Messing around with the portable computer as parts slowly start to arrive from China. The LCD driver board made the trip to Germany in just 10 days!

Hooked up Delock CF adapter with 16GB Kingston card I still had. The card if recognized, which is good, but the BIOS doesn't automatically detect the optimum geometry. I'll try the configuration with which I got the same card to work on my 486 laptop and hopefully it'll work with this one too.

In other news, I should have never given away my old USB floppy drive. I've tried several different ones since, but they all turned out to be terribly unreliable. I know my disks are also dying on me, but I swear the USB drives fail to write/access, like, 9 out of 10 times...

Found this sucker on some sort of a scrapyard. Already cleaned it a little bit. However the Dallas battery is dead. And here is my problem: When I go into BIOS, I enter all the data (disc parameters, etc..) and I save the settings. But when the computer restarts, it forgets everithing I've entered in the BIOS and puts me again on the first boot screen. So the computer is basically useless. Do I have to replace the dallas battery or is there any easier way out?

This has been my experience with most Dallas batteries. It must be replaced to continue.

Turbo -> wrote:

Do I have to replace the dallas battery or is there any easier way out?

If the motherboard does not have jumpers/pins for an external battery, it will need fixing or replacing. There is a simple fix if you have access to a dremel and soldering iron. A quick google of the number on the chip will lead you to some instructions.

Turbo -> wrote:

So the computer is basically useless. Do I have to replace the dallas battery or is there any easier way out?

The proper way..
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/max … 12887-ND/956874 --- Datasheet: https://pdfserv.maximintegrated.com/en/ds/DS1 … 5-DS12C887A.pdf
or
https://www.tindie.com/products/glitchwrks/gw … uct-description

Then there's always the hack-job method of cutting into the existing RTC, which I see a lot of people do but I have no idea why since newly manufactured replaced are still made for $10 each. When desoldering the old one, just install a DIP socket for easy future replacement. I found that going with a new replacement was less money than I spend for lunch at Taco Bell, so it made sense rather than wasting time dremeling an old one out.

Because some motherboards do not work with the replacement Dallas chips, that's why. I have a couple like that.

You are still correct in 95% of situations though.

Spent some quality time with a bunch of Celeron 300A's of the S370 variant.
And i belive i found atleast one little gem:

On an ABIT BX6-2 with an MSI 6905 v1.1 slotket.
For a reference a P3-700E does the render in 82 seconds.
And a P2-400 does it in 145s.
Cinebench 2003 got 61CB.

wiretap wrote:

[...]

Then there's always the hack-job method of cutting into the existing RTC, which I see a lot of people do but I have no idea why since newly manufactured replaced are still made for $10 each. When desoldering the old one, just install a DIP socket for easy future replacement. I found that going with a new replacement was less money than I spend for lunch at Taco Bell, so it made sense rather than wasting time dremeling an old one out.

If your board has a DS128(8)7 I'll fully agree, but if it turns out to have a DS1387 your're screwed as they don't make replacements for those. So dremeling (or otherwise mutilating) the old RTC Ramified is the only option.

@dionb, @luckybob, @wiretap, @twilliamc, @Jed118 - thank you all for your recomandations. I will desolder the dallas chip and will install a DIP socket, that is for sure. And then I will see what will happen with modified dallas battery and what with a new one (ordered from China, that is). Will report.

Fired up Doxbox Prince of Persia. Mapped my xbox right bumper to attack and left bumper to block in order to train for Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice..
🤣

Turbo -> wrote:

@dionb, @luckybob, @wiretap, @twilliamc, @Jed118 - thank you all for your recomandations. I will desolder the dallas chip and will install a DIP socket, that is for sure. And then I will see what will happen with modified dallas battery and what with a new one (ordered from China, that is). Will report.

Careful with the Chinese ones.. many people report getting them with a dead battery with a manufacture date of 10+ years ago. 😵

luckybob wrote:

Because some motherboards do not work with the replacement Dallas chips, that's why. I have a couple like that.

You are still correct in 95% of situations though.

I know, I looked at the pictures that were posted and responded accordingly. However, I also see many people dremel ones that have a readily available replacement. (on this forum and others)

I'd be perfectly happy paying 10€ for a new replacement chip that will last another decade or has a swappable battery. But unfortunately, on all the websites where I've found one for order, shipping to my corner of Europe would increase the cost by an additional 20€, give or take. Which takes it from a decent idea to a horrible one. Maybe some day I'll have enough stuff to order off Digikey to qualify for free shipping (for orders above 50€) and I'll include a couple DS1287 replacements just to have in reserve, but until such day, dremel and soldering iron it is for me 😀

wiretap wrote:

Turbo -> wrote:

@dionb, @luckybob, @wiretap, @twilliamc, @Jed118 - thank you all for your recomandations. I will desolder the dallas chip and will install a DIP socket, that is for sure. And then I will see what will happen with modified dallas battery and what with a new one (ordered from China, that is). Will report.

Careful with the Chinese ones.. many people report getting them with a dead battery with a manufacture date of 10+ years ago. 😵

Earlier this year I ordered a Dallas battery from a French ebay seller; I received one from 1996 😵 Naturally I didn't accept that. I don't think that you should buy an original Dallas from ebay, but rather search for a replacement version from a reputable electronics supplier.

I liked the thrill of the hack job and I like being abled to do carry out repairs with just "household objects" (it must be my Polish heritage).

Well, this wasn't a recent find, but I was passive here in the past few months so I thought I post something

I dug my old basement a couple of weeks ago and brought some of my old shit to a more comfortable area in the house.
One of the recued was this old thing I (re)built about 15 years ago (I think I was still in elementary or 1st year high school) out of literal dumpster found parts and it spent most of these years down there:

1. What I can recall about it:
2. I remember that I installed it with Windows 98
3. It supposed to have a 100MHz CPU, though I don't know what kind
4. I was unable to make the mouse work back then

So before I looked into it, it thought when I stored it, it worked so why not just turn it on?

Okay so it does boot up, but has some serious stability issues.
And as it seems it has an AMD K5, a 1MB Trident VGA card and 32MB RAM and a 3GB HDD.
Well, it seems a bit boring but salvageable. Time to look inside:

I think it is a good starting point for a decent Windows 95/DOS PC. I think maybe I should drop in a Mach 64 a Trio64V+ or a Virge instead of the Trident 8900D maybe some sound card like a SB Vibra16 should be good too and not too long ago a coworker dumped on me a network adapter. If it works I might add it to my home network.

Sadly I have more projects than time or physical space, but I'm glad this still has some life left in it.

It's rare to see a CPU in that spot on a AT motherboard !

Nothing super special today, but did manage to find and cleanup an AT keyboard. Squeaky clean inside and out. Always can use an additional AT keyboard.

^ quite unusual to have an AT connector AND windows keys!

Not really, I have several ones with the windows key