Booting from USB was something that came quite late to the PC. I have many systems from the early 2000's that still can not boot from USB CD-ROM drives. Booting from USB floppy was introduced first, from other media much later. Probably because USB 1.x was way too slow for that and it took some years before USB 2.0 was widely addopted, so BIOS makers didn't care much.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2020-03-01, 21:37:

Last weekend was extremely busy clearing the flat since I might be moving soon - but this weekend I had a chance to catch up on […]
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Last weekend was extremely busy clearing the flat since I might be moving soon - but this weekend I had a chance to catch up on some of my projects.

I've got a whole bunch of Toshiba floppy drives, around half of which had bad drive belts. I bought some cheap TPU filament and printed some 65mm, 0.5mm thick, 0.8/1.4mm tall belts to replace them. All the belts are replaced and only one of the drives is bad! (heads)

Initially I was trying to get hold of *a* slimline toshiba floppy drive for my Toshiba Portege 3010CT , then ended up with 5 of them because of a job lot. It spirralled from there. I've found that the later belt driven drives are actually comparatively easy to repair - the drive's tray mechanism lifts out for easy belt replacement.

floppybelt-repair-station.jpg

Here are my thoughts on each drive:

• Citizen W1D thin floppy drive - very easy to work on, works nicely with 0.8mm tall belt
• Matsushita EME 279TD - also qute easy to work on, works well with 0.8mm tall belt.
• Matsushita EME 278TB - hellish to work on, didn't even need to replace the belt in the end but re-fitting the belt was horrible. The drive is essentially designed upside-down and then riveted together 🙁
• Mitsumi D353F2 - comparatively easy to work on, needs a 1.4mm belt and 3d printed belts don't work because the belt guides aren't well designed. Got this one working by running the belt over IPA+Q-Tip
• Teac FD05 - not a belt drive, it just works!

Got one of my 5 1/4" drives working - I think it's one of the last ones made? A Teac FD55GFR with datecodes suggesting it was made in 1995.

Reinstalled Windows 95 on my Dell XPi CD P150ST because it started refusing to boot from the 1.6GB hard drive, now it has a 4GB CF card, so much faster 😀

Hello,

I'm trying to contact you through PM about W1D belts.

Cheers,

The Toshiba Portege M200 S838 is the spawn of satan. Here is how to reinstall Windows on one for whomever it might concern in the future:

You shall need:

* USB Flash Drive, formatted with Windows XP install media with RUFUS
* A 1.44MB IBM Formatted Floppy Disk
* A USB Floppy Drive (the more standard/generic the better)
* A 2nd PC
* A Program to write .img files to floppies (Google "Floppy Image 2.4" for a 14 day free trial of that program. There is also a freeware version out there that is really hard to find)

STEPS:

1.) Download PLOPs Boot Manager
2.) Extract the archive
3.) Use the imaging program to write the PLOPs .IMG file to a floppy disk
4.) Connect the floppy drive to the Portege
5.) Invoke the boot menu and select the Floppy Disk option (you might need to try a few times with different USB ports connecting the drive)
6.) Once it loads go to setup
7.) Set "Force USB 1.1" to "Mode 1"
8.) Unplug your floppy drive
9.) Plug in the USB drive to the same port the floppy drive was on
10.) Select USB, press enter
11.) Wait patientely for Windows XP Setup to load
12.) Install Windows XP as normal.

Anyone else just spray paint cases makeshift beige when they can't find actual vintage ones?

I had some old Corsair Carbide R75 (something like that) cases lying around im currently in the process of painting beige, and dark pink for my ultimate SLI build. They manage to fit AT boards in them with some standoff re-adjustments, so they make the perfect temporary home. Might not have that turbo-display but it does the trick!

Seriously, i can't fathom the prices vintage AT cases seem to go for these days. and most places around here are quick to junk old computers before i can even get to them.

The ONE time i found a vintage PC while out and about was infront of a bestbuy in their e-waste pile. Looked like a 486/early pentium era machine.
Asked the lady up front if i could take it and she said no ;-;. A reminder to next time bring a bribe! :p

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-03-12, 04:03:

Anyone else just spray paint cases makeshift beige when they can't find actual vintage ones? […]
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Anyone else just spray paint cases makeshift beige when they can't find actual vintage ones?

I had some old Corsair Carbide R75 (something like that) cases lying around im currently in the process of painting beige, and dark pink for my ultimate SLI build. They manage to fit AT boards in them with some standoff re-adjustments, so they make the perfect temporary home. Might not have that turbo-display but it does the trick!

Seriously, i can't fathom the prices vintage AT cases seem to go for these days. and most places around here are quick to junk old computers before i can even get to them.

The ONE time i found a vintage PC while out and about was infront of a bestbuy in their e-waste pile. Looked like a 486/early pentium era machine.
Asked the lady up front if i could take it and she said no ;-;. A reminder to next time bring a bribe! :p

I have entertained the idea but it is very difficult to get a sturdy coat of paint on a PC housing unless you take it to something like an auto repair shop and then the price does not end up being cheaper than a cheap AT case.

I do occasionally come across NOS beige ATX cases from the early 2000s, when I do I grab one or two. I grabbed this for just $15 with a cheapo 300W PSU a few months back, for example:

Last night, I fixed one of my favourite monitors, a Samtron 14" VGA monitor. It has issues with a flickering image when the desk or monitor moved. As I expected, the VGA connector's solder joints were broken.
Easy fix!

I hope it shows on the picture when compressed a bit.

Received a PC-50X Family Games Console today -

Grandstand SD-050:

Needs a good cleaning and need to repair the Right joystick.

Having some difficulties getting either the cartridge or the buttons on the console to work. Can start a few random games but not all buttons seem to function. That's the bit I should be able to fix and in any case I have a few extra cartridges coming for it at the weekend to test properly and find out which is the cause.

The biggest problem I wasn't anticipating however - it won't output properly to modern TVs! I wasn't expecting this issue, as I have a similar Pong-based console from this era that works fine, but this thing seems to have issues. Will have to do some experimenting.

Today i have finished troubleshooting a really stubborn 486 desktop PC.

Always had intermittent issues,losing cmos memory data. Especially when moving it or bumping it. I was testing some 'new' cards in it,including a VLB video card (which works fine) when suddenly the issue worsened.
Started giving me a 1-3 1-3 Phoenix bios message every reboot.

Removed ide controller,as well as all the other addons,changed video card and memory, nothing changed.
Since it has a modded DS1287 , tried another one, with no luck.

I've decided to check the motherboard for loose solder joints, reflowed the keyboard and power pins, no luck.
Then i checked the DS1287 socket and i've found out that some pins were horribly loose. Decided to replace it with a brand new socket.
The PC came back to life, no more errors and the CMOS memory holds after the reboot. All those years of intermittent problems for a stupid socket...

It has a nice Pci/VLB/isa combo motherboard, Expertboard brand. 486 dx2 66, 32 megs of ram, sound Blaster 16, 28.8k modem, 3com LAN,and a 270Mb hard drive. Generic s3 pci card from '96 as video since i have heaps of them.

Got this working on my "TheC64 Full Size", and then wrote a blog entry about it....
Played a lot of 1942, PacMan and Winter Games today, on TheC64 with my TheArcade stick.
Love it... 😜

Played around with the P3 500mhz more today, still waiting for the Voodoo SLI bridge and a slotket to arrive. Which got me thinking about the final upgrade for this rig.

800mhz or 1ghz? Not sure which to stick in there. My motherboard bios only supports up to a 8x multi, so i could go for a 800mhz upgrade with no further mangling to be done.

OR
i do have the latest bios file that claims to support the later coppermines, so i could risk the shenanigans that come with that and go for a 1ghz. (Not gonna bother with Tualatins)

TBH, im a litttleeee hesitant to "fix" whats not broken. But there is ultimately just something so tempting about sticking a 1ghz in there and forgetting about cpu bottlenecks and what have you. Especally with V2 SLI complimenting it.

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-03-14, 02:35:

Played around with the P3 500mhz more today, still waiting for the Voodoo SLI bridge and a slotket to arrive. Which got me think […]
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Played around with the P3 500mhz more today, still waiting for the Voodoo SLI bridge and a slotket to arrive. Which got me thinking about the final upgrade for this rig.

800mhz or 1ghz? Not sure which to stick in there. My motherboard bios only supports up to a 8x multi, so i could go for a 800mhz upgrade with no further mangling to be done.

OR
i do have the latest bios file that claims to support the later coppermines, so i could risk the shenanigans that come with that and go for a 1ghz. (Not gonna bother with Tualatins)

TBH, im a litttleeee hesitant to "fix" whats not broken. But there is ultimately just something so tempting about sticking a 1ghz in there and forgetting about cpu bottlenecks and what have you. Especally with V2 SLI complimenting it.

I'm in kind of a similar dilemma right now. Turns out I was checking some old boxes and found 2 Pentium CPUs (both P54C, 100 and 120MHz) and 2 SIMM memory sticks, 8MB each. I tested all of this on my 430TX motherboard, and they seem to be OK (memtest86+ is still running, but it has done more than 7 passes so far, and no errors). Now I'm not sure if I should go with the MMX 233, 64MB of RAM and DOS/Win9x dual-boot or if I should go with one of these CPUs, the 16MB of RAM and DOS only. In any case, the video card will be a voodoo3 2000 PCI and the audio card is an ISA card with the ESS Audiodrive 1688F chip. First world problems, I guess.

I have spent FAR too much time trying to coax an early 2000s Yamaha 2.1 system back to life. Basically, the plastic part of the inner barrel connector broke off and got stuck in the plug in part, which messed up all the pins. I had to draw several maps of the wires, decide on an alternate connection (by default it was VGA, both a burned out ISA video card and several thousand VGA cables were at hand, had I had more time, I would totally have selected RS-232 but really, this will do), and then cut the housing, trace the wires, solder everything...

VIGOROUS heat gun application to remove the old socket from the board!

Then some soldering:

Connecting the VGA to the 2.1 control wires:

Kinda weird to see a VGA connector on a speaker system:

And upon connecting everything together - popping sounds!

The culprit - the POT here was split down the middle and caused all sorts of issues (this was at the other end of the control board):

I stuck in a 10k POT for now, it works, but I can't adjust it as it is entirely the wrong format (pot adjust shaft extends into the housing)

Started disassembling and cleaning the most dusty PS2 console I've ever seen in my life. Must have rescued hundreds of dust bunnies already. 😁

I took a break from the machines on two wheels to fix some machines. So over a few days I have repaired and cleaned two Amiga 500s, one regular and one plusmodel.
Vartakiller

Saved

And this morning I replaced a RAM-chip on an early VIC-20, and then the same fix on an C64 breadbin. But sadly the SID-chip is dead on the C64.

And while the iron was hot I also soldered up an Pi1541 to try out.

Almost forgot. Some time ago I cleaned up this PC 10-III. I don't have any keyboard to try it out, but someday.

It's nice to lighten the mind and clearing up some space since these machines has been lying in parts all over the place.

Vegge wrote on 2020-03-14, 20:34:

Almost forgot. Some time ago I cleaned up this PC 10-III. I don't have any keyboard to try it out, but someday.

oooooo... that's pretty!

I somehow lucked into a really nice condition NES at the flea market for $20, so I of course snapped it up. I already had a brand new cartridge connector for my ugly yellow NES so instead of fixing the ugly yellow one, I put the new connector in the nice looking one. Much better!

(forgive the widescreen, I didn't feel like setting up a CRT just to test the NES)

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-03-02, 21:30:

Ah, ECS...I've seen so many purple P4 boards rife with utterly toasted caps. Glad the Intel board in my Gateway and the MSI AMD board in my Compaq only have a handful of bad ones.

I've finished replacing the crapcaps with Panasonic ones. It's been 15 years since I've recapped a mainboard (back then it was also a S370 from a Shuttle mini-pc).

As a complete soldering amateur, I could not get all the solder out of the holes, I made my own minidrill from a fine screw driver. It's probably not the proper way to remove solder, but unorthodoxy is not a sin in my religion.

Here's the forest of new Panasonic caps.

The full board running:

Finally the Speedsys result:

Sue me if the clutter is offending 😉

flupke11 wrote on 2020-03-14, 21:25:

As a complete soldering amateur, I could not get all the solder out of the holes, I made my own minidrill from a fine screw driver. It's probably not the proper way to remove solder, but unorthodoxy is not a sin in my religion.

Nice ! Good thinking and I may try that method too.

Looked out for a single 2-inch high bronze heatsink, but was coward into settling with ones for GPU .

Installed two of these cuties on P2B HIP6019BCB.

I'll check how hot this and other MOSFETs get as my P3S runs in full throttle.

I'll prolly end up installing heatsinks all over the places.

Btw, it always is quite a thrill to watch contemporary meets classic before your eyes.

Been a couple of years since I printed off some labels for organizing my loose card collection. Most cards fit in a standard Atari 2600-size clear box protector (some need a slightly-longer Intellivision-size). All cards in anti-static bags. Got about three bins full of loose video and sound cards. Very handy for grabbing the card you need.