Horun wrote on 2020-09-27, 03:31:

Wow, is that motherboard white ? Can you post a good picture of the motherboard ?
Also: if you did not format that MFM drive with that controller you could have odd issues if formatted with a different but same make/model controller... just a thought.

MFM drive had a fresh low-level format, and as mentioned the issue seems to also affect the floppy. I can reproduce it with two different floppy controllers as well. I'm going to write a small test utility to exercise the floppy (far easier to debug because the controller is so simple) and see if I can find a particular bit pattern in the error bytes.

And yes - it is a pure white soldermask on this motherboard! It looks kind of like a NuXT except manufactured in the '80s. Here's a better photo of the entire board.

kdr wrote on 2020-09-27, 22:05:

Horun wrote on 2020-09-27, 03:31:

Wow, is that motherboard white ? Can you post a good picture of the motherboard ?
Also: if you did not format that MFM drive with that controller you could have odd issues if formatted with a different but same make/model controller... just a thought.

MFM drive had a fresh low-level format, and as mentioned the issue seems to also affect the floppy. I can reproduce it with two different floppy controllers as well. I'm going to write a small test utility to exercise the floppy (far easier to debug because the controller is so simple) and see if I can find a particular bit pattern in the error bytes.

And yes - it is a pure white soldermask on this motherboard! It looks kind of like a NuXT except manufactured in the '80s. Here's a better photo of the entire board.

That Is a suprisingly clean and modern look for a board made in the 80s. Well done to the folks in the factory that day!

Great find 😀

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-09-27, 22:30:

kdr wrote on 2020-09-27, 22:05:

Horun wrote on 2020-09-27, 03:31:

Wow, is that motherboard white ? Can you post a good picture of the motherboard ?
Also: if you did not format that MFM drive with that controller you could have odd issues if formatted with a different but same make/model controller... just a thought.

MFM drive had a fresh low-level format, and as mentioned the issue seems to also affect the floppy. I can reproduce it with two different floppy controllers as well. I'm going to write a small test utility to exercise the floppy (far easier to debug because the controller is so simple) and see if I can find a particular bit pattern in the error bytes.

And yes - it is a pure white soldermask on this motherboard! It looks kind of like a NuXT except manufactured in the '80s. Here's a better photo of the entire board.

That Is a suprisingly clean and modern look for a board made in the 80s. Well done to the folks in the factory that day!

Great find 😀

Yes is a great looking board !

Picked up the C64 lot from my wife's uncle today. He wouldn't accept payment. Lots of good stuff. I'll post pix when I unbox it all tomorrow. I think there are 3 Commodore 64's, 4 floppy drives, 2 cassette drives, power supplies, a whole box of various cables, joysticks, flight sticks, etc. There are between 50 and 75 floppies full of stuff he downloaded from BBS back in the day, so it should be fun to go through. He also gave me an older Dell CRT SVGA monitor, quite a few Win9x games, and a bunch of other miscellaneous items. I filled up the entire trunk of my wife's Mercedes GLA with it. 🤣

For free? Dude, you are the luckiest guy in the world. Wish I could find free computers. Haven't gotten a free one since 2015.

Yes, free. He said he was just happy to get his closet space back since it has been there since the early 90's. Now comes all the testing. I didn't have time to power any of it up while I was there, but he said it was all put away in working condition. I had my wife and 3yr old with me, and it was about a 4hr one way trip to get there. He said he goes to auctions and estate sales all the time and he would keep an eye out for any pre-2000 computer stuff for me. He said last year he was at an estate sale where 3 Commodore Amiga computers went for $10 each, but he didn't know at that time I would have wanted them. So, I feel this is just a good route to go, letting family members know what I'm looking for so I just get random hardware to sort through whenever they call me with stuff.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-09-27, 22:30:

That Is a suprisingly clean and modern look for a board made in the 80s. Well done to the folks in the factory that day!

Great find 😀

If you look carefully you can see the blown tantalum on the +12V rail [that miraculously didn't short], which is the reason I had the board out of the case.

Unpacked everything between the rain storms today. It all needs a good cleaning. Some of it was in his climate controlled workshop, but it looks like 20+ years of dust, sawdust, ladybugs, spiders, etc have deposited quite a bit of grime. Physical condition of the stuff varies, but overall it appears that it will clean up pretty nice. One of the C64 keycap stems (middle C64 key #6) got busted on the 4hr Michigan pothole filled drive home, but I already ordered a set of replacement plungers for $2. Also, I underestimated the amount of floppies he gave me.. it is at least 150 of them. 🤣

Wow that is quite the impressive haul

That's a nice collection!

Don't forget to check the floppies for mould, you might damage the drives.

I damaged an internal laptop floppy drive with mould indeed, can I recover it ?
(I'd prefer not to disassemble it)

I already tried a floppy drive cleaner kit, it did nothing at all.

wiretap wrote on 2020-09-28, 02:37:

Yes, free. He said he was just happy to get his closet space back since it has been there since the early 90's. Now comes all the testing.

Great haul! The usual suggestion is to be careful of the original power supplies, they can do damage if they fail. The internets are full of replacement options and the original's are easy to test out with a multimeter - I wouldn't trust one long term though.

Classic machines, good times.

Yea I checked the power supplies. 3 are good, one is bad. I fired up just the C64 machines.. two work fine, one just outputs a red or blue screen. Looks like I have some repairs to do. 😄 But, I'll be ordering a newly manufactured power supply to ensure the machines will recieve good power for years to come.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-09-29, 08:38:

I damaged an internal laptop floppy drive with mould indeed, can I recover it ?
(I'd prefer not to disassemble it)

I already tried a floppy drive cleaner kit, it did nothing at all.

It might be worth trying the kit in conjunction with the drive cleaning option in ImageDisk. Otherwise, I think you might not have any other choice but to disassemble it and clean manually.

Thanks !

I'll try that.

wiretap wrote on 2020-09-29, 12:22:

Yea I checked the power supplies. 3 are good, one is bad. I fired up just the C64 machines.. two work fine, one just outputs a red or blue screen. Looks like I have some repairs to do. 😄 But, I'll be ordering a newly manufactured power supply to ensure the machines will recieve good power for years to come.

Still, be careful with those old power supplies. Because of the way they are designed, one of their failure modes is a too high 5V rail.

https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Power_Supply#Po … he_Commodore_64

Owners of a C64 using an original power supply should regularly (for example, once a year) check the 5V DC function of their power supplies, as they tend to produce higher voltages as they wear out. Because the C64 almost directly uses the 5V to power its chips, higher voltages can become dangerous for the Commodore 64. If you measure the voltage of your power supply, you should interpret this as follows:

Not really retro. Yet.
Installing Vista on a Asus P5N32-E SLI Plus / QX6850 / Radeon HD 2900XT.

It draws a staggering 200 Watts from the socket when idling. Good thing to see lower readings with contemporary hardware.

After moving to a new house and finally settling in, I was reviewing my retro HW inventory and making a list of components - CPUs, Mobos, RAM sticks, GPUs anf sound cards - that I dont have use for in order to sell off, and deciding which of those to use to build complete Socket 7 systems into three old battered to-be-restored AT cases to also sell off. Long winter nights are closing in, I quite look forwards to building a few retro PCs.

It honestly surprises me how long some 5.25" floppy disks survive these days. Like, prior to this hobby, I honestly thought most woulda been dead by now 2020.

I understand it was pretty RNG, even back in the day.

I'm rearranging a bunch of stuff and dug out my 386SX-20 based system. It's some no name OPTi based motherboard with an Intel i386SX-20 and an IIT 3C87X FPU, 4 megs of ram, a no name IO controller, a Trident TVGA9000C with 512kb and a Pro Audio Spectrum 16 (650-0060-53).

I love the case. I'm using one of those Startech front loading CF/IDE trays. It matches well with the other black elements on the case. The left digit on the turbo display has a doggy segment (I can live with it, adds to the charm).

My favorite is the case badge that simply says "Computer". 😀