Tested the Covox in my Atari 800 XL yesterday, and it works great. 😀 Ordered a 3.5" headphone jack today to finish the installation.

Received a box full of IDE and SATA cables, along with a few PC fans (some of them broken), speakers and other miscellaneous components. Took about three hours to clean them one by one. I simply refuse to storage components when they are dirty.

Tried again to find a decent browser for Win98. No luck. I really want to have a retro Win98 VM for some games and other stuff, just like I had 20 years ago. But looks like my best (and closest) option is win2k.

I’d use Win2k if I had a customized bootscreen, start menu banner, logon and shutdown banners to look like 98.

Back to drawing board of ideas...

bfcastello wrote:

Tried again to find a decent browser for Win98. No luck. I really want to have a retro Win98 VM for some games and other stuff, just like I had 20 years ago. But looks like my best (and closest) option is win2k.

I’d use Win2k if I had a customized bootscreen, start menu banner, logon and shutdown banners to look like 98.

Back to drawing board of ideas...

Browser as in Internet Browser? Have you tried KernelEX to load a more modern browser build to Win9x?

Latest activity. Soldered up the XT2AT keyboard converter. The PS/2 connector I ordered didn't have the right mounting leg size, too big for the PCB holes. Might just be a PCB hole size error, but I snipped the mounting legs off and soldered it anyway -- I don't plan on putting gorilla force on it and will seldom use it. I just have to program the PIC, 3D print the case tonight, and it should be good to go.

edit: printing!

edit: print complete, now cooling off!

EDIT: This case I found on Thingiverse does not fit the Oshpark printed PCB. Apparently there are more than 1 PCB versions for the XT2AT. I just designed a quick and dirty new case in about 20min, and hopefully it fits. Printing nao. Oh, I also flashed the PIC with my TL866II Plus -- it worked awesome, first time I used it. 😎

Bah, dimensions are a few millimeters off. Back to the drawing board -- almost there.. so close to fitting perfect. The holes for the keyboards all align correctly, I just need to tighten up the dimensions around the circuit board, and shrink the lid by 1mm to get it to fit in all the way.

That's neat.

Spent the whole day fixing my “new” turntable - Technics SP10 mk2 which I bought very cheaply almost a year ago. When I bought it, I knew it was not fully working: the brake didn’t work and it was an ex-BBC version which required an external control box which in turned required a BBC console (which I obviously didn’t have). Some time ago I bought a new old stock brake assembly (loop and solenoid) but it turned out that not only the solenoid was bad and the loop was missing from my turntable, but the transistor controlling the solenoid was also shot. I also found and bought a spare logic board, that allowed me to get rid of the external control box and of the extremely stiff cable going to that box.

I still need to recap the turntable but aside from that it’s fully functional. Now I need to make a new armboard and install a tonearm. Given how awesome the SP10 mk2 is, I anticipate it will sound much better than my current turntable (a heavily tweaked and customized Technics SL-110).

While doing the repairs, I found a date stamp inside my SP10 mk2, it was made in July 1985 which makes it almost 35 years old.

Sounds like a fun, yet painful project to work on.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Sounds like a fun, yet painful project to work on.

To be honest, the most painful part was patiently watching eBay for spare parts. The service manual for this model is very good and includes an extremely helpful flowchart that basically says "if X doesn't work, check Y". After I collected all the parts, the rest was relatively straightforward.

wiretap wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

Tried again to find a decent browser for Win98. No luck. I really want to have a retro Win98 VM for some games and other stuff, just like I had 20 years ago. But looks like my best (and closest) option is win2k.

I’d use Win2k if I had a customized bootscreen, start menu banner, logon and shutdown banners to look like 98.

Back to drawing board of ideas...

Browser as in Internet Browser? Have you tried KernelEX to load a more modern browser build to Win9x?

Yep. I had the unofficial win98se service pack, installed kernelex, even tried the kernelex updates along with some other more modern browsers, even tried retrozilla, rzbrowser, seamonkey, opera 12.02, firefox 10.x esr, nothing worked for youtube. K-meleon and New Moon/Pale Moon whatever is its name, just crash on me no matter what compat mode I select. Youtube just does not work. Some of my fav websites dont even work properly. I know Pale Moon sort of works on win2k and some more recent versions of firefox with blackwingcats kex on win2k too, but this is not my main goal. I want windows 98se.

Some months ago I sort of had youtube on retrozilla, but I do not remember how. I’d accept it with a greasemonkey script to stream on VLC if I had a greasemonkey version working for it along with the script but I guess that this method does not work anymore. Maybe I am late to the “party”. But at least some of my other websites should kinda work too.

To be fair I have never used youtube on win98 when I had it, I believe Youtube as I know it, I began using somewhere between 2006-2005, when I had XP or Win2K. Probably XP. But I hate XP...

Playing with different harddrive solutions on my Amiga500-Desktop. It is not that happy to use CF cards, and I suspect that it might come down to PIO compatibility issues. Better luck with laptop SATA drives and SATA-to-IDE converters. I can use a 120gb drive, no BIOS settings or whatever to battle with. Just plug it in and I can use up to 4gb of the space. If I want to use all the space, I would have to upgrade the Kickstart from version 2 to the new 3.1.4

A long time ago I picked up a Dell 2000fp (very old 1600x1200 IPS monitor) at a thrift store. Because of it's age I didn't have much confidence that it would work, and it's been sitting around because I've never been able to test it. It uses an odd sized barrel connector for the power supply. I've never found one that fits.
Few days ago I decided to rig up something to finally check if it has a future or needs to be disposed.

This is one of the thrift store PSUs I bought back when I was trying to find one that works with this monitor.
The monitor calls for 20V 3.5A, so this should work. It's for a laptop and for whatever reason Dell used a different connector on it even though they're essentially the same voltage.

When I cut off the connector I was surprised to find 3 wires inside. Apparently Dell has some goofy system where they use the 3rd wire to communicate with the laptop. Luckily the other 2 wires will still provide power without that.

I soldered a couple wires onto the barrel connector and twisted them with the power supply wires. It's ghetto but I want an answer here.

I've used it for hours since this and it still works.
The bezel is huge, but all that black surrounding the screen kind of helps to immerse yourself. Give it a few years and they'll bring back big black bezels to sell new TVs.
Too bad the screen is blemished, but I don't think Goodwill has ever had a monitor on their shelves that wasn't scratched.
I've closed up the case (bare wires still hanging out for power supply) and put it on a VESA stand. It's too heavy for the stand to lift it.

Definitely the oldest LCD that I have, and the picture is quite decent. I need to test it with the "VGA Compatibility Test Suite". I'm hoping that it's age will imply better behavior with some of the hacky demo scene stuff. IPS is 60Hz only though so DOS in general remains iffy.
I wondered about a panel swap, but it looks like this older panel isn't swappable with the later panels found in Dell 2007fp and HP LP2065 monitors. I don't know much about how the signalling works in LCDs but apparently this old model uses TMDS, not LVDS like the later panels use.

Luckybob just did a video on his recently acquired 2001FP. Nice monitors.

https://youtu.be/Z8htUypIy9E

I REALLY like these old dell screens. usb hub, composite, svideo, component, halfway decent speakers. And they tend to be very stable in terms of build quality. Only thing missing is an RF tuner... But I've made an adapter for my TI-99/4A to use composite instead.

Gave up trying to run Windows 98 VM with a decent browser for internet browsing and switched to a Windows 2000 Pro VM. Hopefully with BWC kernel extender I will be able to run some modern browsing with Youtube, some bells and whistles... and with my favorite classic desktop styles.

shamino wrote:

When I cut off the connector I was surprised to find 3 wires inside. Apparently Dell has some goofy system where they use the 3rd wire to communicate with the laptop. Luckily the other 2 wires will still provide power without that.

It's for a lockout chip they put in to block 3rd parties from making power supplies. Of course that chip is known to fail, and when that happens the laptop refuses to recognize it as a "valid" Dell PSU. It'll still run, but won't charge the battery or allow you to use it on a docking station. 😠 I've been burned by having those stupid chips go out twice now, on a laptop I've had since new. IMHO that kind of shonky planned-obsolescence engineering should lead to jail time.

Nice job getting the 2000FP going though! I don't think I've ever even seen one of those in person - they can't have sold very many of them & it's such a chunky beast I imagine a lot of them got replaced fairly quick. It'll be interesting to see how it stacks up against the 2001 & 2007.

Finished up the final design for my XT2AT. Fits perfect. I'll upload it to Thingiverse later.

Edit, Thingiverse link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4032766

shamino wrote:

A long time ago I picked up a Dell 2000fp (very old 1600x1200 IPS monitor) at a thrift store.

I have a Dell 2000FP monitor. It's a solid one to use for old machines. 😀

Finally made some time to tinker with the Tyan S2507T dual Pentium 3 setup today.

Good news is with a beefy old PSU for all the 5v and 3.3v amps, it seems to run like a champ!

Not as good news, still not sure why my 600w Enermax PSU won't turn on after recapping, but since this 450w unit definitely works I'm going to try recapping it before wrapping up this rig project.

I am in the search for a Dell 2001fp (pre-2004 model) my self. Because it can take a 15khz signal. It is for my Amiga's.