Ultrax wrote:

First thing I ever heard through it was CANYON. MID. It's only proper 😁

How about Meltdown.amd? It's even more proper. 😀

Today I finished up work on my newest and (physically) biggest drive I own. Went through low level formatting and now I apparently have 100% OK drive with no bad sectors! Yaaays! 😁

The last comparision is with my SATA I Maxtor DiamondMax 250 GB drive I have done by mistake. I would never thought that it would work.

That's not bad for a completely dead drive isn't it? First it wouldn't spin, then it wouldn't talk to SCSI controller and last the heads wouldn't talk to the platters. Everything is happy now including me 😁

That's a SCSI hard drive? Wow. Glad the HDD works. Also, long live Windows XP. I have a few machines that support Windows XP, 2 currently have XP Pro SP3 installed, 1 has a failing HDD after remapping the bad sectors (did get it to work, though, which is a plus), and 3 are either in storage or planning on swapping the parts around again.

My plan is to image the current HDDs onto my Windows 10 laptop and clone the images to a bigger HDD to replace them with to prevent data loss if the current HDDs go bad.

I had that exact same SCSI drive ^^^^ years ago in an external SCSI enclosure. It's a tank that just wont die. I gave mine away. Just didn't use it anymore.

Made some more holes into a case to fit a speaker to the front. Not pretty, but better than the little buzzers nowadays.

Archived my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus Motherboard's BIOS onto my Compaq Presario C700 laptop in case I need to replace said chip should it fail. Good thing my EEPROM programmer can read/write to that chip.

Another thing I did was test the CBW Diplomat PC I have, which it does work and booted into Windows XP Home Edition (looks like no SP). How odd is it to see the AGP speed selector in a BIOS on a DFI motherboard have 1x, 2x, and 4x on there? Could that possibly mean that I can put in an old AGP card that's either 1x or 2x, or does that go by the voltage support? I haven't seen that since my Socket 370 motherboard, or the old DFI P5BV3+ Rev. B+ board I had years ago. Just looked at the manual I found online and it's a universal AGP slot. Something you don't see anymore when AGP 8x rolled out in 2005 and was replaced by PCI-E back in 2006-2007 (LGA 775, and Socket 939 days).

Quick question guys. Some of you may remember I picked these two monitors up for free from a Letgo ad. They do work, but have a faded, almost washed out looking image. Contrast is all the way up and brightness is as far as I am willing to go, yet the blacks are greyish and the whole image just looks washed out. Before I put them out to trash does this sound like these two are on the outs? My Samsung SyncMaster 760V 4:3 LCD monitor looks light years better.

Sounds like a capacitor issue, or the CCFL tubes that are in the displays are fading. My dad had a Sceptre 20.1" monitor that suffered that as well.

Yeah, I have a feeling these two monitors were dropped off at the computer store where I picked them up for this very reason. The smaller black monitor is an Everex and the larger white monitor is a KDS so not fantastic brands. Out to the trash they go. I had to check them out since they were free. At least I got a 16-bit ISA NIC out of the visit.

My retro activity today was looking for old computers/parts.. I always take specific routes to/from work on trash days for various neighborhoods. I've only been lucky a few times. But today I was driving and noticed a barn open that was full of random odds and ends and a few tables set up out front. I stopped in and it appeared they're having a sale on all the stuff in it. I saw someone in the barn organizing things and I asked if stuff was on sale, or if it was private. Turns out, yes, it is going to be a sale soon. I then proceeded to ask if there was any old computer equipment. Answer: "Yes, we have A LOT" --> *person points over in the corner* "Most of it is just $5 since it is so old". 😲 😲 😲 🤣 😊 😵 Stacks of old beige cases galore, monitors, games, accessories, etc. All of it looks like new. Like enough stuff to where I would have to probably fill up my Hummer H1 two or three times to get it all.

So... it looks like I may just have to stop there before work the morning it opens. I couldn't get up close to it to see what it all was, but I recognized some cases with turbo buttons and turbo displays with AT power switches. It looks extremely promising. I learned from the individual at the barn that it was all personal donations from church members that are raising money for their congregation, so likely not just generic no-name computer items. 😎

Another post from me with borderline retro stuff.

Earlier I posted a picture in the "bought stuff" thread showing a Gigabyte 965P-DQ6 that had gotten beat up in shipping because of shoddy packaging (to put it mildly).

A capacitor had gotten torn off and the heat pipe cooling was bent and skewed in all kind of ways and directions.

As I got a partial refund it's now time to test the motherboard to see if it's still working or if fighting for a return of the board and a full refund would have been a better option.

With the heat pipe cooling removed and with some of the dirt brushed off the board dosn't look that bad. The capacitor that got torn off dosn't look crucial.

I forgot to take a picture of the heat pipe cooling before I got it unbent and aligned but this is how it turned out. I also did a quick "Jörgen tuning" and removed some clutter.

Gigabyte thought it a good idea to glue this contraption to the back of the motherboard... It's in the way of the back plate for my CPU cooler... More "Jörgen tuning".

Without Gigabytes "Crazycool backplate" the pushpins holding down the north bridge heat sink part of the heat pipe cooling are too long... No worries I have ball bearings...

To be continued.

wiretap wrote:

My retro activity today was looking for old computers/parts.. I always take specific routes to/from work on trash days for various neighborhoods. I've only been lucky a few times. But today I was driving and noticed a barn open that was full of random odds and ends and a few tables set up out front. I stopped in and it appeared they're having a sale on all the stuff in it. I saw someone in the barn organizing things and I asked if stuff was on sale, or if it was private. Turns out, yes, it is going to be a sale soon. I then proceeded to ask if there was any old computer equipment. Answer: "Yes, we have A LOT" --> *person points over in the corner* "Most of it is just $5 since it is so old". 😲 😲 😲 🤣 😊 😵 Stacks of old beige cases galore, monitors, games, accessories, etc. All of it looks like new. Like enough stuff to where I would have to probably fill up my Hummer H1 two or three times to get it all.

So... it looks like I may just have to stop there before work the morning it opens. I couldn't get up close to it to see what it all was, but I recognized some cases with turbo buttons and turbo displays with AT power switches. It looks extremely promising. I learned from the individual at the barn that it was all personal donations from church members that are raising money for their congregation, so likely not just generic no-name computer items. 😎

Have fun.

Spent some time cleaning up two systems from yesterdays haul:

Yes, rather messy in here atm.
Dell XPS R350 P2 350, cleaned up nicely.

Acer Acermate 386SX/20N, got upgraded from 3 to 5mb ram in the process 😀 I really like this one.

It came with an awesome startup menu 😎

That's quite a haul! And I agree, that Acer looks excellent, is the boot menu just an autoexec menu?

Today, I got an AT case, which was sold as just a PC chips motherboard, so it's not like I can complain to the seller about this - but the case is fairly badly damaged.
Three and a half of the screw posts are snapped off and there are two other broken bits of plastic. The plastic motherboard standoffs are broken and some of the RAM is half out of its slots? This case had a rough trip 🙁

I'm gving this method a go - dangerous smelling plastic solvent glue from Wickes, it's apparently Methyl Ethyl Ketone based but much less fluid, seemingly it has a bit of plastic in the solution:

I used a lot of this stuff, I guess I will find out very soon whether that's a good idea or not...

This split on the side proved very difficult to hold in place - I have another case with similar damage so I'm really hoping this glue bonds when clamped like this

Edit: This worked really well! The broken off pieces of plastic are now securely back in place and with it sanded down, it's very hard to tell there was a crack there at all.
I'm not 100% sure the screw mounts are very solid, but that's less of a big deal because there are secondary pegs there that can fit screws.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Sounds like a capacitor issue, or the CCFL tubes that are in the displays are fading. My dad had a Sceptre 20.1" monitor that suffered that as well.

Those are CRT displays. They don't use CCFL lighting.

Caps are a perishable item and should be checked, but it's pretty common for the phosphor coating on the tube to degrade and require a boost in electron current.

gdjacobs wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Sounds like a capacitor issue, or the CCFL tubes that are in the displays are fading. My dad had a Sceptre 20.1" monitor that suffered that as well.

Those are CRT displays. They don't use CCFL lighting.

Caps are a perishable item and should be checked, but it's pretty common for the phosphor coating on the tube to degrade and require a boost in electron current.

I didn't see the photo of the monitors after I replied. I thought they were LCD monitors at first.

bjwil1991 wrote:

gdjacobs wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Sounds like a capacitor issue, or the CCFL tubes that are in the displays are fading. My dad had a Sceptre 20.1" monitor that suffered that as well.

Those are CRT displays. They don't use CCFL lighting.

Caps are a perishable item and should be checked, but it's pretty common for the phosphor coating on the tube to degrade and require a boost in electron current.

I didn't see the photo of the monitors after I replied. I thought they were LCD monitors at first.

Yes. My fault. I reposted the photos after my comment. Regardless, I have so much on my plate at this point those went to the trash. Just not worth my time. I have to let some things go.

Installed my new Dreamblaster S1 onto a Yamaha Audician 32 Plus sound card. Kudos to Luckybob for the sound card! This is for my Pentium 100 build I am currently restoring and then using for the Cardinal SNAPplus Youtube demo.

This is what trash day is looking like. Goodbye faded image monitors and goodbye gutted cases. Don't freak out on the beige case. It is gutted and cracked and all kinds of screwed up and not worth saving. All the Dell OptiPlex GX150s are completely gutted and all the parts are going to new homes.

liqmat wrote:

Installed my new Dreamblaster S1 onto a Yahama Audician 32 Plus sound card. Kudos to Luckybob for the sound card! This is for my Pentium 100 build I am currently restoring and then using for the Cardinal SNAPplus Youtube demo.

That S1 is so little! I have a couple of those OPLSAx cards and some capacitors to try this mod on one rainy day:

Yamaha YMF71x SB Pro Mixer Bug Issue Fix

And also an alternative util for setting them up:

T-04YBSC-A, new YMF71x based sound card + SETYMF utility

Fun!

Here is the rest of yesterdays post that I diddn't have time to complete before going to bed.

The ball bearings mounted on the push pins! Buying new shorther push pins costing 4 cents each would have been too easy.

The board looks great with the heat pipe cooling mounted correctly, well except for the missing cap...

...and this corner as it's also kind of missing.

The motherboard and CPU ended up working just fine though.