H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-02, 21:20:

mrfusion92 wrote on 2023-10-02, 06:44:

I was offered two AMD K6. A K6-2+@550 and a K6-III+@400.
Which one you would choose to pick up? The III+ even if it has lower freq? Does it have any overclock margin?

SUCCESSFUL K6-2+ to K6-3+ Full Cache Enable Mod is a good read before buying any plus'es 😀

Think that somebody finding that out and bragging about it jacked the plus prices waaaay up unfortunately. Have a 2+ 570 which I got for 40-ish euros like a year ago. Now it's like 99-140Euros for any 2+. Same for the 3+. I mean it's no new knowledge that this mod can be done. But now I think that the gold diggers learned about it as well.

DerBaum wrote on 2023-09-30, 18:12:

The first car phone i remember was a Siemens C1. https://img.motor-talk.de/JxlQECC_fuipTegK.107.jpg […]
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The first car phone i remember was a Siemens C1.

My father brought one of these home once when they were new because he was on call for a some critical thing at his job. Anyway I still remember that the manual said to stay at leat 50cm away from the antenna. 😅

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-10-04, 20:44:

It might be a fault with DMA if you're getting bad digital audio with 2 cards, especially on something as old as a 286. I had a […]
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It might be a fault with DMA if you're getting bad digital audio with 2 cards, especially on something as old as a 286. I had a similar experience with a 386 motherboard that used an 82c206 and it turned out to be the 74F245 bus transcievers seemed to have some conductive dirt under them, removing, cleaning and reinstalling fixed it: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Today, a tragedy occurred:
IMG_2030 (Custom).JPG
This translucent orange plastic has now broken in so many different ways, it's more superglue than plastic now.

That is some poor packaging. That box was much too small for that case. 😒

The solution to my problem with the SB's turned out to be quite simple. I totally forgot the basic SET BLASTER variable in autoexec.bat
Wolfenstein assumed some settings by default I think. SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 was enough to make it work and now I can hear the full sound effect of a door opening and closing.

PD2JK wrote on 2023-10-06, 13:49:

That is some poor packaging. That box was much too small for that case. :/ […]
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Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-10-04, 20:44:

It might be a fault with DMA if you're getting bad digital audio with 2 cards, especially on something as old as a 286. I had a […]
Show full quote

It might be a fault with DMA if you're getting bad digital audio with 2 cards, especially on something as old as a 286. I had a similar experience with a 386 motherboard that used an 82c206 and it turned out to be the 74F245 bus transcievers seemed to have some conductive dirt under them, removing, cleaning and reinstalling fixed it: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Today, a tragedy occurred:
IMG_2030 (Custom).JPG
This translucent orange plastic has now broken in so many different ways, it's more superglue than plastic now.

That is some poor packaging. That box was much too small for that case. 😒

The solution to my problem with the SB's turned out to be quite simple. I totally forgot the basic SET BLASTER variable in autoexec.bat
Wolfenstein assumed some settings by default I think. SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 was enough to make it work and now I can hear the full sound effect of a door opening and closing.

Haha, that's just because I'm moving pretty soon and don't want to get the case more scratched up than it already is. So it's in a box just barely bigger than the case allowing it to be stacked.
Sadly it didn't turn out to be such a great idea, but it does give the remaining orange plastic better chance of survival for now. Probably gonna rebuild the part with some clear epoxy in a few months.

I'm glad that your sound problem was just that 😀 my 386 board repair was a real mess and timesink. Kinda odd that your audio would work part-way though.

Playing around with recently acquired S3 VLB card.
This is beast for 1994. So far ahead of time that it's not even VESA compatible out of the box. Compared to 1MB GD5428 I own clearly step up.
I mean 100Hz refresh rates across the board. With 2MB VRAM 1024x768x64k is possible. I could only imagine how expensive CRT monitor it required to drive back in 1994.
Well it turned out to be by far my most expensive ebay purchase (so far). There is always someone who wants it as well...

marbury wrote on 2023-10-06, 11:38:

DerBaum wrote on 2023-09-30, 18:12:

The first car phone i remember was a Siemens C1. https://img.motor-talk.de/JxlQECC_fuipTegK.107.jpg […]
Show full quote

The first car phone i remember was a Siemens C1.

My father brought one of these home once when they were new because he was on call for a some critical thing at his job. Anyway I still remember that the manual said to stay at leat 50cm away from the antenna. 😅

Well, they were probably transmitting with 5 or maybe even 10 Watts back then. A modern smartphone is no more than one Watt if not even less ..

H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-10-06, 19:09:

Well, they were probably transmitting with 5 or maybe even 10 Watts back then. A modern smartphone is no more than one Watt if not even less ..

Yeah I know. Early GSM still used like 2watts if reception was bad and we had them close to our head. With 5G its closer to 0.2w. One other thing that was definitely not better back then.

Sorted a bunch of hardware today in an effort to keep things better organized.

Its when you start using the BIG BOY bins from Costco... That's when you should worry...

link for those that don't know: https://www.costco.com/greenmade-27-gal ... 05525.html

luckybob wrote on 2023-10-06, 21:51:

Its when you start using the BIG BOY bins from Costco... That's when you should worry...

link for those that don't know: https://www.costco.com/greenmade-27-gal ... 05525.html

I use crates like that (although admittedly only 45 litres) for storing dried foods. Just starting to go through a pile of 6.5 litre boxes full of CPUs, with a view to selling most and slimming down my collection to just the fastest of each type.

luckybob wrote on 2023-10-06, 21:51:

Its when you start using the BIG BOY bins from Costco... That's when you should worry...

link for those that don't know: https://www.costco.com/greenmade-27-gal ... 05525.html

I use those exact ones, but mine are from Home Depot. You can get the same ones at a bunch of other stores, sometimes in different colors and branded names. I've got 12 of them, filled with stuff to clear out of a storage unit in the near future.

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-15, 03:13:

I wonder if it's already going to the modem audio pin and is just muted with no modem activity.

Just revisited this one today involving my M/75 and the KXL-D20 card. IT looks like pin 62 (pin for audio out to internal speaker) goes to a NEC 62522 Gate Array chip. Not sure what modem audio it would be using, since there is none, but could be a mixback of some sort too - but that'd mean possibly risking the laptop, or finding the pinout of the Qlogic FAS408 SCSI Controller chip and tracing the lines from there back to the connector.

So I did some more prodding around with a VOM in there, found that pin 62 (the pin for Speaker out in PCMCIA) goes to the fifth pin down on the right side of the NEC 62522 Gate Array chip. Tried looking at some datasheets for that chip, could not make heads or tails of it.....but I think I might be able to bodge it in with some careful soldering though to that pin - and then test with the laptop.

creepingnet wrote on 2023-10-06, 22:40:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-10-15, 03:13:

I wonder if it's already going to the modem audio pin and is just muted with no modem activity.

Just revisited this one today involving my M/75 and the KXL-D20 card. IT looks like pin 62 (pin for audio out to internal speaker) goes to a NEC 62522 Gate Array chip. Not sure what modem audio it would be using, since there is none, but could be a mixback of some sort too - but that'd mean possibly risking the laptop, or finding the pinout of the Qlogic FAS408 SCSI Controller chip and tracing the lines from there back to the connector.

So I did some more prodding around with a VOM in there, found that pin 62 (the pin for Speaker out in PCMCIA) goes to the fifth pin down on the right side of the NEC 62522 Gate Array chip. Tried looking at some datasheets for that chip, could not make heads or tails of it.....but I think I might be able to bodge it in with some careful soldering though to that pin - and then test with the laptop.

Thanks for sharing the pictures, I don't think I've seen the inside of one of those cards before.

Just found out that Deus Ex sounds pretty interesting when you play it on a Soundblaster Pro 2.0, the speech all sounds like Half-Life or a poor quality VoIP call 😀 Even the music sounds pretty wonky

Back in the day when it got like that on downsampled 16bit sounds to an 8bit card or even with 16bit cards, it usually meant you had your sample rate set too high for the CPU power available vs game engine demands on it.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-10-06, 21:36:

Sorted a bunch of hardware today in an effort to keep things better organized.

Huh, might be time for me to do something about the ole box 'o mobos

(I've tried a few local computer shops looking for old mobo boxes, but haven't had any luck so far)

Tonight I've been putting my recently acquired GUS Classic through its paces. Depending on the game/demo the GUS's line out can be really spicy such that it completely overdrives my SB16's line in. If I plug the GUS's line out directly into my speakers I need to turn their volume down from normally 50% to barely 15%! From what I can google, if your GUS is old enough, there's really no master line out volume control ability.

Back in the day I had a GUS ACE, which I think was the perfect way to do it - just the parts of the GUS that you actually want, specifically intended to be used with a SB16 or similar. Hmm, come to think of it though, it took the master sound card output and passed it through, which is opposite of what I'm trying here.

Oh well, I just tried it the other way with the SB16 passed into the GUS's line in it comes out sounding like muffled dog crap for some reason... cool!

vutt wrote on 2023-10-06, 16:15:

Playing around with recently acquired S3 VLB card. This is beast for 1994. So far ahead of time that it's not even VESA compatib […]
Show full quote

Playing around with recently acquired S3 VLB card.
This is beast for 1994. So far ahead of time that it's not even VESA compatible out of the box. Compared to 1MB GD5428 I own clearly step up.
I mean 100Hz refresh rates across the board. With 2MB VRAM 1024x768x64k is possible. I could only imagine how expensive CRT monitor it required to drive back in 1994.
Well it turned out to be by far my most expensive ebay purchase (so far). There is always someone who wants it as well...

speas3.jpg

Oh well, it's one of those days I knew it will come. I cant recall over past 6+ years hardware dying on me. Now it happened and of course it's my most expensive purchase. 🤣
No picture today while booting today. Quick voltage check on BIOS and ram chips suggest no issue with power. I could not find RAMDAC datasheet, but it gets warm so power is present. S3 main chip is however cold.
Need to do more digging. Should probably try to read eprom chip externally...
I have no experience troubleshooting video cards... ...I guess now I have good opportunity to put my small home lab equipment into use and try to learn something new...

vutt wrote on 2023-10-08, 10:28:

I have no experience troubleshooting video cards... ...I guess now I have good opportunity to put my small home lab equipment into use and try to learn something new...

I spy lots of little yellow tantalum caps. I know that these are known to fail on old motherboards, often quite spectacularly. I'm not certain whether they fail silently though. I would check all of these for a dead short as the lowest hanging fruit for repair.

They go short circuit, so if there's enough current available, they self immolate, if there's not, they might just sit there getting kinda warm and stopping shit working, but not burn out.

Went to our external storage for other business, but wanted to check if my 2 BP6s were still there ... can't wait to have the time to pop in dual 400s in one of them overclocked to 600. I have 6 or 8 in the box, hoping to bin 2 of them for 600 ...

Speaking of ABIT... rebuilt this old one. BE6-II rev1 + P3 650.

I have 2 modified slotkets yet none are stable with Coppermine chips so I'll just stick to the normal slot variant.