appiah4 wrote:

oeuvre wrote:

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OS/2 Warp 4 in Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 on my XP box.

OS/2 Warp on ANYTHING is a pleasing sight.

Could never get into OS/2 myself. During the times that it was interesting to me, It was expensive and required an expensive computer to run it on, which I could not afford.

Then Windows NT 4 workstation and Linux appeared and then totally killed any chance of interest from me.

It could have been great if it wasn't for IBM, making it excessively bloated and complex.

I finally gave up on attempting to get my SATA/IDE converter working on my old PC Chips M919 motherboard's built-in IDE last night and threw a Promise Fastrack in it. Controller picked it up and I installed MS-DOS 7.10 but will be likely rolling back to 6.22. As some have mentioned in the past, running a dir command on a large drive, in this case a modest 64 GB SSD, takes 2-3 minutes because it hangs while calculating free space. So I might as well go back to 6.22 and 2 GB partitions. Oops. 😀

1. worked through the Soundblaster Programming manual and AWE programming specifics, referencing versions.

2. Some old datasheet book acquisition and referencing. 😀

Spending the evening inspecting CPUs and determining what to put in the 486 build. Currently 486-66 which to me is sort of the defacto standard, but wouldn't mind a little bit more speed. Duke Nukem 3D is not very happy. 😀

this week I removed plop boot manager : freedos1.2/win98se/msdos5.00 and replaced it with win98se msdos7.10 boot menu. I grew tired of opcode crash from freedos.

jxalex wrote:

2. Some old datasheet book acquisition and referencing. 😀

If unscanned, please consider either a. scanning yourself or b. contributing it to Bitsavers.org when done. 😀

Was babysitting for a city-dwelling relative, so I brought my biggest (16GB) USB Flash drive with me.

Logged into my GoG account and finished 2-3 nights worth of downloading in about an hour.

Brought the drive home, used linux to copy the files and sanitized the drive just in case.

On the way home I bought a bigger drive so I can get more done next time. I also need to start bringing a bootable linux so I can bypass all their PC's garbage. It's a Win10 machine infested with malware, Microsoft popups, Apple popups, EA Origin, politics, social media, opinion polls.. I don't know how anybody can stand it.

Working on 10+ year old hardware again, in particular dealing with a faulty 12-year old CPU. Had to replace an AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ CPU for a client's office PC, which was overheating. Also ended up replacing motherboard & PSU for good measure, as they both had signs of failing.

The old parts I was left to dispose, so this meant I was left with a free, but faulty CPU that would overheat constantly regardless of what cooler you paired it with. I tested it out in my spare Socket AM2+ Hackintosh and started playing Bugdom 2 on Mac OS X. After about 20 minutes, the PC switched off. I turned it back on and went into the BIOS where the CPU was running at about 100 degrees C. 😲

Did some digging online and found information about manually setting the VCore voltage in the BIOS, rather than leaving it on Auto. So I manually set it to 1.25V, a little lower than what the CPU expects and it seems to have done the trick. Running nice and stable now. I have a better cooler on the way, to make things even smoother. All in all, a nice free upgrade for my Hackintosh which previously only had an overclocked Sempron 3000+ CPU. 😎

Built a ghetto ATX-AT adapter out of two AUX connectors, a PSU switch and a ripped out 24pin ATX header.

Works fine, tested with my 486DX-50 motherboard and my Totem TM-586TX4.

PTherapist wrote:

After about 20 minutes, the PC switched off. I turned it back on and went into the BIOS where the CPU was running at about 100 degrees C. 😲

Did some digging online and found information about manually setting the VCore voltage in the BIOS, rather than leaving it on Auto. So I manually set it to 1.25V, a little lower than what the CPU expects and it seems to have done the trick. Running nice and stable now. I have a better cooler on the way, to make things even smoother. All in all, a nice free upgrade for my Hackintosh which previously only had an overclocked Sempron 3000+ CPU. 😎

Weird failure - VID signal faulty? I wonder what voltage the CPU was running at before you set it manually.

Stiletto wrote:

jxalex wrote:

2. Some old datasheet book acquisition and referencing. 😀

If unscanned, please consider either a. scanning yourself or b. contributing it to Bitsavers.org when done. 😀

of course, after there will be other developers of the new soundcard version which I am into it (warning, those datasheetbooks are NOT in english). So far it has been couple hundred hours and counting. 😉

khm...

Not exactly retro, but built a quick and dirty floating desk, trying to make space to have at least 1 retro machine setup.

I have a 14" Dell LCD i rescued at work standing by, and i held on to my Cherry PS2 keyboard when i lost my old house that is perfect for small spaces...

And yes my back is against the wall behind me...thats how small my living space is at the moment.

shamino wrote:

Weird failure - VID signal faulty? I wonder what voltage the CPU was running at before you set it manually.

No idea, other than that it appears to be a known issue with many Athlon 64 X2 CPUs from that era. After a few years some of them seem to develop this weird fault where the auto setting ends up over-volting the CPU and increasing heat output.

I did look at the voltage whilst it was overheating, but forgot to make a note of the actual figure. I think it was showing higher than it should normally be though.

I just tested setting "NPT VID Control" back to Auto and the BIOS reports the Vcore stable at 1.28v (think that's -0.02 out and should be 1.30, as the 1.25v setting reads as 1.23v). Funnily enough it's not currently overheating on Auto at present and despite all my attempts I simply can't get it to rise in temperature above about 56 degrees. This really is a weird processor, that just seems to decide to work normally sometimes.

I think to be safe, I'll just leave it on manual and test it out properly with Prime95 in Windows.

Today's thing has been troubleshooting the TC430HX motherboard I posted about a few days ago - after being able to install Windows, it got worse with each boot up and I've had lots of trouble with it since. Some of which turned out to be caused by a troubled CF card, or maybe a bad power supply, or maybe bad caps. I replaced the 4 capacitors around the power / memory area, which seems to have helped it being stable.
I at one point thought maybe the L2 cache was bad, but it turns out that was fine. It did lead me to open up the Deschutes 333 processor I have but haven't been able to use for lack of a SECC1 heatsink. Then I decided to also open up my Klamath 233 processor from the Dell XPS 233 machine, which I replaced with another Deschutes 333 that doesn't quite fit / have the right cooling.

With both of them apart, I swapped the metal plate with the big heatsink attached and moved it from the Klamath 233 to the Deschutes 333, with some fresh thermal paste and some thermal pads for the cache chips 😀

Now the heatsink on the Deschutes 333 fits the Dell XPS 233 and it has the best Pentium II CPU the motherboard can have

The Intel TC430HX board, now it's working - Its onboard sound is less great than I thought. The SB Pro support of the first yamaha OPL3-SAx chip (ymf701?) is pretty glitchy - I wonder if I could swap it with a YMF718 chip? They should be pin compatible, but I wonder if it would just work

Swapped the 32x CD drive and Mitsumi 2x CD drive, it's detected, but not reading disks (not ready error). Even the CD drive light turns on briefly and I can hear the motor, but, no luck. Help? I also adjusted the CD laser assembly to the full up position without success and another machine detects it, but, sadly, does the same thing (not ready/present message).

Arctic fans are really nice quality for the price.

I pulled the 486-66 from a build I was working on and replaced it with an IBM 5x86-100.A million jumpers later and it works! Tidied things up, moved cards around a bit, installed an old CD-RW and floppy and mounted the SSD and it's SATA-to-IDE converter going into the Fastrack. Deleted the MS-DOS 7.10 partitions and installed MS-DOS 6.22 and setup a few 2 GB partitions. Installed some games and will test further tomorrow. Had some issues configuring the Gravis Ultrasound where it passed all tests but would hang in a couple places on boot, in config.sys first, then autoexec.bat. Suspected the GUS and changed IRQs and now it seems to be working well. Won't know until I play games tomorrow. Am going to see what the Fastrack limitations are as I only see 8 GB of the SSD. I suspected it might support larger, but might be mistaken. Might go the drive overlay route if not, I'm not entirely opposed to just 4 partitions. Just seems like wasted space is all. 😀

Called the company that was bringing in my DB15 MIDI cable from another of their stores, as it's been two weeks now and my MT-32 is collecting dust. Apparently, their store they were getting the cable from couldn't find them, despite their inventory saying they had six, but they managed to track down one in another one of their stores that had none according to their inventory. Oh well, i'm happy either way. Just wish I had the cable now to try the MT-32. 😀

Today I played Call of Duty 1, I completed United Offensive that I started in the middle of the summer. I also 'upgraded' the PC from a Northwood 2.4GHz to 2.8GHz as my motherboard will only do 533MHz FSB, and realised that the 6600LE is pretty crap.

I found a second 478 cooler. Which cooler do you think is better?

60mm x 25mm fan

70mm x 10mm fan (and slightly larger heat sink)

I'll get a new noctua fan for the best heatsink I think.

Not sure if it fits here, but I bought some tapes to watch for myself:

Rambo - First Blood (both Part 1 and 2, French dub)
True Lies (1994, said to be the first movie to use the 3D animated Fox logo we all know by now)
The Net (this one is a bootleg tho, as it's subbed in Romanian and begins halfway through the Columbia Pictures logo)
random wedding movie (1995, and I'll admit it's kinda nicely and interesringly spliced together)

Not interested in the last one footage wise but the tape itself is a true gem - 6 hours tape, so I got 3 more hours of recordable footage!

PcBytes wrote:

Not sure if it fits here, but I bought some tapes

Sure, falls under magnetic storage. 😀