There was apparently a huge tech push in Sweden in 1985, with government urging. A number of startup companies, a big institute for technology, etc.
Maybe it is some kind of over-engineered sound card.Or maybe the equivalent of a modern FPGA prototype for later discrete logic. Use the 68k to simulate a chip.
(sigh) I really should get an EPROM programmer if I aspire to this level of nerd (I was always a geek, not a nerd). It would be a good idea to get a backup anyway.
No, that would be Danish or Norwegian - the Swedes are much too 'sophisticated' to put a slash through their 'oe' 😉
Haven't had time to test all my new bits this evening, but have started work on my IBM PC330. It was in rather non-original state, with a Creative CT3670 SB32 and a CD620E 6x CDRom drive with huge Creative logo on the front. Also it only had 1MB video memory for the onboard S3 Trio64, which lead to a rather sad low res and/or colour desktop. The CPU had been upgraded to a P133, but it was jumpered for 100MHz.
Originally (if it had a CDRom drive at all...) it would have had a very understated TEAC OEM drive. Of course I don't have the exact drive, but I do have a NEC that looks similar enough from a distance. At 30x it's far from the original speed, but I can live with that. For sound, I have an original MWave card. Not exactly better than the SB32, but much more authentic Big Blue. I like being able to connect all my systems to a network, and had an IBM-branded Intel 10/100 adapter which was apparently offered as an option on this model, so stuck that in too. Then I added 2x 512kB of video memory, which immediately worked as hoped. Finally (for tonight) I took a good look at the CPU. According to official docs the only relevant settings were switches 7 and 8 which determined FSB. Switch 6 was "reserved", so I gave it a try: yep, multiplier increased from 1.5x to 2x, so it's now running at 133MHz. Of course, 75MHz would be the most authentic, but as with the CD, if it's just a matter of speed rather than a qualitative difference, give me those extra MHz, both in FSB and CPU. Oh, and the CR-2032 was dead; replaced that.
I know the MWave works (tested it on Win98SE last month), but the installed Win95 isn't detecting it. Also the HDD is a bit too small - 1.2GB - for my plans. I want to make this a dualboot Windows 9x (not quite decided on 95 OSR 3 vs 98SE yet) + OS/2 Warp 4 system. So the to-do list is now replace the HDD with something bigger. The original is a WD, and I have a similar-looking 6.4GB WD Caviar. Then time to install the OSs.
I got excited by my new LCD panel for my Compaq Armada LCD screen, and what I got (despite seller assurances of it being what I measured) was too big.
Behold:
Doesn't quite fit:
Pinouts are the same, but there is no way I would shoehorn this into the bezel without monumental alterations to the hinges and bracketry. This is the second LCD I bought from eBay to fit this machine. At this point, I will just carry around a 15 inch external LCD and set it atop the fully folded monitor and do my portable retro gaming at the cottage that way.
Damn man, at this point, all the profit I made off selling my P-75 Satellite has gone into dud LCD panels.
FFS man, I even asked the seller to measure it diagonally. He said 14.1.
My ThinkPad R40 needed a new display as I accidentally put too much screen cleaner on the display and it caused the screen to be brighter in some spots. Found a used display assembly on eBay (fortunately, the same size since I went by the model number (2682)) 2 years ago and I still have the old display.
My suggestion is to look up the exact model number, as well as sub-model number for the display. Sorry about that, man.
Excited that SATA-to-IDE adaptor arrived. Excited that small SSD arrived. Connected to PC. Beeps. Noises. Lockup before and at post. Migraine. Regrets.
My ThinkPad R40 needed a new display as I accidentally put too much screen cleaner on the display and it caused the screen to be brighter in some spots. Found a used display assembly on eBay (fortunately, the same size since I went by the model number (2682)) 2 years ago and I still have the old display.
My suggestion is to look up the exact model number, as well as sub-model number for the display. Sorry about that, man.
Understandable. My screen was a Samsung, whereas the replacement was Hitachi. Same ballast connector, and same interface cable (I hooked it up, it works) but FFS man, if I ask you to measure the screen, F88king measure it, man!
The "vox" bit combined with the 3.5mm (?) jacks and rheostat sounds like it was some kind of voice/audio system, but that hardware... this is almost a whole Mac / Atari ST on an ISA card - computationally more powerful than the XT-class machine it would have been inserted into. As intrigued as you are.
I suspect it to be one of the competitors to the IBM VCA or SpeechViewer cards mentioned in the comments on this post.
The "vox" bit combined with the 3.5mm (?) jacks and rheostat sounds like it was some kind of voice/audio system, but that hardware... this is almost a whole Mac / Atari ST on an ISA card - computationally more powerful than the XT-class machine it would have been inserted into. As intrigued as you are.
I suspect it to be one of the competitors to the IBM VCA or SpeechViewer cards mentioned in the comments on this post.
That is an interesting link. The SpeechViewer was developed in France. NEC made a "competitor." The time frame seems correct.
It's also interesting because of something else (Oh did I mention the Mystery Board was not alone?) buried in the same pile of debris (I wore nitrile gloves, it was a little "crime scene"), but actually in an odd black plastic bag...
The backplate was corroded but the board looks okay. No, it's not a modem, it's a Dialectron Smart Answering Machine, Revision 1, from about 1985/86. I found ads and reviews from that time period but I doubt I will find software for it. Apparently it was designed to use your computer to manage answering, calling, messaging, call screening, and... robocalls? Sort of a computerized call center.
I don't know for sure these were used in the same machine, but could this have been a "phone" for the DSP board, which could have been a speech synthesizer? Well, there's no sound input on the SAM, though there's a solder point (apparently never used) for a jack between the phone jacks. There are TH resistors soldered to the back of the board, I don't know if that's normal for this model.
You may have noticed something behind that board, it was the one apparently unmolested by nature in a traditional antistatic bag:
I mistook it for a serial card at first, especially with the dip switches and toggle switch on the back... but that DB9 is for video. If you look closely at the label, it says copyright 1986 Hewlett-Packard, and 1985 and 86 by... Video 7. The part number lookup from HP (bless 'em) shows a Video 7 Vega EGA card from 1986.
Again, it might have nothing to do with the other cards, but they're all from the same vintage, except maybe the last, a US Robotics modem that is filthy and I haven't fully cleaned it yet. I'm not sure what the extent of the damage is there, but it got wet and dirty while out in the brush.
The limited backstory I had is that someone got a "box of old computer stuff" from someone else and "recycled" it, this was what fell out of the box, unnoticed, to be found later. That was all second-hand, it could have been weeks ago.
I recall an IRC friend explaining that it's not even worth the work to refine it cause you only get a few dollars worth of gold more than what you end up paying for and it's a time consuming process.
Cleaned a SiS 85C460 board that has a 486DX-50 that had corrosion from a leaking battery. Damage isn't that much (mainly a few surrounding parts like a few ISA pins) but it is a bit noticeable.
Sadly I don't have the few remaining important parts (GPU and PSU), or else I'd have tested it straight away. I plan to actually build a machine with it in the future, as it would also be a good reason to use the 850MB Seagate ST3850A HDD I have 😀
"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB
books, study, old hardware schematics. Becouse the hardware hacking is very addictive. Especially research and development.
It has been several weeks by now this way -- the first thing I do after I wake up is the soundcard development -- ISA bus expansion card development entire week for now and meanwhile analyzing (or dissecting) the Soundblaster 16 programming specifics, "ISA bus architecture" "Undocumented PC" , and other advanced peripherals books.
However while being in this project, the whole new project idea got.
And meanwhile being with that also got the attention to the oldfashioned floppy disc controller, after reading all specifications had a thought "why not the new alternative floppy instead?" and with a way high transfer speeds (10MB/s ?) with a focus for simple to build? Second thought -- the new removable media as a bootable scsi peripheral which can be used as new removable drive? Just after remembering the "SCSI bus and IDE interface" book. Remembering that the SCSI-PCMCIA adapter with a COmpact Flash card medium crashes and has errors, slow (400kB/s).
*
Then taking time out to run outside just to keep the blood circulation running better.
* trying a one local here to contaminate with that electronics bacteria, so he could begin to learn electronics
$20 says it is the adapter. I had a discussion about this on another forum. Get a decently branded one.
I replied there too, 🤣. 😀 I bought a Startech one, which I thought was good enough. I have a list from the other thread of some other options now. 😀 It's just a bummer as I was really hoping to make some progress. It just seems that everything with these builds is falling apart. I used to live and breathe this back in the day and now it just feels like I can't get anything right.
Got myself a Radeon 9800 pro recently and it came with an unusual power connector. Not sure if any models came like this stock or if this was done by the previous user, but i didn't fancy on how it looked and soldered a regular molex connector. Also gave it some new paste and a quick cleaning.
Got myself a Radeon 9800 pro recently and it came with an unusual power connector. Not sure if any models came like this stock or if this was done by the previous user, but i didn't fancy on how it looked and soldered a regular molex connector. Also gave it some new paste and a quick cleaning.
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It looked like the original owner did that when the connector that was on there previously gave out, burnt out, or the molex power connections on the PSU were too short.
