Decided to do a quick test today to see if my Socket 5 PC would recognise an 8GB CF card natively or would require the XTIDE Universal BIOS. Unfortunately it wasn't being detected by the BIOS nor XTIDE.

I tried a different CF card for a few seconds, those few seconds being all that was needed for the CF card to become too hot to touch. A dodgy IDE-CF adapter evidently. I've got a replacement coming tomorrow so hopefully I'll have better luck.

Despite the overheating CF card, both cards tested fine in my reader afterwards. So luckily nothing was damaged!

I am busy with a PCI card to "reset" the windows when you reboot a PC. It was used in Cybers (Spanish Pc Bang)

Cobbled a "fast" 775 + AGP build together:

- ASRock 775i65PE Rev 1.03, BIOS P2.00
- Pentium D 925 Presler @ 3GHz
- Radeon 9600 Pro 128MB AGP8x (Gecube OEM)
- 3GB dual-channel DDR400 (2x1GB + 2x 512MB)
- 120GB Seagate Barracuda
- LG GSA-H58N DVD-RW
- XP SP3 up to date

Has anyone had much luck with this style of flat PCB based 2.5" to 3.5" adapter?

I've got mSATA drives in most of my retro machines using the JMicron based 2.5" IDE adapters - either the ones with a caddy or the smaller bare PCB ones. But the common adapters for connecting 2.5" and 3.5" IDE always seem kind of janky - especially the black ones with the Molex power leads just soldered to two of the pins. So when I saw this type on AliExpress I thought it was a great solution as it gives you a firm mounting for the 2.5" drive, and the IDE header faces out rather than up, which is helpful in tight locations.

I only just got around to testing it with an mSATA adapter and got really weird results - on a retro machine the drive is detected by the BIOS as usual, but it won't boot and FDISK (from a boot floppy) won't even see it and quits with an error. I tried it on a USB adapter on a modern machine and it seemed to be either randomly not detected at all, or detected as a removable drive with no media. The power LED comes on, but nothing at all on the red activity LED.

If I plug the mSATA to 2.5" adapter directly to the USB adapter, or to the retro PC via a janky adapter, it works fine! So the problem is in the 2.5" to 3.5" PCB. Which seems weird! Isn't it just passive? Even weirder - when I tried with an old 2.5" spinning disk, that DID work OK via the 2.5" to 3.5" PCB.

I tried reflowing the solder on the 40-pin header as some joints didn't look good, but it made no difference. Might the little black SMD components near the power line be doing something odd? As far as I can see they're the only difference between this and a purely passive adapter?

(also worth saying, I assumed the outer holes on the PCB would match up with the standard 3.5" HDD bottom mounting hole locations - but they don't! )

Try using it with a cable select punched IDE cable.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-04-19, 15:06:

Try using it with a cable select punched IDE cable.

Tried the adapter with two different cable select type 80 wire cables (the original one was 80 wire but only one drive connector) but still no luck with the mSATA adapters booting or being accessible (but still being recognised by BIOS OK). Again the adapter worked fine with a different spinning 44pin drive though.

I've never known any other drive or adapter fail to work with the USB3.0 adapters either ... Seems really weird!

Recapped my recently acquired MSI Tualatin MS-6368 v5 MB. Currently running on 1.1G Tualatin Celeron. Goal is to set up DOS machine with VIA C3 CPU.
First test weekend ended up successful. After I reserved Legacy IRQ/DMA from bios PiocoGus is running just fine. It looks like VIA PLE133T sports good DOS compatibility. Not only for games but also my standard set of dos demos.

I could not found however any VESA tool to set up onboard Trident Blade3D refresh rates in DOS. Univbe does not support it and usual vbehz/unirefresh do require VESA v3 feature set.
However my somehow my Samsung CRT and VGA managed to sync up with standard 85HZ refresh rate for regular 480/600/768 resolutions. Good enough for me.

Made VIA C3 800Mhz Erza ebay order today. Fortunately it's still relatively cheap CPU.

Been testing throttling and benchmarking of this Cedar Mill Pentium 4 651 (SL9KE).

Turns out it can nicely approximate a 486 DX-33 with both L1 & L2 cache disabled. Adding in additional throttling options pushes it into 386 and even 286 territory.

vutt wrote on 2024-04-20, 17:10:

Recapped my recently acquired MSI Tualatin MS-6368 v5 MB. Currently running on 1.1G Tualatin Celeron. Goal is to set up DOS mach […]
Show full quote

Recapped my recently acquired MSI Tualatin MS-6368 v5 MB. Currently running on 1.1G Tualatin Celeron. Goal is to set up DOS machine with VIA C3 CPU.
First test weekend ended up successful. After I reserved Legacy IRQ/DMA from bios PiocoGus is running just fine. It looks like VIA PLE133T sports good DOS compatibility. Not only for games but also my standard set of dos demos.

I could not found however any VESA tool to set up onboard Trident Blade3D refresh rates in DOS. Univbe does not support it and usual vbehz/unirefresh do require VESA v3 feature set.
However my somehow my Samsung CRT and VGA managed to sync up with standard 85HZ refresh rate for regular 480/600/768 resolutions. Good enough for me.

Made VIA C3 800Mhz Erza ebay order today. Fortunately it's still relatively cheap CPU.

Nice finger slicer 🤣

Today I've been working some more on my Socket 5 PC.

Managed to finally configure the XTIDE Universal BIOS properly to get Windows 95 working without being stuck in MS-DOS compatibility mode. Not that I particularly intend to use Windows much on this PC, but useful to have.

I was getting some freezes whilst trying to access my 8GB CompactFlash card. When I realised it was also happening in DOS, I decided to try a different IDE cable. The replacement cable solved the issue.

Now with all of the technical issues out of the way, I can finally start loading this PC up with games and turn it into a circa-1996 DOS gaming build. I'll also make use of the installed S3 Virge card, for the S3D accelerated games.

I did essentially nothing. Apart from having a friend over much of the day, I also still have a dearth of sound modules:

SD-20: Here, working!
SC-D70: Still dead, still with the technician.
SC-88VL: No idea, probably lost in post.
MU-50: Still waiting for the new coin cell holder to join the technician.

Yesterday (well, it's past midnight now so the day *before* yesterday) was more productive - I got a new Y-belt on the printer and ran some very clean test prints - so I can continue with designing the pot mount for the second radio, the Roland-inspired chassis for the Worlds Worst Recording Studio PC, and the upgraded half-rack mt32-pi chassis. Also; while waiting for the lighting and dishwasher to be replaced: I defeated Brock, Misty, Lt Surge and Koga, got the king of Loire killed and became Rat Boy's slave.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-04-20, 19:54:

vutt wrote on 2024-04-20, 17:10:

Recapped my recently acquired MSI Tualatin MS-6368 v5 MB. Currently running on 1.1G Tualatin Celeron. Goal is to set up DOS mach […]
Show full quote

Recapped my recently acquired MSI Tualatin MS-6368 v5 MB. Currently running on 1.1G Tualatin Celeron. Goal is to set up DOS machine with VIA C3 CPU.
First test weekend ended up successful. After I reserved Legacy IRQ/DMA from bios PiocoGus is running just fine. It looks like VIA PLE133T sports good DOS compatibility. Not only for games but also my standard set of dos demos.

I could not found however any VESA tool to set up onboard Trident Blade3D refresh rates in DOS. Univbe does not support it and usual vbehz/unirefresh do require VESA v3 feature set.
However my somehow my Samsung CRT and VGA managed to sync up with standard 85HZ refresh rate for regular 480/600/768 resolutions. Good enough for me.

Made VIA C3 800Mhz Erza ebay order today. Fortunately it's still relatively cheap CPU.

Nice finger slicer 🤣

This is a bit random, but your comment made me think of the all-aluminum PC fans I remember seeing advertised probably 15-20 years ago when PC cooling gimmicks were a really big thing. Even the blades were metal.

What brand made those? I see some results for Evercool alunimum fans, but I don't think that was it (and I'm not convinced the blades are really aluminum on those). I feel like it was a much more expensive and much more "boutique" kind of thing.

If I remember right, those Evercool fans had chrome-colored plastic blades. I don't remember fans with metal blades.

Papst (not to be confused with Pabst Blue Ribbon) has some metal fans, but they aren't shiny PC fans with home-friendly noise levels. Even the overclockers used the plastic Papst fans, and I haven't seen them with anything other than bare wire leads in years.

I like the papst 50cfm metal alloy "muffin fans" which are what they're usually listed as, in 80mm, when you have awkward case cooling in an older case and just want something to rip the air out of it.

lti wrote on 2024-04-21, 00:40:

If I remember right, those Evercool fans had chrome-colored plastic blades. I don't remember fans with metal blades.

Papst (not to be confused with Pabst Blue Ribbon) has some metal fans, but they aren't shiny PC fans with home-friendly noise levels. Even the overclockers used the plastic Papst fans, and I haven't seen them with anything other than bare wire leads in years.

Found them! I thought there was a manufacturer that made one before this that also had an aluminum frame, but it looks like Prolimatech made these "Vortex Aluminum" fans with metal blades in 2012-2013 or so:

https://www.eteknix.com/prolimatech-vortex-fan-reviews/2/

Today, I fixed the Socket-A Lever locking issue.

Building a Cyrix 5x86 100mhz machine, what a beauty

Alphacool makes an all metal fan. It's their new Apex line.

ayandon wrote on 2024-04-21, 08:29:

Today, I fixed the Socket-A 4 Lever locking issue.

FTFY. Nicely done, I'm curious, do you have any pictures of the slot without CPU?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2024-04-21, 09:25:

Alphacool makes an all metal fan. It's their new Apex line.

Only piece that is major metal is frame. Rest of fan's frame and fan blades are made of plastic but nicely made but not impressive specs when compared to premium fans. Anandtech reviewed these.

Cheers,