Working on this:

Hope to get it mostly done today.

Tiido wrote:

You should try SETYMF with the YMF71x card, it probably gives better results : http://www.tmeeco.eu/TKAYBSC/

Whoa. I had no idea this existed! I'm at work now so I haven't had a chance to look over everything but that project looks awesome. Thanks for the heads up!

Totally forgot to test the CT3990 I got aeons ago.

Well, a pretty big card... and i thought the CT3600 was big.
I still had two 4mb simms lying around and now the card has 8MB to upload some goodies. I was not able to find 32pin ram bigger than 4MB and the latter was pretty pricey. Would be cool to get 16mb sticks... guess that will never happen though.

I'm NOT a music enthusiast but these creative cards with the option to upload soundfonts are the tits. I kinda dig the original "AWE sound" when compared to general midi and the standard 4 MB set, albeit latter sounds crisper. The biggest difference I noted when using bigger fonts was that the percussion/drums sounded way better.

Otherwise, the CT3910(SB32?) with 512K onboard is as nice as it needs to get for me especially when having Warcraft humming along... lovely. I have to confess though that some of the music, especially E1M1, sounds in parts extremely strange using the onboard AWE "soundset"... 4GMGSMT.sf2 blows former away here.

Try the 8MB Creative soundfont, it's heaps better than the 4MB one.

As fr 4MB soundfonts, the SCC1T2.SF2 and XGREMAP.SF2 are fantastic little fonts to emulate the sound canvas and XG respectively.

Have fun.

appiah4 wrote:

Try the 8MB Creative soundfont, it's heaps better than the 4MB one.

As fr 4MB soundfonts, the SCC1T2.SF2 and XGREMAP.SF2 are fantastic little fonts to emulate the sound canvas and XG respectively.

Have fun.

Thanks for the tip on the 4MB ones!
Any idea where to get the 8mb creative font - I thought it came with the AWE64 Gold but I could not find it there...?

https://github.com/DriverPackSolution/DP_Soun … ddon/Ct8mgm.sf2

While searching for it I came across this folder in the freebsd.org ftp:

http://ftp.se.freebsd.org/pub/awe32/soundfonts

It has some other nice <8MB SF2s.

appiah4 wrote:

http://ftp.se.freebsd.org/pub/awe32/soundfonts/8mbgmgs.zip

Noice - Thanks!

amadeus777999 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

http://ftp.se.freebsd.org/pub/awe32/soundfonts/8mbgmgs.zip

Noice - Thanks!

I edited my post above, that link is not the Creative one 😀

Today I changed the electrolytic capacitors of two motherboards.
The first is an ASUS P5KPL SE LGA775, it had three swollen capacitors next to the PCI-EX1, I replaced them with identical ones.
One of the three was open, while the other two had high ESRs.
The second is a Gigabyte GA-8IPE1000-G SKT478, it had in the row of five next to the CPU, three swollen capacitors, I still replaced all five of them.
The three bullets were with ESR a little high and capacity out of tolerance.
I changed them with other ones from Rubycon MFZ.
I add the images of the capacitors, before and after the replacement.
I will try the MBs as soon as possible, I hope they work without any problems.

appiah4 wrote:

amadeus777999 wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

http://ftp.se.freebsd.org/pub/awe32/soundfonts/8mbgmgs.zip

Noice - Thanks!

I edited my post above, that link is not the Creative one 😀

Great either way - I'll have a look at these.

Finished the cheapass P4 build. Today I wanted to install the drivers but.... It booted into Win XP, gave an error telling me to insert the XP SP3 CD, reboots and nothing. Screen stays black, fans turn and the floppy drive seek repeats. I wonder if I caused damage inserting an USB stick in one of the front ports. Didn't see it was damaged.

Not sure how retro this would be, but I disguised my DELL Vostro 1015's Windows 7 SP1 x64 install into a near 1:1 copy of Windows 2000 Pro 🤣

By now, the only obvious signs that this is Windows 7 is of course the "Show Desktop" icon, the audio and the WiFi icons, as well as the really neat search box in the start menu. Will work on replacing the audio and Desktop icons though, but the way things look right now really please me. There's still a few things to be done, like adding the web view from 2000 in Explorer, as well as working on the winlogon background (right now it says "Log On To Windows" even if you shut it down 🤣 ) and finding out how to edit a few small things I can't edit using non-invasive tools.

^^ Nice, I have my Win7 rig run the "classic" theme too. How did you go back to the old-style start menu?

xjas wrote:

^^ Nice, I have my Win7 rig run the "classic" theme too. How did you go back to the old-style start menu?

Classic Shell's custom Start menu, skinned for 2000 😀

Tested some parts from my latest Scrap-Lot: 486 Board and a CT3670. Remembered that I had 3 30-Pin SIMMs with 16 MB each from a former lot. Combined...and works 😀 Awe32 with 32 MB for almost nothing 😀

remember that case, that had it's PSU removed along with the power switch?

so... some 16+ years ago I bought a cardboard box full of scrap electronics, plugs, switches etc... because you'll never know when you might need something right?

so I fished out one of these and did some basic cleaning...

it's as if they used a universal switch size for PCs or something 🤣 direct screw-in replacement.

and it's whole again 😀

Very nice work imi! Happy that you got the missing part.

I already told that I am also searching for a specific case/286-PC branded "Random Computers". I only have a rather bad photo and the manual:

I already bought another very nice 286 of this brand...took this photo to document the transport damage, but fixed now 😒

Then watched another auction but this one got too expensive... > 170€, dont know why.

Unfortunately I missed the 1€ auction you won, but I dont have much space and it seems to be in good hands.

Let me know if anybody owns the case on the 1st photo - thanks 😉

that second one is nice though, I like the red switches ^^
I'm still looking out for a nice desktop case too to put my original monitor on top. It's an Eizo 8060s, one of the few pieces of my very first PC beginnings that I still own 😀

I knew this was going to be a big project... but this is going to be a big project.

That's the back of a Toshiba T1100 Plus screen, which worked fine the first time out and then showed some pretty bad screen problems (black screen, screen lines instead of text). I probably jumped to disassembly too quickly but here we are. It wasn't any better after the first cleaning so I did another cleaning job on the insanely tiny connection pads (I suspect there will be some alignment tapping before I'm done) and applied Deoxit and I'm kind of letting that "set" for no reason other than being tired. I'll try to get pics of the pins when I open it again, it's one of those designs that had to have involved gin at some point in the design process.

The good news is that the T1000 screen is the same and I have 3 of those. Used that to make sure it wasn't the motherboard that was the problem.

And the funny thing is I thought the battery was going to be the big problem, but it looks like almost all of these laptops used Sub-C NiCd batteries, which are easy to get. I still want to convert to LiIon but it's probably not worth it (it would be an excuse to just wire around the inefficient 80s-era internal-PSU-plus-big-wall-wart setup, but alas... The good news is a modern 9V wall wart is comparatively tiny and cheap compared to the original.

Mind you I have to find all the hacks and wierdness a previous owner got up to. Like a wireless phone battery (or something) cut in half:

I will have to do some delicate cleaning on floppy drives, too. And take some measurements to see if *any* of those floppy drives have "standard" sizes. And then... the cleaning... the cleaning...

Those "random" (or Random) clone cases can be maddening to find. I have a couple from hole-in-the-wall resellers near here (like within a few miles) that have been out of business for many years (minitowers all, I need moar desktops!).

It's almost always just blind luck finding one, at least until 3D printing gets a little better and a little cheaper!