http://www.win3x.org/uh19/motherboard/show/2529

Yep that looks like the right board.

I doubt you can figure out the max hdd capacity for it that way though, this is mostly a software problem (bios) and not a hardware level (unless you want to go above 128GB)

The wallpaper now cycles each time Windows starts. Such a meaningful life I lead.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2020-10-08, 02:59:

Such a meaningful life I lead.

Don't ever change, Cloudschatze! I like your style 😁

And... the full-color/resolution version of the active Windows wallpaper is now displayed in-place when launching an application that leverages the Tandy graphics chipset.

Why, I'm practically a shoo-in for the "Worlds Biggest Dork" award!

How do you cycle through the wallpapers ?

What's the best, or most reliable, brand for 486 PSUs? Looking around for potential parts, and not sure which one to go with.

Or should I go with a modern one, and a converter cable? If so, which one?

That's a very cool Windows 3.11. Damn !

Deksor wrote on 2020-10-08, 06:18:

How do you cycle through the wallpapers ?

There are undoubtedly more elegant ways of doing this, but it works, and completes in a fraction of a second:

WIN.BAT

1@ECHO OFF
2CD C:\WINDOWS
3REN 1.BMP T.BMP
4REN 2.BMP 1.BMP
5REN 3.BMP 2.BMP
6REN 4.BMP 3.BMP
7REN T.BMP 4.BMP
8WIN.COM

Where the WIN.INI file specifies the wallpaper name of "1.BMP" (with a 15-pixel X-axis offset from 0, concerning the position).

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-10-08, 06:37:

That's a very cool Windows 3.11. Damn !

I wish! This system is (within reason) incapable of running Windows 3.11; I'm limited to 30-year-old Windows 3.0 running in real-mode.

Been battling another Socket 370 PC with a VIA chipset, running Windows 2000. Had stability issues in games which I fixed with some BIOS tweaking and latency issues which I've yet to resolve but have an idea about. Also the irritating HDD stuck in PIO mode issue which requires the removal of the IDE controller and reboot to fix. Simply ticking the DMA box on/off and rebooting each time isn't enough.

I really really hate VIA!

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-08, 10:16:

Been battling another Socket 370 PC with a VIA chipset, running Windows 2000. Had stability issues in games which I fixed with some BIOS tweaking and latency issues which I've yet to resolve but have an idea about. Also the irritating HDD stuck in PIO mode issue which requires the removal of the IDE controller and reboot to fix. Simply ticking the DMA box on/off and rebooting each time isn't enough.

I really really hate VIA!

Have a similar issue with PLE133T, it hard locks up at boot with most OSes (modernish linux, Win2K, etc.) and exhibits the same behaviour with Win9x after Via 4in1 installed when CF-IDE adapter is set to UDMA; it only works when that IDE device is set to PIO mode. It works fine with my main 80GB HDD (set to 32GB via jumpers, unfortunately) though.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2020-10-08, 08:09:

There are undoubtedly more elegant ways of doing this, but it works, and completes in a fraction of a second: […]
Show full quote

Deksor wrote on 2020-10-08, 06:18:

How do you cycle through the wallpapers ?

There are undoubtedly more elegant ways of doing this, but it works, and completes in a fraction of a second:

WIN.BAT

Copy code to clipboard

1@ECHO OFF
2CD C:\WINDOWS
3REN 1.BMP T.BMP
4REN 2.BMP 1.BMP
5REN 3.BMP 2.BMP
6REN 4.BMP 3.BMP
7REN T.BMP 4.BMP
8WIN.COM

Where the WIN.INI file specifies the wallpaper name of "1.BMP" (with a 15-pixel X-axis offset from 0, concerning the position).

xcomcmdr wrote on 2020-10-08, 06:37:

That's a very cool Windows 3.11. Damn !

I wish! This system is (within reason) incapable of running Windows 3.11; I'm limited to 30-year-old Windows 3.0 running in real-mode.

Wow that's quite clever actually ^^
I had thought of this before but instead I was thinking of making a C program that would randomly pick images from a given directory and pick one randomly at boot

In the process of setting up shelfes for my vintage stuff. Not done yet....

appiah4 wrote on 2020-10-08, 10:45:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-08, 10:16:

Been battling another Socket 370 PC with a VIA chipset, running Windows 2000. Had stability issues in games which I fixed with some BIOS tweaking and latency issues which I've yet to resolve but have an idea about. Also the irritating HDD stuck in PIO mode issue which requires the removal of the IDE controller and reboot to fix. Simply ticking the DMA box on/off and rebooting each time isn't enough.

I really really hate VIA!

Have a similar issue with PLE133T, it hard locks up at boot with most OSes (modernish linux, Win2K, etc.) and exhibits the same behaviour with Win9x after Via 4in1 installed when CF-IDE adapter is set to UDMA; it only works when that IDE device is set to PIO mode. It works fine with my main 80GB HDD (set to 32GB via jumpers, unfortunately) though.

This is a PLE133 chipset too, not sure which variant. Thankfully I haven't had any lockups with DMA enabled, it just seems to want to go back to PIO whenever it feels like it. It may be the onboard IDE doesn't completely like the SATA-IDE adapters I've been using, though I have had it running successfully with 2000 displaying Ultra DMA Mode.

Received mail from Belgium, which means Serdaco stuff 😀

The Chill MIDI interface is back in stock, so snapped one up. After half an hour soldering, I had this:

Time to externalise my Trust Korg Super Sound module and hook it up to my Roland A-880 😀

Of course I underestimated the size of the board so will have to hack the case for the Chill, but that kind of thing keeps life interesting.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-08, 14:01:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-10-08, 10:45:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-08, 10:16:

Been battling another Socket 370 PC with a VIA chipset, running Windows 2000. Had stability issues in games which I fixed with some BIOS tweaking and latency issues which I've yet to resolve but have an idea about. Also the irritating HDD stuck in PIO mode issue which requires the removal of the IDE controller and reboot to fix. Simply ticking the DMA box on/off and rebooting each time isn't enough.

I really really hate VIA!

Have a similar issue with PLE133T, it hard locks up at boot with most OSes (modernish linux, Win2K, etc.) and exhibits the same behaviour with Win9x after Via 4in1 installed when CF-IDE adapter is set to UDMA; it only works when that IDE device is set to PIO mode. It works fine with my main 80GB HDD (set to 32GB via jumpers, unfortunately) though.

This is a PLE133 chipset too, not sure which variant. Thankfully I haven't had any lockups with DMA enabled, it just seems to want to go back to PIO whenever it feels like it. It may be the onboard IDE doesn't completely like the SATA-IDE adapters I've been using, though I have had it running successfully with 2000 displaying Ultra DMA Mode.

Hmm, I guess I dodged a bullet setting up the cheapy tualatin PLE133T board with a hard drive. I'll have to try it out with a UDMA CF card at some point.

A couple of weeks back I got this untested VLB Cirrus Logic card and finally made time for it today since I've got my big VLB 486 up on the bench.
It didn't work, no video display. 🙁
Then I looked closer, one of the blue capacitors might actually be a tantalum, and it looks crushed. When I removed that it actually looked burned. I put a cheapy electrolytic in its place but it still didn't boot 😒

But wait, why doesn't this one have a clock crystal? My big VLB 486 has a taller CL-GD5428 card in it so I compared them and looked at some pictures online. They all have the 14.318mhz clock crystal, I guess that datasheet was pretty specific since the designs of other similar cards are all the same.
I borrowed the crystal from my working card and it's working!

Another 14.318mhz crystal (well, 30 of them) is on its way from China 😀

------
I've also got to start making some progress on a 3d printable AT case again, I've got too many computers with no suitable case. I've got lots of components measured up ready to fit together, I just need to figure out how it would all fit together and make it printable on my i3

Copying all the files from 81Mb Caviar 280, which was installed in a 286 PC to 1GB SD card. I call this preserving digital history.

Decided to begin my planned 2003 gaming builds. Dug out the first candidate PC, already built and left how it was since the PC was last used about 10 years ago, minus a few "borrowed" parts. Opened it up and immediately spotted 4 bulging & leaking capacitors. Another board for the "to-do" recapping pile, bloody Gigabyte! Board was a Gigabyte GA-7N400 L, Socket A, nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset with Athlon XP 3200+.

Luckily I had a spare motherboard that looks fine and should suffice (except for having only 3 ram slots vs the 4 on the Gigabyte board) - MSI K7N2, same chipset and same CPU (I had 2 of them in my collection).

Making a backup of my Amiga 2000 SCSI hard drive using my dual Pentium III machine. Just installed an Adaptec AHA-2930CU and a SCSI hot swap bay. Using Winimage 8.1 on Windows XP.

Picked up two of these nice ASUS Socket 7 boards this weekend, both with AMD K6-200Mhz CPUs, one with 64MB (pictured) and the other with 128MB:

This board has two power connectors, one AT and one ATX! So I won't have to consume a valuable AT PSU if I build a system with this board. (And it has three ISA slots, which is very generous when compared to my current Super Socket 7 board's one lone ISA slot, which is just pathetic.)

Includes onboard VGA, which is fine by me since I'm mainly interested in using this one for Pentium-era DOS gaming.

After removal of the tonnes of accumulated dust, cleaning out the heatsink, and applying new thermal paste it is time to boot memtest86:

Strangely, this board is unable to boot from my bootable memtest86 CD-R. The BIOS claims to support booting from CD, hmm. I've tried numerous CD-ROM drives that are known to work fine in other systems, but no go. So far that's the only issue -- what a haul!

kdr wrote on 2020-10-11, 03:51:

Picked up two of these nice ASUS Socket 7 boards this weekend, both with AMD K6-200Mhz CPUs, one with 64MB (pictured) and the other with 128MB:
After removal of the tonnes of accumulated dust, cleaning out the heatsink, and applying new thermal paste it is time to boot memtest86:
Strangely, this board is unable to boot from my bootable memtest86 CD-R. The BIOS claims to support booting from CD, hmm. I've tried numerous CD-ROM drives that are known to work fine in other systems, but no go. So far that's the only issue -- what a haul!

Nice set of mobo's.
I never run Memtest on cd or usb thumb drive on anything older than soc775... too many quirks. Some versions of Memtest are very hardware specific (ver 4.0 will run on 486 but v4.3 will not). You should use a 1.4Mb 3.5" floppy disk and use the appropriate version for the older hardware you are testing. It is a Pentium board, cannot expect it to work like some soc 115x board 😀