After an unavoidable absence and stuff, picked this up earlier this week...

Restore thread - Toshiba T1800 386 Laptop

A new contender for the award of the best 486 PCI motherboard has arrived today. It probably doesn't need any introduction to most here, it's the Biostar MB-8433UUD-A (early rev. 2). I paid through the nose for it but it was late at night and I wanted this board for quite some time so I don't feel to bad (actually I don't feel bad at all). The board was equipped with 2 8MB sticks of FPM (I know a nice antistatic bag near by where those will probably enjoy the rest of their life) and an AMD 5x86 133 ADW (which is nice since I only own one of those chips), so it makes the lot a little bit more worth it. At first it didn't post, but third time was the charm and it posted right up and ever since (anybody an idea why that could be? Didn't change anything besides plugging in a beeper. Can the Dallas Chips cause this behavior?). Time to test!

There is a lot to do, the board is quite dirty so it will go in the shower (with the CMOS clear jumper set so there really shouldn't be any current around), just after some initial benchmarking with my CPU of choice, the Cyrix 5x86. I also need to solder a jumper on JP17 since its soldered close, which technically is not a problem since it can do 33, 40 and 66 MHz FSB, but still. Of cause there is also that stupid soldered Dallas chip which needs to be replaced/modded sooner than later (but not be me, I can't justify ruining the board with my incompetence). Also I will replace all the jumpers since those are the ones which don't have anything to pull on and I hate those things with passion. Upgrading the BIOS to the latest version and replacing the UV EPROM with a nice 5V EEPROM is also on the to do list.

Fun times are coming. Obviously referring to the upcoming exams next week.

canthearu wrote:

32 or 64 meg is kinda splitting hairs I reckon. For me, getting a single 64meg stick of SDRAM for my TX based system was just a […]
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arncht wrote:

64m is also overkill for this age - 32m was more typical in 97 and early 98.
the first fireball was the fastest drive in 95, the st is also one of the fastest from 97 (do not mix with tm, bigfoot). when i build a new config, i always want an authentic rig, i wont use sdcard - every age has the right sound 😀
it is like a steam engine without noise - they are dirty and noisy.

32 or 64 meg is kinda splitting hairs I reckon. For me, getting a single 64meg stick of SDRAM for my TX based system was just a lot easier than finding a 32meg stick.

I had both an original 540meg Fireball - It was an amazing drive for the time. It was balls to the wall fast for it's time. I was using it mostly on a 386/486 with DOS. Because I was poor and the fireball was a gift 😀

I also had a 3.2gig Fireball ST. Also a very fast drive, but I wasn't so lucky with this one. First one had a head crash so I eventually returned it under warranty. Later on, I plugged the molex connector upside down on the replacement and it went up in actual flames like it's namesake.

In a sense I do agree with you about the noise thing, and my NEC V30 (HP Vectra CS) system just wouldn't be an old XT class machine without that seagate ST-225 buzzing away under it's hood. It kind of fires and rattles into life rather than just turning on, and that is awesome. But the noise the old fireballs make, along with the sound a lot of old worn fans is just too much for me and I can't spend a long time with them running. It was a noise I disliked back then too with an almost equally fiery passion back then as I do now.

I should document what I needed to do to get that old Vectra CS running.

I also try to find an authentic hdd from the age - it is very hard, especially if you want the top drives. Eg for my 1994q4 dx4 i chose the wd31000, it was the biggest ide drive. Finally i found one without bad sectors, but the heads are stucked after a couple of weeks of resting. I knock it, and works again, but it is annoying if you build in to the pc.

The 1280 fireball works amazingly, but it is not from 1994 (early 1996). I also have a fireball st 3.2g. I plan to use it for an upcoming mmx rig (1997q3).

I have a pc66 32m sd 😀 i had exactly the same in the 90s, it comes with 10ns ics - it runs at 100mhz. It was great, when i switched from the mmx to c300a (at 450 of course).

blurks wrote:

ATI Small Wonder Graphics Solution

Great condition, with box and manuals. A treat to see.

Soyo Super Socket 7 with Intel Chipset , Pentium 233mhz and 128mb or ram. AGP for Voodoo-3 3000 AGP card and maybe a K6-2 processor.
Award bios.

Picked up a few old cases locally - bit of a mixed bag.

The mid-tower seems to be from an OEM called Tsunami (never heard of them) from around 2002.

The full-height desktop looks a bit like this tower case in general design though I've no idea on make / vintage.

Bought these (retro) hardware today

Can't find much on the lower profile desktop, though the PSU for it could be a PITA (seems to be somewhere between LPX & SFX).

NLX power supply?

Intel486dx33 wrote:

Super Socket 7 with Intel Chipset

No such thing.

^^Doesn't seem to be NLX either (according to the Intel specs) - I'd guess the rear face is 85 x 120mm, with the screwholes like this

Callahan wrote:

Today, some scsi stuff: http://i.imgur.com/Uc9xBI5l.jpg ... St51080N 1GB 50pin fast scsi 2 ... […]
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Today, some scsi stuff:

... St51080N 1GB 50pin fast scsi 2 ...

Callahan, tell me please, do you still have this St51080N HDD?
You can help me here: Repairing a ST51080N Seagate Medalist
Can't send PM yet, so I am writing here.

IBM Keyboard for my Aptiva.
It's a clickety type. Real heavy , Must weight more than 5lbs.

weighs under 5 pounds for sure, is lighter than an M. but definitely one of the heavier rubber dome boards out there

i think it is a quite rare part of the hw history with the original box. roland mpu-ipc from ca 1987-88.
i found the original invoice - they sold it originally in the netherlands in 1989, then it travelled to the usa, then to hungary, and now it is here, in austria 😀 nice, long 29 years trip.

roland had a kit in 1988 with the mt32 - it was not cheap 995 usd (in 1988 - now it is 2092.90 usd!). an article from the pc mag from september of 1988.

Got this nice ATI HD 3850 AGP graphics card today.

^^ nice, I've got one of those. Surprisingly capable; if you want to run 2010~12 games on a P4 for some dumb reason it's what you need. 😜

If you guys were wondering why I felt need to pick the lock on an old Thinkpad docking station yesteray, here's why:

I've been after a more slim and portable laptop to run Win98 stuff on than my bulky & cumbersome Thinkpad i1460. This X24 came up locally and it'll do nicely. I already had a bunch of accessories for it including the big dock & external floppy drive, but it came with a slim dock, extra AC adapter, wireless G card (still usable on my home network), and is in great shape. The screen gives me a much-appreciated 1024x768 to work with (instead of 800x600), and it's still decently bright with no warm-up time for the backlight inverter (it looks dim in the pic but that's because I sat a black laptop in direct sunlight and couldn't get an exposure to work.) It still has at least a solid hour of battery life too. Score!

Two different docking options. The slim dock has a CD and floppy drive and is honestly small enough to just go in the laptop bag too. The full dock has lots of connectivity and something interesting underneath:

...a PCI slot! This opens up all kinds of cool possibilities.

This dock doesn't officially support this model of Thinkpad, but it seems to work fine. Only the DVI port doesn't work (not supported by the onboard Radeon as far as I can tell.)

It came with XP installed, I was thinking Win98 but I might just leave this as it's already set up with all the original IBM drivers & utilities and stuff. This model IS STILL fully supported under 98, but why mess with a working system? It also has Ubuntu on another partition but that seems to be broken.

You might notice those specs are rather nice, this may end up replacing a BUNCH of Slot 1/370 systems in my setup. The more ugly beige towers I don't need, the better. 😜 I wish it had more VRAM, but there's always that PCI slot. The previous owner thoughtfully upgraded it to a 100GB HDD (and 640MB RAM) so I won't be constantly clawing for space like I am with the 4GB SSD in the i1460.

My only big complaint is that it is one of the rubber-coated models, but it's clean enough I can still live with it. Not turning to goo yet.

It's amazing how quickly the form factor of these modernized in the early 2000s. Here it is next to my 2012 Macbook Pro for comparison:

The Thinkpad is every bit as portable and is even a bit smaller due to it being a 4:3 model instead of 16:10. I might start lugging this thing around on trips and stuff, and giving work presentations with it when I need to be especially obnoxious. 😜 That would be a good reason to load Win98 in that unused extra partition.

arncht wrote:

roland had a kit in 1988 with the mt32 - it was not cheap 995 usd (in 1988 - now it is 2092.90 usd!). an article from the pc mag from september of 1988.

"List Price"

Sierra On-Line began selling the same MT-32/MPU bundle (also in September, 1988) for $550 USD. Contextually speaking, and assuming you were in the market, this was a bargain without equal.

xjas wrote:

... This X24 came up locally and it'll do nicely. ...

Very nice... I have thought of picking up one of these older X-series in the past, but having RAM soldered to the MB that can't be replaced (not without mad soldering skills, anyway) if it fails has always made me nervous.

Cloudschatze wrote:

arncht wrote:

roland had a kit in 1988 with the mt32 - it was not cheap 995 usd (in 1988 - now it is 2092.90 usd!). an article from the pc mag from september of 1988.

"List Price"

Sierra On-Line began selling the same MT-32/MPU bundle (also in September, 1988) for $550 USD. Contextually speaking, and assuming you were in the market, this was a bargain without equal.

"Netherlands", for the original sale point 😉 . We never had the massive discounts that were common in the States. So if it was close to 1000 dollars list price in the US, the price in the Netherlands would have been close to 2000 Dutch Guilders (and not much lower than that - maybe 1800), but probably higher because the dollar was worth more back then and there always is some sort of "overseas mark-up" for items made outside Europe by non-European manufacturers. Also, the US price is excluding sales tax, which is always added first around here (+17.5% back then). So sales price in shops would probably be around 2500 Dutch Guilders, if not more.

And since we're on the topic of MIDI stuff,. my latest buy is Yamaha XG Works ST (Japan-only, supposedly loads in English despite that), aka the last XG Works, and the only version based on Yamaha SOL/SOL2. 😎