why I can easily use a 1GB CF card running FAT32 in this system, but DOS 7.1 fdisk refuses to recognise more than 504MB on the HDD...

Not retro, however, I did purchase some things at my local computer store:

30W desoldering iron with integrated pump (push button)
Micro USB to USB type A (ones seen on computers) for my smartphone and tablet
2x 16GBUSBFlash drives (pretty good price)
3.5" to 5.25" bay converter
Multi-card reader with USB 2.0 for my FX-6300 machine (installed in the new converter listed above)

I'm actually typing and using my Apple keyboard and Microsoft Mouse (the batteries went missing for my cordless keyboard and the mouse cannot be found either) and the current keyboard and mouse is hooked up to my phone right now, and I'm typing on here as well. There're some key combinations that I can use as shortcuts (Alt+F4 closes the app, Alt/CMD+Tab brings up the app switcher, Alt+Left/Right navigates the browser, F5 refreshes the web site I'm at, Esc stops the site from loading) as well as the mouse (left-click opens the program, and right-click goes to the home screen or back one).

dionb wrote:

This lot was different. A similar number of cards (30), but they came from someone who turned out to be a fellow retro-computing enthusiast.

That's a good point, I often see bundles of interesting, high-end "untested" graphics cards sold on eBay with fans missing. Have a look at what else they're selling. In this case,a noticed a seller was hocking piles of high-end PCI-E GPUs and heatsinks as well, an enthusiast clearly knowing they were definitely faulty not "untested".