Played around with a 286 in 86Box. https://imgur.com/a/vKdS9

Configured & installed XTIDE Universal BIOS onto a 3Com 3C509B Ethernet Card on my 486. This enabled it to properly recognise the installed 2.5GB IDE Hard Drive, without needing DDO software. Not having to rely on DDO means I can now install Windows NT 4 on this thing, as NT's bootloader doesn't play nice with a DDO.

I've partitioned the drive into 2 and intend to dual boot Windows 95 OSR 2.0 (for DOS gaming and some Windows app usage) & Windows NT 4.0 Workstation (which will be the primary OS).

Huh. Guessing you used an EEPROM programmer and the appropriate sized chip for the XTIDE Universal BIOS? I'd like to do that sometime for my 486, but, I might test the BIOS upgrade I found online and see what happens. I also never used a boot ROM on an Ethernet card as those required programming and the systems nowadays have that.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Huh. Guessing you used an EEPROM programmer and the appropriate sized chip for the XTIDE Universal BIOS? I'd like to do that sometime for my 486, but, I might test the BIOS upgrade I found online and see what happens. I also never used a boot ROM on an Ethernet card as those required programming and the systems nowadays have that.

Yep an EEPROM programmer. The size of chip doesn't matter really, though getting the correct size is most appropriate. I used a 32KB chip and simply copied the 8KB ROM file 4 times with copy /b to fill the 32KB chip. Works fine.

Using the boot ROM on a network card for something useful as opposed to actual network booting which nobody really does anymore.

Which PC did you use to program the chip? I'm planning on getting a USB version of the EEPROM programmer on eBay sometime. Also, is the 32K EEPROM a 256Kb (32K x 8 ) that has a 70ns Access time? Something like this: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/mic … 70PU-ND/1008551

bjwil1991 wrote:

Which PC did you use to program the chip? I'm planning on getting a USB version of the EEPROM programmer on eBay sometime. Also, is the 32K EEPROM a 256Kb (32K x 8 ) that has a 70ns Access time? Something like this: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/mic … 70PU-ND/1008551

The chip I used is similar to the one you linked yes. The one I used is like the one found on this link (Atmel AT28C256), which has 150ns access time:
https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/ ... 2flNw9oA==

There are plenty of those chips available quite cheaply on eBay. Just get whatever you find cheapest, ensuring you get DIP-28 if you're intending to use a card like the 3Com. Also many network cards, like the 3Com, will need configuring to enable the boot rom. On the 3C509B card I used 3Com's 3C5X9CFG utility to turn on the boot ROM, set to 8KB at address D000h.

I only used a 256Kbit EEPROM simply because it was the smallest capacity I had available. All the rest of my spare chips, both EEPROM and the older UV eraseable EPROM types were all 512Kbit / 64KB capacity and the 3Com card happily accepted them all. If you're getting a capacity larger than 64Kbit / 8KB, just make sure you duplicate the image the correct number of times to fill the chip.

I programmed the chip itself on 1 of my more modern Win 10 systems using the USB MiniPRO programmer that's available easily on eBay.

I had to configure the XTIDE image using a PC with a 32-bit version of Windows though, as XTIDE's idecfg.com utility is DOS based. I even used my 486 itself to configure the image at one point, which it did nicely, so any DOS capable or 32-bit NT-based system should suffice.

Just make sure you run the idecfg utility on the rom file first before trying to program it.

I have plenty of systems that run a 32-bit OS since the others are either Linux or 64-bit OS only. Thanks for the tip. Also found the one you posted on here: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/mic … 15PU-ND/1008506

I was in the market for a 486 PCI board for some time, finally got around to one; traded away my beloved Radeon 8500 and a peski Voodoo 3 1000 for it (and immediately ordered a Radeon 9100 hehe) but I still don't know if I got the better deal or not. I don't even know the brand and model of the board, I just have a photo of it. If anyone can help me identify it I would be grateful.

Installed some more shelving for my retro boxes!

All those enlight cases... I can only imagine all the cuts, scrapes, and callouses from using those cases.

luckybob wrote:

All those enlight cases... I can only imagine all the cuts, scrapes, and callouses from using those cases.

I think that is rather callous of you to say. Compared to what most people scrape up, those cases are a cut above the rest.

gloves are your friends

The (3-year-old) printer at my work can print files off a USB stick. I needed to run something off and didn't have one handy. It wouldn't mount my phone or a 2TB USB hard drive, so I looked for an alternate solution. After digging through my Drawer of Crap, I came up with a Dell USB floppy drive and a 1.44MB disk. Copied the (1.4MB!) PDF onto the disk on my i7 workstation, walked down the hall and plugged the floppy into the printer, and booyah! - it mounted the disk with no drama and happily printed my document.

Makes me wonder what OS it's running under the hood - I'm guessing it's some embedded Linux and they didn't bother to remove the floppy code. Or maybe they even intended to make that work in case somebody wanted to do it?? Who knows.

I'm gonna remember that for the future. When was the last time you used a printer with a floppy drive?

I remember using a camera with a floppy drive. haha Definitely not a printer though.

liqmat wrote:

luckybob wrote:

All those enlight cases... I can only imagine all the cuts, scrapes, and callouses from using those cases.

I think that is rather callous of you to say. Compared to what most people scrape up, those cases are a cut above the rest.

Har har!

I think he should invite some of us over to de-clutter his basement a bit. I'd be willing to let you store stuff up in Canada. 😁

I rebuilt the back rim of a vintage mountain bike, broken spokes, rusted rim, reassembled from dismantling a spare front wheel, married front rim to the back hub and replaced spokes. Beforehand I tried getting away with riding it with the missing spokes, turned the back wheel into a banana and couple spokes pulled through the rusted rim. Freewheel removal tool for $1 off ebay did the trick. My vintage road bike needs the same treatment(missing spokes) but it uses different style freewheel keying(two prong, the worst.) I may have to do it the hard way for that one.

Spent some time browsing various sites for retro gear that I am looking for and found something I needed to share.

RAINBOWS!

Setup a dual boot config on my 486, Windows NT 4.0 Workstation & Windows 95. I'd forgotten so much about NT, particularly the fact that 95 with FAT32 confuses the poor thing. 🤣 I had to follow a guide online to setup NT's bootloader manually, to boot between the 2 systems. Neither OS can see each other's partition, which I could solve easily but I think I'll leave it be for now as I'm just testing at present.

Updating the graphics card driver in NT 4.0 was initially a challenge, as it's been years since I've played around with NT and had to get back into it's weird mindset of how things work.

This 486 only has 28MB RAM with an Am486DX CPU @ 33MHz so NT 4.0 isn't all that amazing on it, but more of a fun project than anything actually useful. I'll probably end up keeping the 486 solely on 95 and use my Socket 5 system as the dual boot NT 4.0 / 95 machine instead, as that has 72MB RAM and obviously a much faster CPU.

Also played around some more with the XTIDE Universal BIOS on my XT. I initially used the older version 1.1.5, which didn't play nicely with the MFM hard drive, so I tested out the 2.0.0 beta 3 and that co-exists nicely. My next step on that system is to try out the virtual COM port drive feature, once I find my serial cable in 1 of my storage bags.

PTherapist wrote:

The chip I used is similar to the one you linked yes. The one I used is like the one found on this link (Atmel AT28C256), which […]
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bjwil1991 wrote:

Which PC did you use to program the chip? I'm planning on getting a USB version of the EEPROM programmer on eBay sometime. Also, is the 32K EEPROM a 256Kb (32K x 8 ) that has a 70ns Access time? Something like this: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/mic … 70PU-ND/1008551

The chip I used is similar to the one you linked yes. The one I used is like the one found on this link (Atmel AT28C256), which has 150ns access time:
https://www.mouser.co.uk/ProductDetail/ ... 2flNw9oA==

There are plenty of those chips available quite cheaply on eBay. Just get whatever you find cheapest, ensuring you get DIP-28 if you're intending to use a card like the 3Com. Also many network cards, like the 3Com, will need configuring to enable the boot rom. On the 3C509B card I used 3Com's 3C5X9CFG utility to turn on the boot ROM, set to 8KB at address D000h.

I only used a 256Kbit EEPROM simply because it was the smallest capacity I had available. All the rest of my spare chips, both EEPROM and the older UV eraseable EPROM types were all 512Kbit / 64KB capacity and the 3Com card happily accepted them all. If you're getting a capacity larger than 64Kbit / 8KB, just make sure you duplicate the image the correct number of times to fill the chip.

I programmed the chip itself on 1 of my more modern Win 10 systems using the USB MiniPRO programmer that's available easily on eBay.

I had to configure the XTIDE image using a PC with a 32-bit version of Windows though, as XTIDE's idecfg.com utility is DOS based. I even used my 486 itself to configure the image at one point, which it did nicely, so any DOS capable or 32-bit NT-based system should suffice.

Just make sure you run the idecfg utility on the rom file first before trying to program it.

Found one on one of my old video cards: