...

Atari is a great console and a big part of my childhood. However, this advert was incredibly stupid...

Meanwhile: I just did a new Windows 2000 VM. On a fresh vanilla install, I can get to my iPod Nano 1st gen with the latest supported iTunes (7.3.2).
On an install with all the updates and BWC kernel extender, it can't even see the iPod no matter which iTunes version I install. DAFUQ?

I'm confused...

EDIT: I found the culprit. Well, more or less. Something from the official Windows Update or BWC updates broke the USB for iPod Nano. Now comes the hard part, find which package caused it...

EDIT 2: I found the real culprit. It's the Windows 2000 Unofficial Service Pack 5.1 by Gurgelmeyer. Something in it is breaking the iPod connection to the computer/iTunes. When I roll back to an older snapshot (I'm using a VM) without this service pack, it works.

CarlHopkinsUK wrote:

Discovered the ide controller is kaput on the IBM Aptiva I picked up, given the CD drive was blown too I expect something has happened here...

Well at least I have a nice mATX case for a future project. 😐

Currently spinning up a custom WinXP installer to get XP on my HP 4320s Probook daily driver alongside Linux. Always find it useful to have a working machine with XP on it.

I thought the same with a similar system, a SIS-chipset based Socket 7 computer. The IDE controller just wouldn't pick anything up - it turned out one of the IDE cables, the one to the CD drive specifically, was in backwards and that stopped both IDE channels from working, hopefully yours might be a similar issue? 😁

bandicoot67 wrote:

...

bfcastello wrote:

Atari is a great console and a big part of my childhood. However, this advert was incredibly stupid...

I counter that with...

https://kotaku.com/sorry-that-crazy-stevie-wo … fake-1570104210

Thermalwrong wrote:

CarlHopkinsUK wrote:

Discovered the ide controller is kaput on the IBM Aptiva I picked up, given the CD drive was blown too I expect something has happened here...

Well at least I have a nice mATX case for a future project. 😐

Currently spinning up a custom WinXP installer to get XP on my HP 4320s Probook daily driver alongside Linux. Always find it useful to have a working machine with XP on it.

I thought the same with a similar system, a SIS-chipset based Socket 7 computer. The IDE controller just wouldn't pick anything up - it turned out one of the IDE cables, the one to the CD drive specifically, was in backwards and that stopped both IDE channels from working, hopefully yours might be a similar issue? 😁

Alas i wish it was...

No unfortunately it picks drives up fine, and posts as normal. However in about 8 out of 10 boot attempts it will just hang post boot (no matter what drive or device i use).

When it does boot, it will usually hang once you start doing any amount of I/O. Best i have managed is about 50% of the way through a MS-DOS 6.22 install before it just hung.

Odd thing is, system is still responsive (i.e doesnt hang/lockup), its just as if the IDE controller gives up on sending any I/O...

Tried multiple drives, HDDS, CF's, different RAM, different CPU, different PSU changed all the cables, reseated the BIOS, reflashed the BIOS... only thing i haven't changed is the board itself. Symptons are the same regardless.

I even under clocked the K6-2 to 200mhz and dropped the bus the 66mhz and even that made no difference!

liqmat wrote:

I counter that with... […]
Show full quote

bandicoot67 wrote:

...

bfcastello wrote:

Atari is a great console and a big part of my childhood. However, this advert was incredibly stupid...

I counter that with...

https://kotaku.com/sorry-that-crazy-stevie-wo … fake-1570104210

Excellent counter strike! I almost believed it was for real... sorry, but in today's world I see some bizarre things... Thanks god the poster is fake hahahaha

I'm now reworking my Win 2000 VM from scratch. This time I will not install the USP 5.1 as it appears to have broken how Windows sees the iPod Nano. So far, after each update, I plug the iPod, and when it gets recognized I save a snapshot before proceeding to the next update. This way I can find which one broke it, in case it wasn't the USP 5.1... but so far most probably it was.

Edit 1: I'm 100% sure now that the USP 5.1 has USB drivers that screwed up the iPod/iTunes "conversation". I decided to make a backup of the existing USB drivers before USP 5.1 install. After installing it, I replaced it with the backup USB drivers. Reboot. Reinstall iTunes. And voila, iTunes is now seeing the iPod Nano, with USP 5.1 installed. Next step is to test install of BWC kernel extender to allow me to use newer browsers. I am really close to what I wanted to build since months ago when I tried to make a replica of what was like my old PC back in late 90's/early 2000's using Windows 98SE before I moved to Windows 2000 for these new attempts. I will eventually try again with Windows 98SE later, but Windows 2000 is definitely rock solid so far.

I actually never owned an iPod Nano back in that day, but my dad did, since it is his iPod Nano - He was probably using Windows XP instead. I don't like the XP cartoony look, hence why I am trying to use older versions.

bfcastello wrote:

Atari is a great console and a big part of my childhood. However, this advert was incredibly stupid...

By today's standards, then yes.... However that is taking the add out of the context. The add is in fact quite genious.

You must remember, that Stevie Wonder, was highly successful in the 1970's. The add is from 1981, so it it clearly playing off his immense, huge and grand status as a pop song writer and performer. He was so big back then, that even the fact that he is blind, was kind of his big trade mark. Looking at all this, the add makes perfect sense, to play off the blindness factor.

And yes. Atari 2600 is the king of 2'nd generation consoles.

brostenen wrote:

The add is from 1981, so it it clearly playing off his immense, huge and grand status as a pop song writer and performer.

No, it's not. That ad is a fake and never existed... And it would have been quite insulting even back then, had it been real.

CarlHopkinsUK wrote:

Alas i wish it was... […]
Show full quote

Thermalwrong wrote:

CarlHopkinsUK wrote:

Discovered the ide controller is kaput on the IBM Aptiva I picked up, given the CD drive was blown too I expect something has happened here...

Well at least I have a nice mATX case for a future project. 😐

Currently spinning up a custom WinXP installer to get XP on my HP 4320s Probook daily driver alongside Linux. Always find it useful to have a working machine with XP on it.

I thought the same with a similar system, a SIS-chipset based Socket 7 computer. The IDE controller just wouldn't pick anything up - it turned out one of the IDE cables, the one to the CD drive specifically, was in backwards and that stopped both IDE channels from working, hopefully yours might be a similar issue? 😁

Alas i wish it was...

No unfortunately it picks drives up fine, and posts as normal. However in about 8 out of 10 boot attempts it will just hang post boot (no matter what drive or device i use).

When it does boot, it will usually hang once you start doing any amount of I/O. Best i have managed is about 50% of the way through a MS-DOS 6.22 install before it just hung.

Odd thing is, system is still responsive (i.e doesnt hang/lockup), its just as if the IDE controller gives up on sending any I/O...

Tried multiple drives, HDDS, CF's, different RAM, different CPU, different PSU changed all the cables, reseated the BIOS, reflashed the BIOS... only thing i haven't changed is the board itself. Symptons are the same regardless.

I even under clocked the K6-2 to 200mhz and dropped the bus the 66mhz and even that made no difference!

Does your board have a free pci slot? You can always add a Promise or some such IDE card and boot from that.

Ok, well...while we are on the funny old school ads...here is some more until i can find my "couldn't have got away with that Neo Geo ad in 2019" folder. 😀

is that Don Francisco!?

brostenen wrote:

By today's standards, then yes.... However that is taking the add out of the context. The add is in fact quite genious. […]
Show full quote

bfcastello wrote:

Atari is a great console and a big part of my childhood. However, this advert was incredibly stupid...

By today's standards, then yes.... However that is taking the add out of the context. The add is in fact quite genious.

You must remember, that Stevie Wonder, was highly successful in the 1970's. The add is from 1981, so it it clearly playing off his immense, huge and grand status as a pop song writer and performer. He was so big back then, that even the fact that he is blind, was kind of his big trade mark. Looking at all this, the add makes perfect sense, to play off the blindness factor.

And yes. Atari 2600 is the king of 2'nd generation consoles.

unrelated but 2 years ago in my family's fantasy football (NFL) league... I chose Amari Cooper, WR for the Oakland Raiders at the time. Named my team Amari 2600. Won the league.

I had a 'MHz display' with one segment not working (the middle horizontal one in the left digit so a commonly used one). I finally had enough to order at Mouser with free shipping, so the first thing I did when that arrived was to solder in the new display:

Then I tried my new 386 motherboard:

But the board would not power up at all. No spinning PSU fan and POST card voltage LED for 5V (or was it the 12V one? I don't remember) was the only thing to light up. The culprit was found very quickly. Desoldered it and now the board seems to work just fine. Need to find a replacement for it, and the > 20 other ones on the board. Are eBay/AliExpress tantalums reliable?

The board has a separate BIOS setup for some chipset setting and tweaks, will need to tinker with it to find the best results. The board has cache (64K I think).

Cyrix200+ wrote:

I had a 'MHz display' with one segment not working (the middle horizontal one in the left digit so a commonly used one). I finally had enough to order at Mouser with free shipping, so the first thing I did when that arrived was to solder in the new display:

But the board would not power up at all. No spinning PSU fan and POST card voltage LED for 5V (or was it the 12V one? I don't remember) was the only thing to light up. The culprit was found very quickly. Desoldered it and now the board seems to work just fine. Need to find a replacement for it, and the > 20 other ones on the board. Are eBay/AliExpress tantalums reliable?

Exciting 😀 Surely some basic low ESR capacitors should be a suitable replacement? Also in my experience and what I've seen so far, it's only the ones around the PSU that appear to have trouble usually, so why not wait til the next one goes pop? At least they're easy to spot 😁

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Back in March (which for some odd reason I had thought was March 2018, but no, thankfully it was March 2019) I got hold of this oddball SAA1099 clone card that a good PCB designer in Russia (pcbsale-ru) put together.

I had been afraid to run it because there was so little info and I know little about electronics and could find little about putting this together.

A few weeks ago I found This Thread by "Tronix", the guy that originally put together the SAA1099 reproduction board. His most recent posts he bought the same board and worked out that fitting a small voltage regulator would clean up the output significantly.
I fitted that to my card this evening and finally had a go with it. It sounds great! 😁
Worked first time, although I did cheat a little bit because I also put together the Snark Barker, so I have already had some experience with the GameBlaster-esque soundcards, this sounds a bit better though.

Just finished recreating my Windows 2000 Professional Virtual Machine with all my whistles and bells. Two browsers (New Moon and SeaMonkey) skinned to look like Netscape (4 and 9). mIRC installed, iTunes with a library for my iPod Nano 1st gen. WinAmp works and gets the same library. Games? FIFA 98 RTWC, NFS 2, Flight Simulator 98, Grand Prix 4 with 3 mods (1994, 1997 and 1998), Full Throttle and Indiana Jones & The Fate Of Atlantis. I'm well served for my time travel to the late 90's/early 2000's. I just wish any ICQ version were still working (but we can use the web version anyway). MSN and Orkut are both defunct, so...

I think I might need to install some version of MS Office on it. Dunno which version... It's supposed to be a vanilla Windows 2k install, except it has BlackWingCat's files just for the two browsers.

EDIT: And oh, I posted it using SeaMonkey on my Win 2k VM.

Swapped out white drives for black in my 8088.. looks wayyy better, more period correct. I'm using the hot swap caddy for a CF card --> XT-IDE. Makes loading stuff on it far easier with front access to the case to swap in/out the card.

Old:

New:

It definitely looks better, wiretap. Good job!

Thanks! 😀

Thermalwrong wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

<snip> Are eBay/AliExpress tantalums reliable?

Exciting 😀 Surely some basic low ESR capacitors should be a suitable replacement? Also in my experience and what I've seen so far, it's only the ones around the PSU that appear to have trouble usually, so why not wait til the next one goes pop? At least they're easy to spot 😁
<snip>

I will at least replace the ones near the power connector, for the rest I will probably wait and see. If they short it's not always visible.

Not sure if they can be replaced by other types of capacitors. Googling it gives me many opinions on it but I lack the knowledge to judge those opinions.

The board runs quite well with a 33MHz Am386. SIMM placement is weird but managable, they are in between the ISA slots. Toggling the Turbo seems to slow it down to 8MHz (according to CheckIt). That's interestingly slow and might be useful.