bjwil1991 wrote:

I have a PC Speaker hooked up to my Lo-Tech Tandy Compatible Sound Card that sounds distorted, and I don't know if I should make a cable that has a 100ohm resistor and a 1ųf capacitor or solder on a potentiometer (volume wheel/knob) to the speaker to remove the distortion. I'm also planning on making an IBM PC Speaker wire from the motherboard to the Lo-Tech Tandy Compatible Sound Card with a 100ohm resistor and a 1ųf capacitor as well to prevent distortion and shorting the motherboard.

Found the issue. Apparently, I had the volume set to max on the card, so after turning down the volume to the right setting, it's playing back without issues. My next project would be to hookup the PC Speaker header between the motherboard and Tandy card.

Got called out on a computer repair call today, client said they were having trouble connecting a new printer to an old computer.

By "old" I was expecting a WinXP system, but when I got there, this is what I found:

Still in active use as an accounting system on a farm, running Windows 95 and working perfectly fine. This was literally the first time in over 10 years I've worked on a Win95 system in active field use. 🤣

As for the printer, it was indeed new...or rather new old stock, a Canon BJC-2100 from about 1999 or so. It too worked fine once it was hooked up.

@torindkflt -- Awesome. 😀 Looks very similar to my PB, which came spec'd with a Pentium 120. I've upgraded it with a POD 200MMX. So cool to see someone using something "because it works". 😎

MCGA wrote:

Cyrix200+ wrote:

Thoroughly cleaned a nice case I got yesterday. It was so very dirty, but all clean now. Now that I have this one I really have […]
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Thoroughly cleaned a nice case I got yesterday. It was so very dirty, but all clean now. Now that I have this one I really have too much AT cases, time to get rid of some haha.

Blah! If only we had transport technology and I had the cash to spare. I'd gladly buy an AT case off you, especially one of these little cases that I can't find anywhere with in driving range.

ihave the same case, it is a very common case.
if you retrobright it you can take the yellow out, sometimes you end up with white , sometimes with white-grey color

torindkflt wrote:

Got called out on a computer repair call today, client said they were having trouble connecting a new printer to an old computer […]
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Got called out on a computer repair call today, client said they were having trouble connecting a new printer to an old computer.

By "old" I was expecting a WinXP system, but when I got there, this is what I found:

DF7ngv-UIAALNV_.jpg

DF7nhvtUMAAaL9o.jpg

DF7ninWV0AA2qDY.jpg

Still in active use as an accounting system on a farm, running Windows 95 and working perfectly fine. This was literally the first time in over 10 years I've worked on a Win95 system in active field use. 🤣

As for the printer, it was indeed new...or rather new old stock, a Canon BJC-2100 from about 1999 or so. It too worked fine once it was hooked up.

Wow. Amazing system. I have a Dot Matrix printer from 1994 and a Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus to go along with it, which the printer's in storage (paid $5.99 + tax for the printer and in prestige condition) right now. I'm planning on getting either an HP DeskJet 600c or Epson Stylus Color 640 for the system. And my desktop has 36MB RAM, 2GB CF Card, 66MHz Intel i486 DX2, 1,200bps modem 3Com EtherLink III 10BaseT Ethernet, Dual Floppy drive, 48x CD-ROM, Conner Tape drive, and 3 sound cards: Lo-Tech Tandy Compatible Sound Card, Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro (SB Pro, OPL3, Covox Speech Thing, and Disney Sound Source), and keropi's Music Quest MPU401 Clone card, as well as the original keyboard and mouse. The system came with an SX2-50, 3.5" 1.44MB FDD, 428.1MB (was 210MB when it was new), and 8MB RAM (4MB onboard and 4MB SIMM-72) that was upgraded by the original owner, along with the 10BaseT Ethernet card listed above, and the system had upgrades and more features than it originally had.

Tested and verified one of my Voodoo 2s is dead. RIP.

Finished up the build on my DOS/Win95 machine. Feels good to have a machine that's actually working as it should on the first try. Now I just need to find a case for my Late 98/Early XP machine. Until then, I think I'll work on my MDD G4.

Good for you on your projects my friend!!!!!!!!!!

Had to open up my 9x machine as I realised I'd forgotten to add a CD audio cable; Carmageddon 2 did not sound right without the Iron Maiden soundtrack. I remember now why enthusiasts abandoned the desktop PC case - having to move a CRT monitor to get inside the case gets old very quickly.

Completely reinstalled an old IBM Pentium 166 because the hard drive got corrupted for some reason (and I mean REALLY corrupted) - it may be because of the CMOS battery dying. I did several scans, it found no bad sectors and I did a wipe and replaced the original Windows 98 with Windows 98 SE and on top of it, tracked down USB storage drivers so now it can read USB sticks 😊 . For a 1997 machine, that's quite amazing!

Specs for anyone who cares:

IBM PC 330 Pentium 166
64MB RAM
S3 Trio64V+
Maxi Gamer 3D² PCI Voodoo 2
Pioneer DVD (my very first DVD drive from back in 1999 and it's still going strong) - I love how it has no tray:

Creative Sound Blaster AWE64
A 12GB Seagate HDD (my 40GB drives refused to work but I guess this is plenty considering my first Windows 98 PC had 1.3GB and I have USB stick support now to move stuff to)
Dell M570 monitor - got this one for free some years ago and it looks really new - very good 15" monitor with plenty of settings

All in all, very happy with this little PC. For early Windows 32 bit games it's really great and for late DOS games as well.

Soldered some pins where the leaky battery used to be on my 386 and plugged in a new NiMH battery pack from a cordless phone a safe distance from the motherboard. Also mounted the CF to IDE adapter in the case and reinstalled DOS 6.2/Win 3.1 on a 128mb CF card. Now time to go through the mountain of old floppies and play some games.

Andy1979 wrote:

Soldered some pins where the leaky battery used to be on my 386 and plugged in a new NiMH battery pack from a cordless phone a safe distance from the motherboard. Also mounted the CF to IDE adapter in the case and reinstalled DOS 6.2/Win 3.1 on a 128mb CF card. Now time to go through the mountain of old floppies and play some games.

I just spent all morning going through hundreds of my old floppies to copy what's on them in case they ever die :p Only a few had trouble being read which is amazing after 20-25 years.

After two days of tinkering, I figured how to boot from NVMe drive on a PGA 478 CPU 😁

Valid : http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13244414

torindkflt wrote:

Got called out on a computer repair call today, client said they were having trouble connecting a new printer to an old computer […]
Show full quote

Got called out on a computer repair call today, client said they were having trouble connecting a new printer to an old computer.

By "old" I was expecting a WinXP system, but when I got there, this is what I found:

DF7ngv-UIAALNV_.jpg

DF7nhvtUMAAaL9o.jpg

DF7ninWV0AA2qDY.jpg

Still in active use as an accounting system on a farm, running Windows 95 and working perfectly fine. This was literally the first time in over 10 years I've worked on a Win95 system in active field use. 🤣

As for the printer, it was indeed new...or rather new old stock, a Canon BJC-2100 from about 1999 or so. It too worked fine once it was hooked up.

Lmao, I would have offered them one of my many times faster and newer grey box P4 Dells as a trade for it. Makes collecting sense for the collector and business sense for the business user.

torindkflt wrote:

Got called out on a computer repair call today, client said they were having trouble connecting a new printer to an old computer.

As for the printer, it was indeed new...or rather new old stock, a Canon BJC-2100 from about 1999 or so. It too worked fine once it was hooked up.

Shame about that monitor totally not fitting that case - would be a nice retro PC to have, otherwise - but for DOS/Win 3.1. Win95 is pretty pointless for old games on anything below a P150.

I finally tested a Seasonic SSH-350G 350W AT power supply that I got from eBay about a year ago. Wasn't able to test it before because of not having a switch that fit the size of the PSU's blade terminals.

Anyway, the PSU works great. I left it running for about 5 hours and there was only a negligible shift in voltage readings over that time. I tried to measure ripple using mVAC rms on a multimeter, not sure how valid that is but those readings looked good also, especially on 5V.
Initially I only loaded the PSU with a hard drive, and it looked like the 12V rail might need adjustment, but as soon as I added the load of a motherboard then it came perfectly into line.

The date codes show this PSU was made in late 1997 or in 1998, so it would have been late for an AT power supply. It's also a top notch brand and has a high power capacity for AT (350W), so it would have been pretty expensive. It was completely dust free inside, so I suspect it was never used. It may have sat on a shelf somewhere as a backup for an older server, or as an expensive retail PSU that nobody in 1998+ was going to buy. I'm thrilled to have it, couldn't ask for a better PSU for any AT system I'd ever imagine building. After 20 years of idleness I'm glad nothing popped when I turned it on.

I was amused to stumble across this THG page where somebody nearly bought one of these for a Core2. Presumably there was a photo of the specs label because somebody criticized the amps on 12V. Nobody noticed the total lack of any amps on 3.3V or any of the other clues that it's not ATX.
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-215882 … adeon-5450.html
The eBay link showed 8 sold for only $15, I wonder how many of those went to people who didn't know what it was and couldn't use it.

agent_x007 wrote:

After two days of tinkering, I figured how to boot from NVMe drive on a PGA 478 CPU 😁

Fire Strike Ultra OC2c mini.png

Valid : http://www.3dmark.com/fs/13244414

Hah, great. I very nearly just bought a NVMe drive and PCIe x1 adapter for a 2008 Dell running I58/ICH10R, but I thought getting it to boot would be too problematic on a crippled AMI BIOS, chickened out and ordered a Samsung 850 Pro instead. We'll see how it runs on the ICH10R, I ordered a PCI x1 Marvell "SATA 3" adapter too in case it runs any better. The amount of ballpark estimating throughput to compare all that in my head was a bit grueling.

Are you using DUET or Clover to host UEFI on a USB boot drive? 😀

Today I made a PC. I think I am incapable of having enough spare parts to make a PC, without making a PC...

P4 3GHz HT
1GB DDR400
ASROCK P4VM8
Nvidia 4200ti

DOOM portable

xplus93 wrote:

DOOM portable

Looks neat. In practicality though any common Core2Duo laptop can boot to a DOS flash drive and run DOOM though albeit usually limited to PC speaker. I used to do this all the time on a Sony Vaio with a 1.5GHz Merom based Core2Duo. I also had a Gateway M685E for a while that had a sound card which supposedly was Soundblaster Pro compatible. I never tried it though and I'm not sure it would have worked.