After receiving and replacing the CMOS battery from Mouser, I successfully backed up the Vendex Headstart III 32MB MFM drive to a compact flash card. Updated to DOS 6.22. The CF boots with no issues now.

Disregard my NESPI providing strain relief on the floppy cables. Both floppy drives are having issues that I cannot determine the cause. I cleaned and lubricated both drives, but their performance is inconsistent. I should be receiving a GOTEK emulator today that I am going to experiment with. I would like to get the floppy drives working though if I can find more help.

Next up is to determine the cause of the memory error on boot. It does not seem to affect performance. I believe the dip switches on the board are the cause, but I will need to track down documentation from a user on another forum.

twilliamc wrote:

After receiving and replacing the CMOS battery from Mouser, I successfully backed up the Vendex Headstart III 32MB MFM drive to […]
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20181117_180810.jpg

20181117_180826.jpg

After receiving and replacing the CMOS battery from Mouser, I successfully backed up the Vendex Headstart III 32MB MFM drive to a compact flash card. Updated to DOS 6.22. The CF boots with no issues now.

Disregard my NESPI providing strain relief on the floppy cables. Both floppy drives are having issues that I cannot determine the cause. I cleaned and lubricated both drives, but their performance is inconsistent. I should be receiving a GOTEK emulator today that I am going to experiment with. I would like to get the floppy drives working though if I can find more help.

Next up is to determine the cause of the memory error on boot. It does not seem to affect performance. I believe the dip switches on the board are the cause, but I will need to track down documentation from a user on another forum.

Excellent use of a NESPI! (Thought it was a Classic Edition at first.)

Is it "modern" or "retro" when I run f.Lux with the greyscale mode turned on? I recently noticed there's a greyscale option and it's really nice after a while. Then I look over at another system and everything's in color and it looks so artificial.

(Note: When running f.Lux in Windows 10, disable Windows' own blue light filter-- it seems when both are on the screen will flicker and sometimes briefly return to color.)

AlaricD wrote:

Is it "modern" or "retro" when I run f.Lux with the greyscale mode turned on? I recently noticed there's a greyscale option and it's really nice after a while. Then I look over at another system and everything's in color and it looks so artificial.

(Note: When running f.Lux in Windows 10, disable Windows' own blue light filter-- it seems when both are on the screen will flicker and sometimes briefly return to color.)

I do the same thing having seen an on screen message telling me greyscale was available. Makes watching old gameplay videos and films seem so much more authentic than viewing them in colour.

Leaning towards both (hard to tell), depending upon which version you're running and on which OS.

After I read the firmware contents of the EPROM chip, I put everything back in its place and the CD-ROM drive wouldn't spin up. Turned out that dummy me inserted the one ribbon cable on backwards inside the CD-ROM drive itself and all is well. Tested the CD-ROM drive with the copy of Yggdrasil Plug-and-Play Linux Summer 1994 that I got several months ago and I'm happy how that turned out. I'll post a video about the Linux OS in the future.

Tested out an AGP HIS Radeon HD4670 that I received a couple days ago. It turned out to be DOA.. No output whatsoever. So back to the seller it goes for a refund.

I've been looking to get one for quite a while and finally found one that wasn't priced sky-high so I bought it. Bleh 😵

OldCat wrote:

That said, for DOS I would need a couple things: […]
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That said, for DOS I would need a couple things:

• NeoMagic 2160 and Yamaha OPL3-SA3 DOS drivers - where from?
• Toshiba utility to scale 640x480 and lower resolutions to screen native 800x600 - I know there used to be one, but where to find it?
• USB port driver in order to make transferring files easier - does this even exist?

From my experience, the sound card settings are controlled by the BIOS, so assuming you know how to enter the BIOS setup (if you don't, you do it by holding ESC while powering up, then pressing F1 when instructed), you can get the settings you need (IRQ, DMA, and I/O addresses) for DOS usage. No additional drivers were required. If in doubt, this might be useful.

As for screen scaling utility: I'm not sure where to find it. I remember finding one in a thread on this site, and when I retraced my steps by searching, it turns out the utility was for models with Chips & Technologies graphics processors, so the one I found might not works with your system. I'm sure someone else with more experience with those will point you to the right direction. I remember seeing a setting for screen scaling in the BIOS on one of my Toshiba laptops, but IIRC it only scaled the text modes and left graphical modes as they were (centered).

As for USB: A quick Google search for "ms-dos usb driver" shows some solutions for that, maybe it'd be worth trying those.

Less deeply retro than otherwise, but at last got my ultimate AGP system running, with Phenon II X4 quadcore. After first hitting Linux vs nVidia hurdles I hit an installer problem with Linux Mint that just wouldn't go away (despite being able to do pretty much anything to my HDD manually from within the installer, the installer refused to list the drive as install target), so just gave up on that and installed Lubuntu instead. It just works, everything, straight out of the box. So now using that system to burn a bootable CD for my older stuff (I forgot my last one in one of the PCs I donated to my son's school), while some good music is blaring out of my Microlab speakers.

Earlier this evening my son wanted to play Pirates Gold, so dug out his old K6-2. Must say that that's a game that hasn't aged well - above all else the controls are plain awful, both in sailing and fencing. After having played the 2004 edition this one is well nigh unplayable.

Oh, and on my 'current' system (2011-vintage Core i7 2600) the displayport on my GTX960 died while I was using it. The picture started stuttering, then went black and sound also froze. After a reboot nothing at all on screen, but the rest of the system looked and sounded like it was working normally, so on a hunch grabbed an HDMI cable and sure enough, no problems. Still, WTF...?

I replaced the blown line filter capacitor in my IIe's power supply today. Fortunately, it didn't kill the motherboard when it let the magic smoke out.

She lives!

Marvelous. I miss my old Apple collection.

All I did today was fix some issues on my useless Oldternet site (renamed a few ZIP files) and tweaked the alignment of some images. Making new content (or even finding new content externally) is proving to be more of a chore than anything else. Still deliberating on whether I should go CF with my old systems, as HDDs below 10GB cost far more than I'm willing to pay, and all of my 1GB drives are failing from decades of sloppy storage by the previous owner.

OldCat wrote:

Also, my usual next step is to rip out the hard drive and replace it with CF-based solution, usually with DOS. That said, for DO […]
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Also, my usual next step is to rip out the hard drive and replace it with CF-based solution, usually with DOS. That said, for DOS I would need a couple things:

• NeoMagic 2160 and Yamaha OPL3-SA3 DOS drivers - where from?
• Toshiba utility to scale 640x480 and lower resolutions to screen native 800x600 - I know there used to be one, but where to find it?
• USB port driver in order to make transferring files easier - does this even exist?

Very nice looking machine. The beauty of Toshiba is in the build quality and, even more important, long term support:

https://support.toshiba.com/support/modelHome … Text=1073769634

That should do you for graphics and sound drivers.

Now for scaling, the Libretto 100CT has the same graphics chip and handles scaling via the BIOS, so that may be one place to check. Meanwhile, the data sheet for the 3020CT says there is "internal" full screen support for 640*480 "using stretch utility". This should be the general "Toshiba Windows 95 Utilities" offered on the Toshiba drivers page. These usually let you fiddle with the settings otherwise accessible in the BIOS, plus power management and stuff like that. If it's like the Libretto then it has at least two separate utilities apps.

I haven't set up USB drivers in MS-DOS because none of my laptops have a built in port, but this looks like a thorough guide:

https://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/201 … S-and-Win98.htm

Thanks, KCompRoom2000 and HenryVK. I will try these next time I have a bit of time to play with this system.

OldCat wrote:

Haven't done or bought anything remotely retro in a while. Various real-life problems piled up, didn't have time, money and hear […]
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Haven't done or bought anything remotely retro in a while. Various real-life problems piled up, didn't have time, money and heart to do it. But today for the first time in weeks I had a moment to myself, so I opened my Toshiba 3020CT (looks worse in photo than in reality, it's actually very well preserved):

20181119_160747.jpg

and removed the RTC battery, just in case, based on Maintenance Manual. I am amazed by its build quality, everything is neat, clean and well put together.

20181119_160918-COLLAGE.jpg

The battery doesn't look like typical spillers, though - pic attached.

20181119_152456.jpg

Perhaps I am being overly cautious? Any ideas what to replace it with?

Also, my usual next step is to rip out the hard drive and replace it with CF-based solution, usually with DOS. That said, for DOS I would need a couple things:

• NeoMagic 2160 and Yamaha OPL3-SA3 DOS drivers - where from?
• Toshiba utility to scale 640x480 and lower resolutions to screen native 800x600 - I know there used to be one, but where to find it?
• USB port driver in order to make transferring files easier - does this even exist?

Send PM to me, I'll help you 😀

Got a IBM PS/2 Model 30 286 and installed MS-DOS 6.22 on it! 😀

Today I upgraded my son's C2Q 'educational' system to an HD4850 so he could run Google Earth. I thought that I was working off the crappy G41 integrated VGA, but turned out there was a card in there: a PCIe Matrox Parhelia. I can't for the life of me remember where I got it from or why I stuck this card of all cards into that system. Interesting find in a system I built and maintain myself... must be age taking its toll 😜

Tested the Super Nintendo console that I got for free last friday. First I checked the AC adaptor, to check for stable voltage. Then I proceeded to craft an RF cable, because I recieved it without any AV-Cable. I thought that if the bugger was dead, then there is no need to order a cable.

At first there were no life at all, yet after a couple of power cycles, it gave a signal. It took a long time, as the tv requires me to cycle through all analog channels (only autotune) and I had to test out both channels on the console output. Yet I am stubborn. Think the caps are a bit tired inside. Hmmm... Anyway... Whenever I touched the SuperMario allstars cartridge (both all stars cartridges), then the game would crash, yet Starwing (Starfox) would have no such issue. I cleaned the edge connector inside the console and the connectors on both cartridges, and the issue went away.

So I am hopefull, and can start order some gamebit screwdrivers plus AV-Cable. The controllers were dead as well, so I took them apart and cleaned all the dirt and junk from the contacts. That did the trick. After that, I gamed Super Mario for one hour. Such an awesomme console. 😜

When it is all finished (cleaned and refurbished completely), then I will bring it to my children at their mothers house. I have too much junk and their mother does not mind lending it a couple of years. Still my console, yet it will come to good use and bring many happy hours.

Working on updating my Yamaha XG repository (in sig).

Organized just about everything and also added some more stuff.

Still have a bunch more stuff to add so I'll probably be updating it quite a bit in the next few days.

I replaced the missing BIOS and cache in this 486 VLB motherboard (Chicony CH-491E) I came across a while back and was very pleased to find that it booted right up. I have no idea why someone removed those chips in the first place - the motherboard came as a bonus in a PC I bought for the case. A very kind local enthusiast answered my call for replacement chips.

badmojo wrote:

I replaced the missing BIOS and cache in this 486 VLB motherboard (Chicony CH-491E) I came across a while back and was very plea […]
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I replaced the missing BIOS and cache in this 486 VLB motherboard (Chicony CH-491E) I came across a while back and was very pleased to find that it booted right up. I have no idea why someone removed those chips in the first place - the motherboard came as a bonus in a PC I bought for the case. A very kind local enthusiast answered my call for replacement chips.

Nice. I just bought a CH-471A myself; I'm not familiar with 486 chipsets at all, I wonder what the differences are. The motherboard looks pretty similar.

That's a nice looking board yours - ZIF socket, 72 pin RAM I think I see there? That SiS chipset was well thought after in the 486 era from what I understand - my fancy ASUS 486 board uses it.