VOGONS


Reply 14300 of 27187, by derSammler

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After doing many hours of research, I think I finally found a way to write ATR disk images to floppy using only an SIDE2-equipped Atari 800XL (no SIO2PC, SIO2SD, etc.). Hope this works, have to test that later.

Reply 14301 of 27187, by root42

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Stiletto wrote on 2020-02-22, 06:26:
root42 wrote on 2020-02-20, 22:27:

Met some Vogons:
AEBF1C67-B5DE-4E4E-A60B-DD4AB389899B.jpeg

MAME just within the last month or two added support for Psion Series 5mx emulation. 😀

Not sure if MAME has a ROM dump from a flat Series 5. If memory serves, there's a utility you can download to dump it, and then you would need to extricate the dump over to another PC with Internet access. 😉

Good, so we can play Infocom games on a Series 5 in MAME! Finally MAME has some usage!

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Reply 14302 of 27187, by gex85

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The other day there was this thread about ATX case recommendations. There was a recommendation to have a look at the Chenbro SR105 and SR209 series. I wrote a comment, stating that I really like these cases, but find them to be too big for my limited space.

Did that stop me from doing a quick eBay search? No.
Did it stop me from watching a beautiful black SR20969 in excellent condition? No.
Did it stop me from bidding at least 1€? No.
Did I end up winning the auction for exactly 1€? Sure thing.

So yesterday the case arrived at my doorstep. I thought about what kind of system would fit, and today I quickly slammed together a Pentium 4 build in like half an hour.
I am not particularly interested in this platform, but I had all components at hand and it just felt like the right thing to do with this case.
And it really is fun to build with these Chenbro cases. Very roomy and good build quality. Plus, they really look great (which is of course a matter of personal taste).

Here's the configuration I ended up with:
Mainboard: Biostar P4TGE, Socket 478, i845GE chipset
CPU: Pentium 4 Northwood 2,4 GHz / 533 MHz (might be upgraded to 3.06 GHz / 533 MHz if I get lucky on eBay again)
RAM: 1 GB of Kingston HyperX
Graphics Card: ASUS V9950 - GeForce FX 5900 Ultra, 256 MB
Sound Card: Creative SB Audigy
Hard Disk: Some 200GB Western Digital

It happily runs WinXP SP3, which seemed like the natural choice. A quick 3Dmark2001SE bench gave me a score of 12527, which is perfectly acceptable.

The only thing that I downright hate about the build is how freaking noisy it is. The fans on the V9950 are brand new and spin at around 1800 rpm, which I don't consider too fast, but somehow the whole system is far louder than I am willing to accept. I will have to take a closer look at that.

My retro computers

Reply 14303 of 27187, by Jed118

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To extend konc's post, I also did some mono stuff today, if only to move the monitor onto the shelf (temporarily, everything will move soon enough anyhow to another room)

UdCwUn6.jpg

I also got myself an NEC Multisync 2A, and "upgraded" my speakers to Yamaha 2.1's. I had previously Altec Lansing 5.1s but they made no sense connected to my Radlib. Even these are in need of repair, and are eye candy only until I repair the connector.

AKicA9j.jpg

Working on a Kijiji save of a 386 DX 25, Fujikama branded, full manuals and even a printer came with it. Paid a pretty penny for it, and the CMOS battery leaked all over. Still worked, but I had to repair the mainboard. Here it is, retrobriting:

52vWTa3.jpg

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

Reply 14304 of 27187, by Jed118

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I also prepared three 1.8 GHz P4 systems - two survived a recap, one shorted out so badly that the power supply went with it. I am currently looking for two P4 boards.

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

Reply 14305 of 27187, by Horun

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Jed118 wrote on 2020-02-23, 02:21:
To extend konc's post, I also did some mono stuff today, if only to move the monitor onto the shelf (temporarily, everything wil […]
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To extend konc's post, I also did some mono stuff today, if only to move the monitor onto the shelf (temporarily, everything will move soon enough anyhow to another room)

UdCwUn6.jpg

I also got myself an NEC Multisync 2A, and "upgraded" my speakers to Yamaha 2.1's. I had previously Altec Lansing 5.1s but they made no sense connected to my Radlib. Even these are in need of repair, and are eye candy only until I repair the connector.

AKicA9j.jpg

Working on a Kijiji save of a 386 DX 25, Fujikama branded, full manuals and even a printer came with it. Paid a pretty penny for it, and the CMOS battery leaked all over. Still worked, but I had to repair the mainboard. Here it is, retrobriting:

52vWTa3.jpg

NIce ! I miss my NEC Multi, it slowly died not long ago. Great monitor ! Good looking setup you have.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 14306 of 27187, by Horun

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Started working on two 386 motherboards in my archives a few days ago, neither been booted up since 2003 from the docs that came with. Got both up and working after a bunch of messing around. The DTK Pem3301 is an odd board, big and lots of PLA and looks very industrial. The Symlabs 386SC rev A2 is a beautiful full AT 386 board. Both have cache and is why they needed fixing IMHO, cache capable 386 boards are getting rare in my area. Since neither has a full manual that can be found will be documenting anything discovered. A few pics of the DTK board...

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Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 14307 of 27187, by appiah4

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Jed118 wrote on 2020-02-23, 02:21:
To extend konc's post, I also did some mono stuff today, if only to move the monitor onto the shelf (temporarily, everything wil […]
Show full quote

To extend konc's post, I also did some mono stuff today, if only to move the monitor onto the shelf (temporarily, everything will move soon enough anyhow to another room)

UdCwUn6.jpg

I also got myself an NEC Multisync 2A, and "upgraded" my speakers to Yamaha 2.1's. I had previously Altec Lansing 5.1s but they made no sense connected to my Radlib. Even these are in need of repair, and are eye candy only until I repair the connector.

AKicA9j.jpg

Working on a Kijiji save of a 386 DX 25, Fujikama branded, full manuals and even a printer came with it. Paid a pretty penny for it, and the CMOS battery leaked all over. Still worked, but I had to repair the mainboard. Here it is, retrobriting:

52vWTa3.jpg

That monitor on the shelf is a fatal accident waiting to happen..

Last edited by appiah4 on 2020-02-24, 10:27. Edited 1 time in total.

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

Reply 14308 of 27187, by FazzaGBR

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This morning I have upgraded my Shuttle PC by installing a black facia Floppy Disk Drive so I can create disks via a propper drive rather than a 'modern' USB one! 😀

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Reply 14309 of 27187, by H3nrik V!

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FazzaGBR wrote on 2020-02-24, 10:19:

This morning I have upgraded my Shuttle PC by installing a black facia Floppy Disk Drive so I can create disks via a propper drive rather than a 'modern' USB one! 😀

Loving the XPC's .. Especially back in the days, when I built a kick-ass system in such a small form factor .. 😀

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 14310 of 27187, by FazzaGBR

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H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-02-24, 11:32:
FazzaGBR wrote on 2020-02-24, 10:19:

This morning I have upgraded my Shuttle PC by installing a black facia Floppy Disk Drive so I can create disks via a propper drive rather than a 'modern' USB one! 😀

Loving the XPC's .. Especially back in the days, when I built a kick-ass system in such a small form factor .. 😀

The best thing about the Shuttle I have is the other day I found a genuine original bag for it on eBay!

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Reply 14311 of 27187, by H3nrik V!

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FazzaGBR wrote on 2020-02-24, 13:03:
H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-02-24, 11:32:
FazzaGBR wrote on 2020-02-24, 10:19:

This morning I have upgraded my Shuttle PC by installing a black facia Floppy Disk Drive so I can create disks via a propper drive rather than a 'modern' USB one! 😀

Loving the XPC's .. Especially back in the days, when I built a kick-ass system in such a small form factor .. 😀

The best thing about the Shuttle I have is the other day I found a genuine original bag for it on eBay!

Now, that's cool!!!

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 14312 of 27187, by GigAHerZ

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Went to my parents to bring out some stuff that was mine when i was a child. Among other things, found official Windows XP SP2 and Windows Vista RC1 CDs. 😜

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!

Reply 14313 of 27187, by Cyrix200+

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Sorting through all my stuff in preparation of testing. Got alle my sound-, video-, network- and controller cards out off all storage and repacked them.

I have 28 PCI S3 Trio & Virge video cards, 6 PCI Trident video cards and a few PCI Cirrus Logic video cards. Time to test and get rid of quite a few!

I also found some decent ISA video cards, great for my 386 build 😀

1982 to 2001

Reply 14314 of 27187, by creepingnet

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This was all last week but you know......

Upgraded both 486s to FreeDOS 1.2. I'm beginning to think this may be the best choice for non-windows vintage PCs and even has some "daily" capabilities such as HTTPS support in Links and Dillo.

I liked it so much I sacrificed Win95 on the NEC Versa laptop for it. Much happier with this. Been playing SimCity 2000 for DOS a lot in between all the BBS and text mode web browsing.

~The Creeping Network~
My Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/creepingnet
Creepingnet's World - https://creepingnet.neocities.org/
The Creeping Network Repo - https://www.geocities.ws/creepingnet2019/

Reply 14315 of 27187, by Jed118

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appiah4 wrote on 2020-02-24, 07:37:

That monitor on the shelf is a fatal accident waiting to happen..

🤣 hat monitor weighs all of like 6 pounds. The speakers and the books that came off of there weighed more.

Also, it's custom built. I anchored it pretty well. In several spots.

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

Reply 14316 of 27187, by Jed118

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juszOn6.jpg

Retrobrite complete. After soldering bodge wires around some burned traces and replacing the 3.5 inch diskette drive, it booted. I still have to figure out how to "unlock" the 384k of RAM that disappeared from the total of 1024k (similarly to my NEAT 386 SX - I had to play in the XCMOS for hours to find the right bit to activate it, nothing at all in the manual) so I'll read the manual on that and/or just put more RAM in there.

I also put an external 3.6v battery in there. Now I'm waiting for a hard disk to come in, and a soundcard. The hard disk that's in there (WD, type 42) is slow and stepper-motor noisy, (it works as it should, just slow) not sure why someone would have paired that with a DX-25. It belongs in a 286 IMO.

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

Reply 14317 of 27187, by FazzaGBR

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Jed118 wrote on 2020-02-25, 02:44:

Retrobrite complete.

Do you have a 'before' photo for comparison?! 😀

My personal website blog: https://www.retrocomputing.co.uk/ and my new Retro Computing YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCL8UT2gm3EvNl2tvomN7reg

Reply 14318 of 27187, by Jed118

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FazzaGBR wrote on 2020-02-25, 10:58:
Jed118 wrote on 2020-02-25, 02:44:

Retrobrite complete.

Do you have a 'before' photo for comparison?! 😀

52vWTa3.jpg

There was a particularly nasty orange band on the top of the front bezel - unfortunately I didn't save the pics from the local ad, but it came out perfect, the whole bezel is the same color. The 3.5 inch floppy was replaced with spares I had, which were previously also retrobrited.

I use the hair-bleach peroxide gel and saran wrap method. Nowadays, I just apply it onto the case after a good cleaning, floppy drives and all. The stuff is so thick that it doesn't drip into the drives or get inside the machine. It even works in the winter with minimal sun, but the computer was on my kitchen table facing a window for two days. In the summer I put them outside for a few hours and it works just as well. Cleanup is a little tricky, toothbrush and a rag, then the toothbrush gets dipped into a bowl of water and used on crevices. I've never had any issues using this method (marbling, discolouration) and I bought 1L of the hair bleach over 2 years ago for $16, still about half left.

The P4 case to the left was also done - front bezel comes off easily on it, but I also took off the floppy faceplate - if you look closely, the eject button and the dust cover are slightly more yellowed. This is why I prefer just applying it to everything.

Last edited by Jed118 on 2020-02-25, 12:35. Edited 1 time in total.

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

Reply 14319 of 27187, by PTherapist

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Performed a quick repair/bodge on my Sega Master System - the Reset & Pause button contacts were very worn and needed a little extra pressure to make contact. I'd previously fixed the Pause button about a year ago, but the Reset button now needed fixing too.

This is where the bodge comes in, rather than risk soldering in some new contacts to the motherboard, I simply cut off the heads of a cotton bud and stuck the plastic stick into the back of the button itself. Works great and both buttons are functional once again. May not last forever, but it'll do for now. 🤣