Apart from the one for the Pentium Pro, these trays are barely larger than the CPUs they hold. And you can stack them. I don't see how your idea would save more space, especially considering the different sizes of the CPUs. Also, one case for every single CPU would be overkill.

Here's a picture of the current stack with a floppy disk as size reference. In there are 46 CPUs.

And yes, that stack of CPUs is insanely heavy already.

Fancy.

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-06, 21:05:

Here's a picture of the current stack with a floppy disk as size reference. In there are 46 CPUs.

And yes, that stack of CPUs is insanely heavy already.

very nice sir. maybe start a little side business there?

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-06, 20:52:

Apart from the one for the Pentium Pro, these trays are barely larger than the CPUs they hold. And you can stack them. I don't see how your idea would save more space, especially considering the different sizes of the CPUs. Also, one case for every single CPU would be overkill.

Yeah, you’re right. I forgot about different sizes.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-01-06, 18:15:

Gotta love using multimeters on power supplies before using them.

Utterly essential when working with Commodore 64s. Nothing more fun than blowing out proprietary chips because the official power supplies weren't engineered by somebody with an IQ above room temperature. "What say we make a stepdown transformer that uses a terrible voltage diver, then encase it all in resin so it cooks itself to death? And for the icing on this cake, let us have it fail dangerous, so that it will burn up the computer by feeding high voltage to everything. Also, my rum has run out. Be a dear and refill it for me."

^^ and with the C64 bricks, even if you test one 'good' once, it doesn't mean it's still good the next time you turn the machine on. I snip the DIN connectors off those things (to give to a friend who builds new ones) when I come across them, TBH.

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-06, 21:05:

Here's a picture of the current stack with a floppy disk as size reference. In there are 46 CPUs.

And yes, that stack of CPUs is insanely heavy already.

That is a work of utter practical beauty 😀

Received this today -

I opened it up to check the state inside and all looked well, so I reassembled it, turned it on and - nothing, just a white screen. 🙁

So I opened it up again and pressed down firmly on the socketed ULA chip and heard it click. Reseated the keyboard ribbon and powered it up again -

IT LIVES! 😀

The ULA must have gotten dislodged from it's socket. I'm actually surprised that was such an easy fix!

Now I'm off to start playing some games on it...

liqmat wrote on 2020-01-06, 21:30:

maybe start a little side business there?

Was looking into this when I started with 3d printing years ago. Conclusion: makes no sense unless you have an army of 3d printers and offer doing custom designs as well.

My second DMG-01 system's display decided to act up again (vertical line of death) and almost got it to fully work again... until it was reassembly time, then the vertical line issue came back again. Attempted to repair it some more, but it won't do anything. Planning on doing some more work on it or get replacement assemblies and fix the 1 I got to work and replace the other 3 will be rebuilt with new shells and buttons, and possibly do a backlight mod on all of them, but I'm not good at removing polarizer films on anything.

Fortunately, my PLAY IT LOUD! red edition still works without issues, except I need a second DMG-01 to trade Pokémon (Red-Silver).

bfcastello wrote on 2020-01-06, 20:43:

Or this one if you're fancy to design a smaller one: https://getprostorage.com/wp-content/uploads/ … age-Case-05.jpg

I tend to reuse the shipping boxes from resellers, usually they send the complete box if you buy a lager number of disks. You can also check your neighbouring computer store, many tend to dispose for recycling. These boxe's are very handy to store HDD "collections":

I'm doing more sophisticated trays now fitted to the remaining CPUs in my collection. This one holds 4 68030 and up to 5 accompanying FPUs, 68881/2 either PLCC or PGA.

Some further retro activity for me, aside from playing lots of games on my new Acorn Electron, I also decided to try out a little mod on it.

The Composite output is black & white by default and guides online show it is very easy to make it colour by bridging 2 solder joints on the motherboard.

Now I didn't want to get out the soldering iron and risk damaging this thing with my crap soldering skills, so I decided to try my conductive ink pen instead.

I got to work with the pen and rubbed it across the 2 solder joints. I was sceptical, but surprisingly it worked well and I now have a colour composite output. As a bonus, it's easily reversible in the future.

Xicor wrote on 2020-01-07, 18:22:

I tend to reuse the shipping boxes from resellers, usually they send the complete box if you buy a lager number of disks. You can also check your neighbouring computer store, many tend to dispose for recycling. These boxe's are very handy to store HDD "collections":

This is an excellent one! Me and my dad really need to get together to find ways to clean and tidy up our stuff at home.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-01-07, 18:42:

Some further retro activity for me, aside from playing lots of games on my new Acorn Electron, I also decided to try out a littl […]
Show full quote

Some further retro activity for me, aside from playing lots of games on my new Acorn Electron, I also decided to try out a little mod on it.

The Composite output is black & white by default and guides online show it is very easy to make it colour by bridging 2 solder joints on the motherboard.

Now I didn't want to get out the soldering iron and risk damaging this thing with my crap soldering skills, so I decided to try my conductive ink pen instead.

I got to work with the pen and rubbed it across the 2 solder joints. I was sceptical, but surprisingly it worked well and I now have a colour composite output. As a bonus, it's easily reversible in the future.

Cool! You were really creative here, reminded me of MacGyver. 😜

PTherapist wrote on 2020-01-07, 18:42:

Now I didn't want to get out the soldering iron and risk damaging this thing with my crap soldering skills, so I decided to try my conductive ink pen instead.

A warning: this is at best a temporary solution. I guarantee you this will fail at some point. Might work for now, but eventually you will need to actually solder it.

I drew a new label for my model M keyboard. The original was a bit rough, so I thought it will look better with new one. I still need to visit paper shop to buy some white printable sticker paper. I only had transparents at hand.

I know the font is not perfect, but close enough in my books 😀

That's amazing. I need new labels for my Original Xbox systems and feet with holes in them so that I can take the screws out without removing the feet or moving the labels off.

Last weekend I replaced a DIN keyboard connector on a Tyan S1590 baby-AT socket-7 board. I noticed it would be possible to install a pair of PS/2 connectors for mouse+kb, but doing so would require switching to an ATX case. That's a problem for this board because the layout puts the AGP slot too high to use with ATX cases. Therefore I stuck with the AT style DIN connector, even though I don't own a single DIN keyboard.

Also replaced the button switches on 2 mice. The first, a Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical, was easy. I like how it feels with 130gf switches (heavier than stock), but it was mistake to use one on the middle button. It makes the wheel more prone to roll slightly when I click it.
The second mouse, a Logitech G500, was annoying to work on. On that mouse I ended up with a 150gf button on the left and a 75gf on the right because I didn't have two of the 150gf switches. I also discovered that the middle button has completely collapsed and it's a different type that I don't have a replacement for. For a while I thought I was putting it together wrong, but no, the button is just shot. I don't remember that happening before I opened it, but whatever. So I will definitely get to reopen the G500 and replace switches again. Yay?

Also noticed how whack the tracking speed is on my G500 when compared to the Microsoft. As far as I'm concerned the Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical is the vanilla standard of mice. Whenever I get a chance to run the G500's config app on my WinXP machine I need to reflash it's speed settings. I want one of the speeds to match the Microsoft.

derSammler wrote on 2020-01-07, 18:41:

I'm doing more sophisticated trays now fitted to the remaining CPUs in my collection. This one holds 4 68030 and up to 5 accompanying FPUs, 68881/2 either PLCC or PGA.

I will get some Socket 7/370 and Socket 4 trays printed for myself this week, methinks.. You've done a fantastic job with these, thank you very much.

I just can't decide on the color.

Green for AMD, Blue for Intel maybe? How about Cyrix, did they even have a brand color?