I got around to testing my spare Dell Optiplex GX260 motherboard last night, I had to take caution due to it having a bulged capacitor but I ended up spending too much time with it. 😵

Basically what I did was when I got it to power up, I went ahead and popped in the Ultimate Boot CD to do some benchmarks. the integrated GPU passed Video Memory Stess Test. AIDA16 did a fine job at detecting its hardware, then the trouble started when I played with NSSI System Information and found that the benchmarks were getting spotty results and the system shut itself off while doing the PC Speaker test. upon restart it showed the "Alert! Previous shutdown due to thermal event" error in the BIOS.

The scariest moment was when I heard a pop when I removed the CPU heatsink. turned out a capacitor was starting to leak but luckily it didn't cause surface damage to the board, I plan on re-capping it ASAP. here's a picture of the swollen capacitors on the board:

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

I got around to testing my spare Dell Optiplex GX260 motherboard last night, I had to take caution due to it having a bulged cap […]
Show full quote

I got around to testing my spare Dell Optiplex GX260 motherboard last night, I had to take caution due to it having a bulged capacitor but I ended up spending too much time with it. 😵

Basically what I did was when I got it to power up, I went ahead and popped in the Ultimate Boot CD to do some benchmarks. the integrated GPU passed Video Memory Stess Test. AIDA16 did a fine job at detecting its hardware, then the trouble started when I played with NSSI System Information and found that the benchmarks were getting spotty results and the system shut itself off while doing the PC Speaker test. upon restart it showed the "Alert! Previous shutdown due to thermal event" error in the BIOS.

The scariest moment was when I heard a pop when I removed the CPU heatsink. turned out a capacitor was starting to leak but luckily it didn't cause surface damage to the board, I plan on re-capping it ASAP. here's a picture of the swollen capacitors on the board:

IMG_0145.JPG

I have a Dimension 4550 that has4 swollen caps by the heatsink and it still runs. My AM2 board had 1 bloated cap and it died.

Modded my original Xbox with the UnleashX dashboard and upgraded the HDD to a 60GB Maxtor (the largest I had which supports the security features required by Xbox).

So far all I've done is play Quake and it was quite glorious on my 27" RCA TruFlat. I really do need to figure out how to get into the service menu on this TV though. The left corners picture has dropped about 2 inchs lower than the otherside and it's starting overscan.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Modded my original Xbox with the UnleashX dashboard and upgraded the HDD to a 60GB Maxtor (the largest I had which supports the security features required by Xbox).

So far all I've done is play Quake and it was quite glorious on my 27" RCA TruFlat. I really do need to figure out how to get into the service menu on this TV though. The left corners picture has dropped about 2 inchs lower than the otherside and it's starting overscan.

I have a softmodded xbox, I wonder how easy it would be to replace mine.. Any tutorials for me?

appiah4 wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Modded my original Xbox with the UnleashX dashboard and upgraded the HDD to a 60GB Maxtor (the largest I had which supports the security features required by Xbox).

So far all I've done is play Quake and it was quite glorious on my 27" RCA TruFlat. I really do need to figure out how to get into the service menu on this TV though. The left corners picture has dropped about 2 inchs lower than the otherside and it's starting overscan.

I have a softmodded xbox, I wonder how easy it would be to replace mine.. Any tutorials for me?

Not very hard. I had more difficulty due to my lack of reading the instructions correctly the last time around.

Anywho, One tutorial coming right up.

Basically you FTP over a program called CHIMP which loads a Gentoox based hard drive cloning utility. There are plunty of tutorials on how to do this. Start your xbox with the case open and set the hard drive you intend to use ontop of the Xbox's DVD drive as you'll need to hotswap the IDE cable from it later. You'll also need to power this hard drive which can be done any number of ways. Make sure your hard drives jumpers are set to slave for this I just leached power off a molex connector from the PC I used to install my softmod. You could also use a Y splitter on the original hard drives molex. You go into your dashboard and get to the point to where the XBE for CHIMP is selected but don't start. Hotswap the IDE off the DVD drive to the Hard Drive carefully and then press A to start the CHIMP XBE. Once your into chimp scan the IDE devices which is option 1 and scroll down to make sure that your hard drive was detected. If it says something about a DVD drive it wasn't detected. If it is detected go down to check Slave Drive Security Status and make sure that your drive supports the security features "Security Supported = Yes". If it doesn't your drive doesn't support the required security feature and you'll need to find another drive. I used a 60GB Maxtor DiamondMax 16 drive but IMO if you plan to play a lot of games you should go bigger. Much bigger. 500GB IDE drives are cheap on eBay. If it says yes you can go ahead and select the copy from Master to Slave item. Press A until it starts and I recommend choosing the the slower option that gives you periodical progress updates as the extra peace of mind is well worth it. After its done copying you need to select the lock slave drive option and select lock from motherboard to enable the security feature as the Xbox will not boot if the drive is not locked at start up. Confirm the lock by checking security status on the drive again and making sure it reads "Security Enabled = Yes". If it is go ahead and shut down your xbox, disconnect your hard drive and reconnect the DVD drive. Set the jumper on your hard drive to master and replace the original with yours. If everything went well you should be done.

It's really not that hard. I think it took me longer to do the actual softmod than the hard drive upgrade and that's really saying something because I used the old style method where you hotswap the original hard drive into a computer to format it.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

I have a Dimension 4550 that has4 swollen caps by the heatsink and it still runs. My AM2 board had 1 bloated cap and it died.

It's funny you say that because I had a situation last year where somebody donated a am2 Dell Dimension to me that I set up for a coworker. Every single cpu vrm cap and secondary was blown but it worked and ran perfectly fine when I got. Afraid to change it's voodoo I left it stock running Vista and before I gave it away prime95'd it for 10 hours. Not one hiccup. Weirdest thing ever!

Yesterday, I tried sorting out my Power Mac 6500 floppy drive woes. It didn't go over well, but I learned some things.

-Some of these floppies were bad, like "circular scratch marks from a head crash" bad, and then I noticed that they left some black stuff on the heads themselves that rendered them unable to read even known good disks until swabbed down. I'll have to mark these as known problem disks.
-I think I might've bent one of the heads out of alignment by mistake when trying to swab 'em down in there, because now it's not reading disks 100% properly. Great.
-I have no idea where the heck I'm going to source a replacement floppy drive, and the IIcx is still out of commission until I get the motherboard recapped, which makes it an unviable option for backing up these Mac floppies. Its floppy drive doesn't work correctly in the 6500 to begin with, though its 80 MB SCSI HDD comes up just fine if I swap out the internal Zip 100 drive with it.

I'm starting to develop a very strong distaste for floppy drive-based media out of all of this, alongside said internal Zip 100 drive erroring on disks that come up just fine in a different drive.

If nothing else, I'm hoping that I can back up the 1.44MB floppies on a typical PC somehow, though the 800K disks just aren't happening without an actual vintage Mac or some very expensive floppy drive controllers.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Yesterday, I tried sorting out my Power Mac 6500 floppy drive woes. It didn't go over well, but I learned some things. […]
Show full quote

Yesterday, I tried sorting out my Power Mac 6500 floppy drive woes. It didn't go over well, but I learned some things.

-Some of these floppies were bad, like "circular scratch marks from a head crash" bad, and then I noticed that they left some black stuff on the heads themselves that rendered them unable to read even known good disks until swabbed down. I'll have to mark these as known problem disks.
-I think I might've bent one of the heads out of alignment by mistake when trying to swab 'em down in there, because now it's not reading disks 100% properly. Great.
-I have no idea where the heck I'm going to source a replacement floppy drive, and the IIcx is still out of commission until I get the motherboard recapped, which makes it an unviable option for backing up these Mac floppies. Its floppy drive doesn't work correctly in the 6500 to begin with, though its 80 MB SCSI HDD comes up just fine if I swap out the internal Zip 100 drive with it.

I'm starting to develop a very strong distaste for floppy drive-based media out of all of this, alongside said internal Zip 100 drive erroring on disks that come up just fine in a different drive.

If nothing else, I'm hoping that I can back up the 1.44MB floppies on a typical PC somehow, though the 800K disks just aren't happening without an actual vintage Mac or some very expensive floppy drive controllers.

In 30 years time I doubt there will be any working floppies left to read anyways.

This week I have bought and received two Radeon 9800 cards. . . and both had horrible artifacts and had to be returned. As I recall the same thing happened to the 9700 Pro I had over a decade ago. Is it just me or are they really bad for reliability?

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

In 30 years time I doubt there will be any working floppies left to read anyways.

Which is why I find it imperative to back up the floppies/Zip disks/etc. we've got before they rot out into uselessness.

Sure, most of the disks I have are probably backed up on the usual sites somewhere, but I don't know for sure. Better safe than sorry in that respect.

NamelessPlayer wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

In 30 years time I doubt there will be any working floppies left to read anyways.

Which is why I find it imperative to back up the floppies/Zip disks/etc. we've got before they rot out into uselessness.

Sure, most of the disks I have are probably backed up on the usual sites somewhere, but I don't know for sure. Better safe than sorry in that respect.

I find it more fair to ask, if there are any hardware left that uses floppy disks or are there any floppy disks left for hardware that use it? Wich is it, that dies first? Someone might start producing floppy disks or drives again, at that time, using some sort of crowd funding. Much like those C64/A1200 cases.

Moved around half of my computers so far... 19 today. The rest in the following days... Then the CRT monitors and the rest of the boxes... Slowly I'll have all my stash under one roof 😁 I knew I have a lot... but seeing everything in one room... it's just too much 🤣

NamelessPlayer wrote:

Yesterday, I tried sorting out my Power Mac 6500 floppy drive woes. It didn't go over well, but I learned some things. […]
Show full quote

Yesterday, I tried sorting out my Power Mac 6500 floppy drive woes. It didn't go over well, but I learned some things.

-Some of these floppies were bad, like "circular scratch marks from a head crash" bad, and then I noticed that they left some black stuff on the heads themselves that rendered them unable to read even known good disks until swabbed down. I'll have to mark these as known problem disks.
-I think I might've bent one of the heads out of alignment by mistake when trying to swab 'em down in there, because now it's not reading disks 100% properly. Great.
-I have no idea where the heck I'm going to source a replacement floppy drive, and the IIcx is still out of commission until I get the motherboard recapped, which makes it an unviable option for backing up these Mac floppies. Its floppy drive doesn't work correctly in the 6500 to begin with, though its 80 MB SCSI HDD comes up just fine if I swap out the internal Zip 100 drive with it.

I'm starting to develop a very strong distaste for floppy drive-based media out of all of this, alongside said internal Zip 100 drive erroring on disks that come up just fine in a different drive.

If nothing else, I'm hoping that I can back up the 1.44MB floppies on a typical PC somehow, though the 800K disks just aren't happening without an actual vintage Mac or some very expensive floppy drive controllers.

There are floppy emulators for PCs. Cost is around $20 a piece. You use a USB stick and software that comes with it in order to make the separate floppy folders. Some support up to 999 floppies on one thumb drive.

And look, here is somebody who sells a mac disk emulator... does both floppy and HDD images.
https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

Edit: will this drive work for backing up the floppies?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-JU-268A016C … c-/132294492359

Looks like the other option is to add a USB card to the 6500 and just use a USB floppy drive.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1796395?tstart=0

brostenen wrote:

NamelessPlayer wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

In 30 years time I doubt there will be any working floppies left to read anyways.

Which is why I find it imperative to back up the floppies/Zip disks/etc. we've got before they rot out into uselessness.

Sure, most of the disks I have are probably backed up on the usual sites somewhere, but I don't know for sure. Better safe than sorry in that respect.

I find it more fair to ask, if there are any hardware left that uses floppy disks or are there any floppy disks left for hardware that use it? Wich is it, that dies first? Someone might start producing floppy disks or drives again, at that time, using some sort of crowd funding. Much like those C64/A1200 cases.

I've got a few hundred 3.5" floppy disks, most of them NOS AOL disks that were sold blank when AOL went to CD.

Finding working drives is a whole other matter.

I'm going to be using floppy emulators in my old machines as it is just not worth the hassle/money to try to find fully working drives anymore.

As for what I have been doing today... wiping old 3.5" floppy disks with my 2x speed USB floppy drive.

Windows 10 formats 1.44MB disks fine within the regular GUI format utility, but it freaks out when you try to format a 720k disk. Have to use the command prompt format utility to format those.

cyclone3d wrote:

Finding working drives is a whole other matter.
I'm going to be using floppy emulators in my old machines as it is just not worth the hassle/money to try to find fully working drives anymore.

Hmmm... I see 3.5 inch drives locally, everywere. Not hard to get a hold on these days.
They are priced between 2,5 and 15 US Dollars. Most drives cost some 8 US Dollars.

cyclone3d wrote:

Windows 10 formats 1.44MB disks fine within the regular GUI format utility, but it freaks out when you try to format a 720k disk. Have to use the command prompt format utility to format those.

I don't see the issue on using any command line prompt. Might just be me, wich finds it more usefull and more natural on some tasks. I am after all from the day's of good old pure MS-Dos/C64 and now a days I use Linux exclusively for my daily computing tasks. Daily driver, my IBM thinkpad, runs Xubuntu. My router's OS is a stripped down embedded Linux. Most of the internet runs Linux and my phone runs Android, wich is after all Linux that have been stripped down. 😀

WildW wrote:

This week I have bought and received two Radeon 9800 cards. . . and both had horrible artifacts and had to be returned. As I recall the same thing happened to the 9700 Pro I had over a decade ago. Is it just me or are they really bad for reliability?

I've had a few 9800s, a couple were flakey, but recently AGP 3850s have been unreliable for me (3 out of 4 dead, of which 3 were NOS), and 8800s are notorious too. Had a slight stress over 9800 reliability myself recently as well, after buying one that was artifacting on first test, on the VGA port. Auto adjust on the LCD fixed that, but there is still very faint snow. DVI was OK though, rock solid signal. It doesn't like an nForce4 board I have but that could be the PSU in that machine. How much testing did you do on your 9800s?

JidaiGeki wrote:

WildW wrote:

This week I have bought and received two Radeon 9800 cards. . . and both had horrible artifacts and had to be returned. As I recall the same thing happened to the 9700 Pro I had over a decade ago. Is it just me or are they really bad for reliability?

I've had a few 9800s, a couple were flakey, but recently AGP 3850s have been unreliable for me (3 out of 4 dead, of which 3 were NOS), and 8800s are notorious too. Had a slight stress over 9800 reliability myself recently as well, after buying one that was artifacting on first test, on the VGA port. Auto adjust on the LCD fixed that, but there is still very faint snow. DVI was OK though, rock solid signal. It doesn't like an nForce4 board I have but that could be the PSU in that machine. How much testing did you do on your 9800s?

3 dead NOS 3850s? What the hell. That seems a bit excessive unless they all came from the same batch and the batch had an issue.

8800s suffer from BGA failure but a good reflow can usually get them working again.

I have a ATI built 9800 256MB with the full 256 bit memory that only 128MB models usually have. It's an ES I think, I can't find any pictures of one like mine online. It works great, it's in my P4 rig atm in lieu of my FX5950U.

brostenen wrote:

Hmmm... I see 3.5 inch drives locally, everywere. Not hard to get a hold on these days. They are priced between 2,5 and 15 US Do […]
Show full quote

cyclone3d wrote:

Finding working drives is a whole other matter.
I'm going to be using floppy emulators in my old machines as it is just not worth the hassle/money to try to find fully working drives anymore.

Hmmm... I see 3.5 inch drives locally, everywere. Not hard to get a hold on these days.
They are priced between 2,5 and 15 US Dollars. Most drives cost some 8 US Dollars.

cyclone3d wrote:

Windows 10 formats 1.44MB disks fine within the regular GUI format utility, but it freaks out when you try to format a 720k disk. Have to use the command prompt format utility to format those.

I don't see the issue on using any command line prompt. Might just be me, wich finds it more usefull and more natural on some tasks. I am after all from the day's of good old pure MS-Dos/C64 and now a days I use Linux exclusively for my daily computing tasks. Daily driver, my IBM thinkpad, runs Xubuntu. My router's OS is a stripped down embedded Linux. Most of the internet runs Linux and my phone runs Android, wich is after all Linux that have been stripped down. 😀

Sure the drives are available, but finding one that actually works properly 100% is a pain. As in, drives that will actually format the disks properly without saying you have bad sectors and getting a drive that will format disks that will work in drives in other computers. Getting multiple drives that actually work properly is even harder.

I have a pile of drives that all have some sort of issue.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

3 dead NOS 3850s? What the hell. That seems a bit excessive unless they all came from the same batch and the batch had an issue. […]
Show full quote

JidaiGeki wrote:

WildW wrote:

This week I have bought and received two Radeon 9800 cards. . . and both had horrible artifacts and had to be returned. As I recall the same thing happened to the 9700 Pro I had over a decade ago. Is it just me or are they really bad for reliability?

I've had a few 9800s, a couple were flakey, but recently AGP 3850s have been unreliable for me (3 out of 4 dead, of which 3 were NOS), and 8800s are notorious too. Had a slight stress over 9800 reliability myself recently as well, after buying one that was artifacting on first test, on the VGA port. Auto adjust on the LCD fixed that, but there is still very faint snow. DVI was OK though, rock solid signal. It doesn't like an nForce4 board I have but that could be the PSU in that machine. How much testing did you do on your 9800s?

3 dead NOS 3850s? What the hell. That seems a bit excessive unless they all came from the same batch and the batch had an issue.

8800s suffer from BGA failure but a good reflow can usually get them working again.

I have a ATI built 9800 256MB with the full 256 bit memory that only 128MB models usually have. It's an ES I think, I can't find any pictures of one like mine online. It works great, it's in my P4 rig atm in lieu of my FX5950U.

Actually it was 2 dead NOS 3850s - both were Powercolor, so no surprises there - the other was a used HIS IceQ, which I really wanted to get my hands on. The only working one I've got now is a (formerly NOS) Sapphire.

In my experience, baking 8800s only works for so long - best I got out of baking a GTS was another year's use, before baking had no further effect. An 8600 I baked also didn't improve 😵

brostenen wrote:

NamelessPlayer wrote:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

In 30 years time I doubt there will be any working floppies left to read anyways.

Which is why I find it imperative to back up the floppies/Zip disks/etc. we've got before they rot out into uselessness.

Sure, most of the disks I have are probably backed up on the usual sites somewhere, but I don't know for sure. Better safe than sorry in that respect.

I find it more fair to ask, if there are any hardware left that uses floppy disks or are there any floppy disks left for hardware that use it? Wich is it, that dies first? Someone might start producing floppy disks or drives again, at that time, using some sort of crowd funding. Much like those C64/A1200 cases.

Honestly, for older computers, I think floppy drive emulators are the way to go - if there are working images of the floppy disks needed to use in them to begin with.

That's the dilemma right there - it's unlikely that every single software floppy disk out there has been backed up to a drive image workable in such an emulator, and as such, measures need to be taken before they're lost forever.

cyclone3d wrote:

There are floppy emulators for PCs. Cost is around $20 a piece. You use a USB stick and software that comes with it in order to […]
Show full quote

There are floppy emulators for PCs. Cost is around $20 a piece. You use a USB stick and software that comes with it in order to make the separate floppy folders. Some support up to 999 floppies on one thumb drive.

And look, here is somebody who sells a mac disk emulator... does both floppy and HDD images.
https://www.bigmessowires.com/floppy-emu/

Edit: will this drive work for backing up the floppies?
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Panasonic-JU-268A016C … c-/132294492359

Looks like the other option is to add a USB card to the 6500 and just use a USB floppy drive.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1796395?tstart=0

PC floppy drives, including all of the USB ones, do not read Mac 400K/800K floppies. Those were made possible due to a variable-speed design feature of the Macintosh floppy drive controller, where PC drives could only store 720K on a DSDD disk. As a result, the only method I know of to archive those disks is to image them using a suitable vintage Mac, then transfer the images to a more modern system.

Otherwise, I would've taken the USB floppy drive route by now. I do have a USB + FW + ATA-133 card in the 6500, but I would probably just use the iMac G3 or MDD G4 instead if the USB approach was viable.

Because I have a mix of DD 800K and HD 1.44MB disks to deal with here, whatever I do has to work with both of these.

Remember that the goal here is archival of existing floppies, where the Mac floppy emulator is of no use (though it might come in handy for the IIcx later if I can't boot off of the SCSI HDD for any reason).

Your eBay listing pointed me in the right direction, though! They're cheap enough that I could order one right now, though I'll have to do a bit more research if I want to go with a Mitsubishi drive identical to what was pre-installed in this 6500, or opt for a Panasonic or Sony drive instead.