Yesterday i have received my Coolermaster HAF922 from america.. I have unpacked it and checked it on more damage places if they where on this case.. Iam going to build an fastest windows 98 se / with windows xp build inside this system with an AGP Socket 939 motherboard inside.. And the rest i will reveal later.

Also have stripped my new bought XT case iam going to use for my V20 XT build.. So i can use the other desktop system case for my 286 or 386 build.

And yesterday evening i started with cleaning (water and soap) the base of the case.. After dismantle the whole thing. Iam thinking of respraying the bottom side, because its stratched to much, and black painting is coming of. I ordered some new PCI slot brackets, because the older ones where rusty.. Iam also going to clean the whole PSU unit and fitting an new cooler fan inside.. The little rusty spots i will trying to clean with `rustyco` and maybe polish the outside of the PSU as new.. Also need to replace some screws that also became rusty.

Cool. That is a lot of work. But a lot of fun at the same time.

I got the IBM ValuePoint 466DX2 today. Booted right up with IBM DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1. It must have been used as an industrial machine. It still has CAD/CAM software on it (DOS & Windows). No sound card / NIC and only a 210MB IDE HDD and 8MB RAM. After Norton Disk Doctor finishes scanning I will replace the CR2032 and test the FDD.

I love IBM PS/ValuePoint machines. Such a nice combination of proprietary and generic technology.

Ran the full Norton System Diagnostics test and all came back fine. My Model M keyboard however appears to have a F12 key that does not work.

^ LOVE the look of the CGA

Actually... For last week I've been teaching myself to program interrupt driven polyphony sound on the PC speaker 😀 The mechanics itself are fairly straightforward, but actually getting it to work right are proving problematic 🙁 First, took me forever, it seems, to do it without messing up the RTC. Then, when I tried to start writing it in Open Watcom instead of Borland, I discover that OW can't seem to produce code that will run at speed on older systems. So I'm back to Borland again. I may try another more modern compiler in the future. Its a shame, really, I was looking forward to learning to program with a DOS extender too 🙁

Just found this forum and I must say I like it. Working on an old system myself the past month or so.

Micronics w6-LI
Wish it had the SCSI and all but i got two of them cheap a few years back and just got around to getting one running.

Twin Pentium Pro 200's and currently only 64MB of RAM, RAM upgrade soon.
Will post full details after I get it the way I want it.

If I have not posted pics correctly please let me know. Didn't find a photo rule in the FAQ.

Yesterday I installed a 4X IDE CD-ROM and CT2290 in my new IBM PS/ValuePoint 466DX2. I had to play around with the Maxtor IDE HDD jumpers to get the master / slave setup right. And change jumpers on the CT2290 to happily coexist with the MIF-IPC-A clone. Now this machine is nicely up and running. I played Colonization on it for 20 minutes but then decided to watch a movie instead. 🤣

Designed my first ISA card, and placed a manufacturing order. Pretty excited to see how they'll turn out 😀

jwt27 wrote:

Designed my first ISA card, and placed a manufacturing order. Pretty excited to see how they'll turn out 😀

This line of text burned right onto my retina, what card is it? 😁

Nothing special, really... You'll see it when I get it (and all the other parts I ordered) 😀

Played a higher level of Colonization yesterday and won. Great game.

Iam being busy on testing and cleaning the 3.5 inch floppy drives i have here.. Did decide not to trow them away and going for new one.. Seems 3.5 ones getting harder to get these days.

Today I played SimCity Enhanced CD-ROM. Cool samples and videos.

Started my 486 build that has been shelved for the past 2 years

Hi,

by "order" of the steerswoman of our marriage-ship tidying out our spare room.
today:
- finished building and setting up my NMC-5VM5XS with K6-2 350, 128MB PC-100 CL2, Matrox 200 AGP, the on-board Yamaha OPL3, CD-burner aso.This one I will keep - just like it....
- tested and threw away three HDDs with 6,4/15/16GB due to massive faults
- finished building and setting up a crappy Via Apollo133 board (with the faulty 686) with an as crappy CyrixIII-700/ATI Rage128/128RAM/16GB HDD aso.
- tested and not sure yet if to throw away a Tyan Titan Turbo (with TX-chipset, the one only caching 64MB)
- once more tried to identify a 486 pci-board with no name, serial number or producer on it (UMC-chipset). not sure if it´s okay anyway, so maybe not urgent.
- and, of course, in between posting and reading here 😉 😉

stay tuned,
greetings duncan

Had to remove the CPU fan on my daily use rig (Core2Duo - S775) because I was getting low RPM readings from my ASUS PC Probe software and it was getting noisy.

I cleaned the axle with a qtip and applied some oil to the axle when I was done, and reinstalled it on my heatsink. Noise is gone and everything is working great now. I wonder how long the oil will hold up (not too long I am guessing since I just used regular motor oil, but it wont take much to just remove it, clean it again and re-apply the proper axle grease). As this person at this link http://hackedgadgets.com/2011/08/06/pc-fan-repair/ mentions, the oil is going to most likely just be a temporary fix until I get the proper axle grease.

Hi retrofanatic,
...I use MoS2-grease for the bearings. Will last till eternity....

greetings duncan

Got married, does that count?

Hi @RacoonRider,

...that is so much retro it counts twice 😉

greetings from a married
duncan

duncan wrote:

Hi retrofanatic,
...I use MoS2-grease for the bearings. Will last till eternity....

greetings duncan

Thanks...I will look into maybe getting some of that. I might opt to use some white lithium grease if I get lazy.

Hi @retrofanatic,

white lithium is okay for some time. But it lacks the ability to "repair" slightest scratches in the surface. Having been a bicycle and motorbike mechanic before getting involved with hardware, I just took over the experience I made there - and it works. Even a simple, non-ballbearing fan will work for ages with this stuff.

stay tuned, and keep building rigs,
greetings duncan