got some AT to PS2 adapters (male+female) and rigged up a cable to convert the Texarse Micro custom pinout to standard AT keyboard pinout.. no joy. something else is going on. hnnmmm.

Not exactly today's score but this weekends (about 4 euros each, the Pi was cheaper):
- Asus V8440 (Ti 4400, it POSTs fine, not tested further yet)
- P5K SE with an E8200. If the CPU works it was a good score. I'm hoping to wedge a Xeon L5420 in there 😀
Both were wrapped in cling wrap. At least it prevents scratches, I just hope the added static did not mess something up.

- TI-89 Titanium. Working. Equipped with duracells that were bust but not leaked. Never had a graphing calculator before 😀
- Raspberry Pi 1 B + WiPi + case. Just could not leave it there. I guess it's mainstream now that you can find it at the flea market.

I bought the Yamaha CBX-10, which is a Yamaha bundle consisting of the MU-10 MIDI module, a power supply, and quite some software. Bought because the software is actually included (according to the auction), and Yamaha MIDI software and utilities for Windows 95 are hard to find these days.

The MU-10 itself is actually pretty interesting, because it incorporates a digital audio mixer from two external sources, to which its large selection of effects can be applied (most modules with inputs mix the unmodified input signal with their own output signal). It's basically an external version of the DB50XG wavetable daughterboard, but with the MIDI implementation of the Yamaha QS300. Next to XG mode it also has the TG-300B GM mode. It lacks a display and buttons to control most of its functions, instead requiring XG-compatible MIDI sequencing software. Sonic State page.

Bought this.... Complete with PSU, DataCable and 50 disk's. (sellers photo)

Bought an Apple Pro Keyboard, The Adventures of Wallace and Gromit on VHS, Yamaha PSS-460, and a tri-pod for my video camera during yesterday's thrift store adventures.

Probably slowest GeForce card that actually exists :

No, this is NOT a GeForce 2 MX.

Isn't it the first GeForce 256 SDR with 64bit bus?
I have a similar poop-brown PCB ASUS Gf4 MX440 😊

Yes it is 😀
But I don't know if it's the slowest GeForce...
GeForce 2 MX PCI ?

Not sure if this counts as retro, but it's 10 years old this year and arrived at my house today. Backward-compatible PS3 CECHA01.

boxpressed wrote:

Not sure if this counts as retro, but it's 10 years old this year and arrived at my house today. Backward-compatible PS3 CECHA01.

IMG_0498.JPG

Nice. When do you plan to install custom firmware?

Anywho. I bought a Dell XPS Gen 1 today. Ive been discussing buying this since early last year and I've actually forgotten which CPU and GPU it has in it. It'll be good regardless. It should have either a 3.4GHz Prescott or a 3.4GHz Gallatin (is there a major difference?). The GPU will be either a Mobility 9700 or a 9800. I think this one has a 9800 Pro. In theory the former can be upgraded to the latter anyways.

It has a 1920x1200 display which should be great for Infinity Engine RPGs. It's going to become my main XP portable. Not sure what else I'll play on it aside from of course Morrowind. Oblivion in theory would run but it would be like 800x600 @ Medium Low. I'm also not sure how the display on these things handle 4:3 resolutions. If they letter box it that's great. If they stretch it that's not.

That display would actually be the highest resolution display I own. It actually makes me wonder if the Pentium 4 can decode 1080p H264 @ 3.4GHz. I imagine this would depend on the player but my gut tells me lower bitrate files could do it.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Nice. When do you plan to install custom firmware?

Actually the early PS3s with NOR flash are a PITA to hack, if I recall correctly. I have a CECHA01, and did a bit of research when I got it. It seems that all of the commonly available tools are designed for the later models with NAND flash. The only exception is if you got one whose firmware was never updated past 3.55.

Anywho. I bought a Dell XPS Gen 1 today. Ive been discussing buying this since early last year and I've actually forgotten which CPU and GPU it has in it. It'll be good regardless. It should have either a 3.4GHz Prescott or a 3.4GHz Gallatin (is there a major difference?). The GPU will be either a Mobility 9700 or a 9800. I think this one has a 9800 Pro. In theory the former can be upgraded to the latter anyways.

It has a 1920x1200 display which should be great for Infinity Engine RPGs. It's going to become my main XP portable. Not sure what else I'll play on it aside from of course Morrowind. Oblivion in theory would run but it would be like 800x600 @ Medium Low. I'm also not sure how the display on these things handle 4:3 resolutions. If they letter box it that's great. If they stretch it that's not.

That display would actually be the highest resolution display I own. It actually makes me wonder if the Pentium 4 can decode 1080p H264 @ 3.4GHz. I imagine this would depend on the player but my gut tells me lower bitrate files could do it.

Nice find!

If it's a Prescott, swap it with a Northwood immediately. Those things are furnaces even in a desktop, never mind with a laptop's cooling restrictions. You'll also see better battery life. Even if it's a Gallatin EE, I'd still change it out. I'm pretty sure the Gallatins had higher TDP than the Northwoods thanks to their L3 Cache. It would run much better in a desktop. Also, if you're cleaning out the inevitable dust, remember that it has a third fan underneath the palm rest that cools the chipset and then blows across the top of the CPU cooler.
Basically: Swap in a Northwood, throw the Gallatin in a desktop, throw the Preshott in the trash.

The Mobility Radeon 9800 is definitely the one you want - It's actually a cut down R420, out of the X800. The MR9700 is a little faster than a desktop 9600 Pro. Definitely not suitable for 1920x1200. If you do have the 9700, your best bet is scouring eBay for cheapo XPSes and running the service tags. That's how I managed to get mine - bare 9800s seldom show up, and are exorbitantly expensive when they do.

If it doesn't have a full 2GBs of RAM, keep in mind when ordering that it contains an honest-to-god desktop i865 chipset, and thus you should order DDR400 SODIMMs. It'll take the more common DDR333 sticks, but you'll take a performance hit.
I'd also recommend finding a 7200 RPM HDD for it. They generally came with 5400 or (barf) 4200 RPM drives, and it makes a world of difference.

I don't have it in front of me to check atm, but I'm fairly certain they have a 1:1 pixel mapping mode. Better still would be a "keep aspect" mode, for 800x600 -> 1600x1200, but like I said I don't know off the top of my head.

Rawrl wrote:

Nice find! […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Anywho. I bought a Dell XPS Gen 1 today. Ive been discussing buying this since early last year and I've actually forgotten which CPU and GPU it has in it. It'll be good regardless. It should have either a 3.4GHz Prescott or a 3.4GHz Gallatin (is there a major difference?). The GPU will be either a Mobility 9700 or a 9800. I think this one has a 9800 Pro. In theory the former can be upgraded to the latter anyways.

Nice find!

If it's a Prescott, swap it with a Northwood immediately. Those things are furnaces even in a desktop, never mind with a laptop's cooling restrictions. You'll also see better battery life. Even if it's a Gallatin EE, I'd still change it out. I'm pretty sure the Gallatins had higher TDP than the Northwoods thanks to their L3 Cache. It would run much better in a desktop. Also, if you're cleaning out the inevitable dust, remember that it has a third fan underneath the palm rest that cools the chipset and then blows across the top of the CPU cooler.
Basically: Swap in a Northwood, throw the Gallatin in a desktop, throw the Preshott in the trash.

...

If it doesn't have a full 2GBs of RAM, keep in mind when ordering that it contains an honest-to-god desktop i865 chipset, and thus you should order DDR400 SODIMMs. It'll take the more common DDR333 sticks, but you'll take a performance hit.
I'd also recommend finding a 7200 RPM HDD for it. They generally came with 5400 or (barf) 4200 RPM drives, and it makes a world of difference.

I wonder if the XPS Gen 1 will take the Intel Pentium 4M Northwood processors used in early P4 laptops, if so I would imagine a 2.2-2.6 GHz model would be a viable replacement if you wanted to prioritize power consumption over performance. even then a 2.x GHz P4 should be good enough depending on the era of games you're targeting, off-hand I don't know anything that would run good on a Radeon 9700/9800 that would need a 3.x GHz P4 to run properly, for 1080p video usage it will mostly depend on how the player takes advantage of the GPU for decoding.

An older PATA SSD would be a great drive replacement depending on your chances of finding a good drive, I've heard of M-SATA adapters but IDK how practical they would be to install on older laptops like that, good find nevertheless.

boxpressed wrote:

Not sure if this counts as retro, but it's 10 years old this year and arrived at my house today. Backward-compatible PS3 CECHA01.

Rawrl wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Nice. When do you plan to install custom firmware?

Actually the early PS3s with NOR flash are a PITA to hack, if I recall correctly. I have a CECHA01, and did a bit of research when I got it. It seems that all of the commonly available tools are designed for the later models with NAND flash. The only exception is if you got one whose firmware was never updated past 3.55.

What's the current story with PS3s in general? I understand there were a bazillion of models & most were locked down to different degrees. If you took one with recent firmware and "hacked" it, do you get all the functionality of an early one with OtherOS back? More features? Less? Is it still possible to use one as a Linux desktop without it being a horrible kludge?

I've never owned one, but they combine two of my favorite "computer things" - PowerPCs and large numbers of cores 😁 so I've always been kind of interested in them.

I got this Olivetti M24 yesterday. It is really (REALLY) dirty, so dirty that it needs to be taken apart completely. Also the HDD is dead, makes a few whining noises and then nothing. I hope my spare Seagate ST225 will work and is compatible with this system.

Will be a nice project. I will document the process in a seperate thread on the forum.

I had hoped to use the CGA monitor/card to test my Tulip monitor, but the connectors are proprietary I think.

The design is kinda cool, the motherbord is underneath an ISA 'backplane'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olivetti_M24

Those old hard drive needs sometimes some attention to be able du run again. Yours sounds like it's stuck

My 8088 has a western digital that had at first bad tantalum caps. There was also a spindle that is tied to the axle of the motor under the circuit board, and I think it was stuck, but since I turned that thing I think I unstucked it. Then I started it ... it did something like a seek test and then it went back off. I did it quite a few times and for some reason once it stayed on. I left it that way for a few hours. It didn't do anything at first, but I tried to let it run agai for few hours and then it didn't the "seek test and then off" thing when it's powering on

The HDD only has ONE bad sector out of 20MB. To this day since I took care of it, this HDD still works like a charm.

I scored a silver Thermaltake armor LCS case today. the first gen Armor LSC that is. Its missing a few of it parts and the LCS system, but that's no big deal. Seller was asking 38.50$+116 shipping. I got it for 80 some dollars some how.

I have a Kandalf LCS rad holder that should fit it. It will be the home for an AM2 system. And yes it will be water cooled.

EDIT:
This is the case I got, but with the optional side panel that has a big 2XXmm fan on it.
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?I … N82E16811133039

Deksor wrote:

Those old hard drive needs sometimes some attention to be able du run again. Yours sounds like it's stuck

My 8088 has a western digital that had at first bad tantalum caps. There was also a spindle that is tied to the axle of the motor under the circuit board, and I think it was stuck, but since I turned that thing I think I unstucked it. Then I started it ... it did something like a seek test and then it went back off. I did it quite a few times and for some reason once it stayed on. I left it that way for a few hours. It didn't do anything at first, but I tried to let it run agai for few hours and then it didn't the "seek test and then off" thing when it's powering on

The HDD only has ONE bad sector out of 20MB. To this day since I took care of it, this HDD still works like a charm.

Wow. That is dedication. Many would have walked away from that so early on.

Yeah I know ^^

One of the tantalum caps even blew up at some point 🤣

When it was turning off on itself, I was about to give up, but like I said, once it did stay on, and I could access the data on it. At that time, I knew that there was probably something more to do with it. I heared people saying that leaving these old HDDs turned on for a while heats the platters and make them the correct shape to be read. However it seems like it wasn't the problem on mine. Like I said the main motor was probably stuck at first, but since I filmed my advancements on that computer, I discovered after watching my footage that the step motor was making a different sound when the disk wasn't properly working, so I wonder if the step motor didn't need some help too ^^

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Rawrl wrote:

Nice find! […]
Show full quote

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Anywho. I bought a Dell XPS Gen 1 today. Ive been discussing buying this since early last year and I've actually forgotten which CPU and GPU it has in it. It'll be good regardless. It should have either a 3.4GHz Prescott or a 3.4GHz Gallatin (is there a major difference?). The GPU will be either a Mobility 9700 or a 9800. I think this one has a 9800 Pro. In theory the former can be upgraded to the latter anyways.

Nice find!

If it's a Prescott, swap it with a Northwood immediately. Those things are furnaces even in a desktop, never mind with a laptop's cooling restrictions. You'll also see better battery life. Even if it's a Gallatin EE, I'd still change it out. I'm pretty sure the Gallatins had higher TDP than the Northwoods thanks to their L3 Cache. It would run much better in a desktop. Also, if you're cleaning out the inevitable dust, remember that it has a third fan underneath the palm rest that cools the chipset and then blows across the top of the CPU cooler.
Basically: Swap in a Northwood, throw the Gallatin in a desktop, throw the Preshott in the trash.

...

If it doesn't have a full 2GBs of RAM, keep in mind when ordering that it contains an honest-to-god desktop i865 chipset, and thus you should order DDR400 SODIMMs. It'll take the more common DDR333 sticks, but you'll take a performance hit.
I'd also recommend finding a 7200 RPM HDD for it. They generally came with 5400 or (barf) 4200 RPM drives, and it makes a world of difference.

I wonder if the XPS Gen 1 will take the Intel Pentium 4M Northwood processors used in early P4 laptops, if so I would imagine a 2.2-2.6 GHz model would be a viable replacement if you wanted to prioritize power consumption over performance. even then a 2.x GHz P4 should be good enough depending on the era of games you're targeting, off-hand I don't know anything that would run good on a Radeon 9700/9800 that would need a 3.x GHz P4 to run properly, for 1080p video usage it will mostly depend on how the player takes advantage of the GPU for decoding.

An older PATA SSD would be a great drive replacement depending on your chances of finding a good drive, I've heard of M-SATA adapters but IDK how practical they would be to install on older laptops like that, good find nevertheless.

Just about anything will take the mobile versions including desktops but there is one catch, the clocks will be defaulted low as the cpu has two multiplier states that are chipset controlled. They are good for high clocking boards and a small number of people used them this way back in the day but you are better off using a normal P4. For low power win9x with a p4 these things are overlooked at the low state is like 1.2ghz so they will only sip power.

Gallatins EE are a Northwood extreme more or less