Haha VOGONS would have a heart attack if I shared photos of my hardware stacked inside plastic crates with absolutely no protection. I mean, I would get boxes and bags for all, but then I would need twice or thrice the storage space, and I don't have that.

As long as you don't touch it, it will be fine. 😉

Today I did something really stupid. I stopped a spinning CPU fan and then probably a transistor blew on an AOpen MX3S-T board. Sigh...

People with perfectly organised collections don't do enough Using. People with fully messy collections don't do enough Organising. I'm sure there's a healthy middle ground in there somewhere. But don't look at me, I haven't found it.

NEC V20 came in today - holy crap I did not expect that kind of Speed Boost out of a Tandy 1000A. Monkey Island (in 16-color TGA) is actually playable now.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-08-11, 01:41:

NEC V20 came in today - holy crap I did not expect that kind of Speed Boost out of a Tandy 1000A. Monkey Island (in 16-color TGA) is actually playable now.

The NEC V20 is a hell of an upgrade for 8088 based systems. I had one in my PCJr I went slightly crazy with upgrades and I regret selling that system.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-08-11, 01:52:

creepingnet wrote on 2022-08-11, 01:41:

NEC V20 came in today - holy crap I did not expect that kind of Speed Boost out of a Tandy 1000A. Monkey Island (in 16-color TGA) is actually playable now.

The NEC V20 is a hell of an upgrade for 8088 based systems. I had one in my PCJr I went slightly crazy with upgrades and I regret selling that system.

Ouch

I know that feeling.

Polishing the fins on a Zalman Socket 462 cooler...

I find it easier to dunk it under the faucet and use a nylon brush with some mild detergent. There are way too many tiny crevices to try and clean each individually with a flower fan.

PD2JK wrote on 2022-08-10, 21:12:

Today I did something really stupid. I stopped a spinning CPU fan and then probably a transistor blew on an AOpen MX3S-T board. Sigh...

Repaired it today. Salvaged from a donor Asus P5S800-VM; I took a transistor next to the fan header and it works.

Tried installing Peppermint 32-bit on my MSI Wind U100 netbook. The result was far worse than my previous attempt with Raspberry Pi Desktop: always got "unknown filesystem" error message followed by the GRUB Rescue prompt. Tried many ways but just couldn't fix the problem.

Guess I'll just leave my U100 with WinXP. 🙄

Spent the evening getting the new AREA 5150 demo running on my IBM PC. After all, it's not every day that there's new software released for the 8088!

The demo is meant to be run from a hard drive but I keep my 5150 in its original state: just the dual 360K floppy drives. Managed to get it working in the end, thanks to DOS 3.30 and the APPEND command: spread the demo files across two floppies and APPEND them together to turn it into a gigantic 720K virtual drive!

And wow, these graphics are insane! The CGA can't do that!

...and yet somehow, yes, the CGA can do that!

Here's a (not very good) video capture of the demo release with audience reactions:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xJZ9I4iqg8

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-08-11, 05:48:

I find it easier to dunk it under the faucet and use a nylon brush with some mild detergent. There are way too many tiny crevices to try and clean each individually with a flower fan.

Already done that... the copper and aluminium were very heavily oxidised.. I want it to shine again 🤣

I have heard that some people are really triggered from storing cards without antistatic bags.
So i bought even smaller bins and put even more cards inside. 😏

That's more or less how I store everything 🤣

DerBaum wrote on 2022-08-11, 12:41:

I have heard that some people are really triggered from storing cards without antistatic bags.
So i bought even smaller bins and put even more cards inside. 😏

Yeah, but everyone has a huge stack of Live! cards .....

Do that with a huge stack of voodoo 1 cards and watch the internet rage!

canthearu wrote on 2022-08-11, 12:59:

DerBaum wrote on 2022-08-11, 12:41:

I have heard that some people are really triggered from storing cards without antistatic bags.
So i bought even smaller bins and put even more cards inside. 😏

Yeah, but everyone has a huge stack of Live! cards .....

Do that with a huge stack of voodoo 1 cards and watch the internet rage!

Voodoo 1? Meh. Do it with Voodoo 5 5500 PCIs.

I'd trade a working Voodoo 1 for a working Voodoo Rush PCI. Am I crazy?

I acquired an Amiga A600 many years ago. Apart from making sure everything is okey dokey I haven't done much with it.

This afternoon I started to have a gander. Having a great time playing with it. I have it hooked up to a SANYO LCD TV via AV cables. Sound is crisp from the LCD TVs speakers. I've got a SMART PCMIA 2 2meg flash card using PrepCard in the Tools Draw on the "Extras" disk I can use the flash card as permanent storage or use it as RAM. Quite neat.

I have two external fdds which makes life a bit easier the just the internal fdd.

I've got WorkBench 2.1 with installation disk. I am going to make non volition storage via the internal IDE port.

DerBaum wrote on 2022-08-11, 12:41:

I have heard that some people are really triggered from storing cards without antistatic bags.
So i bought even smaller bins and put even more cards inside. 😏

Most of my graphics cards are stored in comic book storage boxes. Super strong and stackable, but hard to find anything specific. I'll be putting everything in smaller shipping boxes soon, and testing / cataloging everything. Got to get organised so I can start selling duplicates to pay the UK's extortionate power bills 🙁

canthearu wrote on 2022-08-11, 12:59:

Yeah, but everyone has a huge stack of Live! cards .....

This is not just a regular random stack of Live! cards...
Its the assimilation of Ensoniqs Audio PCI to Creative Soundblaster 128.
The death of Ensoniq.

All my excess hardware lives in an old pinfeed printer paper box that a friend in Seattle gave me when I gave me a bunch of his stuff years ago. All my cards live in there as well (I don't have a lot of cards, I prefer to fix stuff up these days when I can).

Last night, did even more work on the Tandy. V20 is working, and I FINALLY figured out why Ultima V and Ultima VI were not running (and Castlevania) - because my XUB (XT-IDE) was conflicting with the Tandy's CGA VRAM. Apparently some part of the old version I was using was leaking into the CGA/TGA memory space. Once I upgraded to the latest release using IDE_XTPL.BIN, no more issues.

Benchmarks show the V20 being faster than a 6MHz 1000EX which is a bit surprising to me. Also explains why this thing feels more like my first computer (1000 SX) now.

And finally, the 8087 shipped, ordered it on the 6th, went out yesterday. So soon I'll have that. I have some games that use that (CYAFT, MSFS, Sim City), and I think DOSLynx can leverage it as well.