Tried to bring a PC Partner TX820DS back to life (pretty standard S7 430TX mb) that I got last week and was apparently dead, just for fun. It looks like maybe somebody tried to repair it by changing a dead capacitor, and also the bios chip had a bent pin and the socket retention clip is also broken 😠.

So I had to make a couple of wire bridges (what a botch job 🤣 ) over some broken traces (really ruined board!) and it went back to life!

Running the mandatory gaming tests 🤣 🤣

It lives! I'm curious about this board supporting USB keyboards natively 😲

I don't have any plans for it but maybe I'll repair it properly someday

Not me, but a friend of mine who I gave my old sk604 parts has been braking hwbot records left and right with it.

Went shopping again.

Got 2 joysticks. One is a CH Flightstick with 2 buttons, big white base, built like a tank (I got it because it said Made in USA on the back) the other is a Gravis with 3? buttons, 2 round ones on the base. Seems more worn out than the CH but the rubber is almost intact.

Inno3d Ti4200 with a broken fan (hope the card works) and a random Prolink? TNT M64.

Troubleshooting boot issues on a couple of Thinkpad 755CX. I have 2 of these, and they are superficially identical however it looks like one has a typical Mwave modem that is usually present on that series, and the other one has instead an IBM token-ring adapter installed. I have 4 caddies for HDDs and a total of 5 hard drives. One caddy with HDD I won't touch, it has on it the original software I had installed on the first of them since 1996. I want to preserve it intact. Of the remaining 3 caddies, one is bad, no matter what HDD I put in there it won't recognize it. I may attempt at one point to repair it as it's probably a bad solder joint or deformed connector. I've marked one of the HDDs as "known good" as it's tested to work when placed in a good caddy. With it I was able to determine that the remaining 2 caddies are good too. Then using one of those I tested the remaining drives. One of the drives is bad, it clicks continuously as soon as it's powered up and the computer doesn't recognize it. One of the other drives is good, it has on it a Debian installation from the early 2000s which I had forgotten all about. It's specifically installed for the 755CX so it still works as back in the day.

The remaining hard drive is puzzling me. When attached in a good caddy, the Thinkpad gives me error 00174. That error means severe but undetermined hardware failure. It won't boot. I attached it to my main computer via a USB/IDE converter, and the drive is good. I don't remember anything about this drive, but it's obviously one I've used in the past as it has some of my files on it. It's a 1.4GB IBM drive. It has 2 partitions: one is a 60MB FAT partition with a hibernation file on it, 58MB in size. The remaining space is a FAT32 with an folder containing installation files for Windows 95 (copy of the installation CD) but has no OS installed on it. And another folder with some old games I used to play. I obviously used this HDD in the past as I recognize some of the files, but I can't tell in which computer. I don't know why the 755CX doesn't recognize it and throws the error. It's obviously a working drive (even if not bootable as such) and period-correct.

TBH I do remember that when I tried to move a HDD between the 2 Thinkpads, while the laptop of origin was hibernated, the other laptop threw an error 00174. It would not resume from hibernation on the 2nd laptop even though it's almost identical in hardware. I had to put the drive back in the first laptop, wake up from hibernation, shut the OS down before it would boot in the 2nd laptop. Perhaps it's the same thing, and the presence of a hibernation file on the drive that wasn't generated on the exact same hardware throws the BIOS in a fit.

I may try to remove the hibernation file and see if that clears the error. The timestamp on the hibernation file is March 2002; I must not have touched this HDD since then. No wonder I have no memory of it.

(edit) Yes, deleting the hibernation file cleared the error 00174. Lesson learned, don't try to boot a Thinkpad with a drive attached that has a hibernation file made on another system, or it'll make you think you have a serious hardware error.

I have begun making recordings of DynaBlaster. That game is one of those that only sound right on a real OPL chip.
So far, I have done 4 recordings. Using AWE64 and Media Vision Jazz16. (So far. More to come)
Title track and first level including the cutscene.

Link here... Be aware that some are large files.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0Bzzas … VGM?usp=sharing

Am I the only one that are getting bleeding ears from Dyna on AWE64?
If not, then fear the recordings I will make of the Tango100's OPL capeabilities.
That card has an awesomme MIDI part, and a complimentaery OPL-torture.

Did some Sound related testing today. My Diamond Monster MX300 with DB50XG attached showed up so i was eager to test it out. Works great and sounds so awesome. Even works through dos which is great! Think i got an absolute bargain at £28 delivered for both cards with manual!

Secondly tested out my Music Quest IH9MQ9. Ran the diagnostics software and it registered as available which is a good sign. Not bad for £5!

Tested a bunch of boxed/stored motherboards. A bunch of them decided to die apparently. . .Abit Socket KX333 has a yellow warning LED and wont post. Msi matx Socket A board briefly powers on, then shuts off. Asus 478 board refuses to post. Because screw me for testing and safely packing away unused boards. . .meanwhile the one I crappy 754 Asrock board that fell 20 feet works fine 😮

Today I played a little with Contaq MS-3124 motherboard with Am386DX33 and 16MB RAM. It's odd to me that this board needs two tag chips, one 4bit and one 8bit. This board is currently configured with 128KB cache, one 16kx4 tag and one 8kx8 tag. I wondered what if I pull one of the tag rams out and here are the results from cachechk7:

16kx4 + 8kx8: 49us for less or equal to 128KB, 91us for above
Only 8kx8: 49us for less or equal to 128KB, 145us for above
Only 16x4: won't pass post
No tag ram: won't pass post

The BIOS is configured as "power on defaults" with cache enabled.
I wonder if some one can explain how tag rams works on this particular board. To my understanding, one 8bit tag should suffice in this setup: 2^8 * 128KB = 32MB and indeed other boards usually come with only one 8bit tag chip onboard.

Got an IBM Aptiva 2168-A90 and spent some time cleaning it inside and out. It wasn't too dirty for its age, just some dust. Fixed the door, as one of the plastic things that keeps the metal coil in place had broken off. Replaced it with a small screw.

http://imgur.com/a/6iYDb

Loading up all my DOS games that support General MIDI and listening to the music through my new DreamBlaster X2. 😎

I've been having some early 3D fun with a NOS Voodoo2 I picked up a while back. It installed A-OK with the included drivers in my P166MMX machine alongside a Matrox Millennium, and Quake, MDK, HyperBlade, etc all worked as expected. I know the 3D thing must have been mind blowing back in the day - I'd diverted most of my funds into drinking / cars during that era so missed the wave - but I gotta say that early 3D looks like arse compared to late SVGA / VGA. Quake for example is super smooth on a Voodoo2 (and pretty smooth on a Voodoo1, albeit at lower res), but the textures are a muddy mess.

Same deal with MDK - it's a nice looking game in SVGA, but on the Voodoo everything looks a lot less clear. I guess it's about frame rates. But I feel like I've had my fun; I'm back to DOOM's clear pixels and waves of detailed monsters.

clueless1 wrote:

Loading up all my DOS games that support General MIDI and listening to the music through my new DreamBlaster X2. 😎

Great ! 😀 And ?? What's your favourite ?

dreamblaster wrote:

clueless1 wrote:

Loading up all my DOS games that support General MIDI and listening to the music through my new DreamBlaster X2. 😎

Great ! 😀 And ?? What's your favourite ?

System Shock, Dooms, Descents, Lands of Lore, and Ravenlofts were favorites. I've had the S1 for many months, so I got used to its sound, it's weird hearing the same tunes sounding so different. Most sound way better. Thank you. 😀

lazibayer wrote:

The BIOS is configured as "power on defaults" with cache enabled.
I wonder if some one can explain how tag rams works on this particular board. To my understanding, one 8bit tag should suffice in this setup: 2^8 * 128KB = 32MB and indeed other boards usually come with only one 8bit tag chip onboard.

The 16kx4 chip is likely the "dirty bit" for enabling write back cache mode.
The cache won't work without the 8kx8 tag RAM...unless your chipset has the tag built in, which it doesn't.

I had a recap candidate but never did that before. So I started searching the house and found an old soldering iron i new i had somewhere. I do electrics in houses and like computers but electronics are not my cup of tea....

The candidate was a MSI k7D Master. I do not really like MSI boards but this one is a dual socket A so it deserved some attention from me, and was a good training board.
I replaced 7 caps, it was a pain with this iron (30w) but it got the job done and the board worked!! Ok, it did work before with bulging caps but now it STILL works and is stable so that means i did it right! 🤣

So next up was my more precious: a Tyan Tiger dual Tualatin board with 8 bulging caps. This board also worked fine but needed new caps badly. With a new soldering station (digital up to 50w) and a smaller tip i started way to confident and after replacing 2 caps (which still were very hard to get loose) the third i got a bit to rough/fast and damaged a trace with the iron 😢 😢 😢

Long story short: after fitting 8 new caps the board still booted but only saw 1 cpu. So i now needed to learn how to fix the damage. I ended up bridging the trace and all works well now 🤣

So, if anyone is in doubt about recapping some stuff: it isn't rocket science, even i can do it!! 🤣

Just be patient, you will get the job done. The component is dying or dead anyway, it makes you smile when you get it fixed yourself.

Went to my basement (a dry place unlike many basements) in search of a short power cable for a PC. Found none (long ones however...), but discovered I still have a PS/2 mouse that's serial compatible.

Also cleaned my two main vintage machines and was able to see that despite operating in the same environment and getting about the same amount of use the one with the soundproofed case (factory Gateway G6) was a lot cleaner than the P4 (crappy Dell case with lots of holes through which dust can enter).

Added more RAM to my Aptiva, now up to 64MB. Replaced the MWave with an Aztech Sound Galaxy modem/sound combo card. It has a Yamaha YMF262 chip!

http://imgur.com/a/luj3u

some more old dos code archaeology, dug out my old 'ls'/'dir' replacement, fixed a bug and compiled it back up. nice. Was gonna post it but not entirely sure which subforum it should be on. ohwell. digging through old code is fun.

Troubleshooting a weird 386DX motherboard: Bought these (retro) hardware today (and also at the end of previous page)

A while ago I did a project using a notebook and USB MIDI adapter and turn it into a General MIDI and Roland MT-32 device.

Gdjacobs got this working on his Raspberry Pi. I finally bought myself one and played around with it. Today I managed to get General MIDI all working. It uses FluidSynth and a Roland USB MIDI interface. I will document the process first, likely do a video about it and then check out the Munt Roland MT-32 emulator.

I must this Raspberry Pi is a real nifty unit. It turns on faster than most PCs I come across these days 😊