henryVK wrote:

Good question! However, I can't find anything on the manufacturer, e-Data, on Google. The card is simply described as a PCMCIA C […]
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OldCat wrote:

That's interesting - which PCMCIA SD-card adapter did you use?
(I believe that linking to where you bought it might be frowned upon here, but if you could provide uniquely identifying name, that should be okay)

Good question! However, I can't find anything on the manufacturer, e-Data, on Google.
The card is simply described as a PCMCIA CF Type 1 to PC Card adapter:

pcmciaadapter.jpg

But, yeah, it works quite well, is hot-swappable thanks to the PC Card standard and for file transfer it beats unscrewing the HDD caddy with it's proprietary Toshiba IDE connector!

Hang on, that's CF, not SD.

Also very useful (possibly more so than an SD adapter), but something different in any event. I have one of those too, although currently not in use due to no suitably veteran laptops - everything has USB2.0.

Not a problem with CF - I actually routinely remove HDDs from older machines and put CF adapters instead. But in some cases PCMCIA-CF adapter might be more useful (for example Toshiba Libretto 50CT - no need to dismantle this delicate thing each time).

Agree with the utility of PCMCIA CF adapters. But some machines will see them as removable devices and won't allow you to i.e. install an OS to them.

I finally completed resurrection of an old 386 board - Opti 495SX, which is interesting since it has VLB slot working with 386 CPU 😀. Unfortunately it does not allow any co-processor to be mounted, but it is still possible to add some para 486 DLC CPU. It sustained some damage thanks to the leaky 3,6V cell. Few traces disappeared, so I had to re-create them with very thin wire and a bit of solder. It took me some time to do it as it is very precision job, and some components had to be removed before. I sprayed everything with PVC lacquer to secure it against anti-oxidation in the future. Not the factory quality, but enough for my needs. As a bonus, now the battery can be connected to the goldpins. I don't get it - why they didn't put a battery on the wire. Most of broken motherboards I saw from that era have missing traces due to leak. It turned out also that the motherboard plays dice when checking memory during POST. The culprit - two broken pins in simm 30 socket, and had to be transplanted from different board. They don't look the same, but who cares 😀. One simm is still missing as I will do a reflow - one of the chips was missalligned and touching the next one. Activity no 2 today: soldered missing pin in DX2ODP66 overdrive CPU. Unfortunately it is not a P3 coppermine, where pins could be taken out simply with hot air gun. I had to grind it with a tools to reveal some area that solder could be stick to. I wonder if it still works 😀, need some board with a socket that has a lever, as it may stucked in this Opti board.

Have been configuring the Pentium 100 audio. It has the Yamaha Audician 32 Plus ISA card installed with a Dreamblaster S1 daughterboard. Does anyone have this sound card? I find it a fairly noisy card. Using the driver setup utility "SETUPSA.EXE" I find "Ymersion" under the 3D settings the main culprit of background noise coming from the card. I turn "Ymersion" down to zero and also lower the bass and treble in the 3D settings to zero. After doing this the card has much quieter background noise. Wondering if any of you with this card experience the same thing? The Dreamblaster S1 sounds great of course.

Frustrating evening. Wanted to do some testing of cards not supported under Win9x (HD3650 AGP, HD4650 AGP) and some PCIe stuff that I didn't have an OS install for (still no WinXP retro box...). So time to break out the trusty old Knoppix 4.0 CD. Except it was dead, huge re-reads needed to get to desktop and almost no software would run. At first I suspected the drive, but another known-good drive gave the same problems.

So time to burn a new CD. I was down to my very last CDR. 6 years back I received my first and only BluRay disk, but seeing as it was from a film I had invested in and wanted to see in full glory, I decided to buy a BD-ROM drive, and while I was at it replace any other opticals I may have had with a single external USB drive. Sleek little affair, did the job playing anything optical out there and writing whatever I needed. Until now. Mechanically it still seems OK, but the USB device announces itself but the identification probe fails 🙁

Next attempt: install one of my old opticals into a PC and burn it there. So installed a LiteOn DVDRW in my P3 test system running Win98SE. Found some burning software that still could run on Win98. And...

...write errors halfway through, despite full buffer. After all that trouble the last CDR was dead too (and even if it had been an OS/drive issue, the CDR was definitely dead in any event). Time to give up for this evening and go to bed.

dionb wrote:

Frustrating evening. Wanted to do some testing of cards not supported under Win9x (HD3650 AGP, HD4650 AGP) and some PCIe stuff t […]
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Frustrating evening. Wanted to do some testing of cards not supported under Win9x (HD3650 AGP, HD4650 AGP) and some PCIe stuff that I didn't have an OS install for (still no WinXP retro box...). So time to break out the trusty old Knoppix 4.0 CD. Except it was dead, huge re-reads needed to get to desktop and almost no software would run. At first I suspected the drive, but another known-good drive gave the same problems.

So time to burn a new CD. I was down to my very last CDR. 6 years back I received my first and only BluRay disk, but seeing as it was from a film I had invested in and wanted to see in full glory, I decided to buy a BD-ROM drive, and while I was at it replace any other opticals I may have had with a single external USB drive. Sleek little affair, did the job playing anything optical out there and writing whatever I needed. Until now. Mechanically it still seems OK, but the USB device announces itself but the identification probe fails 🙁

Next attempt: install one of my old opticals into a PC and burn it there. So installed a LiteOn DVDRW in my P3 test system running Win98SE. Found some burning software that still could run on Win98. And...

...write errors halfway through, despite full buffer. After all that trouble the last CDR was dead too (and even if it had been an OS/drive issue, the CDR was definitely dead in any event). Time to give up for this evening and go to bed.

That's why a little while back I bought 3 USB DVDRW drives. I use one wherever I need it, and keep the other 2 as backup. They were cheap, I think $10 a piece new in the box from ebay. Memorex brand, model MRX-650LE. Works well with a number of freeware burning programs including ImgBurn, Anyburn etc. I like to have backups for any cheap piece of hardware that I have an expectation that may break and frustrate me.

Did some diagnostics on the Control-Panel-not-opening issue on my Windows XP Pro SP3 Inspiron 600m notebook and I found out the BCMWLCPL.CPL file was causing the issue (over 3MB, which a normal CPL file should be between 100KB and 105KB), deleted the file, and Control Panel finally opened up. Whew!

I’ve been trying to get PCem to build 32 bit on Linux 64 bit, because the 64 bit Voodoo recompiled is buggy and broken, producing miscolored 16 color VGA looking graphics. Sadly, my 32 bit release build crashes with a segfault in the video blitter the instant Windows 98 finishes booting. Debug build, while obviously slower, manages to boot, rendering it nearly impossible to debug.

I’ve also been playing Super Mario Sunshine in Dolphin, my first time through the game for real. My first time playing it on console ended after I visited Bianco Hills for the first time and got frustrated with the game. I’m doing much better this time, I’ve even got 30 Shine Sprites so far, unlocking the FLUDD crates in Delfino Plaza. That came out 16 years ago, so that’s still retro, right?

Just finished a new build yesterday. This will be my primary retrosetup, until i decide to build another primary setup 😜 I really do love the look of the case <3

Pentium II 450MHz
Soltek SL-67B
3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 AGP
Creative AWE32 (CT3990)
512MB SDRAM (PC133)

The setup is running Windows 98se.

stamasd wrote:

[...]

That's why a little while back I bought 3 USB DVDRW drives. I use one wherever I need it, and keep the other 2 as backup. They were cheap, I think $10 a piece new in the box from ebay. Memorex brand, model MRX-650LE. Works well with a number of freeware burning programs including ImgBurn, Anyburn etc. I like to have backups for any cheap piece of hardware that I have an expectation that may break and frustrate me.

Given I have a huge pile of regular internal optical drives that's fortunately not really the issue (can't play BluRay now, but almost never do that anyway). Wasting time and running out of writable media - that was the frustrating bit.

The testing itself was also a mixed bag. The AGP stuff all worked, including the HD3650 and HD4650 - but none of the PCIe cards did. It was so bad I first suspected my test board was misbehaving - but with known good cards it worked perfectly. Oh well, RIP 6800GS, GT240 and Gf7500LE - and of course none had the same heatsink connections as my perfectly working GT430 with dead fan. Which is irritating as my in-laws need a low-profile PCIe card with HDMI (or DVI-D + converter) and I'd sort of promised them one, knowing I had three cards that fit the bill and being confident either one of the two new ones would work or that I could swap heatsinks with the GT430 if they didnt. Grumble...

m1chelsen wrote:

Just finished a new build yesterday. This will be my primary retrosetup, until i decide to build another primary setup :P I real […]
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Just finished a new build yesterday. This will be my primary retrosetup, until i decide to build another primary setup 😜 I really do love the look of the case <3

Pentium II 450MHz
Soltek SL-67B
3Dfx Voodoo3 3000 AGP
Creative AWE32 (CT3990)
512MB SDRAM (PC133)

The setup is running Windows 98se.

That case is awesome! Both retro and ... new at the same time. 😎

You need to get a fan on the Voodoo though, stat!

Played a bit of Unreal Tournament on Toshiba 3480CT. Sadly, 1024x768 even @ medium details results in 15-20 fps max, so barely playable. Such a pity, I thought this lovely little thing would be my UT-engine go-to machine. Deus Ex, etc. Oh well.

dionb wrote:

stamasd wrote:

[...]

That's why a little while back I bought 3 USB DVDRW drives. I use one wherever I need it, and keep the other 2 as backup. They were cheap, I think $10 a piece new in the box from ebay. Memorex brand, model MRX-650LE. Works well with a number of freeware burning programs including ImgBurn, Anyburn etc. I like to have backups for any cheap piece of hardware that I have an expectation that may break and frustrate me.

Given I have a huge pile of regular internal optical drives that's fortunately not really the issue (can't play BluRay now, but almost never do that anyway). Wasting time and running out of writable media - that was the frustrating bit.

Which reminds me, I need to get another stack of CD-Rs. I'm down to about 10-20 only and burned about 10 only in the past week alone. Fortunately they're still available in local stores.

m1chelsen wrote:

Just finished a new build yesterday. This will be my primary retrosetup, until i decide to build another primary setup 😜 I really do love the look of the case <3

Howdy doody that's a neat and tidy machine - great specs too 😎

Ancient hardware can be so frustratingly fickle 😮

I have an ASC-88 8b ISA SCSI adapter from 1985 I wanted to test as a possible expansion for my Olivetti XT if I ever find a keyboard for it. Small, elegant card with few part, even less config options (offset address, bus power and that's it). Put it in my test system and... nothing. Fiddled around with the offset address - setting it to zero stopped the system from booting, but I couldn't get more out of it than that. Until one time suddenly on boot the option ROM kicked in and promptly hung on device detection. Of course, that was the one time I didn't have any devices attached. So attached a drive - and of course next boot it didn't do anything again. Nor the one after. I tried to reproduce everything I had done leading up to the one activation of the option ROM couldn't get anything out of it again.

So back in the 'to do' box it goes, until I next have a bash at a much older system, as my main test system is very much a PnP system and grabs resources left, right and center.

In other news I did manage to successfully test my ISA NICs - all those nasty non-PnP cards with card-specific DOS-only config programs. An hour or two's hunting and I found ones that would work on every one of my cards. And it turns out they all work as well - although getting an Intel EtherExpress Pro/10+ to work under Windows 98SE is one of those things I don't recommend anyone to do unless there is no alternative or they have a masochistic streak a mile wide. Maybe one day I'll do a comparative benchmark in DOS and Win98SE. What I've read suggests that 3Com 509C beats Intel 595 beats all the NE2000 clones hands down. But I'd like to confirm that myself, particularly given a lot of those "NE2000" cards can do shared memory too, which should boost performance significantly.

I searched all of my basement boxes (well not all of them but many) for a 8742, then after I found one I searched all my boxes again for my Willem programmer and MCS48 adapter (last used circa 2014), then after I found that I realized that I don't have an assembled computer with a parallel port so I went and searched all of my boxes again for my USB2LPT adapter and didn't find it; so I started planning building another one, therefore my post in this thread USBLPT : a 'real' parallel port on USB

Recently got my hands on a "mint", Tualatin-capable Asus TUSCL-2 socket 370 motherboard for less than $60, with manual and I/O shield (bargain, right?).

I threw into it one of two PIII-S 1266MHz CPUs I salvaged from an old server that my father had held onto for years, attached a new Startech FanDURONTB Socket A/370 CPU cooler, slotted in a Nvidia GeForce FX 5900XT AGP card, a 256MB PC133 Kingston SDRAM stick, replaced the coin battery, fired it up, and boom!, it worked!

Still need to wait on some "new" 34-pin floppy cables to hook up a Gotek floppy emulator to update the BIOS, because I am out of floppy cables that accept all 34 pins, and therefore are compatible with the Gotek emulator (I mean, I'm sure I could "mod" it and snip off a pin off the emulator to fit those "33-pin" cables, but, rather not).

Also, a question or two. I recently got my hands on a Creative AWE64 Gold, and while cleaning it (it was absolutely disgusting), I noticed some slight corrosion on the gold-plated audio jacks. Since it wouldn't come off with 91% isopropyl alcohol (at least in any reasonable amount), and CLR is out of the question, does anyone have any recommendations on cleaning solutions that can safely remove this slight corrosion off the jacks? Also, if I decided to leave the corrosion on the jacks, would it significantly affect the outputted sound's quality in any meaningful way?

Oh, and for fun, a 1999 Will Smith song remixed into pure gold: https://youtu.be/aiysKaxVYEs

the_ultra_code wrote:

Still need to wait on some "new" 34-pin floppy cables to hook up a Gotek floppy emulator to update the BIOS, because I am out of floppy cables that accept all 34 pins, and therefore are compatible with the Gotek emulator (I mean, I'm sure I could "mod" it and snip off a pin off the emulator to fit those "33-pin" cables, but, rather not).

Just force the connector on, normally with a little force you can punch right through the blocked off pin on the cable. It is what I normally do.

canthearu wrote:

Just force the connector on, normally with a little force you can punch right through the blocked off pin on the cable. It is what I normally do.

Please don't do this. If you are in the situation ultra code mentioned, use a small drill bit to make the hole.

its not a disaster if you frack up a cable. if you break something on a drive or motherboard....