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.

Re-purposed a 1.44 floppy with scratched disk into a 720k floppy.

Edit- The patient booted fine.

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

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.

That was my initial thought as well. I should lower the power on the board sometime, but, this is for my personal use only.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Re-purposed a 1.44 floppy with scratched disk into a 720k floppy.

20191031_212458[1].jpg

Edit- The patient booted fine.

Now try the other way around 🤣 just kidding. Good job.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Re-purposed a 1.44 floppy with scratched disk into a 720k floppy.

20191031_212458[1].jpg

Edit- The patient booted fine.

Does this actually work? I thought the media was different in some way, instead of just having less tracks like a DD 5.25 diskette.

Just replace the cooky and cover up the HD hole. Very simple really.

No, not very simple. You can not use HD media as DD or DD media as HD. People try that and it often works, but only for a very short time. Data is lost after a few days, or some weeks at most. HD and DD use media that requires different Oersted values to write data to. Wrong Oersted value means that the data is either written too weak (HD as DD), or adjacent tracks getting corrupted while writing a track (DD as HD). That's also why HD drives have an extra sensor for DD media. It's not that they need to know that the disk inserted has only 720k, but to know that they need to switch writing current to match the media.

FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Does this actually work? I thought the media was different in some way, instead of just having less tracks like a DD 5.25 diskette.

The media have different coercivity, but in case of 3.5" disks, not much...
DD = 600-665 Oe
HD = 720-750 Oe

Back in the era, when DD diskettes were cheaper, some people used to drill holes in them, to use them as HD.
Nowadays, when DD diskettes are rare, it's common to do the reverse.

With 5.25" diskettes, however, it's impossible, the difference is much greater:
DD = 300 Oe
HD = 600 Oe

derSammler wrote:

No, not very simple. You can not use HD media as DD or DD media as HD. People try that and it often works, but only for a very short time. Data is lost after a few days, or some weeks at most. HD and DD uses media that requires different Oersted values to write data to. Wrong Oersted means that the data is either written too weak (HD as DD), or adjacent tracks getting corrupted while writing a track (DD as HD).

I am NOT using 720k media as 1.44meg madia. I just purely but the 720k cooky in the 1.44meg case just to use it as 720k. That simple. Good cooky replaces bad cooky. Cover up the HD hole so as not to accidently have it try to be formatted as 1.44megs and you have a 720k floppy. Does that help? Here's a pretty picture

During the process of swapping I could have damaged the 720k cooky quite easily. The boot and subsequently testing out various files were functioning correctly verified I hadn't damage said transplanted 720k cooky. Hmmm, now I'm hungry.....

Grzyb wrote:

Back in the era, when DD diskettes were cheaper, some people used to drill holes in them, to use them as HD.
.

Mag cover disks were always good candidates for this. Your Amiga friends usually had shit loads of them. Soldering irons were the tool of choice if a hole was needed. No messy shards.

Upgraded my Thinkpad T41 from a Pentium M 1.6 GHz CPU to a 1.8 GHz version, and 1536 MB RAM instead of 1024.

My R40 supports up to 1GB RAM and has a P4-M 2GHz.

Put some velcro patches on the back flap of my Zenith Data Systems PC Z-180 lap top because the original latch broke of.

Does the job quite nicely. No fear if it flipping over and getting damaged while inserting it in to its case.

Grzyb wrote:

The media have different coercivity, but in case of 3.5" disks, not much... DD = 600-665 Oe HD = 720-750 Oe […]
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FAMICOMASTER wrote:

Does this actually work? I thought the media was different in some way, instead of just having less tracks like a DD 5.25 diskette.

The media have different coercivity, but in case of 3.5" disks, not much...
DD = 600-665 Oe
HD = 720-750 Oe

Back in the era, when DD diskettes were cheaper, some people used to drill holes in them, to use them as HD.
Nowadays, when DD diskettes are rare, it's common to do the reverse.

With 5.25" diskettes, however, it's impossible, the difference is much greater:
DD = 300 Oe
HD = 600 Oe

I can report to doing this with over 200 DD 3.5" disks after moving from an Amiga to a 486. Failure rate after around 6 months was >50%.

And today I definitely want to kick myself in the balls repeatedly for ruining such a valuable stash of DD floppies.

At the time it felt economically sound though.

Tiido wrote:

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.

I wish you had a YouTube channel or something, I would love to watch your work on your projects and repair jobs..

I managed to get myself a Big Box and complete version of TIE Fighter Collector's CD for $20 total. I can't complain.

It even has an unused registration card. and, before you ask, the Label Maker label on my n3DS XL was applied by a coworker after I told them I legitimately have a living Pokedex.

Caluser2000 wrote:

Put some velcro patches on the back flap of my Zenith Data Systems PC Z-180 lap top because the original latch broke of.

20191101_172035[1].jpg

Does the job quite nicely. No fear if it flipping over and getting damaged while inserting it in to its case.

This looks very IBM PS/2 laptop like design-wise, I approve.

BetaC wrote:

I managed to get myself a Big Box and complete version of TIE Fighter Collector's CD for $20 total. I can't complain. […]
Show full quote

I managed to get myself a Big Box and complete version of TIE Fighter Collector's CD for $20 total. I can't complain.

IMG_20191029_164618.jpg

IMG_20191029_165045.jpg

It even has an unused registration card. and, before you ask, the Label Maker label on my n3DS XL was applied by a coworker after I told them I legitimately have a living Pokedex.

That is the DOS version, correct? Best DOS Flight-Sim right there, period. And the vein of the existence of many, many and oh so many Serial and PS/2 mice that were "abused" playing this game ad infinitum.