Almoststew1990 wrote on 2020-04-28, 09:17:

I caused a minor fire

Nothing is as reassuring as a lightly smoking PC case...

I smell bacon!

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:16:

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:01:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-28, 13:44:

Is this a Trident card? They tend to do that on TFT panels..

Yes it is indeed a trident 8900C.

Known issue with no workaround, use a CRT or another card.. Sorry. 8900 is a fast card and I have one with 1MB RAM too, but the same issue prohibits me from using it..

How does the 8900 compare to the Cirrus Logic 5429? Also 1mb ISA.

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:29:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:16:

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:01:

Yes it is indeed a trident 8900C.

Known issue with no workaround, use a CRT or another card.. Sorry. 8900 is a fast card and I have one with 1MB RAM too, but the same issue prohibits me from using it..

How does the 8900 compare to the Cirrus Logic 5429? Also 1mb ISA.

I would take an ISA Cirrus Logic over a Trident 8900C any day . The 8900D is supposedly quite fast, but the previous models, not so much .
I used a VLB 5429 back in the day and had no compatibility issues, I can't comment on the speed of the ISA version or LCD compatibility . I did have a Trident 8900B before that and definitely would not have called it fast (then again OAK Technologies and Realtek ISA offerings were even slower) .

Bruninho wrote on 2020-04-28, 04:16:

Does a 11-hour non stop working on code to get a Learning Management System (Moodle) custom theme to work on iOS 12.4 count as a retro activity? I never felt myself so angry. I tested even for iOS 10 and 11.

Turns out a small patch was done but not without much research. I’m losing my magic.

Sounds like the first time I discovered the need for cache busting for mobile platforms. I spent a bunch of time thinking they were handling css selectors differently, but it was just a stale version of the css file.

dave343 wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:29:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:16:

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-04-28, 14:01:

Yes it is indeed a trident 8900C.

Known issue with no workaround, use a CRT or another card.. Sorry. 8900 is a fast card and I have one with 1MB RAM too, but the same issue prohibits me from using it..

How does the 8900 compare to the Cirrus Logic 5429? Also 1mb ISA.

The CL-GD5429 is the better card.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-28, 16:53:

The CL-GD5429 is the better card.

The CL-GD5429 places its LFB (linear frame buffer) just below 64 MB.
So you have to use less than 64 MB RAM in this machine.

I installed "Mario is missing" and Windows Entertainment Packs 1 + 2 on the P75 DOS/WfW 3.11 build I have been working on lately and played a fair bit. My brother and I spent days and weeks with these games back in the day.
So, working remotely during COVID-19 does have its advantages, like being able to play retro games on your retro machine while attending a Skype conference call on your work laptop 😉

I broke one of my gotek drives by either doing something very wrong with wiring or I plugged the cable in upside down?

Thanks to flashfloppy's special test firmware, I was able to find out which pins weren't working, the ouputs on 26,28 & 30. Sure enough, looking close up and following the traces, the little components at Q2, Q3 & Q5 had visible burns on them.

These are: SBT2222A - replacement parts are MMBT2222A-7-F, got them today in the post, soldered in the replacements and the test firmware now shows those outputs are working 😁

I messed around with my AGP Radeon X850XT PE I used years ago in my main machine. I replaced thermal paste, greased up the bearings in the fan and did some testings and it works nicely although it is still really loud...
I did a test with 3Dmark2000 and two CPUs using that card, in default benchmark with a 1.4GHz Tualeron I got 7393 points, with a 1.4GHz Tualatin it got 9991 points. That extra 256KB of cache and 33MHz more FSB certainly makes a noticable difference 🤣

Greased the newly acquired 1.2MB diskette drive for my tall case build and also greases my Epson SD-800 in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus along with the power connector solder reflow as the drive kept dropping power. Both drives are quiet (I greased the 1.2MB from eBay prior to installing it in the computer). Also fixed the 64MB RAM issue in my other build as the RAM wasn't seated all the way (I'm surprised the system booted with the RAM not seated all the way).

Installed a S/PDIF socket on my CT3670. Btw, the lead space is 2.5mm apart, not 2.54mm.

Disruptor wrote on 2020-04-28, 18:35:

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-28, 16:53:

The CL-GD5429 is the better card.

The CL-GD5429 places its LFB (linear frame buffer) just below 64 MB.
So you have to use less than 64 MB RAM in this machine.

I thought ISA cards were limited to the first addressable 16MB . Are you referring to VLB version ?

The ISA was limited to the first 16MB, which sounds right. My Packard Bell has a CL-GD5428 VLB integrated video, which will be upgraded to a 5429 once I order a hot air station with temperature controls and tweezers to pull the chip up and out (will add protection to the board's other components prior to using the hot air station). The CL-GD5428 isn't that bad considerably speaking, but for Windows, it's decent, but not good enough, although the video RAM has been upgraded to 2MB. The 5429 will be the last upgrade to the system.

It was a few days ago but I replaced some molex with sata power connectors on a perfectly good PSU that didn't have enough SATA connectors at the right distance.

Molex is definitely worse than SATA, but that doesn't make SATA particularly good.

Something like a burly RJ9 or RJ45 cable would probably be better. It would be a little bulky. I mean SATA would be fine if the plastic were universally higher quality.

I have an older P4 motherboard with those SATA data connectors that don't have the "fence" around them, and I'm afraid to use one. Looks like it's gonna snap off if I breathe on it.

I have had a bit of a cleaning pause but I really need to dig back in now and get "sell" stuff sorted out ASAP. I'm getting down to the "hard to decide" stage on some things.

Got my 286 to read, write, and format 1.44 Mb floppies using 2M-ABIOS, project complete. Now to dump the ROM for that 286 thread and play around with it some more, immortalize it on YouTube why not 😉

Even the mono monitor is growing on me, something about the amber glow takes me back to my sister's 8088 (I think it was a Hitachi or Fujitsu machine) which I recall had Snakes on it.

Imaged out the Pismo PowerBook (the original HDD was replaced with SD cards not too long ago) just so I can try my hand on qemu PPC emulation. Had no issues with the MacOS Tiger image or the MacOS 9.2 image, but the MacOS Jaguar image faceplanted pretty badly. The Ivy Bridge ULV chip on my Windows machine wasn’t too powerful, but qemu worked just okay with it. Not sure if the Broadwell or the Ryzen embedded machine in my home will do significantly better. This does represent significant progress from the QEMU team, and memories of me using PearPC to emulate MacOS on slower hardware back in the days.

Figured out an issue dealing with Windows NT 3.51 - do not transfer your drive to another machine for copying data if it’s NTFS...looks like early NTFS is no bueno coexisting with modern NTFS implementations - if you copy any data into it NT3.51 will BSOD and not boot, and the emergency rescue disk will be of no help whatsoever. Also, since NT 3.51 is old school Windows, it won’t do FAT32, and FAT16 won’t play well with drives over 2GB...has to hunt down an old school SD card for that one, and install NT 3.51 on it (had an IDE44 to SD card in my barebones ThinkPad 560E). Then later on I found out that the card was used For my OS2 Warp 4 install...whoops.

Had to re-install Warp 4 and deal with all the associated insanity that brings. Oh well, the Thinkpad floppy Gotek worked just fine...except that the OS2 Unpacker2 on a video driver install seems a bit speed sensitive and crashes on the faster throughout of the Goteks. Oh well...I still have a couple physical floppy drive or 2 somewhere with the driver image.

Simple retro activity today -- swapped out the ink ribbon for my Panasonic KX-P2123.

I bought some 8mm width ribbon awhile ago and forgot about it. It cost less than $1.00 each. Today I felt like using it.

Tools: Flat head screwdriver, ribbon cartridge, ink ribbon.

The old ribbon still prints but it's quite nasty. After all I did find this printer on the side of the road...

The nice, black new ribbon inside. It's shorter than the old one but who cares?

Threaded it through with all the left over ribbon sticking out the top.

After turning the knob counter-clockwise to get the rest of the ribbon inside the cartridge, it's nice and ready to go!

I didn't set the offset, but success!

Old print on the left, new print on the right. Much darker and vibrant now.

Next step is cleaning the printhead.

Did some maintenance work on the modded Xbox 360 (Falcon) I got lately. The previous owner already did some improvements to the cooling system, fortunately. I've added a heatsink to the HANA chip, replaced the thermal paste, fixed the GPU x-clamp fix (one washer was missing and the screws too loose), and secured the wires from the glitch chip. Also gave the DVD drive a good clean and added fresh silicone grease.

I may also replace the original fans later or add a third fan to the heat pipe, so I can set the other two fans to a lower speed.

KENWOOD DPX-MP4050B cd drive gear replacement

schmatzler wrote on 2020-04-23, 21:05:

Today I've spent hours trying to get SLI running with two Voodoo II's and it just doesn't work.

Today I received a new SLI cable, plugged it in and it just works.
I want my many hours of lifetime back! 😁

Voodoo 2 SLI is pretty awesome. But POD doesn't seem to work with it, it crashes at startup. 🙁
UT99 and DS9: The Fallen both run fine.

Edit: Nevermind, after yet another reboot it works, too.
Edit #2: And after another reboot, none of my three cards work in SLI anymore. 😁 I'm beginning to think all of my Voodoos are cursed.