VOGONS


Reply 8040 of 27171, by Jed118

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All end of life:

1UUVhf4l.jpg

I'm most disappointed at the loss of third from the left (ISA card) and directly below it.

Those two helped the aging 386 platform through the early-mid 00s.

Youtube channel- The Kombinator
What's for sale? my eBay!

Reply 8043 of 27171, by Jed118

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^^^^ 403 mate!

oeuvre wrote:

wait, that seagate barracuda doesn't work? 🙁

It spins up and can be seen by the BIOS. I've tried it in DOS and with an AHA 294x adapter in a modern machine under Ubuntu: It can see the LUN, but not any media attached to it. I credit its death due to a lot of quick on/off cycling when I was troubleshooting the DLC, but truth be told it had been getting louder and louder near the end. I'm bummed out about the drive, but I'm getting a SCSI2SD in the mail, and I also have a working CF card adapter out back for further file transferring. I could also use the ZIP drive or the USB floppy.

I can't wait to get it all put together finally, after a decade or so 😉

Youtube channel- The Kombinator
What's for sale? my eBay!

Reply 8045 of 27171, by Nvm1

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I did try to get 4 different motherboards going again this weekend.
The first one was the Octek Hippo Pro board. I removed the battery when I got it a while ago and the bios chip was broken due to bad insertion by the last owner. With some help from a fellow vogoner I got a new bios chip but the board still refuses. The post card only gives ---- although all power leds do light up, so my guess is that the 4 traces that passed the battery are in a too bad state and prevent the board from booting. Will have to look into more detail to this board when I get my electronics room fixed later this year. 😢
The second one is a M396F motherboard, baby AT form with a 486SXL2 soldered onboard. I received the motherboard with a ton of damage from battery leakage. So I did remove all the blue eaten stuff and rinsed the board with demi water. The next day I tried the board but I get multiple codes on the post card indicating also some missing or eaten traces. So I decided to put it away for now till my own work room is ready.
The third one is a Intel Premiere/PCI socket 4 board. This one had no damage but gets stuck while booting or trying to access the bios. After a bit of fiddling my guess is that the Dallas 12887 is the problem because the battery is completely dead. And since it is soldered directly to the board the thing needs to be desoldered first. Since that usually isn't a big issue I put it in my box with soon to do solder jobs. I do have some dipp sockets so I can add a socket for easy replacement. I meant I saw somewhere on this forum an alternative board for the normal dallas replacement module. I would be interested in something with an external mounted coin battery for easy replacement. So if somebody can point me in the right direction?
The fourth board I did try was a 386 board, this one to be exactly: http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/m/U-Z/32567.htm I added a AMD DX40 and a cyrix 387 and the board did work right away. The barrel battery is flat so I did quickly remove the battery off the board. The board works really well with the 32kb cache so that made me happy. Only issue remaining is that two metal clips that hold the memory module are badly bend the wrong way, but tonight I am gonna try and bend them back into the right shape with a really small plier. Happy that atleast one board works like a charm after a whole evening off testing and trying to fix stuff 😊

I hope I can continue the next week with checking all boards I haven't had time for so far and eventually to actually fix more boards back to working condition!

Reply 8046 of 27171, by OldCat

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Some Loom (EGA version) on my newly restored Toshiba T3200SX. Although it has VGA card, the amber plasma screen displays only 16 shaded of orange, so EGA games look best on it. Also, EGA Loom is far superior to its later VGA update - there are comparison screenshots on the internet, should anyone doubt it.

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Reply 8047 of 27171, by liqmat

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OldCat wrote:

Some Loom (EGA version) on my newly restored Toshiba T3200SX. Although it has VGA card, the amber plasma screen displays only 16 shaded of orange, so EGA games look best on it. Also, EGA Loom is far superior to its later VGA update - there are comparison screenshots on the internet, should anyone doubt it.

That's kind of cool in amber. Makes it look like a Dune world.

Reply 8048 of 27171, by OldCat

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liqmat wrote:
OldCat wrote:

Some Loom (EGA version) on my newly restored Toshiba T3200SX. Although it has VGA card, the amber plasma screen displays only 16 shaded of orange, so EGA games look best on it. Also, EGA Loom is far superior to its later VGA update - there are comparison screenshots on the internet, should anyone doubt it.

That's kind of cool in amber. Makes it look like a Dune world.

Everything looks really cool in amber - but I am not objective, my first PC was AT with Hercules graphics card and monochrome amber monitor. It's imprinting, I guess - I now have a soft spot for old amber games.

Reply 8049 of 27171, by creepingnet

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OldCat wrote:
liqmat wrote:
OldCat wrote:

Some Loom (EGA version) on my newly restored Toshiba T3200SX. Although it has VGA card, the amber plasma screen displays only 16 shaded of orange, so EGA games look best on it. Also, EGA Loom is far superior to its later VGA update - there are comparison screenshots on the internet, should anyone doubt it.

That's kind of cool in amber. Makes it look like a Dune world.

Everything looks really cool in amber - but I am not objective, my first PC was AT with Hercules graphics card and monochrome amber monitor. It's imprinting, I guess - I now have a soft spot for old amber games.

I agree, I once played the first three Leisure Suit Larry titles on this......that was back in 2005 or so. I rather miss my old Deskpro 386, maybe I"ll get another one once I buy a house.
attachment.php?attachmentid=2478&d=1227504996

I did a bunch of stuff this weekend, the 486 is already fully loaded on it's replacement Win95 drive, though I'm looking for the Windows 95 PTI-255W drivers for it that I stowed away somewhere. Next up will be creating virtual CD-ROM files (yep, virtual CD-ROM, so I can run that pesky Diablo without a CD) and changing the PTI-255W VLB IDE Controller from 600ms seek time to 280ms (I'm running PIO4 drives on this thing, might as well set it to PIO3 transfer rates), then it'll probaby be a good time to test out some multitrack recording in ntrack studio 3 again......with 600ms access time I was able to lay down three tracks (guitar, bass, drums).....with 280, it might make things more stable.

~The Creeping Network~
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Reply 8050 of 27171, by liqmat

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OldCat wrote:
liqmat wrote:
OldCat wrote:

Some Loom (EGA version) on my newly restored Toshiba T3200SX. Although it has VGA card, the amber plasma screen displays only 16 shaded of orange, so EGA games look best on it. Also, EGA Loom is far superior to its later VGA update - there are comparison screenshots on the internet, should anyone doubt it.

That's kind of cool in amber. Makes it look like a Dune world.

Everything looks really cool in amber - but I am not objective, my first PC was AT with Hercules graphics card and monochrome amber monitor. It's imprinting, I guess - I now have a soft spot for old amber games.

Yeah, the friends I had in 1984 with monochrome monitors all had green monitors and I had CGA back then. I did like those monochrome monitors that with a push of a button you could switch between green and amber.

Reply 8051 of 27171, by Thandor

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Cyrix200+ wrote:
Some Irish Whiskey, a 486, a Roland MT32, some more Irish Whiskey and a classic game! […]
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Some Irish Whiskey, a 486, a Roland MT32, some more Irish Whiskey and a classic game!

JLfcuFml.jpg

I like your case (and Aztech 268/468) ! 😎

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A while ago I upgraded it from 286-12 with 1MB to a 386SX-20 with 4MB. The 386 is a tad faster which is welcome but it's main advantage is easier memory options so I can get loads of free base memory 😀.

Today I installed a resister in the wiring of the PSU-fan so it's a lot quieter now 😀. Good for all those early games!

Specs: 386SX-20. 4MB RAM, 40MB HDD. Trident TVGA9000. Sound Blaster 2.0. Philips CDD-250 Single-speed CDROM. Genius GM-6000 mouse and brand new (unpacked it in 2017) Gravis Analog Joystick!

thandor.net - hardware
And the rest of us would be carousing the aisles, stuffing baloney.

Reply 8052 of 27171, by OldCat

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liqmat wrote:
OldCat wrote:
liqmat wrote:

That's kind of cool in amber. Makes it look like a Dune world.

Everything looks really cool in amber - but I am not objective, my first PC was AT with Hercules graphics card and monochrome amber monitor. It's imprinting, I guess - I now have a soft spot for old amber games.

Yeah, the friends I had in 1984 with monochrome monitors all had green monitors and I had CGA back then. I did like those monochrome monitors that with a push of a button you could switch between green and amber.

I actually have one like that! CGA/EGA in colour and monochrome amber/green if need be.

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Reply 8053 of 27171, by dionb

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Received my MVP3 board at last, so spent the evening testing AGP and PCI cards, DIMMs, SIMMs and CPUs. So far everything works, at least to the point of POSTing 😀

Standout moments were when I discovered my 50ns EDO SIMMs worked at 100MHz, and of course when my K6-3+ (hitherto untested) turned out to work at any speed I threw at it; the motherboard is the limiting factor at 6x 100MHz.

But enough hardware for now. I also got SoftMPU working on the 486 and there's a whole world of MT-32 stuff out there I want to hear (whether or not it sounds awful on General MIDI)

Reply 8054 of 27171, by liqmat

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OldCat wrote:

I actually have one like that! CGA/EGA in colour and monochrome amber/green if need be.

That's cool! I've never seen a monitor with all those modes (color/mono) in one. That must have been very expensive in its day. Where do you set the mode? Button on the back or side?

Reply 8055 of 27171, by bjwil1991

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There were certain monitors, like the Tandy EGA monitor that has the monochrome button (green and black). Today, I installed the internal wireless card that I took out of my Compaq Presario C727US laptop that caused Linux to crash with the card installed (thought it was that, but it wasn't) since having an external USB wireless card causes an eyesore (sticks out and can easily break).

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 8056 of 27171, by OldCat

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liqmat wrote:
OldCat wrote:

I actually have one like that! CGA/EGA in colour and monochrome amber/green if need be.

That's cool! I've never seen a monitor with all those modes (color/mono) in one. That must have been very expensive in its day. Where do you set the mode? Button on the back or side?

I actually haven't seen one ever before either - but when I found this one a couple months back, I just had to get it. Wasn't very expensive, too - in the ballpark of 30-40EUR.

As for setting the mode, there is a small switch on the top, actually. You can see it in this photo (I don't have any better one at the moment):

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Reply 8058 of 27171, by bjwil1991

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OldCat wrote:
liqmat wrote:
OldCat wrote:

I actually have one like that! CGA/EGA in colour and monochrome amber/green if need be.

That's cool! I've never seen a monitor with all those modes (color/mono) in one. That must have been very expensive in its day. Where do you set the mode? Button on the back or side?

I actually haven't seen one ever before either - but when I found this one a couple months back, I just had to get it. Wasn't very expensive, too - in the ballpark of 30-40EUR.

As for setting the mode, there is a small switch on the top, actually. You can see it in this photo (I don't have any better one at the moment):

Nice setup.

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 8059 of 27171, by bjwil1991

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Bidding on an NIB sound card.

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser