MMaximus wrote:

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Set up my trusty EGA Wonder card to test out my color monitor some more. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to work with EGA resolutions (400 lines), but it works BEAUTIFULLY as a normal CGA monitor.

Nice monitor! Have you used the EGA wonder driver disk to switch modes on the card? The EGA Wonder 800+ can display EGA hi-res modes on a normal CGA monitor, thanks to interlacing. I would assume the standard EGA wonder can do the same thing...

Yeah, but the EGA Wonder is in my AT machine and I want to use this with an XT. I haven't been able to find a working EGA Wonder on eBay for any less than the price I paid for the computer and both monitors, let alone something I'd be willing to pay for one.

Using the "SMS" program supplied on the EGA Wonder driver diskette it will go into some modes, but lose sync or make whining noises with others, so I don't feel comfortable running it.

I.E. it will display a readable picture when in MDA 80 columns / Hercules modes, but the monitor's normal whine becomes much lower and much louder.
When in EGA 640x400 mode, the picture will go black, or it will appear as static or garbage rolling vertically until the computer it restarted. Same for the emulated VGA modes.

Technically did this yesterday, but I added a network card to my 486 and took it on its maiden voyage online - the entire process was much easier than I remember it being back in the 90s, but I suppose I'm not in grade school anymore either, haha.

Been working on the 486 NEC laptop again....

On Friday my 16MB memory card came in as did the Cisco Aironet LCM-352 PCMCIA card.

On Saturday night I was out playing a show when the Lucent WaveLAN Silver PCMCIA card ce in.

The RAM upgrade was a piece of cake of course, now I have 20MB of RAM and it runs NES games in NESticle x.xx at full frame rate.

The Cisco was a PITA to setup. I had to use a splitter utility to split files for floppies the spoon feed them over because not Linux nor Win 10 could see the partitions on n my 80 GB drive formatted to FAT-32 because Fujitsu Disk Manager does something that renders the partitions unreadable without the DDO loaded. Once I got it on there....the next roadblock was WEP vs WPA2. The long and the short of it was that all of these old PCMCIA cards from the 2000s use WEP encryption.

So I decided to run my Spectrum given router temporarily in WEP mode....ha, instead when I clicked Dave, the administration must be hard programmed by my ISP to only use WPA2 and nothing else....oh well.

Tried using the guest Network feature and could not find my WAP on it....so I guess that's out of the question, at least with the Cisco. Kind of a shame, I picked the LCM version vs the PCM because if it worked I was going to route a home designed and built antenna through the laptop case as the card works with the cover closed.

But the biggest pain is not WEP, it's not extended antennas out the PCMCIA slots....it's that Cisco makes it so ridiculously painful to impossible to get ANY drivers or software. They require you to login to their site, setup an account, list your employer and contract, and the I'm not sure what access you can get or how to get it. Not out of the question that I did anyway since my career is taking me down the Cisco/Meraki path anyway as of late...but still.

Now on Sunday I sorted this all out.

Reformatted the 80 gig and reinstalled Windows 95 OSR 2.5 using the MAXBLAST DDO this time after testing my 486 desktops WFW311 15GB drive and seeing all four FAT-16 partitions on it in Linux Mint. While I still can't see the other 4 (Logical DOS drives in an extended DOS partition perhaps?), I still have the 20GB drive C to work with....which is WAY more than enough.

The Lucent WiFi went along much better except the one caveat of the NEC Versa V - PCMCIA management in Win95 is totally jacked up during install. But after some fiddling (ie, remove the PCMCIA slots in device manager, rerun the detect hardware wizard, shutdown, power off, reboot) it worked. The reason is I think Windows setup loads the wrong driver which causes it to hang, or installs the device out-of-order. Found the Lucent card right away.

Victory today at work at lunch though because it found the company guest Wifi right away using the default profile. Shame Retrozilla won't work though....not enough RAM, probably will try Opera next. Still have yet to try out my temp on open guest wifi at home though, and Opera, plus toying with using WebOne or WRP with this.

For home wifi though, I'm toying with getting a second router and setting up a separate non broadcast WEP network withAC Address filtering that I can switch on and off for retro clients. Probably a modified Linksys wrt54g (I had one....loved it for vintage tech wifi).

creepingnet wrote:

Probably a modified Linksys wrt54g (I had one....loved it for vintage tech wifi).

I have a few of those, and a couple BEFSR41 wired routers to use as 10/100 switches. The wired routers were being sold for pennies at yardsales a while back, as ISPs were just giving them away, and people had no use for them. The WRT54G v4 has Tomato firmware installed on it, and was my main router until my ISP bumped my connection to 100Mbps (still pathetic upload). My WRT 1900AC is now the main router, and has DDWRT on it. I used to draw maps of my network layout, going back to when I used to have a couple beat up desktops and a single laptop, with some trash D-Link router.

What I really need to do is hook up one of my dot matrix printers to my print server, since Windows 3 doesn't like my network laser printers.

creepingnet wrote:

Victory today at work at lunch though because it found the company guest Wifi right away using the default profile. Shame Retrozilla won't work though....not enough RAM, probably will try Opera next. Still have yet to try out my temp on open guest wifi at home though, and Opera, plus toying with using WebOne or WRP with this.

Your only options with only 20 megs of RAM are Internet Explorer 3, Netscape Navigator 3 or 4, or maybe Opera 3.

And you are far better off sticking with Windows 3.1 with only 20 MB. Yes, you can get the Lucent card working in WFW 3.11 as well, you just have to load the DOS drivers first, use IPXODI, and install Microsoft TCP/IP as the protocol.

Built a phone control logic board for my novelty AM radio. Good news is the volume and play/pause buttons work. Bad news is the mic doesn't work at all and when I tune into FM stations on my Samsung tablet or phone, some of the stations get a bit choppy, even though the connections are good. Do I need to add power to that for it to work or am I missing something?

Hi, Newbie here..
I have this same motherboard. That should be Philips P3120; and also known as DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION P3100CE. My motherboard is "not working" but the original ROM is still attached. Unfortunately I don't know how to extract BIOS ROM data.

BTW I thought my MB was "Not working" but actually it was the keyboard problem. If you don't connect the proper XT keyboard then this MB shows nothing... nothing happens... not a beep..

Predator99 wrote:

Now have the 1st of my 9 Philips XT boards running! Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today […]
Show full quote

Now have the 1st of my 9 Philips XT boards running!
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Before:

The attachment IMG_5333x.jpg is no longer available

After:

The attachment IMG_5365.JPG is no longer available

After having Supersoft running without errors on CGA, it was quite difficult to make it boot with a normal BIOS. The CGA card didnt work at all, and the board was quite picky about the VGA. An ET4000 did it. In between C22 beneath the power supply exploded, but it also runs without it.
Regarding the BIOS I tried many. TURBO XT BIOS and mony others dont display anything on all cards. Award complains about parity and doesnt let me continue. Phoenix finally works! Dont have the sockets to install the parity, but it works without, too.
Think a main problem is, that the DIP settings dont change in Supersoft when switching. So the BIOS thinks all the time a MDA is installed. The DIP seems to be specific for this board.
On-board floppy also seems to run. The 8-bit IDE interface is not compatible, so I used XT-IDE with a 16-bit controller.

And still interested in the original BIOS 😉

The attachment IMG_5359.JPG is no longer available

The attachment IMG_5362.JPG is no longer available

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Organized my Wall of Video Cards a little better. Still a bit of a jumble, but at least I have SOME idea of what's where when I go to grab something now.

I do have examples from S3, Tseng, and PowerVR (actually a Matrox card), but they're all in systems or in my parts closet & so they don't get a sticker here yet.

kracos wrote:

Hi, Newbie here..
I have this same motherboard. That should be Philips P3120; and also known as DIGITAL EQUIPMENT CORPORATION P3100CE. My motherboard is "not working" but the original ROM is still attached. Unfortunately I don't know how to extract BIOS ROM data.

Predator99 wrote:

Now have the 1st of my 9 Philips XT boards running! Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today […]
Show full quote

Now have the 1st of my 9 Philips XT boards running!
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Before:

IMG_5333x.jpg

After:

IMG_5365.JPG

After having Supersoft running without errors on CGA, it was quite difficult to make it boot with a normal BIOS. The CGA card didnt work at all, and the board was quite picky about the VGA. An ET4000 did it. In between C22 beneath the power supply exploded, but it also runs without it.
Regarding the BIOS I tried many. TURBO XT BIOS and mony others dont display anything on all cards. Award complains about parity and doesnt let me continue. Phoenix finally works! Dont have the sockets to install the parity, but it works without, too.
Think a main problem is, that the DIP settings dont change in Supersoft when switching. So the BIOS thinks all the time a MDA is installed. The DIP seems to be specific for this board.
On-board floppy also seems to run. The 8-bit IDE interface is not compatible, so I used XT-IDE with a 16-bit controller.

And still interested in the original BIOS 😉

IMG_5359.JPG

IMG_5362.JPG

IMG_5363.JPG

Hi, many thanks for your reply! I have mine running in the mean time (with BIOS provided by silentw), see here:
Re: XT BIOS image collection

What does not work with your board? These seem to be quite easy to fix 😉

I also see on your photo that the RAM is soldered on the board without sockets. That is supporting the impression I have that the RAMs have been removed from my 10 boards with a heatgun..! Some other ICs in this area are also not in the correct position anymore...

dat DoTT

xjas wrote:

Organized my Wall of Video Cards a little better. Still a bit of a jumble, but at least I have SOME idea of what's where when I go to grab something now.

20191029_104532.jpg

I do have examples from S3, Tseng, and PowerVR (actually a Matrox card), but they're all in systems or in my parts closet & so they don't get a sticker here yet.

Nice wall. Personally I keep all my individual components in separate anti-static bags. They're not that expensive and they probably add to the life span of your hardware.

oeuvre wrote:

https://i.imgur.com/clo3o6Yl.jpg […]
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dat DoTT

Day of tentacle? Cool

Refurbished my previously borked PowerBook Aluminum 1.52GHz. New heatsink paste, new LCD assembly, installed an mSATA SSD to replace an HDD and a new-old-stock combo drive.

Time for some Halo and UT2004SE.

Pulling stuff out of big boxes and putting the stuff in smaller boxes to put in to bigger boxes to box up....

Went back to the drawing board and fixed the mic issues with the logic board I made for my novelty AM radio and it's now a functioning speakerphone and FM radio (Samsung Tab 6A and Galaxy S7 Edge). In fact, I picked up more FM stations than my car, which is either good or bad.

bfcastello wrote:

oeuvre wrote:

https://i.imgur.com/clo3o6Yl.jpg […]
Show full quote

dat DoTT

Day of tentacle? Cool

I can complete it in less than an hour now!

Another power supply adapter, this time for a Dell Latitude L400 that I've been holding on to for about 15 years now 😁
It works, so the laptop gets a hard drive caddy and hard drive lavished upon it, for a whopping £6.00!
Thankfully, this one is new enough to boot from the Dell parallel adapter floppy drive I have, and it's got ATI Mobility graphics so its 1024x768 screen can smoothly rescale lower resolutions quite nicely.

edit: I hope I don't need to use the PS/2 port for anything anytime soon 😒

bjwil1991 wrote:

Went back to the drawing board and fixed the mic issues with the logic board I made for my novelty AM radio and it's now a functioning speakerphone and FM radio (Samsung Tab 6A and Galaxy S7 Edge). In fact, I picked up more FM stations than my car, which is either good or bad.

Your car's radio is probably following FCC regulations... That, and it's likely that there's a very long coaxial cable to the antenna, which means that very low power or far away stations get lost just from the cable.

Also, I installed and tested a set of DRAMs in my 286 today. Also still working out how my Cheetah RAM expansion card is supposed to work...

Going through sorting some more treasures. Apparently at one time I was particulaly good at keeping back ups of everything I downloaded.

Back then my Windows 98FE box was still the quickest system in the house on the just installed ADSL. The IBM PC300GL mini tower was truely a masterful beast.

I spent a while figuring out the jumpers of my new ALI PCI486 board, the CPU jumpers are now all traced out and most of the functions are now known of them. Now to figure out exactly what they must be set for various CPUs. Cyrix support seems to be the main thing, they have several pins on them that are way different from all the others that are mostly sticking to the same pinout.
Next up will be cache stuff, as soon an I figure out the connections.