Picked up a Compaq Presario 4550 on the way home today along with some mystery beige box computer, I have not opened up yet.
The Presario boots into a stock install of Windows 95 (the original installation).
Outside needs some cleaning, still has the sealed sticker, which by now could be gently peeled aside, leaving it intact.
Inside is clean! No dust bunnies, no nicotine, nothing. Looks almost new. 😁
Just like the software, HW config is factory spec. Sadly further inspection will have to wait until this weekend.

imi wrote:

anyways, started to get my stuff a bit organized before I drown in random hardware ^^

progress! 😀

imi wrote:

imi wrote:

anyways, started to get my stuff a bit organized before I drown in random hardware ^^

progress! 😀

hardware34_01b.jpg

Nice ! I Been using a Sharpie pen, yours looks so much nicer and easier to read.

imi wrote:

imi wrote:

anyways, started to get my stuff a bit organized before I drown in random hardware ^^

progress! 😀

hardware34_01b.jpg

If I had the money to do that, I would. For some reason ESD bags are expensive to order. Not to mention the 100x boxes I would need to get to properly house all the motherboards I have.

Horun wrote:

Nice ! I Been using a Sharpie pen, yours looks so much nicer and easier to read.

the label printer was a worthwhile investment 😀

@luckybob, I bought the ESD-bags in packs of 100 for about €10
unfortunately motherboard sized ones are more expensive.

the boxes were a bit on the expensive side, yes, but the ESD-safe variant cost me about the same as the regular grey euro-boxes and I was getting tired of all the odd sized cardboard boxes ^^

sharpies taste great

Finished modding my Gotek 'drives'. FlashFloppy firmware, rotary encoder and an OLED display. Contemplating also adding the piezo speaker for 'floppy sounds' but I think that's a bit silly.

I installed a CPU and NorthBridge water block on my Abit KG7 board last night. Still hoping to find a case for the build.

Saturday - setup trumpet Winsock and got internet working on the NEC Versa under windows 3.1. Also freed up RAM using the method of installing the Orinoco driver without card services. Found a few more cool BBSes from the Bulletin Board System Facebook group. Also installed Wacky Wheels.

Sunday - Did JB Weld repairs to the Versas top cover. I managed to mix the epoxy/hardener to match the NECs medium gray plastic perfectly and now the initial crack is invisible. The second crack was filled, screen and hinge removed, and a layer of JB applied to the inside attaching to the stuff in the cracks. Let sit overnight.

Monday - NEC is cured and the hinge mounts and back cover are rock hard. Tested off/on for sturdyness.

Tuesday - Sanded and leveled the NECs hinges, damage is mostly invisible, and what is visible looks kind of cool and fitting to the name JB Weld - looks like a literal plastic weld, 🤣. Sanded plastic to 2000 grit to attempt to meet or come close to the silky plastic texture of the top. Looks rather nice, feels super sturdy. Also moved my 486 DX-4 100 desktops Win95 install from dying 80 GB (motor fluctuates) to the 128GB SSD.

- Started back at making some Games on the NEC at lunch. Put 3 newer laptops on eBay to help fund some further upgrades. Planning to swap the 8GB in the Tandy 1000A with a 3GB and rebuild my WFWG install for the 486 Desktop on the 8GB, the 15GB drive it's on now is failing (trouble detecting on certain systems but my Linux box finds it just fine). Started planning for a 128GB SSD setup on the Versa to host multiple OSes.

Received the Sinclair ZX81 computer that I ordered today. I don't have any old CRT TVs anymore, so tested the RF output of this thing on all my LCD & Plasma sets. Found 2 LCD sets which it would run on, with the happiest being my oldest - a crappy Mirai brand 1366x768 set.

It doesn't look amazing, but at least that TV works. This week I'm going to test running the output through the tuner of an old VCR from the 80s, to see how it handles it, as this particular VCR has the old DIN Composite output and would be a nice workaround for modern TV sets if it works.

Has a few issues though, to be expected with an "untested" computer of this poor quality. 🤣

The PSU was dead, looked like it had been dropped and was all smashed inside. No big deal, I had a spare. The biggest issue though is the membrane keyboard has succumbed to the brittle & broken ribbon cable. I tried to cut and repair it, but it was hopeless so I've had to order a replacement membrane keyboard. Once that arrives and I'm reasonably happy, I can go ahead and look out for the 16K RAM expansion.

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Contemplating also adding the piezo speaker for 'floppy sounds' but I think that's a bit silly.

My 1541 Ultimate (modern replacement for a C64 floppy drive) has a speaker and emulates the sound of the real thing - I think it’s fantastic 😎

A month ago, I had to fix the screw holes in my 1984 Commodore64 Breadbin. The old plastic was in the process of splitting, after years and years of opening and closing the case. So I clipped off some of the plastic, used a screw to tread the hole that was left, insert a couple of PC motherboard copper standoff's and finally gluing it all with some epoxy glue. Finished it off by giving it a coat of ABS plastic, that was made into a paste with acetone. I have no picture of the finished result. Only these 3 ones.

creepingnet wrote:

Saturday - setup trumpet Winsock and got internet working on the NEC Versa under windows 3.1. Also freed up RAM using the metho […]
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Saturday - setup trumpet Winsock and got internet working on the NEC Versa under windows 3.1. Also freed up RAM using the method of installing the Orinoco driver without card services. Found a few more cool BBSes from the Bulletin Board System Facebook group. Also installed Wacky Wheels.

Sunday - Did JB Weld repairs to the Versas top cover. I managed to mix the epoxy/hardener to match the NECs medium gray plastic perfectly and now the initial crack is invisible. The second crack was filled, screen and hinge removed, and a layer of JB applied to the inside attaching to the stuff in the cracks. Let sit overnight.

Monday - NEC is cured and the hinge mounts and back cover are rock hard. Tested off/on for sturdyness.

Tuesday - Sanded and leveled the NECs hinges, damage is mostly invisible, and what is visible looks kind of cool and fitting to the name JB Weld - looks like a literal plastic weld, 🤣. Sanded plastic to 2000 grit to attempt to meet or come close to the silky plastic texture of the top. Looks rather nice, feels super sturdy. Also moved my 486 DX-4 100 desktops Win95 install from dying 80 GB (motor fluctuates) to the 128GB SSD.

- Started back at making some Games on the NEC at lunch. Put 3 newer laptops on eBay to help fund some further upgrades. Planning to swap the 8GB in the Tandy 1000A with a 3GB and rebuild my WFWG install for the 486 Desktop on the 8GB, the 15GB drive it's on now is failing (trouble detecting on certain systems but my Linux box finds it just fine). Started planning for a 128GB SSD setup on the Versa to host multiple OSes.

The joys of glueing old laptops back together 😀
I always wonder how people put some of these in such a broken state, but on some of them, at this point the plastic just cracks so easily - my Omnibook 800CT is literally falling to bits, at this point I'm melting in metal strips to the plastic to reinforce what's broken. The Librettos are terrible for this too, disassembly seems to result in just a pile of broken plastic.

This evening, I got my second Abit AN4 motherboard operation again, with the keyboard working 😀 This repair is so much tidier than my other AN4 board.
It was scary stuff - earlier in the evening, the board was running but with no keyboard, so I tried to resolder a few things, tidy up some wires.
It then stopped booting up and was just showing "--" on the POST card and doing nothing else. It turned out I had two wires that go to the KBC from the main chipset connected together due to not cleaning off solder properly when I had wiped fresh solder over the un-masked traces.
After that's fixed, still no keyboard, so I gave up trying to repair the keyboard's clock and data traces on the board and just soldered some fresh wires on directly. Now it's up and running 😁
This is the first time I've cleared out the vias and run fresh enamel wire through them, easier than I thought and that should keep the board working for many more years yet.

luckybob wrote:

imi wrote:

imi wrote:

anyways, started to get my stuff a bit organized before I drown in random hardware ^^

progress! 😀

hardware34_01b.jpg

If I had the money to do that, I would. For some reason ESD bags are expensive to order. Not to mention the 100x boxes I would need to get to properly house all the motherboards I have.

I may have posted this before, but there are cheap ESD bags on eBay, but it takes some digging because of the "lot of 10-50-100" or whatever means the really expensive singles end up at the top of the list, and then the kind of expensive lot of 5 or 10 after that.

If you have the time to make a list and compare prices you can find pretty good deals.

The boxes are another matter, that's one of thise "right time right place" things, if you can catch a repair store before they clean out or something like that. I wish recyclers would actually *RECYCLE*.

Great work ! Being a good fabricator is a good skill specially on old stuff.

Refined my Win 2000 Pro VMware "machine" with some more tweaks. I wanted Windows 98 but since no browser there is capable of viewing Youtube videos, I "upgraded" my plan to Windows 2000 to keep the same classic theme.

GP4 doesn't run well, so I downgraded to GP3 (actually, it's historically correct now) and patched it with a better 1998 season mod. GP3, GP Manager 2, FIFA RTWC 98, SIMTOWER, so far so good. Maybe I will get Grand Prix 2 and Championship Manager 99/00 too. I've got Firefox 52.x ESR running too, so I have youtube for now. Oh, damn! I need to find my boxes of NASCAR Racing, IndyCar Racing, Moto Racer 3, NFS... dammit, where are they?

No DOS games though. I am yet to install Full Throttle and Indiana Jones Fate of Atlantis. I'd install Spycraft too if I hadn't mastered the whole game again some months ago in just two days of straight gameplay. After that, I will just redo the Windows 10 VM from scratch, because I am pissed with the VM size. GOD, the Win 10 has 25GB, while Win 2k has 6,5 GB only.

After these two VMs, I will go back to the DOSBox one with Win 3.x, and last but not least... find some use for my raspberry Pi 3.

Ran Chimp on my other 1.6b Xbox to clone the Western Digital HDD that was starting to go (will do SMART test after I unlock the drive on the system) to my new 120GB Maxtor HDD. On top of that, I also repaired the sticking Samsung DVD drives by spraying white lithium grease on the eject mechanism gears and the gear tracks on the trays themselves on both of my 1.6b systems. The 1.0 still works, but it will get the HDD swap, preferably an SSD or a 1TB SSHD and I will keep the original HDD in case the new drive fails.

Merovign wrote:

I may have posted this before, but there are cheap ESD bags on eBay, but it takes some digging because of the "lot of 10-50-100" or whatever means the really expensive singles end up at the top of the list, and then the kind of expensive lot of 5 or 10 after that.

no need for ebay, like I said, I bought them in packs of 100 for ~€10 from the usual electronics retailers.

and yeah I was looking around for boxes everywhere, but couldn't find anything local, I found a really good deal for some but couldn't order them at the time and then they were gone (EOL)... and as this is a one time investment hopefully I just finally ordered new ones.

I spent most of the day on making an actual DOS device driver, with intent to get UMBs going on several 486 chipsets (or anything else i can find documentation on). Thänk you to Uwe Sieber (UMBPCI author) for crucial info ~

Sounds like fun. Out of curiosity here, does the driver enable UMBs on certain chipsets? My 486 has an OPTi 82c895 northbridge, but runs perfectly fine (to a point). Going to re-enable the 4MB onboard RAM to have a whopping 36MB RAM or upgrade to 128MB. And the system in question is a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus that has been modified with 3.3V CPU support, CR1220 battery holder, 512KB L2 cache, Evergreen 586 w/ 16KB L1 WB cache, and lots of good hardware, I/O, and storage drives.