I bought myself a Y splitter to install 2 Gamepads or Joysticks to my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus (might look into and see if Windows 95C complains about having 2 joysticks on the same machine). In the future, I'll be playing NHL Hockey 95 with 2 players and I'll have to look and see if there're any other games that has 2 player support. Wish someone can make NHL Hockey 2018-2019 for MS-DOS (how cool would that be?) Also, which game did you play?

Finally got 128KB L2 cache installed in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus (4x 32Kx8 12ns SRAM*, 1x 32Kx8 15ns SRAM*, and 1x 64Kx1 15ns SRAM**). I get 69FPS in the Doom benchmarks. I need to find software to look to see which type of L1 cache is installed on the DX4-100 OverDrive prior to installing a NOS Evergreen 586 processor I'm getting in the mail. Gotta say, the system boots better and finally boots with L2 cache installed (the other L2 cache chips I had weren't working properly, even though they passed and the system detected everything right).

* bought on Digikey.com
** bought on eBay

I'm uploading a video on YouTube right now from my phone and it'll take a while to upload (UHD video).

Hmm. Not sure if that fits in here, but this morning I kind of finished my Hellschreiber modem for my PC/XT compatible.
Most tricky part was to interface the relay without slowing it down too much.. 😅

PcBytes wrote:

That's actually a Pentium - note the 82430VX string on the POST screen.

Thanks, you are totally right, I just hadn't had a proper look at the mainboard and I don't know anything about BIOSes.

Someone must have upgraded this machine to a Pentium 133! That's not at all what I expected, but I'll just run with it now.

Shagittarius wrote:

The ESC key there is like the IBM AT Keyboard. Personally I love it there and wish it had never been moved to it's current position. I think there are a lot of nice things about the older key layout than what we ended up with today.

Good to know! I've had really old AT keyboards that we "liberated" from school supplies back in the 90s, but they already had the more modern layout it seems.

The keyboard feels really nice and is one of the reasons I would like to get this package working as a "living room retro pc".

dkarguth wrote:

To me, that looks like the pre-boot display of an older AMI BIOS. Maybe you should try reseating all the socketed chips in the machine, oftentimes this helps with that kind of thing.

You know what, actually that looks like a character ROM problem. Notice how the characters aren't random, they are substituted for others. Maybe there is a bit not working on the character ROM and it has shifted the character table over that much.

It totally is an AMI BIOS. Regarding the characters, you are probably right too. I saw similar failures reported where only individual characters had "shifted", and not, like it appears in this case, the whole character set.

It's this card, by the way:

http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/cpu/item/ … -cl-gd610-620-c

Is the character chip the top right one, next to the dip switches? If so, mine looks like it's seen better days and comes from somehwere else than the rest of the video card.

Anyway, I'm not keeping this card since I'll hopefully will be doing without the LCD screen 😀

I read this: Man discovers working 30-year-old Apple IIe in parents attic https://www.techspot.com/news/78800-man-finds … ie-parents.html and realized VOGONS is a goldmine of news for tech ‘media’..

Started testing yesterday's huge haul.

First up was the Asus PCI/I-P5SP4, So4 P60 with SiS501 chipset. First attempt was a failure, turns out that the CPU socket is worn and the handle keeping the pins locked is loose. Pushed down on that, started to see POST on the card but not on the screen. After much swapping of VGA cards, turns out PCI slot 1 isn't working (or has bad defaults - there are a LOT of per-slot PCI-related BIOS settings that even differ from slot to slot). WIth a card in PCI slot 2, 3 or 4 or any ISA slots, we get a full boot 😁

To do: dead Dallas DS12887 needs replacing, but it's socketed and I have two spares, so no problem. Also the cable to the worn-out 40mm fan on the CPU heatsink is damaged. I'll replace the whole fan with a 50mm or 60mm version if possible.

Then video cards. The ColorMax S3 Virge/DX 4MB is cheap & nasty, but does the job with perfect VESA support and everything up to 1600x1200@8b / 1024x768@32b. The Ark 1000PV PCI is another matter. Not sure if its VESA implementation is crap or the whole card lacks hi-colour support, but anything over 8bpp loses primary colours; 16b looks like there's no red, 24b like there's no blue... fortunately looks great below that.

Finally for now the monitor. It's a "Royal" CM1564. Looks cheap, but the plastic is in decent enough state. Image is .28dp sharp-ish, ideal for that vintage experience. And then there's the LCD at the bottom, telling you which video mode is currently active. Gimmicky, but all in all I think I have a new favorite retro/DOS monitor.

Here's the PCI/I-P5SP4 with Virge/DX hooked up to the monitor with "VESA 1024x768" displaying in the LCD

The case for my 386 build arrived today so i got straight to work on it! This case is really solid unlike my other AT case which has my Pentium housed.

I managed to get the LED MHZ display to show 40mhz. Need to work out the turbo function on it though. The module is a SK-188 which seems to be well documented.

The build is as follows

Opti 496SLC with AMD 386 DX40 & USLI Maths Co-pro
4mb ram
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 VLB
Winbond ISA i/O FDD/HDD controller
1GB Seagate Hard Disk
Mitsumi IDE 16x CD-Rom
Mitsumi 3.5 FDD
200Watt AT PSU
Dos 6.22

I just need to figure out what sound to put in it now. My Music Quest MPU401 card will be going in for the MT-32

Wiring is to be sorted!

Installed an SSD. Am I doing this right?

Its an IBM, in my book all is good. ^.^

luckybob wrote:

Its an IBM, in my book all is good. ^.^

Kind of. Another IBM NetVista sleeper

appiah4 wrote:

I read this: Man discovers working 30-year-old Apple IIe in parents attic https://www.techspot.com/news/78800-man-finds … ie-parents.html and realized VOGONS is a goldmine of news for tech ‘media’..

What is the news worthy content (or news sensation) in that article? (rant alert)

Finding a working Apple IIe is not something special (I have owned a lot of them and apart from the very first series all later models with the tall power supply worked fine). Finding a readable floppy disk with content on it is not something special. An Apple IIe is certainly nothing special nor does it have any historical value (it's just one of the many Apple II series computers and one of the many many many old home computers). If this would be a fully working and original Apple I or Apple II rev. 0 with low serial number, now then it would be news worthy, but this isn't.

rant off

Anyway, today (or yesterday) I finally managed to get my PIII Voodoo2 pc completely working. I had to reinstall Windows 98SE 3 times or so because some things went wrong with the installation of updates, drivers and programs. Especially after installing a Nero OEM program that was included with an optical drive, Windows crashed with the mouse pointer not working anymore and weird errors relating to graphics card drivers (tried to repair, no luck). So the Nero OEM CD went to the trash (I have another version anyway). With some different steps and sequence in the installation process I managed to get everything working. Finally my Voodoo2 also gets recognized in 3DMark99 3dmark99 MegaThread (benchmark score).

I've also tried out a newer version of CPU-Z and AIDA32 for the first time, as well as configured my SB AWE64 PnP in my PII 300 system (SB16 removed, I keep that one for a future 486 system).

Finished first round of testing of my big haul. Big picture is rather positive, with a few disappointments).

Working:
- PC Chips 386DX-40. The "128k" soldered cache actually checks out as real cache in CACHECHK.EXE 😜
- Tiny Cx486SLC/e-33 GP board with awful-looking corrosion nonetheless boots as if nothing had happened.
- Two So1 LIF 486 VLB boards took a bit of fiddling, but both work fine now, although one is rather choosy with VLB cards (what's new...)
- As mentioned above the Asus PCI/I-P5SP4 So4 board is working, albeit needing some work.
- Asus P2L97 works fine.
- DFI TA-64 works fine
- Gigabyte GA-BX2000 works like a dream.
- Elsa Victory Erazor RIva128ZX shows off how good nVidia's VESA implementation really is.
- HIS RadeonVE 32MB also does the business
- Two AT PSUs including the huge one work.
- All the 30p SIMMs at least work well enough to boot.
- i486DX-33, P200MMX, P2-233 and Celeron 500 all check out.
- Laser and IBM keyboards clicking away nicely.

So, what doesn't work?
- Two AT PSUs.
- Cx486DX2-80 (third Cyrix DX2/DX4 I've had dead in a fairly short time - disappointing)
- PC Chips M537DMA - sometimes boots, but only the ISA slots seem to work.
- Trident TVGA-9000 ISA
And then the big disappointment
- Ark 1000VL VLB card does generate an image, but it's full of vertical stripes :'(
I've opened a topic for that - unlike the PC-Chips board, this one is worth a lot of TLC and effort Vertical lines in Ark 1000VL output - fixable

dionb wrote:

- Elsa Victory Erazor RIva128ZX shows off how good nVidia's VESA implementation really is.

The Riva 128ZX seems to be rather rare in Western Europe. I have been looking for one for a while now, but I can't find one (locally). The Riva 128 is pretty common though. The Riva 128ZX is an interesting, probably short lived, fall in between the Riva 128 and Riva TNT graphics card.

SpectriaForce wrote:

[...]

The Riva 128ZX seems to be rather rare in Western Europe. I have been looking for one for a while now, but I can't find one (locally). The Riva 128 is pretty common though. The Riva 128ZX is an interesting, probably short lived, fall in between the Riva 128 and Riva TNT graphics card.

Yes, I also remember lots of (US) reviews of them but this is probably only the second ZX I've seen in the flesh. And it's and ELSA which is always good, although the PCB design is far less elaborate/unique than their earlier PCI ones.

I'm surprised by the date though - this card dates from mid 1999 (the NV3 itself 9922, the RAM chips 9916), so after the release of the TNT and even the TNT2-Vanta, which was cheaper to manufacture and nonetheless outperformed the 128ZX, so quite why anyone would still make a card like this is a mystery.

Bancho wrote:

The case for my 386 build arrived today so i got straight to work on it! This case is really solid unlike my other AT case which […]
Show full quote

The case for my 386 build arrived today so i got straight to work on it! This case is really solid unlike my other AT case which has my Pentium housed.

I managed to get the LED MHZ display to show 40mhz. Need to work out the turbo function on it though. The module is a SK-188 which seems to be well documented.

The build is as follows

Opti 496SLC with AMD 386 DX40 & USLI Maths Co-pro
4mb ram
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 VLB
Winbond ISA i/O FDD/HDD controller
1GB Seagate Hard Disk
Mitsumi IDE 16x CD-Rom
Mitsumi 3.5 FDD
200Watt AT PSU
Dos 6.22

I just need to figure out what sound to put in it now. My Music Quest MPU401 card will be going in for the MT-32

Wiring is to be sorted!

<snip>

That is one snazzy machine you got there. Is that board a 386/486 combo? That case is better than my AT case that has my Socket 7 parts installed (rusty, the HDD/FDD mount is falling, and the mounting screws for the case and the I/O cards are stripped). My plan is to put an ATX Super Socket 7 motherboard or a Socket 370 board in there for another Windows 98SE machine for an old school LAN party/gaming. Fortunately, I have plenty of AGP cards and PCI cards, so my plan would be to use my GeForce 6200 card in that Windows 98SE machine and the GeForce4 Ti4400 in the other Windows 98SE machine (I need a 3dfx VooDoo2 card since my current one isn't working correctly and it's time to fix it again), and my repaired Radeon 9600XT in my Windows XP desktop, as well as another Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 card and an Ethernet card. I have a Composite/S-video capture card by Pinnacle (drivers needed) that'll be installed in the other Windows 98SE machine to capture footage from my Commodore 64 or another system.

Today my DE9 straight-through cable arrived at last so I could try out the MCE2VGA at last. Took a while to get the settings figured out (turns out the dipswitch is numbered in reverse compared to documetnation...), but having figured that out the fun could start.

I had a big backlog of MDA/CGA/EGA cards with DE9 connector to test:
- A huge full length Datamedia EGA card
- An equally large Hyundai MONO GRAPHICS BOARD
- 4 Tulip DGA cards (switchable CGA/MDA)
- A completely anonymous MDA card

And then there was this:

Yep, an original IBM MDA card. Outputting nicely via the MCE2VGA to the CRT behind it.
(quite a late example, mfg date 8644 - but still the oldest working video card I own)

In the end only one of the DGA cards was dead (output a solid block of colour/mono in either mode), but it took a lot of rubbing with rubbers to get these >30yo monsters connecting properly with the ISA slot.

MDA card on a (I assume) socket 7 board 🤣 😎

I have some Super EGA cards over here, never tried them out, I wonder what the difference with EGA is, I should try them out one day.

Got my NOS Evergreen 586 processor in the mail today from Amazon, wrote the Evergreen Diagnostics diskette, and got these results:
39682 - Intel i486 DX4-100 OverDrive 16KB WT cache
56818 - Evergreen 586 (AM5x86-P75) 16KB WB cache enabled
My Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus didn't complain about the processor and it works without issues. My main concern was the CPU fan. Good thing I kept a fan handy and it's held in with electrical tape temporarily until I find screws to put through the fan to the heatsink.

SpectriaForce wrote:

MDA card on a (I assume) socket 7 board 🤣 😎

Nope, it's that Cx486SLC board I picked up on Sunday. Still runs at 7x the intended CPU speed and possibly (tbh didn't check) twice the bus speed. In fact I'm surprised it works at all as I'd heard the original MDA was very speed-sensitive. If it hadn't I'd have dragged up an XT, but my desk is messy and space is limited, so if it works on a motherboard half the length of the MDA card itself, so much the better.

I have some Super EGA cards over here, never tried them out, I wonder what the difference with EGA is, I should try them out one day.

Iirc they gave the same colour options in hires mode as in low-res. I can recommend the MCE2VGA adapter in any case. Once you figure out the dipswitches, it's very easy and works perfectly.

Less good news: I also picked up a nice but obscure VGA monitor with a little LCD indicating sync mode. It died last night - suddenly lost sync and started emitting a tortured whine. Sounds like flyback transformer...