My P133 case's speed display had an LR41 battery in it that had leaked all over the battery holder and circuitry, eating it up to a state that was unrecoverable. As a result, I had to remove the LR41 holder, solder in an AA battery holder to parts of the board that still had any traces left, and it went better than I expected. I will mount it into the case and try it out in a few days. Fingers crossed.

I had bad ChipMem on one of my Amiga500's. I was lucky that it was the 512k that I had upgraded the motherboard with, and because of that, they are socketed. 4 chips came out, 4 new ones was inserted in the sockets. Tonight I am going to play on my Playstation3.

Benchmarked some videocards on my 486DX4-100 to understand, how they rank.
Results:
[code]+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+
| | 3D Bench 1.0 | 3D Bench 1.0c | Chris' 3D | Chris' 3D (640) | PC Player | PC Player (640) | Doom (max) | Quake | Quake (360) | Topbench |
+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+
| S3 86C805-P | 71,4 | 67,3 | 38,4 | 9,4 | 15,3 | 5,7 | 39 | 10,8 | 4,8 | 266 |
+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+
| CL-GD5422-80QC-D | 43,4 | 42 | 27,1 | 8,4 | 13,4 | 4,6 | 22 | 9,8 | 4,4 | 158 |
+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+
| HMC HM86314Q | 22,2 | 21,7 | 13,9 | 4,2 | 9,6 | 2,7 | 13 | 7,6 | 3,2 | 72 |
+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+
| TVGA8900C | 28,5 | 28,1 | 17,9 | 5,7 | 11 | 3,5 | 12 | 8,5 | 3 | 128 |
+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+
| TVGA9000B | 28,5 | 28,3 | 18 | 5,7 | 11 | 3,5 | 12 | 8,5 | 3 | 128 |
+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+
| CL-GD5422-80QC-D 1.3 | 43,4 | 42 | 27 | 8,4 | 13,4 | 4,6 | 22 | 9,8 | 4,4 | 158 |
+----------------------+--------------+---------------+-----------+-----------------+-----------+-----------------+------------+-------+-------------+----------+[/code]

For TVGA8900C and HM86314Q i had to use UniVBE to get the 640 resolution results. The S3 card is the only VLB card i have.
So for now, the S3 is the best for my 486 and the Cirrus Logic card is best for my 386. 😀

Decided for fun to test the old 2400 baud modem by turning my Windows 98SE laptop into a Dial-Up Server using Ethernet as the Internet connection and using the 56K modem as the server using WinRoute Pro 4.1.26 following the steps in this thread: Creating Your Own Dial-Up Connection At Home: No Line Simulators Needed!

Painfully slow and it's still loading vogons.org on the computer.

I'm building a separate display case just to house all the different types of 386s (DX, SX, EX, EE, etc).

Man, that 15000 RPM hard drive is noisy. I'm considering putting sound deadener on the inside of the case, like in a car's floorboards. Has anyone tried this, or other methods of silencing?

appiah4 wrote:

My P133 case's speed display had an LR41 battery in it that had leaked all over the battery holder and circuitry, eating it up to a state that was unrecoverable. As a result, I had to remove the LR41 holder, solder in an AA battery holder to parts of the board that still had any traces left, and it went better than I expected. I will mount it into the case and try it out in a few days. Fingers crossed.

You're lucky - I've got a nice compact 386 board here and a PCI 486 that are quite dead - even the diag card doesn't cycle through any numbers. 🙁

Jed118 wrote:

Has anyone tried this

Yes. Did the tar-backed foil for autobody dampening for the P3B-F back in the day.

I've had enough kit short'n'smoulder'n'smoke since then that I'm no longer that keen on lining computer cases with flammables. Also it's virtually impossible to remove. "Lessons were learned."

I'd mount the drive on flexible washers, and if that doesn't move the noise into something more desireable, I'd replace the drive. It's probably a good trade item too.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Decided for fun to test the old 2400 baud modem by turning my Windows 98SE laptop into a Dial-Up Server using Ethernet as the Internet connection and using the 56K modem as the server using WinRoute Pro 4.1.26 following the steps in this thread: Creating Your Own Dial-Up Connection At Home: No Line Simulators Needed!

Painfully slow and it's still loading vogons.org on the computer.

That's the kind of stuff I love doing. Awesome fun!

Tiido wrote:

Yesterday I recapped the floppy drive of my T3200 and now the drive works once more ~
I could copy out the stuff it had on it and later I'll prep it for installation of new DOS and games etc. I have already installed a sound card and a LAN card, mTCP will be put to use on that thing since floppies are inconvenient 🤣

I have a T3200 with a malfunctioning floppy drive, too, but it was a bear to access, and I gave up mid-project. I should get back to it one day, but it's so unattractive. One of the ickiest vintage computer endeavors I ever entertained.

Tiido wrote:

Yesterday I recapped the floppy drive of my T3200 and now the drive works once more ~
I could copy out the stuff it had on it and later I'll prep it for installation of new DOS and games etc. I have already installed a sound card and a LAN card, mTCP will be put to use on that thing since floppies are inconvenient 🤣

Ooh, I missed it: do you have Toshiba T3200 (or T3200SX)? If so - welcome to the amber glow club, my friend. 😎

I have sound card and SD card instead of HDD in my T3200SX, and just SD in T3100 and T5100 (fewer slots). I would love to also get T5200 and T3200, but alas, not enough money for that recently.

Today I was working on my Sinclair ZX81 computer. I received the official Sinclair 16K RAM expansion last week (plus original box, which is cool), but hadn't gotten around to testing it. Upon connecting it and switching on the ZX81 - totally unstable video output, barely appearing.

I cleaned the connectors etc and still nothing, the ZX81 would only display a stable picture without the RAM expansion connected.

So I did some quick googling and hit upon an idea - I'm not using the original PSU, rather a cheap 9V DC Adapter, but of course the original ZX81 PSU was unregulated and could output as much as 12V. So I modified the connector of a spare 12V 2A DC adapter that I had lying around and plugged it in and SUCCESS IT WORKS!

I then set about trying to solve another important issue I had - trying to load games onto it. Outputting sound from my Thin Client (via .p to .tzx to .wav conversion), yielded no results, the ZX81 was acting as if the signal was too weak. So I dug out a spare cheap Chinese USB Audio adapter and tried via that and now I was finally starting to get some data transfer, resulting in garbled BASIC programs.

Finally, I switched to a MONO cable connected to the USB Audio Adapter and victory - I can now load games onto this thing! 😎

My test screen isn't really suitable for the ZX81, as it kinda sucks, but was nice to see it display the loading rasters, whilst most modern TVs would blank the screen:

And finally into a game:

So all that's left to solve now is figuring out the audio output requirements to be able to SAVE programs to .wav, as well as to test this thoroughly on the 1 TV I have that seems to co-operate with it.

I was reading up on the W5100 ethernet chip, with an aim toward interfacing this with some retro hardware (obviously not PCs which can use normal ISA/PCI cards). ebay has a large number of pre-built PCBs with this chip, BUT they are all designed for arduinos and only have the SPI interface connected. I want parallel I/O. Wiznet has boards with the parallel interface but if I buy one from their site I will get mercilessly $%&#'ed on shipping cost. LAME!

Swapped the TFT active and DSTN passive displays on both of the ThinkPad 380D systems I have. The first one was from VT that liqmat got for me (thanks again for the laptop) that had the DSTN display, which is not good with DOS or Windows, including fast scrolling pictures and text and the second one I bought at a consignment shop for $10 that has missing hardware (CD-ROM, bracket) and screws. Fortunately, the second 380D works without issues, only needed a new battery to get it to boot up. Was going to use the 380D as a parts machine, but, I would fix it up and have another DOS/Windows machine for gaming and throw in a TFT active display.

Plus, I also swapped the FDD between the two systems as the one in the first 380D would not read any 1.44MB diskettes, only 720K for some reason, which could be a cause of the ribbon cable contacts to be dirty.

Currently working on upgrading my second Atari 800 XL. It's got 512 KB of additional RAM and an 8-bit Covox yesterday, which I still have to test.

512K on an Atari 800XL? 😲

Yes, why not? You can even go up to 1 MB. Some demos like Numen require 320k or even more.

OldCat wrote:

Ooh, I missed it: do you have Toshiba T3200 (or T3200SX)? If so - welcome to the amber glow club, my friend. 😎

I have sound card and SD card instead of HDD in my T3200SX, and just SD in T3100 and T5100 (fewer slots). I would love to also get T5200 and T3200, but alas, not enough money for that recently.

I have a vanilla T3200 indeed. I did a little more work on it yesterday when I tuned down the plasma power supply voltage to get a bit better contrast and played some games on it. It was such a strange feeling to look at another screen after my eyes had gotten used to the amber color hahaha.

Next mod is to route PC-Speaker output to the sound card I put in the machine and PC speaker itself to the sound card. There's a ltitle volume dial too so I can adjust volume as I wish also ~

I plan to get rid of the HDD too at some point but that will have to wait a bit since I need LAN and also sound and there's one 16 and one 8bit ISA slot so some effort is needed to get IDE or something else available next to those. Maybe one day I'll also look at getting memoy expansion made for it...

I also replaced the 5V fuse in PSU with polyfuse, since I already blew out the original and I'm sure during experiments I'll cause more shorts, so it is better just to have a fuse that will reset itself after a bit 🤣.

Horun wrote:

dan86 wrote:

system with a matx Asus board. I ended up tossing the crap old fans, some cables and the CPU. I'll strip the motherboard for parts, scrap or reuse the heatsinks and .

WAIT ! Which Asus mobo ? Am looking for a low end 478 mobo and if you live in USA would gladly pay something for it, assuming it boots up...

p4r800-vm, budget Radeon 9100 IGP board. I no clue if it works, was sold to me as working but its not worth my time to test or sell as I already toss the CPU that was in it and don't have any 478 CPUs anymore. I pulled the heatsink off the chip-set and will be pulling caps, ram slot latches and other parts from it tonight.
I only bought the system for the case and intend to put a SK462 system in it or maybe if I can find the parts, a system built around a P4EE and ic7max3

Got my DTK PIM-TB10-Z moved into the Swan XT10 case. I believe the previous motherboard in this case was the same. (bought them separate) All the LED/Switch headers were zip tie spaced to exactly fit this DTK motherboard, 🤣.

dan86 wrote:

Horun wrote:

dan86 wrote:

system with a matx Asus board. I ended up tossing the crap old fans, some cables and the CPU. I'll strip the motherboard for parts, scrap or reuse the heatsinks and .

WAIT ! Which Asus mobo ? Am looking for a low end 478 mobo and if you live in USA would gladly pay something for it, assuming it boots up...

p4r800-vm, budget Radeon 9100 IGP board. I no clue if it works..

Ok thanks, yeah I would not save the board either, was hoping a Intel 848 or 865 chipset :p