I tested a Diamond Monster3D Voodoo 1 I had bought as faulty. It was lacking some SMD capacitors so I soldered them back on. It also had some bent legs on the chip that were making contact so I carefully separated them. The card now exhibits strange behaviour. It intermittently works, but more often than not gives me a weird checkered pattern when I run GLIDE games and locks up. The fact that it works intermittently gives me hope that it may be fixed, but I no longer know where to look.

I hate optical media...

Spent a frustrating afternoon trying to find at least one writer that would burn me an ISO. Eventually managed to do so reliably on a LiteOn 52x32x52x - at least. if I set speed to 8x.

Of course, the ISO in question turned out not to work either, so now I need a new one and have to start all over again. Joy.

In between that, I cleaned two filthy keyboards - a BTC 5339R-0 tactile foil&foam dinosaur and a similarly old Laser-branded Monterey/Keytech K104 alps white clicky beast. After disassembly, chucking keycaps & membranes into a pillow case that went into the washing machine, putting the plastic upper enclosure into the dishwasher and thoroughly manually cleaning the rest, then putting it all back together again, the boards are spotlessly clean although rather yellow (long live ABS keys...). That BTC was fiddly as hell.
End result is an Alps board that I might well use as my new default test bench keyboard - it's robust, types beautifully and has an XT/AT switch on the bottom. The BTC is... interesting... it's my only capacitive keyboard but 30-year old foam is downright crappy and makes the board type very irregularly. Probably something I'll keep as a curiosity, nothing more.

Apart from that mainly tidying up, de-duplicating bags of cables, removing three desktop systems someone should be buying from me this week from under the spare bed, then shoving boxes/tubs of stuff in the space freed up. Later this week I have another crateload of tested stuff to try to flog, and another one to test. Once I get those out of the way perhaps I can get down to some of my more long-term projects...

.legaCy wrote:

Man, this is the first time that i got one retro gift, these were in my godfather storage, the external part is pretty dirty but […]
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Man, this is the first time that i got one retro gift, these were in my godfather storage, the external part is pretty dirty but the internals are cleaner than my main PC, idk if they are working but ill give it a try.
The summary of this score: 2AT cases needing a little bit of attention, 2 3.5" floppy drives, 2 AT power supplies(will check them before powering it on) but they should be working) , two at/atx motherboard socket 7(one with an intel chipset i guess a 430VX, and the other an SiS chipset), two pentium mmx, two simms (i dont know the amount of ram in those) and one dimm(i don't know the amount of ram either), one ISA sound card that i don't know the brand, one really long card that i assume it is SCSI(it even have a fuse), two hard drives, idk if they work, two cd drives, a real modem.
Let me attach some pics and ill go clean these and test them, wish me luck, if everything work it will be an really awesome score for me.

Attic finds are the best - the ones I have found are always rusty and water damaged, but half the time I'm able to get them working. If there's ever a barrel battery... These days, I actually look forward to soldered-on Dallas RTC chips!

Wait what!

I've never seen that kind of pass through. Shit, that gives me an idea!

red_avatar wrote:

I finished setting up my HP Vectra Pentium 75 with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 using a 2GB SD card - works brilliantly now. Now it's my Pentium III 600's turn to get solid state media - the very noisy 80GB drive is getting replaced by a 480GB SSD.

Oh man I have a Vectra 4/33 on eBay now. It took a CF card very well. I'd keep it but I have a Siemens-Nixdorf DX2/66 😉

More playing about with my ZX Spectrum. Today I received the "Cheetah Joystick Interface" that I ordered for it, so I can use the Kempston interface and proper decent joysticks at last.

Perhaps "decent" isn't the correct word for what I'm using though, as I had some issues with 1 of my joysticks not wanting to move right properly. A quick slam against the desk cured it however and then tested out on PC with the Windows Control Panel to ensure it was moving about correctly. I'll have to open it up and tweak it properly again at some point, but hey brute force can work sometimes too. 🤣

dionb wrote:

I hate optical media... […]
Show full quote

I hate optical media...

Spent a frustrating afternoon trying to find at least one writer that would burn me an ISO. Eventually managed to do so reliably on a LiteOn 52x32x52x - at least. if I set speed to 8x.

Of course, the ISO in question turned out not to work either, so now I need a new one and have to start all over again. Joy.

In between that, I cleaned two filthy keyboards - a BTC 5339R-0 tactile foil&foam dinosaur and a similarly old Laser-branded Monterey/Keytech K104 alps white clicky beast. After disassembly, chucking keycaps & membranes into a pillow case that went into the washing machine, putting the plastic upper enclosure into the dishwasher and thoroughly manually cleaning the rest, then putting it all back together again, the boards are spotlessly clean although rather yellow (long live ABS keys...). That BTC was fiddly as hell.
End result is an Alps board that I might well use as my new default test bench keyboard - it's robust, types beautifully and has an XT/AT switch on the bottom. The BTC is... interesting... it's my only capacitive keyboard but 30-year old foam is downright crappy and makes the board type very irregularly. Probably something I'll keep as a curiosity, nothing more.

Apart from that mainly tidying up, de-duplicating bags of cables, removing three desktop systems someone should be buying from me this week from under the spare bed, then shoving boxes/tubs of stuff in the space freed up. Later this week I have another crateload of tested stuff to try to flog, and another one to test. Once I get those out of the way perhaps I can get down to some of my more long-term projects...

I now open up used CDROM drives and clean the optical lens with solution manually.
It is really easy to open up these drives and clean. Once you do one you will get the hang of it.

PTherapist wrote:

A quick slam against the desk cured it however...

The Fonz approves!

blurks wrote:

Replaced Mac OS 9.2.2 on my Power Mac G4 (933 MHz / 1 GB RAM) with OS X 10.1.5. Runs extremely well as I have almost no additional software installed. Even managed to bring it online over a network bridge but as expected there is no browser anymore that is capable of displaying modern websites. Thinking about keeping this OS version as I heard later versions may offer a lot more but are also slower than Puma.

os.png

Yeah, 10.1 and 10.4 is what I use. OSX Leopard is to heavy and slow on the old PPC.

These old mac's are still good for playing old games and music cdroms and DVD's too.

Jed118 wrote:

red_avatar wrote:

I finished setting up my HP Vectra Pentium 75 with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 using a 2GB SD card - works brilliantly now. Now it's my Pentium III 600's turn to get solid state media - the very noisy 80GB drive is getting replaced by a 480GB SSD.

Oh man I have a Vectra 4/33 on eBay now. It took a CF card very well. I'd keep it but I have a Siemens-Nixdorf DX2/66 😉

The Vectra (VL2) is growing on me. When I got it, I didn't know what to do with it - it was a very early Pentium and I had plans to update my IBM Aptiva to a 486 DX2 66 CPU so the jump to a Pentium 75 seemed pretty small. But the update failed (motherboard won't recognize the Overdrive CPU it seems) so the Vectra seemed my best bet for a solid DOS machine for playing 1995-1996 games. Only thing that bugs me is the boot up screen - besides it being slow as ass to boot because it tests everything, the BIOS is very VERY bare bones. My IBM PCs had a decent amount of options including some fast boot toggles but the Vectra has next to nothing besides the obvious hard drive, time, password, etc. settings.

Played a bit of DoomII and Warcraft on two PCs, one equipped with an AWE64 Gold and another with an EWS64XL.
Paired with nice speakers this was a totally awesome experience. I will buy a Simm Extender for my CT4520 Value so that I can have a go at some good samples and enjoy good sound with minimum monetary input.

red_avatar wrote:

Jed118 wrote:

red_avatar wrote:

I finished setting up my HP Vectra Pentium 75 with DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11 using a 2GB SD card - works brilliantly now. Now it's my Pentium III 600's turn to get solid state media - the very noisy 80GB drive is getting replaced by a 480GB SSD.

Oh man I have a Vectra 4/33 on eBay now. It took a CF card very well. I'd keep it but I have a Siemens-Nixdorf DX2/66 😉

The Vectra (VL2) is growing on me. When I got it, I didn't know what to do with it - it was a very early Pentium and I had plans to update my IBM Aptiva to a 486 DX2 66 CPU so the jump to a Pentium 75 seemed pretty small. But the update failed (motherboard won't recognize the Overdrive CPU it seems) so the Vectra seemed my best bet for a solid DOS machine for playing 1995-1996 games. Only thing that bugs me is the boot up screen - besides it being slow as ass to boot because it tests everything, the BIOS is very VERY bare bones. My IBM PCs had a decent amount of options including some fast boot toggles but the Vectra has next to nothing besides the obvious hard drive, time, password, etc. settings.

Yes I noticed the BIOS was rudimentary. My 486DLC clone has a better BIOS (AMIBIOS).

For me to keep the 33MHz (It's a 50 MHz now) machine makes no sense, as I have a low spec 386SX16 for 1984-1991 games, a midrange 486DX2/66 for 1992-1996 games, and a top of the line 233MMX for 1997+ games. I also have a very heavily modified 486DLC which is comparable to the Vectra in terms of performance, so yeah, no need for redundancy.

I like the way they look though.

No pics for the moment but I am still tinkering with the dtk PII, I have tons of video options, ram, even video cards to test (the one in it is period-appropriate, tho).

On the subject of "it works better if you dry it out," I picked up a somewhat brutalized Packard Bell 75MHz Pentium (the one with the gray ripple border on the bottom and sadly a tower instead of the desktops - no one around here saved their desktops!). After a day resting and a little time with a hair dryer the beast roars to life! I'd like to test the HD if I can get it to boot from CD but I have other things that need to be on the bench.

Like the Mac Pro 2.8 I traded for some donuts today (along with a small stash of parts). Sugar is a hell of a drug, people.

Received the Yamaha FB-01 today and did some tests on it:

1) plugged in the unit and it powered on without issues
2) unplugged the unit, opened the unit to get to the battery, and according to my multimeter, it showed 2.85V, which is a good sign that the battery was still good*
3) hooked it up to my laptop using my Roland UM-ONE MK2 USB MIDI adapter and played some games with DOSBox.

* will install a removable battery method someday.

I also attempted to install some sound banks using MIDI-OX and it shows as dump/received!! but it's not loading for some reason. The FB01 Sound Editor software refuses to open those SYX files for an odd reason.

Sound banks obtained from here: http://mmmazes.blogspot.com/2010/05/fb-01-patches.html

I also did some inspections for anything wrong and no missing or broken pieces on the unit itself. Could use a bit of cleaning in the back, however, there is a bit of paint missing on the top cover. Other than that, in great condition and working without issues. Best of all, no damage from the shipping carrier and packed very well with packing peanuts and bubble wrap.

Pictures:

Gallery: https://imgur.com/gallery/LlOsTnc

And a productive day it was today 😉

1) I re-installed the 3,5" drive in my 5160. I know, it's not really correct but I bought it like that. It was installed in a dodgy way so I ordered a bay adapter from Aliexpress. I had to file some plastic off to make it fit and it looks pretty good now. The only thing to look for now is the plastic bezel that goes around the drives.

2) Made the mouse, optical drive work on my P75 in DOS. Also adjusted the keyboard layout. Tried it with Crusader No Remorse :p

3) Finished my XP build:

* Asus Crosshair with Phenom X3 8650
* 4GB RAM but since XP is the 32bit version...
* GeForce 8800GT
* 1,5TB HD
* Audigy 2 ZS with Daniel K drivers (hoping to find the internal drive bay once for a decent price)
* An extra PCI card with 4+2 USB ports
* Corsair Graphite 230T
* Win XP SP3

Tested with GTA3. Wanted to play that for a long time.

Jed118 wrote:

Yes I noticed the BIOS was rudimentary. My 486DLC clone has a better BIOS (AMIBIOS).

For me to keep the 33MHz (It's a 50 MHz now) machine makes no sense, as I have a low spec 386SX16 for 1984-1991 games, a midrange 486DX2/66 for 1992-1996 games, and a top of the line 233MMX for 1997+ games. I also have a very heavily modified 486DLC which is comparable to the Vectra in terms of performance, so yeah, no need for redundancy.

I like the way they look though.

We got similar systems then - I got a 386SX 25 for the same time period, a 486SX33 (which I failed to upgrade to a DX2-66) which was for 1993-1995 games but now my Vectra has taken over that position and will be used for games from 1993-1996. The 486SX is quite an odd PC since it's the last CPU to not have a co-processor so the jump to even a DX2 66 is massive. I love this PC but it covers too few games - I really wish I could have gotten the DX2 66 upgrade to work. It's odd since the service manual claims it should work fine.

Then I also got a P233MMX like you got 1996-1998 games and a PIII600 for 1998-2000 games. From then on, I use my i5 2500K which is excellent as a Windows XP machine for games of 2000-2008.

Jed118 wrote:

...
For me to keep the 33MHz (It's a 50 MHz now) machine makes no sense, as I have a low spec 386SX16 for 1984-1991 games, a midrange 486DX2/66 for 1992-1996 games, and a top of the line 233MMX for 1997+ games. I also have a very heavily modified 486DLC which is comparable to the Vectra in terms of performance, so yeah, no need for redundancy.

I like the way they look though.

Sounds like a good array of systems but... how do you play XT-class games on your 386SX16? Do you slow it down somehow? In my experience an SX16 is still too fast too run many pre 1988 games... (1988 is a bit arbitrary but I feel it's around that year that developers started making games with 286 systems in mind)

Retrobrighted (session 2, cause one session of retrobrighting wasn't enough) of one of the cases that i got from my uncle, also retrobrighted one AT keyboard, i didn't tested yet but i think it will work fine, i need to get my 486 out of his storage box to test( or find my AT to PS/2 keyboard adapter.
the case turned out awesome, the case looks brand new, it had some rust spots on the metal(on the backside near the expansion cards area), but it was just on the surface, scrubbing with a steel wire brush attachment to my dremel solved it quick and easy, since the bare metal got exposed i applied some colorless nail polish to prevent rust(not the ideal solution but it was what i had at home)

I had a go at Opteron 170 and DFI LanParty Ultra-D... wanted to test how far I can overclock it. When I got it a few months ago I did a quick test and it seems it wouldn't go pass 2.4Ghz. Which would be rather disappointing. Now I tested it again and watched for correct memory and HT speed. It went pretty far. On default 1.35V it would boot into built-in Memtest up to 2.7Ghz. Pass this I had to raise the Vcore. I raised it to 1.55V at 3.0Ghz but it still wouldn't load Memtest correctly. So I back down to 2.9Ghz with 1.5V. This is only Memtest stable. Not a bad overclock in the end... from 2Ghz to 2.9Ghz 😉

Some other day I'll test my other DFI LanParty Ultra boards and my 2nd Opteron 170 and Athlon64 X2 4200+. Back in 2005/06 I had some Gigabyte NF4 Ultra with Athlon64 X2 3800+ (Toledo core) running at 2.5Ghz and I was pretty happy 😉

Going through boxes of non-computer, I mean absolutely non-computer related stuff. I found my old Asrock K7S41 that I thought I had thrown out because of what I believed to be a botched recap. And it struck me, that I had missed one single bulging cap at that time. We are talking some 3 or 4 years ago. Why it was sitting there not in antistatic bag, between picture frames and old dinner plates, I had no idea about. I must have had a hurry, cleaning up at that time. Well... Who knows. Anyway.

I thought that I should give it one last go, at bringing the board back to life. It is Win98, Win2000, WinXP and Os/2 compatible after all. So I found one cap that had the correct fahrad rating, yet 10 volt and not 6.3 volt. Volts do not really matter, as long as they are at least what is specified. On the other hand, 10 volt might be a bit over the top. After a quick solder job, I managed to bring it back from the grave. I only had it posting. Now I need to find drives and stuff, in order to test it through. A job for the next couple of days.

Playing around with a year 2004 system i have i decided to bling up the X800 XT PE in it.
The standard cooler is long gone and in its place is a rather sad looking Zalman VF700cu.

Not very shiny !:

Me being out of elbow grease i bring out the chemistry kit.
This is the vile stuff only kids can eat (yup thats kethup).
But i found an alternate use for it !:

After 5 minutes in the disgusting facial and the result is:

Far from perfect, but on a cooler like this with tons of fins its pretty much the only way.
And its an easy way to restore atleast some of the shine to old copper !