mmx_91 wrote:

I hope this little overclocked chip will run cooler after this improvement, this particular 200MMX one is capable of running at 250Mhz (2.5x100), with only 2.4V! (stock 2.8V 😲 😲 )

This gives me an idea. I've got a couple of 233s - maybe my newly-acquired Zalman could be used for such an experiment. Although I'm more likely to replace the stock cooler on my P4 XP build instead. I like overkill.

I should preface this by saying that my PC gaming area only has room for two PCs.
I've been switching between two DOS PCs to play games because one of them slows down better than the other for WC1 and WC2. Yesterday I beat WC2, so I decided to "retire" that machine to make room for my XP GOG machine (which was sitting in the guest room upstairs). Here's the vitals--
retired DOS PC:
Packard Bell Multimedia C110
Pentium 120 downclocked to 75Mhz
32MB edo
onboard Cirrus Logic 1MB
Aztech ISA soundcard (Yamaha OPL3, SB Pro compatible)

Active DOS PC:
Asus P2L98XV (Intel 440LX chipset)
Celeron 333Mhz
32MB
GeForce 2MX AGP
Audician 32 Plus ISA soundcard (Yamaha OPL3, SB Pro compatible)
DreamBlaster S1 General MIDI daughterboard

Active XP GOG.com PC
Intel D946GZIS (LGA 775)
Xeon 3070 2.66Ghz
2GB DDR2 333
GeForce 8800GTX
Turtle Beach Santa Cruz PCI

edit: I've also got a Win98SE machine waiting in the wings (hiding in the upstairs guest room) 😉 It's a Dell Dimension 4100 with a P3-933, 512MB, GeForce FX5200 128-bit AGP, and Sound Blaster Live!

brassicGamer wrote:

mmx_91 wrote:

I hope this little overclocked chip will run cooler after this improvement, this particular 200MMX one is capable of running at 250Mhz (2.5x100), with only 2.4V! (stock 2.8V 😲 😲 )

This gives me an idea. I've got a couple of 233s - maybe my newly-acquired Zalman could be used for such an experiment. Although I'm more likely to replace the stock cooler on my P4 XP build instead. I like overkill.

Nice!! 😎

When I bought the mainboard for this machine, I had to use a pretty crappy and noisy aluminium heatsink from an Athlon (didn't have a proper one), and it didn't get warm at all. I can't imagine how overkill a Zalman would be, but we like it that way, don't we? 🤣

Not PC related, but dismantled and repaired my old Technics RSTR555 Tape deck that I bought new in around 1991 for about $500. The left deck take-up reel didn't
work which would cause chewed tapes, and I was getting a loud hum from the audio outputs. Also the front push switches would often do some other function when
pressed, so cleaned all them whist at it. I pulled apart the mechanisms to clean everything, capstan pins, pinch rollers, belts, etc. The belts are amazing in that they
haven't lost any of their tension nor gone brittle in 25 Years, to the point where I reckon they'll be good for at least another 10. There was a dry joint on the audio out
RCA's and the gears on the reel motors had moved so that they weren't making proper contact with the spindles, easily fixed fortunately by gently pushing them back
into place. I intend to make up some tapes for an Amstrad CPC-464 I got recently, also it's good to reminisce and listen to old tapes I recorded off the radio in the 80's and 90's.

Im testing the last Socket-7 motherboard from the lots I bought recently . It's a Vtech 35-8220-03 i430VX motherboard also known as PC Partner MB520NH and it seems to work.

Out of 10 Socket-7 boards from the two big lots with "untested" motherboards I have got 8 boards working and found two motherboards beyond repair. After I have benched a few Socket-7 boards I will start testing the Socket-3 boards from the lots.

tried to get my PowerVR PCX1 card to work in my PIII machine. It seems to have some detection issue where the PVR tab is missing, and no Windows based SGL games work , even though the device manager recognises the card.

I think its probably one of the IRQ/PCI conflicts the PowerVR is known for.

Put away all my vintage gear for the time being. Time to take a break. 😀

Nice weather is here so more pool time! 😎

I just got a QDI US491P3 VESA local bus motherboard going! 😀

The board is from one of the "untested " motherboard lots I bought.

The board has some "fixes" but not because of corrosion, I think they are factory fixes eventhough they look really shoddy. In any case I tested everything, different memory, 3 different ISA (S)VGA cards, a different CPU and lowering the FSB from the 40 MHz that was set but nothing worked. The motherboard did show some life and the Diagnostic Post card stopped at "FF22" but it would never post. There is no jumper to clear the BIOS settings on this board and the battery is soldered.

I finally gave up but I thought that I should remove the battery eventhough it looked pristine in case it will be years before I try again, after desoldering the battery I thought I would try to get the board to post a final final time and it posted. 😀

Why the heck did they not implement clear RTC jumpers on these old boards with soldered batteries?

Edit

After letting the board spend half an hour in the BIOS setup while I was doing something else I loaded BIOS defaults and saved, the board would save the settings fine even without a battery but I had to power off to connect a floppy drive so I could boot DOS and now the board wont post again. How I love old motherboards! 😜

And after much tinkering... the board still wont post again, it stops on different codes depending on which VGA card and slots I use, "1312" "0014" "0020" "00FF" "FF22" "2222" "2016" "2221" "2C26" "2260" and many more interesting codes.

Well at least it isnt totally dead, it has posted once and it does stuff when it gets power... Im going to try other cache chips some day... in a few years... or decades...

/Edit

Imperious wrote:

Not PC related, but dismantled and repaired my old Technics RSTR555 Tape deck that I bought new in around 1991 for about $500.

I had one of these!!! It was my first dubbing deck after my dad upgraded and passed me his old one. Makes me wonder what happened to it...

I found a jumper setting at stason.org that seems strange.

This is stasons page for Elitegroup UM8810PAIO REV 1.0 (there is another page for REV 2.1)

http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/E/EL … M8810P-AIO.html

Here is the manual for UM8810PAIO REV 1.0

This is how you set 3.3V or 5V CPU voltage.

This is how stason.org thinks you set 3.3V or 5V CPU voltage

I would have preferred that they would have got some other jumper setting wrong and not this one...

Of couse I use a 3.3V DX4 120 CPU when testing and of course I did not even use a heatsink as I only would see if the board posts, and yea I was too lazy to find the manual and used the jumper settings from statson.org.

The board seems rather dead and it probably already was dead and my CPU is probably still fine but running a DX4 120 MHz 3.3V CPU at 5V without even a heat sink could easily have killed it even if I only would have looked through the BIOS for couple of minuts.

I just tested a FIC 486-GIO-VP and it posts, now I just need to connect a keyboard...wait a minute... I dont even want to know how someone manage to do this to the poor motherboard.

The Cyrix DX-2 came with the board, so did the memory.

This board has scratches everywhere, every pin header was bent and many shorted and the separate VRM board also had shorted pins, for once I checked all such trivialities before I powered on. 😜

I did not expect this board to work so it kind of makes up for the dead Elitegroup board above, I just need to solder a new keyboard connector.

MS-DOS v6.22 ITA InstallFest Garage Edition:

IMGs written on floppies with good ol' DISKCOPY on FreeDOS, now installing on my new 486 <3

Installed a Linksys Ether PCI Card II into my Celeron 466, installed Retrozilla, set the old beast up in the front room with a network cable and posted a few messages with the old girl here on Vogons 😀

Started playing another old game that my computer at the time couldn't max out: Dungeon Siege. The minimum requirements called for a PII-333 and 8MB graphics card. Pshaw! The 1.8GHz P4/Radeon 9600 Pro that I used back then often dipped to around 15 fps when there was a ton of action on screen and the visuals were cranked.

Dang, it's nice seeing these old games pegged at 60!

My file server uses a Socket-940 board. I bought it as NOS a couple years ago. It mostly uses Sanyo caps and some polymers, but it also has a few Chemicon KZGs which are known to be prone to bloating. Good brand but bad series, so lots of quality motherboards were affected by them. I've been keeping watch of mine but they're still in there.

I was in the machine yesterday and decided to quickly check over the caps again. Irony ensued.
The KZGs still look fine - but the Sanyo WGs are bulging. Multiples of them. What the hell... I never heard of any defective batches of Sanyos, and I'm pretty sure Tyan knows how to design a motherboard properly so I don't know what's up with this.
I meant to replace the KZGs at some "convenient time" (as if there is such a thing for a 24/7 server). Now I think I need to replace all of the Sanyos, and soon.

Isnt Retrozilla just a fake ? its just rebranded old stuff currently.

I updated my copy of openwatcom v2 from git and did a full build on linux (generated all host/targets), to create a new binary release for dos. zipped its like 21mb, just the dos host/target. I only just noticed OWv2 cant create .COM anymore, but 11c can. not a huge deal really.

*urgh*

Strange how much dirt you can find under the buttons of a recently bought old keyboard - After a good cleaning now it feels better:

I have figured out that not all keyboard-controllers are the same.

I have a corrosion free Siemens 286 motherboard with a keytboard interface error, it uses an "AMI KB-BIOS-VER F" (=Intel P8042AHP) and I tried to replace it with an Amikey keyboard-controller from a 486. it was hilarious, my diagnostic post card flashed through post codes at an amazing pace, like 10 codes a second or so. 😀

I tried a few others, a Mitsubishi one and some other and they at least let the motherboard post but produced the same keyboard interface error. Perhaps this board really needs an "AMI KB-BIOS-VER F" or perhap the previous ownner has already tried to change the keyboard controller and it needs some other random keyboard controller. Or perhaps the board just wont work correctly without a battery connected. I really need to fix a working external battery pack, the ones I have are flat.

I got another 286 motherboard working, it was playing a bit hard to get, it would not let me enter the BIOS setup to disable parity without parity chips installed. I had to look around for 4x 16pin dip memory chips as I only have a surplus of the 20pin ones, luckily I found some on another old 286 motherboard with corrosion damage.

I have a stack of 286, 386 and 486 motherboards that posts but has damaged traces leading to the keyboard controller. The plan is to fix them later, probably by connecting the keboard jacks data pins directly to the keyboard controller socket.

Also got a very nice "SPRING CIRCLE COMPUTER, INC. MDX340C/FOREX386" motherboard working, it has corrosion damage and had faulty memory when I got it. With new memory the board posted but with a keyboard error, luckily the cause was corrosion in the keyboard jack itself but now Im afraid to clean the board as corrosion is likely the only thing keeping the contact between the keyboard jack and the keyboard controller. 😀

Edit

I just removed the battery and corrsion. It wasn't as bad as I thought, sure there was battery "acid" all over the battery area but this FOREX386 motherboard has a very thick layer of clear-coat so the corrosion seemed to barely have touched the traces going from the keyboard jack.

/Edit