I tried my new diamond crystal mm hp pc104 soundcard on my advantech dx4 biscuit pc. I managed to get it to work, after playing with irqs. Tyrian has music now , but isnt very playable yet. It seems i have a keyboard buffering problem, as it beeps often, under tyrian, setedit, freepascal ... I have to figure out why. I had the keyboard problem before the new soundcard. Maybe i should tweak my keyb buffer?

dkarguth wrote:

I upgraded my 286 machine from CGA to VGA. No more dumb programs refusing to run in graphics mode. Also upgraded to windows 3.1.

Now that you have VGA on your 286 go check out some of the cool demoscene demos that will push your VGA 286 to its limits (if it has sound). All these demos work well on my 286-12 with VGA.

http://www.pouet.net/topic.php?which=10952

I deactivated the temperature controlled ventilation in my Mac to extend its life.

I finally found an X-Fi and PCI Gigabit NIC capable of running on a 38.75MHz PCI bus. My insane-in-the-brain, DDR-equipped PIII-S system is even faster now.

PIII-S 1400 CPU, overclocked to 1628MHz on a 155MHz FSB! Vcore is at 1.55v.
2GB of DDR at 310MHz, 2-2-2-6
EVGA 6800GT @ AGP 5x (that's AGP 4x running at 77.5 MHz 😁 )
QDI Advance 12T motherboard, Apollo Pro266T chipset.
X-Fi Platinum
300GB/7200rpm/16MB buffer/ATA-133 Maxtor hard drive.
XP MCE 2005
All crammed into an Antec P182 tower

With a 155MHz bus and low latency DDR, the PIII-S is a fast little bugger at 1628MHz. The 3DMark, Aquamark, SuperPi, and Quake III numbers are astonishing to say the least. CPU hungry games like NFS Underground and Morrowind are running beautifully. GPU heavy workloads like a 1600x1200 Far Cry are also running nicely. 720p software-decoded H.264 is completely lag-free, and the Windows eXPerience in general is just snappy AF.

I'm really liking this machine! Maybe a little too much. I spent 3 hours playing Painkiller on it last night. I don't even spend that much time gaming on my main computer!

Steve the sounds like one hell of a system you have there.

Patched a broken +5V trace on a faulty A600. Worked flawlessly after soldering the the jumper wire. The RF Modulator is dead and needs fixing and the floppy drive's disk change sensor's not working, but otherwise a fully working machine. Once everything's fixed, I'll do a recap as the final touch to this machine.

Set up my dual boot Windows 98 & Windows XP system on my VIA Nano U3400 800MHz / VIA VX855 Chipset Thin Client with 32GB CF card. Windows XP (which was installed 2nd) was a breeze, installed without issue and all drivers installed and setup fine. Did my usual test of Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation, output at 1080p with maximum settings. A bit laggy, but playable. If I dial down the settings to something more reasonable this will be a fine retro gaming system.

The Windows 98 install was less successful. It took nearly 3 hours to install, then it had issues with drivers & also laggy mouse movement etc. Plus the impossible hurdle - this thin client uses onboard VIA/Realtek HD Audio and not AC'97. I'll probably just keep this thin client on Windows XP.

Also started working on my 2nd Thin Client, with Via C7 1GHz / VIA CN700 Chipset.

Managed to squeeze in a 30GB mSATA SSD with mSATA-SATA adapter, on the left hand side:

The SSD is covering the IDE ports, but as this is such a small enclosure there is no room to fit anything to them anyway. Oh and the bottom and sides of the adapter have been insulated.

Going to also set up a dual boot 98SE / XP system on this. However it has a major issue at present - the CPU is overheating. I've had to temporarily attach a USB case fan, otherwise it simply gets unstable and unusable after about 15 minutes. I'll sort this issue properly this week, will clean the heatsink and add some new thermal paste. Failing that, the motherboard is regular Mini ITX and has a standard CPU fan connector onboard, so I can replace the heatsink with a small heatsink/fan - which will require some modifications of course.

badmojo wrote:

Ooh super nice build! Great sound options and that Voodoo3 is a perfect fast DOS card in my experience - fast and excellent image quality.

Thanks dude! I've always felt this board would be a good base for a fast dos build being able to cover the sound options with the 2 ISA slots. I would love to get a Voodoo 5 in there but i haven't found one yet that is in my price range and i don't know how its DOS performance compares in relation to the Voodoo 3 so that will have to do. I may experiment with some other cards in the future although I know this board is notorious for its AGP which is why i think the Voodoo is a great match.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

cut

Nice to see a fellow Tualatiner around! 😎 My RDD system (yes, I use it as a modern computer!) is pretty close to yours except it has PC133 SDRAM and a QDI Advance 10T. The graphics card is an ATI Radeon X1950 Pro, kinda unstable if I mess with it but now I finally got it to work stable at 608/702. I'm running my system at 148.63Mhz FSB and so at 1560MHz. Unfortunately I can't push it higher otherwise I'll get freezes or BSODs, most likely caused by the RAM (Infineon CL2 sticks) or the PSU (a Corsair CX500M which I believe is getting pushed too much). It's a very fast machine, but I wish I could push it further... But I'm glad enough it's stable as it is despite sometimes it likes to not POST after a reboot. 😠

On the bright side, I've ordered an Antec High Current Gamer 620W which hopefully should give me more headroom in terms of power, so maybe with that PSU I'll be able to push the system a little bit more. By the way, does your QDI Advance 12T support vCore overvolting through jumpers? I tried to raise the vCore of my system through them, but as soon as I change them from anything that isn't the Automatic Detection, the system won't POST. What PSU do you use in your Tualatin build?

Watching demo's all day. Technically yesterday. I found a nice collection of OCS demo's from 1987 to 1993.

Soldered a new NiMh battery on a 486 motherboard from a safe distance. And just to be on the safe side, I placed the battery in a transparent PVC box. You know what they say: "never trust a barrel battery, even a new NiMh one" 😀

Got round to checking out some software from my huge haul in December. The most interesting find was a (near?) NOS copy of Gibson Reseach's Spinrite II.

The original media were in there too:

Both disks still worked and contained identical content, Spinrite 2.0, with a README.NOW file claiming a March 1991 date, but the floppies are marked with a May 1991 date code. Whatever dubious stuff Spinrite has morphed into over the years, back in 1991 it was primarily a non-destructive interleave calculating & changing tool for ST-506 drives with physical CHS settings, with a very friendly user interface. We didn't have it on vogonsdrivers.org yet, and I'm not 100% convinced other versions online are exactly the same - so uploaded it.

After re-reading the manual of my motherboard carefully, I've managed for the first time to increase the core voltage of my Tualatin through jumpers. In the beginning I moved the wrong jumper and the machine booted to Windows with a vCore of 1.76v, but then I moved it to the right spot and finally got 1.55v, mimicking Standard Def Steve's core voltage.

For the first time now, I've been able to push the FSB to 148.67Mhz through CPUFSB without getting freezes or BSODs. 3DMark 2003 successfully completed the benchmark scoring 12340 3Dmarks at stock settings, 1024x768 @ 32bpp. Nice!

I wonder if I can push the CPU further to reach or at least get closer to Standard Def Steve's clock frequency...

EDIT: Well, I spoke too early. The graphics card started being unstable again. So in order to get stability I had to underclock the FSB back to 148.63Mhz and reduce the overclock on the graphics card as well, or else I'd get random freezes and blue screens. I hope that things will get better once the new PSU arrives.

Busy day is over, all repairs on my old Dallas DS1387 are completed and it holds a charge as well as 4k's worth of settings in SRAM:

The dremel-work was messy at best, so much so that I despaired of getting a CR-2032 mount properly connected. So I cheated and went for 3x AAA. Won't win any prizes for elegance, but it's effective enough, Now time to get that EISA config sorted... enough to do - the SCSI card config is accepted, but only works on warm boots (hangs at detecting drive on a cold boot), and the Compaq CPQ3001 SVGA card .cfg has syntax errors according to my utility. But that's all for another day. For now at least the hardware is doing what I want.

Inspired by Phil's computer lab's 'sleeper' retro game pc's and being a bit tired looking at too many beige pc enclosures, I have performed some plastic surgery today on my Voodoo2 system:

Before:

Work in progress, transplantation of important organs done:

2019 make over done:

Looks amazing to me 😀

New parts:

- Thermaltake Versa H15 Window mATX case (this case has 1 USB 2.0 port on top as well as front/top audio, so that's great for a retro pc)
- Seasonic S12-II 520W ATX PSU (24A on +5V and plenty of 4 pin Molex) -> bought two more of this one to finish my project of replacing all old PSU's
- Don't know the brand anymore / generic green LED 120mm case fan (the standard fan in the case is a really crappy one without LEDs -> went straight to the dumpster!)
- Asus CRW-5232A3 PATA CD-RW

dionb wrote:

Busy day is over, all repairs on my old Dallas DS1387 are completed and it holds a charge as well as 4k's worth of settings in SRAM:

The dremel-work was messy at best, so much so that I despaired of getting a CR-2032 mount properly connected. So I cheated and went for 3x AAA. Won't win any prizes for elegance, but it's effective enough, Now time to get that EISA config sorted... enough to do - the SCSI card config is accepted, but only works on warm boots (hangs at detecting drive on a cold boot), and the Compaq CPQ3001 SVGA card .cfg has syntax errors according to my utility. But that's all for another day. For now at least the hardware is doing what I want.

Please do the audience a favor and buy a new Dallas compatible battery for € 10 next time 😁

I finally finished another build that was 95% done.

Mobo: FIC SD11/Aspen2 (It used to be a Compaq System but the case lacked the bracket to fixate the PCI cards so I threw it away. Sorry...I didn't like the case and couldn't find the bracket too...
CPU: AMD-A0750MPR24B (Thunderbird)
RAM: 768MB
GPU: Voodoo3 3000 (normally it came with a V3 1000)
Sound: SB Live 5.1
HD: Quantum Fireball CR 8,4GB (previous owner installed a PCI SATA controller card and a Velociraptor but after the second boot, it died). The PCI card is still there just in case 😀
Drives: DVD drive + floppy
OS: W2K SP4

I put it in a fairly 'modern' case but due to the proprietary connectors on the board, only the power button and led work 🙁

It was just one of those days - Had some trouble communicating over Serial between 2 pcs. My XT wasn't detecting anything no matter what I tried. Then I pulled out the computer and spotted the issue - it wasn't plugged in!! Damn I hate when something stupid like that happens. 😖

SpectriaForce wrote:

[...]

Please do the audience a favor and buy a new Dallas compatible battery for € 10 next time 😁

Note I said DS1387, not DS1287. You can easily buy DS1287-compatible modules, in fact I did. The difference is 4k SRAM on the DS1387. A board expecting a DS1387 won't run with a DS1287 or compatible. And as far as I can see, no one has made DS1387-compatible modules for the last two decades.

dionb wrote:

SpectriaForce wrote:

[...]

Please do the audience a favor and buy a new Dallas compatible battery for € 10 next time 😁

Note I said DS1387, not DS1287. You can easily buy DS1287-compatible modules, in fact I did. The difference is 4k SRAM on the DS1387. A board expecting a DS1387 won't run with a DS1287 or compatible. And as far as I can see, no one has made DS1387-compatible modules for the last two decades.

You can still get DS1387's on ebay. They are probably flat or close to it by now, but another chance to mod cleanly 😀

But still, a working motherboard with a dodgy looking battery is better than a broken motherboard with a perfect looking battery 😀