far less exciting than most people i'm sure but i've been browsing around for case badges for various old windows OSes for a few machines i have kicking around.

although i'm fairly confident in the places i've seen them being sold in/at are all -- y'know -- real stores and i'm not about to be scammed, i am curious... is there a place that sells them that is actually run by someone in the retro community? i don't mind spending a couple extra bucks if it goes to someone who actually is doing it out of the good of their heart and not just some soulless sticker factory on the other side of the planet.

as for actual retro things; i'm currently listening to midis on the pocket 386 i purchased for funsies while i swap out a crt in an old Mac SE Superdrive. its absurdly burnt in due to years of use and abuse by high school students back in the day, so it's a little tired and needs the help.

zuldan wrote on 2024-04-23, 12:28:

PcBytes wrote on 2024-04-23, 08:04:

Yesterday: […]
Show full quote

Yesterday:

- fixed an early 10s 1TB Seagate ST31000528AS that had a corrupt partition which in turn caused long times for reading and a UNMOUNTABLE_BOOT_VOLUME crash
- sold my ole' Zida 6DLX w/ a Celeron 433 slotket and a few other things like 128MB SDR, a GF 4 MX440 and a 10GB Xbox HDD (slim Seagate ST310014ACE), along with 98SE
- retested my "penny modded" 🤣 X1950XTX PCI-E. That thing runs like a trooper ever since... just keep it away from Windows 10 (desktop UI glitches with it for whatever reason.)
- checked a K6-II Plus I had on a ol' reliable Luckytech-SYE P5MVP3 mobo, still running! Not sure what GPU to pair it with - Geforce 2, TNT2 M64 or a Savage 4.

To do today:
- fiddle with Soltek SL-75FRN2-RL BIOS... mainly patch the "Unknown CPU type" to "AMD Athlon XP-M". Somone on Techpowerup sent me guide on how to do that, and I have two BIOS-es to do this on - Soltek and MSI K7N2 Delta-ILSR. Soltek sports a 2600, the MSI sports a 2400.
- test out an AGP HD3450 from ASUS with a nForce 2 mobo to figure out which driver version would suit best - this idea came from @Ozzuneoj's experiencea with ATI cards and nF2 based boards.
- come up with a plan to tidy stuff up

Hi PcBytes, sorry a bit off topic here. I noticed you own a PCChips M726MRT board. I read the slot 1 can take a coppermine. Do you know what’s the fastest CPU the socket 370 can take? And does the board do 133Mhz bus? I’m thinking about purchasing this board for a build. You said it’s pretty stable.

It'll only do FSB 100 AFAIK, and you're limited to Mendocino on the physical socket 370. Coppermines work but you'll need a slotket. Otherwise than that, pretty stable although don't use the drivers provided on the PCChips disc - download the latest versions off the internet (either from TRW or anywhere else) and use those.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-04-23, 04:45:

I had no idea that cardboard box restoration was a thing. It never would have crossed my mind.

It's not super common, that's for sure. I think it might be more of a thing in the toy collecting community. But there are a handful of videos/YouTubes that do retro box restorations.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-23, 05:50:

Very cool! I would love to see what you come up with for box repair.

If you have time, I think that would be thread-worthy. 😀

Thank you! I plan to create a thread in Milliways at some point, once I have experimented with some techniques and have something to show. 😀

gerry wrote on 2024-04-23, 08:59:

it will be interesting to see before/after and also a run down of what you did, an area of restoration new to me

I definitely plan to do that. Once I've gotten further into this, I'll start a thread on it.

Aui wrote on 2024-04-23, 07:50:

There isn't a lot of restoration material out there for restoring old boxes

There is a RMC episode where he is ironing his boxes...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uarvsGKRXKI

That's certainly one of the better restoration videos I've seen. I'm impressed with the DIY 'hot plate' they used.

Also came across another video where they used a T-shirt press to flatten out boxes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmhBiVr74lM

Look what fun item I found today... brand new in box... still in original shrink wrap....

Did a partial recap of an AWE64 Value I am repairing. It had a dead amplifier chip, but that had dried out a lot of the filtering caps in the audio circuit. While at it I also replaced the +5V filtering caps. It is back to life and sounds pretty good. I am contemplating also doing the 2MB RAM mod..

Antieon wrote on 2024-04-23, 17:31:

Look what fun item I found today... brand new in box... still in original shrink wrap....

Very nice 😀

Finally got the Intel D850GB Socket 423 system going. So I've had one of these boards sitting in a box for about a decade, and a couple of years back I picked up a *really* nice 2000-2001ish computer build that had ANOTHER D850GB in it that seemingly had a dead IDE controller as I never could get that system to initialize past IDE detection. Swapped out the board with faulty IDE for the one I've had sitting around forever, and well... that was interesting.

Are all Socket 423 boards like this? The heatsink base mounts to standoffs on the case using double length screws, the IO shield snaps in place *from the outside*. Just odd overall. System works fine now, I also discovered one of those CD drives in the chassis was faulty which may or may not have been causing the IDE issues, I thought I checked both of those drives the last time I was messing with the system but I cant remember for sure.

Also I know I said I was done buying GPUs but I found a mislisted GF3 Ti 200 on eBay for basically free, so I grabbed it to go in this build. 1.5GHZ Willamette with an Audigy. Perfect 2000-2001 era PC. Once it arrives I have a Duron rig I'm going to throw the GeForce2 GTS I fixed for this machine into.

Yes many soc 423 are odd IMHO 😁 ...Good find on the GF3 !

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2024-04-24, 00:52:

Finally got the Intel D850GB Socket 423 system going. So I've had one of these boards sitting in a box for about a decade, and a couple of years back I picked up a *really* nice 2000-2001ish computer build that had ANOTHER D850GB in it that seemingly had a dead IDE controller as I never could get that system to initialize past IDE detection. Swapped out the board with faulty IDE for the one I've had sitting around forever, and well... that was interesting.

Are all Socket 423 boards like this? The heatsink base mounts to standoffs on the case using double length screws, the IO shield snaps in place *from the outside*. Just odd overall. System works fine now, I also discovered one of those CD drives in the chassis was faulty which may or may not have been causing the IDE issues, I thought I checked both of those drives the last time I was messing with the system but I cant remember for sure.

Also I know I said I was done buying GPUs but I found a mislisted GF3 Ti 200 on eBay for basically free, so I grabbed it to go in this build. 1.5GHZ Willamette with an Audigy. Perfect 2000-2001 era PC. Once it arrives I have a Duron rig I'm going to throw the GeForce2 GTS I fixed for this machine into.

I also have the same motherboard (Garibaldi) i850GB, and I have to adapt a CPU heatsink, because it doesn't have the original one, having an interesting tower heatsink with a copper central part, I wanted to use it in the 423, for the rest it has CPU 1.6GHz, four 128 MB RAM (512 MB total), and I hope not to have the same problems you had, I hope to adapt the heatsink and test the card as soon as possible, it would be the second 423 with RDRAM, I have one third but has normal PC133 SDRAM.

Antieon wrote on 2024-04-23, 17:31:

Look what fun item I found today... brand new in box... still in original shrink wrap....

i'm sure that would have been a few hundred $ back in the day, and it sat there all that time

to do it justice you'll have to be that workstation professional it wants! 😀

nice find

Modified my Soltek 75FRN2-RL's BIOS to read Athlon XP-M 🤣

ascle wrote on 2024-04-23, 15:16:

far less exciting than most people i'm sure but i've been browsing around for case badges for various old windows OSes for a few machines i have kicking around.

although i'm fairly confident in the places i've seen them being sold in/at are all -- y'know -- real stores and i'm not about to be scammed, i am curious... is there a place that sells them that is actually run by someone in the retro community? i don't mind spending a couple extra bucks if it goes to someone who actually is doing it out of the good of their heart and not just some soulless sticker factory on the other side of the planet.

Isn't https://geekenspiel.com/ considered good?

H3nrik V! wrote on 2024-04-25, 05:54:

ascle wrote on 2024-04-23, 15:16:

far less exciting than most people i'm sure but i've been browsing around for case badges for various old windows OSes for a few machines i have kicking around.

although i'm fairly confident in the places i've seen them being sold in/at are all -- y'know -- real stores and i'm not about to be scammed, i am curious... is there a place that sells them that is actually run by someone in the retro community? i don't mind spending a couple extra bucks if it goes to someone who actually is doing it out of the good of their heart and not just some soulless sticker factory on the other side of the planet.

Isn't https://geekenspiel.com/ considered good?

That's where I get all of mine from now. Not the cheapest, but they're very nicely made and there's a good selection.

Slight disappointment today - was looking to build a high-end Win98SE build, as I currently only have some compromise ones. Intended to use an AM3NF2 for it, but after digging though all my stuff I discovered I sold that a few months back. Oh well, back to the drawing board. Does give me the chance to fine-tune. I have an Audigy2 Platinum for it, but might now go for a board with ISA and add my Terratec EWS64XL as well - partly for the sound, partly to have more fancy front bay stuff 😉

Built an ISA ROM card, hope to use it as an XT-IDE card for a possible future Turbo XT build..

appiah4 wrote on 2024-04-25, 09:45:

Built an ISA ROM card, hope to use it as an XT-IDE card for a possible future Turbo XT build..

Out of curiosity, where do you plan to connect the IDE device since this is just the ROM?

konc wrote on 2024-04-25, 10:18:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-04-25, 09:45:

Built an ISA ROM card, hope to use it as an XT-IDE card for a possible future Turbo XT build..

Out of curiosity, where do you plan to connect the IDE device since this is just the ROM?

Directly to the motherbaord or to a separate dumb Multi-IO ISA card.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-04-25, 10:52:

konc wrote on 2024-04-25, 10:18:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-04-25, 09:45:

Built an ISA ROM card, hope to use it as an XT-IDE card for a possible future Turbo XT build..

Out of curiosity, where do you plan to connect the IDE device since this is just the ROM?

Directly to the motherbaord or to a separate dumb Multi-IO ISA card.

That's exactly what I was thinking, XTs don't have on board IDE and don't take 16-bit ISA cards. Unless this Turbo XT is some modern clone that I'm not aware of, for me it always meant "just faster than 4.77MHz".

konc wrote on 2024-04-25, 11:07:

appiah4 wrote on 2024-04-25, 10:52:

konc wrote on 2024-04-25, 10:18:

Out of curiosity, where do you plan to connect the IDE device since this is just the ROM?

Directly to the motherbaord or to a separate dumb Multi-IO ISA card.

That's exactly what I was thinking, XTs don't have on board IDE and don't take 16-bit ISA cards. Unless this Turbo XT is some modern clone that I'm not aware of, for me it always meant "just faster than 4.77MHz".

That, is a good point. I guess I can only use this on AT and up 😅