I finally got around to dismantling my 1541C and swapping its guts into a 1541. I got this unit from Poland (by way of Germany) - curiously, another Newtronics drive, but this one worked. I had to swap the power supplies over, and the drive faceplate. The 1541 Newtronics had the optics for the write protect tab built into the plastic faceplate, whereas the 1541C had them screwed into the metal portion of the disk drive assembly. A quick hit of cutting pliers solved that. The LED was also hard to get out of the original 1541's faceplate, seems by the C they made it much easier to remove. In all, the top part of the case is outside retrobriting.

I fired up the C64 with a Music Composer cartridge and my 7 month old son was interested in the sounds that were being made: teardrop moment, he started to hit the keyboard around to make it play notes! I'd love to get my hands on a keyboard overlay for this software, and perhaps a manual.

I also started work on a P4 2.4 GHz that I got from my mechanic. He pulled his 80 gig IDE drive out of there and drilled a hole through it, gave me the rest. It's DIRTY. So far I armed it with a Radeon 7500 and another 80 Gb drive and I plan to put 98SE and XP on it, dual boot.

I have a working drive!!

😁

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I just found something that the G4 is really good at: video playback! [...] However, CorePlayer may be taking shortcuts to speed decoding performance. On the G4, I noticed some artifacting in a couple of very high-motion scenes. On the x86 machines, these scenes were completely clean.

Very interesting indeed. I found Samsur to be able to handle up to 480p MP4s under VLC with some struggles, where Al-Jalima barfs over anything more intense than a 240p MPEG1. Those tests were done under 2000 on Samsur and 98SE on Al-Jalima, it'll be neat to see whether NT4 makes it any better.

bakemono wrote:

When I recently tried to find a memory test program that ran from DOS, and which could test more than 16MB (unlike the old CheckIt), I only found two programs and neither one worked (just froze with no error). So I made my own: DOSMEMU

Very nice. I've got a bunch of SIMMs in an anti-static bag that I would probably need to test in the future, and this should help quite a bit.

stege wrote:

Bought this machine 2 years ago and never had the time to play with it until last night. Its an AST Pentium 75, 40MB Ram (came w […]
Show full quote

Bought this machine 2 years ago and never had the time to play with it until last night. Its an AST Pentium 75, 40MB Ram (came with 8Mb originally), 1.2Gb Conner, 3.5 Floppy, Sound Blaster compatible and a 4x cd-rom. I wish I would have had a 15" Sony Trinitron to go with it but my Sony S51 will have to do it for the time being.

Two questions come to mind:

1. How on earth do you open this particular case? I tried everything short of throwing the case against the walls.
2. Is there someone that could supply me with a zip containing usual software of that era, including a decent autoexec.bat and config.sys files? I need an EMS/XMS manager, mouse driver, cd-rom driver, SB init and a smartdrv to speed up things. Then the DOS itself, some utilities and couple of DOS games.

Thank you in advance!

Doesn't it slide off to the front?

Tried everything. I'm lost and dont want to break something. And I have a wonderful awe64 and a Matrox Mistique screaming at me to get inside there.

stege wrote:

Tried everything. I'm lost and dont want to break something. And I have a wonderful awe64 and a Matrox Mistique screaming at me to get inside there.

Post photos of the case from all six sides please?

Installed some more dashboards (XBMX4Xbox, Original Xbox Dashboard) and applications (Chimp Loader and DVD2Xbox) on my Original Xbox 1.6 and backed up every file on the C, E, and F drives on my ASUS X54C laptop using WinSCP to be on the safe side. Getting the SATA to IDE adapters via Amazon tomorrow or whenever and I'll be cloning the HDD to the 480GB SSD and add a G drive for more storage (movies, music, TV shows, and other stuff).

stege wrote:

Tried everything. I'm lost and dont want to break something. And I have a wonderful awe64 and a Matrox Mistique screaming at me to get inside there.

I have the same style of case from AST. There are screws on the back of the case and once those are removed, the top cover & front bezel can be slid forward. That's easiest to do by pressing on the CD drive and pulling on the top lid. It does require some force.

This page has some really good pictures with the case half open: https://www.recycledgoods.com/ast-501921-701- … sktop-computer/

Just finished 2 systems

1) Compaq Presario 5240. Original Seagate HD had died so I replaced it with another Seagate 10GB. Case is in good shape, gave it a clean. Too bad the front door is missing. I have its P2 brother too :p
Chipset: VIA Apollo MVP3?
CPU: AMD K6-2 450 (or was it 400 :p)
RAM: 192MB
GPU: ATI 3D RAGE PRO
Sound: some integrated chip (Dolby Digital Surround, Microsoft WSS 1.0/2.0, Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16/Pro)
OS: 98SE

2) This one is being a real stinker so far. The case was VERY dirty but it cleaned up very well. Some dents and scratches though. Almost zero yellowing. Replaced the CD-ROM with a DVD since my spares are not working that good. Actually,this one acts up too so might need to swap this out too and test.
Motherboard: Soltek SL54-U5
CPU: K6-2 300
RAM: 256MB
GPU: Voodoo3 2000
Sound: ESS1938S Solo-1
OS: 98SE
HD: Quantum Fireball 6 or 10GB I forgot

System is very sluggish, freezes a lot. Already did a few fresh installs. Going to swap some memory sticks to see if it improves. Doesn't seem to like 133 SDRAM. Maybe try another HD,...
I also tried to flash the latest A11b BIOS (according to Soggi.org) since it seems it's still on stock BIOS but AWDFLASH gave me an error that it's flash protected or something. There doesn't seem to be a flash protection jumper, only CMOS reset.
Anyone has an idea what this could be?

Sorry for the greenish picture. I put something in front of the window to block the sun :p

Are you sure that K6-2 can actually cache that 256MB? How much cache does the board have?

I put together the 486DX33 system in my signature together yesterday but the VLB Multi I-O Controller is giving me problems. I will do further troubleshooting tonight.

appiah4 wrote:

Are you sure that K6-2 can actually cache that 256MB? How much cache does the board have?

I put together the 486DX33 system in my signature together yesterday but the VLB Multi I-O Controller is giving me problems. I will do further troubleshooting tonight.

Will check it tonight. And possibly I used some 133 RAM too again. I'll need to dig in my small stash tonight.
I spent so much time on this stinker already that I just want to put it away 🤣.

https://soggi.org/motherboards/soltek/SL-54U5.htm
512kib cache.

I know about the pain of the VLB controller. I had to use VLB and ISA in my DX2-66 to get everything working

(finally) Diagnosed and got my STDX2-66 system running! It was 2 ram sticks that were faulty. 1MB sticks so was not a big fault. Got 7,88 MB ram (will buy more soon). Machine runs beautifully.

I added a socket to my 386 so that I could use a 486DLC with it. While at it I heatsinked the 486DLC since it gets really hot without.
It was quite PITA to remove solder from all the PGA area holes. Removal of the original CPU took maybe a minute.

Murugan wrote:

appiah4 wrote:

Are you sure that K6-2 can actually cache that 256MB? How much cache does the board have?

I put together the 486DX33 system in my signature together yesterday but the VLB Multi I-O Controller is giving me problems. I will do further troubleshooting tonight.

Will check it tonight. And possibly I used some 133 RAM too again. I'll need to dig in my small stash tonight.
I spent so much time on this stinker already that I just want to put it away 🤣.

Another advice I'll give is recapping. I can't stress this enough, but those boards are 20 years old. All of my top-notch Socket 7 and Slot 1/Slot A boards usually get Rubycon,Nichicon and Panasonic, and maybe OST if I don't really have anything handy. (since these don't seem to fail on older boards - not much could be said for scorching-hot nVidia chipsets)

Measured the 5v line amperage on my upgraded megapc setup 🤣
I was worried that the original psu that is rated at 6A for the 5v line would not be enough or it would work at limit but the most I could read was 3.0amps on the 5v line so all is good.
A stock 386sx25 megapc with a mechanical HDD averages the same more or less IIRC , this one has the 486slc33 motherboard with a CF instead of mechanical hdd - it helps a lot.

played this gem for a bit

This game is awesome, I loved playing it over the internet with a friend 😁

I finally conquered the stinker PC!
Replaced the Quantum with a Toshiba 3.4GB one, installed another DVD drive and replaced the RAM sticks with verified 2x64MB 100 sticks.
Seems to run smooth now.
Problem is: what change made the difference :p

About the recap. I know it's necessary but with the amount of systems here,quite expensive and time consuming.
I don't have something with (S)S7 but I just like to repair,clean,assemble,....systems that I buy or build from all the parts available.

I am glad I can put this one away 🤣.

On the plus side, the next time the system screws off, you'll know that it's far more likely to be a capacitor issue.

I've been looking around for parts and whatnot for resurrecting a few items. A 3 Farad capacitor for my Xbox, a CF to PATA adapter for my Pentium tower and a card to go with it, maybe a drive controller card for my 486 tower with no onboard PATA ports... Haven't pulled the trigger on anything yet, because most of it would take a month or two to arrive, being on the opposite side of the planet from me. Considering making an NES fan site, as they were popular about 20 years ago. All vapor at the moment.

1. Killed my dx2-80 system software-wise doing scandisk with "normal" rather than "lba" in bios.
2. Got once again tricked by those strange gods that invented "serial a and b" connectors.