Not sure, if it's already retro activity or not, but...

Bought 1TB 2.5" HDD, put into a external hdd box and connected it to my Wii console. Works perfectly.

You guys know that Wii can play total of 22 consoles? (Wii & Gamecube are native, others are emulated)
All in all, i think the original Wii is the perfect console when taking few beers with friends.

Scrounging out in thse shed and come across this

It was rather dirty but a cycle in the dish washer bought it up a treat.

It's not retro per se, but *could* be used for retro, so...

I think I figured out what to do about mounting 24 2.5" drives in a computer case (for reasons not worth going into and I've posted before).

Maybe not this exact model, and I might fabricate something to get the "blades" closer together, but something that can fit 2 or 4 drives per "blade" and be mounted "sideways" so a case fan can blow over them.

Now I just need to find the materials cheap, because I'm doing this on the cheap.

Ridiculous is so awesome.

So anyway, speaking of ridiculous, I'm shopping for anti-static bags for my collection of cards filling up a small set of shelves, mostly uncovered. It turns out that if you spend a couple of hours on eBay and note down the prices and amounts, there are actually a few good deals to be had. A brief search is likely to make things look much more expensive, which is why I quit last time.
 

GigAHerZ wrote:

Not sure, if it's already retro activity or not, but... […]
Show full quote

Not sure, if it's already retro activity or not, but...

Bought 1TB 2.5" HDD, put into a external hdd box and connected it to my Wii console. Works perfectly.

You guys know that Wii can play total of 22 consoles? (Wii & Gamecube are native, others are emulated)
All in all, i think the original Wii is the perfect console when taking few beers with friends.

If you ever come across a cheap Wii U, you get even more through the Wii U side, plus everything the Wii can do. You can even do Gamecube over HDMI via Nintendont. Also, if you have a receiver that lets you manually choose your decoder, can even do Dolby PL II via HDMI for the Wii and GC games.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

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.

Yes, Collector's CD ROM is the best version of the game, unless you really like MT-32 music, which technically the Floppy version shipped with a specialized version of iMuse that sounds best on that.

Replaced the 5 caps on my Original Xbox 1.6b motherboard (second 1.6b in my collection) and hooked up the power. Didn't work well at first as the caps needed a charge, and after disconnecting the controller, it sprang to life, and it still does with the controller plugged in. Third Original Xbox that needed repairs or a clock cap removal.

BetaC wrote:

GigAHerZ wrote:

Not sure, if it's already retro activity or not, but... […]
Show full quote

Not sure, if it's already retro activity or not, but...

Bought 1TB 2.5" HDD, put into a external hdd box and connected it to my Wii console. Works perfectly.

You guys know that Wii can play total of 22 consoles? (Wii & Gamecube are native, others are emulated)
All in all, i think the original Wii is the perfect console when taking few beers with friends.

If you ever come across a cheap Wii U, you get even more through the Wii U side, plus everything the Wii can do. You can even do Gamecube over HDMI via Nintendont. Also, if you have a receiver that lets you manually choose your decoder, can even do Dolby PL II via HDMI for the Wii and GC games.

I know there's some usb adapter for gamecube controllers, but what about gamecube's memory cards? Does the same adapter have those slots as well? Or how you save GC games? Wii U does note support gamecube's hardware natively.

To be honest, i haven't found much anything from Wii U selection of games. From Atari 2600 and NES to Wii games, it's already an amazing game console! 😀

GigAHerZ wrote:

BetaC wrote:

GigAHerZ wrote:

Not sure, if it's already retro activity or not, but... […]
Show full quote

Not sure, if it's already retro activity or not, but...

Bought 1TB 2.5" HDD, put into a external hdd box and connected it to my Wii console. Works perfectly.

You guys know that Wii can play total of 22 consoles? (Wii & Gamecube are native, others are emulated)
All in all, i think the original Wii is the perfect console when taking few beers with friends.

If you ever come across a cheap Wii U, you get even more through the Wii U side, plus everything the Wii can do. You can even do Gamecube over HDMI via Nintendont. Also, if you have a receiver that lets you manually choose your decoder, can even do Dolby PL II via HDMI for the Wii and GC games.

I know there's some usb adapter for gamecube controllers, but what about gamecube's memory cards? Does the same adapter have those slots as well? Or how you save GC games? Wii U does note support gamecube's hardware natively.

To be honest, i haven't found much anything from Wii U selection of games. From Atari 2600 and NES to Wii games, it's already an amazing game console! 😀

Nintendont send the save files to the SD card, solving that issue. The only downside is the Safe games are usually I can’t separate, which can lead to some games not giving you bonuses for finding another save on your memory card.

BetaC wrote:

Nintendont send the save files to the SD card, solving that issue. The only downside is the Safe games are usually I can’t separate, which can lead to some games not giving you bonuses for finding another save on your memory card.

You can of course download save files from the web and transfer them to any of the .raw save files that Nintendont creates. The Dolphin emulator is perfect for this task!

You can unlock everything and cheat to your heart's content. I've done it myself on games I couldn't be bothered playing through to unlock, ie. multiplayer/party GameCube games. 🤣

My retro activity for today was testing my XT build's Composite output on 2 LCD TVs.

The first one was a very old Mirai-badged "HD Ready" set. It would display a picture, but the colours would flicker and it had faint horizontal bands running through the picture. Was perfect in Monochrome mode however, but yep generally pretty useless.

The 2nd TV I didn't hold out much hope for, fully expecting it to display the usual horizontal distortion that you get on most LCD TV sets with CGA Composite Out. The TV was a 1080p Toshiba-badged Vestel set. Upon switching it on and loading a game I did indeed get the horizontal distortion.... and then it cleared! 😲

I would never have guessed it, but a cheap crap Vestel TV can sync with the CGA Composite from my XT! I did some testing and everything seemed to work, including the Composite Colour Artifact mode, with fully functional Hue/Tint settings on the TV.

Sometimes the distortion reappears upon changing output modes, but it seems to clear up & sync quickly on it's own 9 times out of 10, with the longest wait being around 12-13 seconds. This is much better than the crap LG LCD TV I was previously using, which would require having to change inputs back and forth to get it to sync. I finally have a screen that I can use for my XT, it will come in handy when I have friends around.

My activity for today was to turn on 1st gen ipod nano, 1st gen iphone, iphone 4S and iPhone 5S all for some updates that were delayed by my plans. The iPod is rocking insane and I will use it on my car. When I had the 4S in my hands again, oh God I miss the smaller model. Bring it back Apple, ffs!!

bfcastello wrote:

My activity for today was to turn on 1st gen ipod nano, 1st gen iphone, iphone 4S and iPhone 5S all for some updates that were delayed by my plans. The iPod is rocking insane and I will use it on my car. When I had the 4S in my hands again, oh God I miss the smaller model. Bring it back Apple, ffs!!

I have a few iPods, but they don't work, I have a 2nd gen nano with a cracked screen, a 3rd gen nano that won't hold a charge anymore, and a 5th gen classic with a dead hard drive.

Windows9566 wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

My activity for today was to turn on 1st gen ipod nano, 1st gen iphone, iphone 4S and iPhone 5S all for some updates that were delayed by my plans. The iPod is rocking insane and I will use it on my car. When I had the 4S in my hands again, oh God I miss the smaller model. Bring it back Apple, ffs!!

I have a few iPods, but they don't work, I have a 2nd gen nano with a cracked screen, a 3rd gen nano that won't hold a charge anymore, and a 5th gen classic with a dead hard drive.

2nd gen screen is replaceable. 3rd gen battery is replaceable (my 1st gen original battery exploded, prompting myself to change it and then its awesome now) and the 5th gen classic you can change and even upgrade the hard drive with some kind of flash memory drive. There are youtube tutorials on how to do it but I believe you'll need a adapter as well. Check them out

Managed to get the GOG version of Descent II working on a Win98 PC...with the 3dfx patch as well. Combined with a Voodoo3 and Yamaha MU1000 the result was very nice. The game is not as bad as I remembered it.

About to sit down for a session of HL1 on a different Win98 PC with a Voodoo5 and MX300 sound.

My Texas Micro N286 SBC has a custom ROM (from a Kodak Printer). I saw in the 286 motherboard bios thread there was a DTK board with the exact same chipset (Its a PCChips combo), so I've ordered some 27512 eprom's and will burn that and see if I can bring the board to life. It runs 2x64kb eproms in a hi/lo config.

I've been fiddling with my Olivetti CDU 1458MS/HA71 CRT monitor, on the RDD. After checking out the several refresh rates it can handle, I have settled at 640x480 @ 100Hz. It looks marvelous.

After trying and failing to play Gears of War 5 with it's buggy, always onine campaign I decided to play the original Quake. I've never played it beyong the first few minutes, ditto for Quake II.

It's a been a blast, I've played through most of the single player tonight! I haven't found every secret of course, that's not really my bag but it's been great fun. I'm about a third of the way through Episode 4 and would keep playing if I didn't have work tomorrow 😵

Windows9566 wrote:

bfcastello wrote:

My activity for today was to turn on 1st gen ipod nano, 1st gen iphone, iphone 4S and iPhone 5S all for some updates that were delayed by my plans. The iPod is rocking insane and I will use it on my car. When I had the 4S in my hands again, oh God I miss the smaller model. Bring it back Apple, ffs!!

I have a few iPods, but they don't work, I have a 2nd gen nano with a cracked screen, a 3rd gen nano that won't hold a charge anymore, and a 5th gen classic with a dead hard drive.

Look up iPad Rehab. They'll sort you out.

I ordered a CPU upgrade for my Dell "Optiplex 425s/L" 486 - an Intel 486 DX2 66MHz. It hasn't arrived yet, so in the meantime I'm still using the "AMD Am486 DX-40" at 33MHz to re-setup this system ready for the upgrade.

I updated the EEPROM on my network card containing the XTIDE Universal BIOS, to the latest Beta 3 version (with the IDE patch for Windows 95) and I've installed the only spare large HDD I had - a 120GB IDE HDD. I partitioned the drive into 2, with a 7GB C: drive for the Windows 95B install. The rest of the space will be used for storage of DOS Games & Programs. The HDD capacity is a little overkill for a 486, but as it's all I had to hand it will suffice.

It seems to work great, with the drive set to "none" in the BIOS. The IDE patch works great too, no more getting stuck using MS-DOS Compatibility Mode in Windows 95.

The only issue I've got to resolve now is the 3COM 3C509B network card isn't working. This may be a BIOS settings issue though, as I haven't put the BIOS battery back in yet. Alternatively the card may have become slightly dislodged, as I seem to recall having this same issue in the past. Should be relatively simple to fix.

One thing I'd never noticed before is how crazy the BIOS acts on this when it doesn't have a battery installed and has lost it's settings - the time goes into warp drive, ticking away seconds at one hell of a rate. I didn't set the BIOS settings for about 30 minutes and in that time the date had cycled from 1993 through to the year 2000! 🤣 🤣 🤣 🤣

Cleaned up the corrosion on my Toshiba Satellite Pro 430CDS - At first I thought it was clear, but looking closer has got me wondering how much damage those batteries did.
It's working for now and my cleanup should have helped, but where the corrosion has gone to suggests that it's eaten into one of the internal layers:

PTherapist wrote:

I updated the EEPROM on my network card containing the XTIDE Universal BIOS, to the latest Beta 3 version (with the IDE patch for Windows 95) and I've installed the only spare large HDD I had - a 120GB IDE HDD. I partitioned the drive into 2, with a 7GB C: drive for the Windows 95B install. The rest of the space will be used for storage of DOS Games & Programs. The HDD capacity is a little overkill for a 486, but as it's all I had to hand it will suffice.

Nice 😀 I've got to try that with my Abit AN4 board. I had some trouble with the eeprom last time I tried, it started up successfully once, then started beeping constantly and now the ROM isn't detected apparently.
Since trying that, I've redone how the pins are arranged on my larger than 128Kb EEPROM following this guide so that none of the pins are "floating": http://sbfmdrv.blogspot.com/2015/11/retrofitt … nto-old-pc.html

PTherapist wrote:

I updated the EEPROM on my network card containing the XTIDE Universal BIOS, to the latest Beta 3 version (with the IDE patch for Windows 95) and I've installed the only spare large HDD I had - a 120GB IDE HDD. I partitioned the drive into 2, with a 7GB C: drive for the Windows 95B install. The rest of the space will be used for storage of DOS Games & Programs. The HDD capacity is a little overkill for a 486, but as it's all I had to hand it will suffice.

It seems to work great, with the drive set to "none" in the BIOS. The IDE patch works great too, no more getting stuck using MS-DOS Compatibility Mode in Windows 95.

Where'd you get the BIOS from and is it 8KB in size?