Did some testing of hardware, and taking pictures of stuff. Setting up previously tested hardware for sale, and fiddeling around with CF cards in my Amiga600. (Forgot to eat)

Attempted to jumper the Amp IC and caps with wiring and solder since I discovered the traces were peeling off, so I improvised.

Don't know of it'll work or not, but I think I need to solder on a new jack for the speaker output.

Was playing some Wings of Glory last night on my 486. This game has an incredible MIDI soundtrack as played through the DreamBlaster X2 plugged into an Audician 32 Plus. Strangely, though, I started getting hanging MIDI notes in the past few days that only go away if I shut down and switch the PSU off. They come right back if I only do a warm boot. It's happened I think 3 times in maybe the last 10-15 gaming sessions. I wonder if it's heat-related, as we are having 100+ degree days and it's probably 80+ degrees in my gaming room.

Worked on a FX5900 so long I'm going insane (as if I couldn't already).

I'm hearing various sounds from the classic Pokemon games non-stop. Particularly the level up and evolved sounds.

Getting my Slot A build squared away. Decided I'm recreating my original personal PC with some twists
First off Slot A vs Slot 1. Second off a far nicer case than whatever generic junk mine was in. Going to reuse my original GPU so the heart of it will still be true. I'll also be dual booting 98se and XP.

Installed a Monster Fusion 3D in the Aptiva, installed drivers, added a NIC and sound card. Also concluded that somehow a MX400 does not work inside it and the onboard SIS 2 MB video is not dead yet but is EOLing (bad picture quality). On the to do list: install more drivers and programs plus cleaning the case.

This is borderline retro activity here, as it's an "upgrade" to my main rig, of some sorts.
Been wanting to add another 1TB drive for extra storage, but just didn't get around to it.
But since my rig also needed a case fan swap and a partial de-dusting, I decided to take her outside and do a thorough clean, swap out 2 case fans while I was at it and add the 3rd 1TB drive.

Problem was, I wanted some space between this drive and the other harddrives, but I needed a 5.25in to 3.5in adapter to add the 3.5in 1TB drive to a 5.25in drive bay...but I couldn't find a suitable adapter! 😵

So I went into my boxes of really old parts and found an old SCSI drive which was still mounted to the 3.5in to 5.25in adapter from when I salvaged it like over 10 years ago 🤣
The SCSI drive was some old type 0662 1GB drive (which frankly, if someone were to ask me, looks very cool!).
The drive is dated from roughly 1994, so the metal adapter should be from around the same era, which makes it the oldest part that is currently "actively" used in my main rig 🤣!

It is not the oldest part I ever used in my main rig. That distinction fell to a floppy drive from 1991 which was actively used in my former main rig (meaning it was actually 20 years older then the rest of the system).
It is however the oldest part ever used in my main rig when looking at the current year..and I really REALLY needed this part or I'd have to mount the new drive lower into the case, needing to remove the graphics card which would have me need to remove a LOT of cables as well! 😵
Here's some pics (I had just finished dedusting the front bezel)

WD 1GB and 1TB side by side, like brothers! 😁
With the old brother passing on the way to the younger brother.

There is will go.

Even ended up using the original flatbed screws to mount the EZEX 😁

There is was, right before I added back the front bezel, sharp edges and everything 😜

This is more of the span of a week of activity, but surprisingly - though I usually slow down my PC Stuff during the summer as I enjoy working on guitars more at that time, I did do a few things and have some more planned.

Earlier in the week, I started consolidating us down to one family computer. So I decided it would be the Core 2 I built about six months ago, as it's been running great under a 500GB SSD with Windows 10 for all this time. Put the widescreen on it, Razor Black Widow keyboard, and am about to throw a Lancing sound system on it as well. Also moved all the crap from the 80GB HDD to a 3.5" 160GB HDD - which is more space than I need currently for a share on that machine.

Moved the 17" LCD to the 486, the 286 will be getting the 15" once I get done swapping the power supply (the fan is getting loud - would rather just swap my other full AT PSU into it and work on the other power supply (fan swap) while I use that one.

I'm getting rid of the Dell Dimension 4600 P4 - I just don't need it anymore, and since I'm getting into some STEAM Games that are not runnable on a Pentium 4 (in particular, Thimbleweed Park - which I really want to dive into more). I hope I can find it a good home as it works great aside from not being able to run any O/S newer than Windows 7 (that is not Linux or something else0.

I'm turning the other box - a Pentium D 3.40GHz beast I built out in 2008 for $800 (my old super-gamer rig) into a TV replacement. The Wii stopped working with Youtube this week, so I decided since the wife wants video games in both rooms - I'll setup the PC to our computer in the bedroom, and setup the Wii in the livingroom on the Smart TV so that it does not need to be connected anymore.

Also plan to build out a 80GB HDD for the 486 with Windows 2000 Professional on it - want to try some "sick" experiments running newer software on that one.

And then the Tandy 1000 - I swapped out the original home-built drive bay rack for a black drive bay rack that matches the only floppy drive it has now. This is nice as it will allow me to remove the caddy and replace the hard disk - which was having some stiction issues - so I plan to replace that one sometime soon - probably with an 8GB Drive On Module.

Since I've been taking a week-long break from computers, I'll be listing the activities I've done within the month so far rather than activities for just one day.

I've upgraded my iMac G3's hard drive from a 13GB Maxtor to a 30GB Quantum Fireball, the opening process was tricky but I managed to do it, I was also anticipating on replacing the optical drive but it turned out that the original drive has the IDE connector rotated which made it difficult to use a replacement slot-loading drive, maybe I'll look for an extension cable/board to get around that, I'd prefer to have a professional service do any further modifications/upgrades than to do them myself especially with the risks I expose myself from taking such a delicate machine apart.

What about the 13GB Maxtor drive? I've decided to put that into my Celeron-433 rig to double the storage capacity (original drive was a 6.4GB Quantum), unfortunately, the floppy drive's bezel broke during the replacement process and attempting to put the bezel back on ended up breaking the drive so I'm going to get the floppy drive replaced before I reinstall Windows 95 OSR2.1 on the bigger hard drive.

My mom's old Toshiba Satellite A105-S4254 had some work done to it - the keyboard got replaced, the CPU fan/heatsink had some cleaning done to it, and the CPU got upgraded from an Intel Core Duo T2050 to an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200; the laptop was running slow before we upgraded/cleaned it, now it runs a lot faster to the point where it feels almost like a brand new computer again, even did some light web browsing on it afterwards and it was amazingly fast.

I started to glue back the ethernet connector on the 8 PCI 3Com I've bought yesterday as they were loose. Next I started to clean the Voodoo 3s (all of them completed the 3Dmark benchmark with no issue). Like I said, some of them had rust on them. Hopefully none of the boards are damaged but the aluminium cooler as well as the bracket don't want to be cleaned completely. I just can't remove all of the rust residue for some reason. I even tried a toothbrush with white vinegar but it didn't help a lot. Anyways I think it's clean enough ...

I also straightened some of the pins on the header. The next step will be to find fresh caps to replace those which came off the boards. I wonder where could I find a replacement bracket for the voodoo 3 that misses one. There is also a voodoo 3 that misses a screw for the bracket

Decided to diagnose my Pavilion's battery to see what was going on and there was nasty acid and corrosion on the batteries. Looks like I have to get a new one since replacing the cells is a no-no due to the fact that the batteries are welded together in pairs, and it's hard to find an already built one with the connections, but I can get a new one on eBay for a good price (OEM only).

Writing a dos game in pure assembly. Writing an engine remake for another dos game.

vvbee wrote:

Writing a dos game in pure assembly. Writing an engine remake for another dos game.

What type of DOS game are you writing? Which game is the remake based on?

133MHz wrote:

Dug out a pair of ISA NICs, enabled Boot ROM functionality, burned some EPROMs with the XTIDE BIOS and called it a day: http://1 […]
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Dug out a pair of ISA NICs, enabled Boot ROM functionality, burned some EPROMs with the XTIDE BIOS and called it a day:

It works, but in the 486 it makes Windows 95 use MS-DOS compatibility mode for the hard drive which is painfully slow, and it turns out the 486 doesn't need it anyway since it can correctly handle LBA in the BIOS even though the displayed size is not correct. OTOH the 386 definitely needs it to get past the 500MB barrier.

Continuity was restored from the +5V rail to the CPU socket, and the board fired right up! Even the original CPU survived the whole ordeal:

my god i have the very same pc case
but yours looks white teeth

did you paint it or what

mine looks like cheddar cheese

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

xplus93 wrote:

Farcry was running poorly so I decided to run 3Dmark. From what i've seen this is a typical score for my rig.

P4 EE 3.4 478/6800GT OC AGP

A bit low isn't it? My FX5950 rig scores 3500ish and I know for a fact the 6800GT has roughly twice the performance under DX9 so I would expect it to score high 6k low 7k.

6800XT gave me score: 6800
with an athlon xp3200

Pabloz wrote:

my god i have the very same pc case but yours looks white teeth […]
Show full quote

133MHz wrote:

Dug out a pair of ISA NICs, enabled Boot ROM functionality, burned some EPROMs with the XTIDE BIOS and called it a day: http://1 […]
Show full quote

Dug out a pair of ISA NICs, enabled Boot ROM functionality, burned some EPROMs with the XTIDE BIOS and called it a day:

It works, but in the 486 it makes Windows 95 use MS-DOS compatibility mode for the hard drive which is painfully slow, and it turns out the 486 doesn't need it anyway since it can correctly handle LBA in the BIOS even though the displayed size is not correct. OTOH the 386 definitely needs it to get past the 500MB barrier.

Continuity was restored from the +5V rail to the CPU socket, and the board fired right up! Even the original CPU survived the whole ordeal:

my god i have the very same pc case
but yours looks white teeth

did you paint it or what

mine looks like cheddar cheese

He probably retrobrited it, or he was just lucky that it hasn't yellowed at all. I doubt he painted it.

armankordi wrote:

Comparing my collection from 2012 to now.
Note: In 2012, the only machine I had was the PS/2 Model 70, and the Compaq Deskpro.

i would die to get of of those ibm PS/1 PS/2 style pc cases

but where i live its just impossible

i have seen all sorts of clone china pc cases designs from the 486 era but no IBMs

oeuvre wrote:

IBM NetVista MASTER RACE!

http://imgur.com/a/KRyCR

All it needs is more RAM.

netvista the white model
and the later black model, are the most ugly pc cases that IBM ever made.
i just loved their designs from the 486 era, and then the netvista is just ugly

krivulak wrote:

Because I finished high school, college is starting in autumn and they didn't want me for the parttime job in recycling centre, […]
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Because I finished high school, college is starting in autumn and they didn't want me for the parttime job in recycling centre, I am sitting home and kicking my butt from boredom. So I thought I could finish my SS7 project.
I started with case. I got it from friend, it had some super weird socket 7/slot A combination which didn't work properly. It also had inside ATX PSU with power button wired on reset button, stuck CD drive and dark orange floppy drive. So I threw out all the guts and started cleaning the front bezel.

One day of Retr0bright and it looks brand new!
So I assembled it back and started looking for some nice motherboard. I went through my stash and found only some generic LGA775 stuff, pretty much worthless. When I thought that I need to buy some nice board my eyes landed on computer I got YEARS ago. It was some ugly proprietary purple FIC LEO and when I powered it on, it had Windows XP on it, graphical artifact and it performed really, really poorly. Then the main filter cap in PSU blew and threw the breakers, so I tucked it in corner and left it there. When I finally disassembled it, it had nice Super Socket 7 board! It has Cyrix MII 266MHz, so that's also nice.
Few hours of digging in my supplies later I found some nice back brackets, AT PSU, white CD drive (which I might upgrade to DVD), never used 3,5" floppy and the only white (sadly yellowed) 5,25" drive which is being whitened right now. And also Seagate Barracuda 40GB IDE drive.

Then I stopped. I have dilemma what GPU I should use. I have few options, but I want to use brown board if possible.
- Asus AGP-V6600 32MB - had the best benchmark, but is DARN HOT - 75-80°C
- ManLi GeForce 2 MX-400 - Second best benchmark, but DARN loud fan...
- S3 Trio 3D - It is fully working, but when I tried to pull it from PC I got zapped. And the PC was two hours unplugged from wall...
- S3 Trio 3D/2X - worst benchmark from all of them (231 FPS 3DBENCH, 100 FPS PCPBENCH, 74,8 Quake bench), but it had no problem. I am afraid of lack of performance, but I will see...

Next really big problem - where to find soundcard that works in Windows 98 SE AND in Commander Keen and Wolf 3D. I love soundcards, but I don't have anything suitable. (I think, maybe some SB Live! is there, but I would like something like AWE64 a little bit more)

And the last problem - how to use the TURBO button since the board doesn't have option for it. I thought maybe I could add fan somewhere and turn it on with the button when needed. Maybe to front since it is perforated there. But then I will have to rellocate the speaker. Nevertheless, it might be nice, don't you think?

*Disclaimer*: I did NOT power it on without the CPU cooler. I didn't have thermal paste on hand so I left the mainboard unplugged while testing the PSU, front panel and drives.

nice retrobright, i tried to do some with salon care40 and it didn´t work as expected, it did change color but just a little bit.
the reason was because the original plastic (back of faceplate was not white) it was like sand color, so it never reaches white.

ill never understand why some cases were white and some were sand color, i thought all where white in the 80s from factory

I've been testing out my Mac haul - all but two of the machines are working as-is; the Power Macintosh 7200/75 needs a hard drive, and the LC needs a PSU recap. The Apple Multiple Scan 15 monitor (also in-box) works great. Haven't tested the Color OneScanner.

I've got 2 working Apple Extended Keyboard II's as well, a working Apple USB Pro Keyboard, and some mice (although I've only tested 1 or 2) and a MacAlly Extended Keyboard that is not nearly as nice as the Apple ones. Also an untested iMac keyboard and some puck mice.

I also received an in-box Personal LaserWriter LS - which looks absolutely mint, complete with the manual and software, but throws Fuser and Scanner Motor errors when attempting to print 😢

Not sure what to do with the printer - it's in such nice shape it seems a shame to bin it, but it only works by Serial connection on Macs running system software 8.1 or older even if I get it working. Kind of a limited use case. Hilariously enough you can still buy toner for them.