VOGONS


Reply 9820 of 27187, by Merovign

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Skyscraper wrote:

To be able to test this a professional CGA/EGA 9pin to "EGA/CGA 15pin" cable is needed.

Just a wild hair of a wild thought (that I almost used and might still use for rebuilding the 8-pin DIN power cable from a Zeos 386 (got it working but haven't fully rebuilt the cable yet):

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It might take two cat5 cables (you could glue the sockets together side to side) and I'm not 100% sure your wires will fit in the cable ends, they might be too large (but it's a thought). It would look a lot cleaner in the end *and* in theory you could swap out different adapters later, provided they were wired correctly.

You could... you could almost have a universal 15-pin-to-anything adapter, or at least anything signal-compatible.

*Too* *many* *things*!

Reply 9821 of 27187, by Duouk2000

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For some reason my Soundblaster 16 wasn't showing up in Windows 98 and nothing I did was making it become visible. I had it all set up pretty much perfectly apart from this and didn't want to start over but also wanted DOS sound compatibility. After removing my Soundblaster Live! fully and doing a quick install to another drive it showed up so I decided to start over on the main 120GB Maxtor and everything's up and running now as it should.

I also finally tested the 5 1/4 FDD I bought ages ago after recently purchasing the right floppy cable. It seems to read floppy disks well enough to see the files on each disk but I get errors when it tries to run anything from them. Not sure if it's the drive yet or the floppy's (I only have a few). The drive's a little beat up and needs a little tlc really, the arm that holds the disk in place doesn't fully clamp down despite turning all the way round so I have to do it manually for the moment.

Reply 9822 of 27187, by Jed118

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^^^ Clean the heads up on the old drives. I saved a few by just greasing the rails and taking alcohol to the R/W heads.

Here's what I did:

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These three are eventually going on eBay - 486/66, 2GB hard disk, 16 Mb RAM, Pentium 166, 4.3 Gb and 32 Mb RAM, and a PIII Slot 1 450 MHz, 8.5 gig HDD and 256Mb RAM. I might retrobright them on Wednesday (last warm sunny day here for a while) and configure their software correctly. The P166 is a DALLAS RTC (soldered on) so... fun with that. This is like my 6th DALLAS RTC battery conversion this year.

Onto my own computers: I upgraded my P166 to 233MMX after discovering the board will handle 2.8V CPUs. Unfortunately the multiplier only goes up to 3.0x and 75MHz bus, so I am able to get 225MHZ only. I added 32 Mb RAM and a Voodoo 3dFx card (which came out of the P166 above, which received this system's CPU as it came with 100 MHz) . I might upgrade the CDROM from a 4 spin to an 8x (swap them around between the 486/66) as it would be more era-correct. This is pretty close to the system I had as a teenager, except that I had DDR RAM in there (mine takes it, but I need to find a stick). The final project on this machine is to put in a full three character 7 segment LED (I have one ready) as for now the readout is stuck at 199.

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I'm gonna have to get used to that clock speed:

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Youtube channel- The Kombinator
What's for sale? my eBay!

Reply 9823 of 27187, by elderago

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lets see

I bought a 2.80 ghz pentium 4 processer

and Ive been ripping my entire library of cds onto that computer....so then I can transfer to my modern computer and recode the music into flac ( my modern desktop doesnt have a cd-drive)

not sure how retro that is but its something

Reply 9824 of 27187, by appiah4

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Jed118 wrote:

Onto my own computers: I upgraded my P166 to 233MMX after discovering the board will handle 2.8V CPUs. Unfortunately the multiplier only goes up to 3.0x and 75MHz bus, so I am able to get 225MHZ only.

P233MMX P55C cores treat 1.5x as 3.5x internally so just set your multiplier to 1.5x (and FSB to 66MHz, unless you want to try 3.5x @ 75MHz).

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 9825 of 27187, by Jed118

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When I read that, it opened a vague memory of this in my mind. Not enough to pin it down and be sure, but something just on the edge of being familiar.

I tried different combinations of the multipliers (even ones that weren't explicitly listed in the manual, I got weird speeds like 110MHz and 180MHz) but nothing above 225 MHz.

I will give that a go, thanks!

Youtube channel- The Kombinator
What's for sale? my eBay!

Reply 9826 of 27187, by bakemono

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Tried to resurrect my A2000. I put it away ten years ago because it was not working reliably anymore. I bought some A1200 stuff afterward but had problems with that as well, got fed up and sold it off. But the A2000 was still sitting around and one day I was down in the basement cooling off and decided to look it over and see if there were any obvious problems. I found a few spots where components had been added or changed and the soldering didn't look too good. So I resoldered those, tested the PSU, and also pulled the DKB Megachip and reinstalled the 1MB AGNUS as the jumper wire from the megachip to the CPU was suspect. Then I tried to power it on and got the insert disk screen.

I have a SCSI card and 1.2GB HDD that I used to use in it. I think it had OS3.9 and would not boot on a 68000. When I tried to boot it there was a lot of disk activity and then a "software failure." I have an 040 card with no RAM and an 030 with 12MB, but it wouldn't boot with those either. And I have no mouse so I can't bypass the startup-sequence. There was also a clunky old IDE HDD that plugged into the 030 card and that one was able to boot WB 3.0. And it has the PC2Am program so I can copy files through the parallel port. I want to test something on real hardware since WinUAE has no way to set the CPU speed.

again another retro game on itch: https://90soft90.itch.io/shmup-salad

Reply 9827 of 27187, by derSammler

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bakemono wrote:

I want to test something on real hardware since WinUAE has no way to set the CPU speed.

How old is the version of WinUAE you use? Of course WinUAE has ways to set the CPU speed. I replicated all my Amigas in WinUAE using backup images of the CF cards and all running at exactly the same speed as the real hardware (they all have different turbo boards).

Reply 9828 of 27187, by appiah4

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bakemono wrote:

Then I tried to power it on and got the insert disk screen.

Oh snap, I was biting my nails up until this point! Glad to hear you got to the kickstart!

bakemono wrote:

I want to test something on real hardware since WinUAE has no way to set the CPU speed.

Don't you have any WB 1.3 floppies or a Gotek to use in that A2000? I mean, it's an A2000! Go buy a Gotek and flash it with FlashFloppy (or preferrably HxC) already! If I had an A2000 I would be buying shit for it nonstop 🤣.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 9829 of 27187, by dionb

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Jed118 wrote:

When I read that, it opened a vague memory of this in my mind. Not enough to pin it down and be sure, but something just on the edge of being familiar.

I tried different combinations of the multipliers (even ones that weren't explicitly listed in the manual, I got weird speeds like 110MHz and 180MHz) but nothing above 225 MHz.

I will give that a go, thanks!

Don't trust what BIOS reports if you're going above official spec. The CPU will be running at bus speed times how it interprets the multiplier, regardless of what BIOS displays. If in doubt, run a benchmark at a known, supported speed, then change settings and re-benchmark. You should see the settings taken correctly.

So, choose 1.5x and 66MHz and you should get 233MHz even if BIOS can't figure it out.

Reply 9830 of 27187, by oeuvre

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Found one of my dad's CDs, The Alim Multimedia Edition 4.5, from 1996. An Islamic reference of sorts. Made an ISO of it.

HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
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Reply 9831 of 27187, by digitalx

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Swapped out an old Dell DVD Drive for a new Phillips DVD Drive.

Installed some TNT2 Riva Graphics Card drivers.

Will be replacing the old Compaq Motherboard with an Asus P4S8X board and P4.

Reply 9832 of 27187, by brostenen

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appiah4 wrote:

If I had an A2000 I would be buying shit for it nonstop 🤣.

I know the thought dude.... I know it. And because they are just a tad too expensive for my pocket, I have bought a lot of upgrades for my Amiga500. Well... One of the two I own. It is not an Amiga300, yet on paper, my 500 should become some 2.5 times faster than a 3000 with the TF-530 that I bought. That was "on paper", as the accelerator will only communicate over an 16-bit bus.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
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Reply 9833 of 27187, by ultra_code

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Yesterday, I decided to attempt to get that P2 system I had upgraded working again.

I took out 2 32MB sticks out of the 4 that were in there, because, although, if I recall correctly, Memtest86 said all of the sticks were fine, the Win98SE installer would freeze up by the time I would reach the installation customization screen.
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Thankfully, I was this time around allowed to progress past that screen, and got all the way to the second-boot part of the setup, where devices were being detected. However (of course), my problems didn't stop there.

I then encountered both of these BSOD right after the other, and was then forced to manually shut down the PC:
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After restarting the PC, the installation continued where it left, and acted like it forgot, finishing the installation without another BSOD. However, once I got to the desktop and tried copying data from a disc over to the machine, in the middle of the transfer, File Explorer decided to crash:
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*sigh*

If it is not the RAM, the only thing I can think of being the problem is the CPU itself. It is a P2 "Deschutes" 333MHz CPU, which, when I first installed it, I happened to not change the jumper settings on the motherboard, which beforehand was set for a P2 "Klamath" 300MHz CPU. 🙁

It is possible that I damaged the CPU's cache, and, possibly, the motherboard itself?

Last edited by ultra_code on 2018-11-05, 22:59. Edited 1 time in total.

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Reply 9834 of 27187, by okenido

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Repaired my voodoo5 5500. Got it in a lot with other cards, it never worked but now that I have a good soldering station I managed to replace the small missing CMS capacitor !

I plan to use it instead of the Geforce 4MX in my 450mhz PII build. Is it stupid to match it with this CPU ? Should I definitely upgrade for a PIII ?

Also i'm quite worried by the amout of heat it produces. 4MX was very cool, passively cooled. The Voodoo5 5500 runs very hot in comparison... is there a way to undervolt it ?

Reply 9837 of 27187, by appiah4

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brostenen wrote:
appiah4 wrote:

If I had an A2000 I would be buying shit for it nonstop 🤣.

I know the thought dude.... I know it. And because they are just a tad too expensive for my pocket, I have bought a lot of upgrades for my Amiga500. Well... One of the two I own. It is not an Amiga300, yet on paper, my 500 should become some 2.5 times faster than a 3000 with the TF-530 that I bought. That was "on paper", as the accelerator will only communicate over an 16-bit bus.

Terriblefire is a nice accelerator.. I'm a ACA500plus guy though. Mine works flawlessly at 42 fps, so I'm also cruising at the limits of official Amiga speeds. 😎

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 9838 of 27187, by appiah4

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the_ultra_code wrote:

If it is not the RAM, the only thing I can think of being the problem is the CPU itself. It is a P2 "Deschutes" 333MHz CPU, which, when I first installed it, I happened to not change the jumper settings on the motherboard, which beforehand was set for a P2 "Klamath" 300MHz CPU. 🙁

It is possible that I damaged the CPU's cache, and, possibly, the motherboard itself?

Possible; Deschutes is 2.0V and Klamath is 2.8V, you basically 40% overvolted the thing without proper cooling, you may have damaged it.

Retronautics: A digital gallery of my retro computers, hardware and projects.

Reply 9839 of 27187, by okenido

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Most of time a cpu either work or doesn't work, even if it's theoretically possible to get inbetween (like those P4 Northwood getting more and more unstable when too much overvolted, or sometimes dying). Since you may have overvolted by +40% it may have damaged it in seconds/minutes.

However I think more about a motherboard stability problem. Have you checked caps ? Can you lower the FSB or something to underclock it and see if it's more stable ? Tried another power supply ?