buckeye wrote on 2020-06-25, 18:16:

brostenen wrote on 2020-06-24, 19:15:

I signed the fucking lease contract for my new home/apartment. Ohhhh YEAH.... Then I paid 4 times rent as deposit. I was even asked if I wanted the keys today!! Wow! I have only rented from the first of next month. This is so freaking awesome. Welcome to northern jutlandian island. Yes. Top of Denmark is an island.

I was even alowed to move my stuff in, on saturday. Even more awesomme. Though I am not alowed to live there before the first. Wonderfull gesture from the landlord.

Sounds like the perfect spot for a "retro" station!

Thanks.
Yeah. There will be room for vintage hardware. However, it will take some time to get stuff in order.

Took out an old, rarely used Super Socket 7 board and put a K6-III 400 onto it. I ran the cpu at 133x4 mhz with the 2nd level board cache disabled... that thing roared.

-172fps in Doom timedemo 3
-56fps in PCPlayerBench in 640x480
-super smooth in Blood at 640x480

tool used was K6WC(parameters: e4000000 and 16)

Nice. Which SS7 board did you use?

Today I saved this poor ESS audiodrive :



As you can see, it has seen better days, and the previous owner removed two caps and the amplifier ...

First I cleaned the solder pads, removing two leftovers of the legs of the previous amp

The new amp is in


It's a TDA 1517

After some testing, I could hear that the card was working !
So I added two caps I had laying around.

I don't know which caps came originally but I suspect they were 16V 470µF because looking at a photo of the card, they looked like another cap onboard.
The ones I installed were 25V 220µF low esr rubycon caps I had laying around

However looking at the datasheet, it seems I'd need 1000µF caps to be perfectly in the amp's specs. Oh well it works. I may change them for in spec caps at some point, but for now it'll be good.
https://www.nxp.com/docs/en/data-sheet/TDA1517.pdf?

The potentiometer was also very crusty. But with some contact cleaner and white vinegar, the issues went away.

Now all I had to do was to remove the rust

And voilà !

A new happy card 😀

Nice job. That card looks factory fresh. It's also always nice to see old hardware saved and brought back to life

Managed to get the GOTEK menu working on my BBC Micro, as found here: https://stardot.org.uk/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16070
Works pretty well and also changing to a different game after starting another by simply pressing the 2 buttons on the GOTEK twice to wake up the screen and reset it, followed by SHIFT+BREAK to reload the menu. Occasionally have to do a CTRL+BREAK first if something refuses to load but that may be down to my FlashFloppy version + DFS ROM combination, I'll have to investigate that.

Also performed a quick audio out mod on the BBC, disconnected the speaker and fitted a 3.5mm Jack socket which connects up to a 3.5mm Jack cable that I wired to an RGB Scart cable to send the sound straight to the TV instead for easy volume control. Easily reversible too, just unplug & remove the 3.5mm Jack lead and plug the internal speaker back in.

Additionally I took some time to test out the BBC on several different TVs. I assumed it would be practically identical to the Acorn Electron, but some of my TVs are a bit more picky with the RGB signal coming from the BBC. Weirdly, one of them I have to set to SECAM to remove some slight wavy shimmering on strong blues/reds. The issue is still there, but a lot less noticeable when set to SECAM.

I need to remove rust from the PB450 board above the serial and VGA ports. Might as well do that now.

Made a SB-Link cable using 3 CD audio cables since that was all I had at hand. I double checked that the pins were properly connected (pin1 on the sound card to pin1 on the motherboard etc.) and it worked! My Yamaha YMF724 is now happily using S-IRQ and PC-PCI in setupds, and pretty much behaves as if it were an ISA card.

I'll eventually get a proper 6-pin flat cable to use for this, but I just wanted to run a few quick tests, and this makeshift solution did the trick.

Another bad PB450 that won't start. Chips and components get warm, but the system refuses to power on or get anything on the PC POST card. Might as well look for a working board (there is one on eBay, but I'll ask the seller if it still works before I buy it.

Watched "The net" with Sandra Bullock from 1995 the other day, must count as a retro activity 😎

H3nrik V! wrote on 2020-06-27, 22:54:

Watched "The net" with Sandra Bullock from 1995 the other day, must count as a retro activity 😎

It sure does count! I love this movie

I watched it in theaters in 95 and it was dumb as fuck even back then. I used to go online through OS/2 Warp at the time and was like “What? No. Haha.” all the way.

Ok, then... How about..

Playing around with the Cobra YMF today. Learning alot of the pros and faults of PCI sound cards.

Real OPL3 is awesome and its SB Pro emulation(?) in Win98 Dosbox is pretty spot on. Not too noisy either! Very pleasant card to use.

But its not without fault, it freezes with BUILD engine games for example unless in MS-DOS Real mode, iv noticed a few issues in other games too like Epic Pinball having audio abnormalities on the highest quality.

Thats kiiinddd of a deal breaker (mostly the build engine stuff though). Im trying to build this P3 rig around having everything done in Windows and MS-DOS Boxs for the simplicity sake, (and i prefer it that way for windows machines).

I guess ideally i could stick a ISA AWE64 Value with the Cobra or a Vortex instead. How noisy are AWE64 (non golds) though? I know being a noise snob with un-recapped, old 90s sound hardware is kinda moot, but i'd like my Win 9X gaming to be relatively hiss free.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-06-26, 11:36:

Nice. Which SS7 board did you use?

It was a PCPartner MVP3BS7-954... given I got the model correct.

Did some work on the LB386DX motherboard (2 EISA, 5 ISA) that has the Cyrix Cx486DLC-33GP by removing the NiCd battery, cleaned off corrosion, and repaired a trace (had connections, but to be safe, I soldered a wire to make the connection stronger in case it was weak). Also soldered on a CR2032 battery holder after I sliced the trace for the positive terminal to prevent the charging circuit from damaging the battery. Just need to solder the other end of the diode to the circuit or another diode to prevent the charging circuit from being used.

These days I've been playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. I have had this game since a long time ago (like since 99) but had never made it past the first sith you face (Level 7). Now I've made it past him, I'm up to level 12 (from 21) now. It's a very good game with some unique mechanics (the lightsaber) and very varied weapons.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-06-28, 16:12:

These days I've been playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. I have had this game since a long time ago (like since 99) but had never made it past the first sith you face (Level 7). Now I've made it past him, I'm up to level 12 (from 21) now. It's a very good game with some unique mechanics (the lightsaber) and very varied weapons.

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-28, 05:25:

Ok, then... How about.. […]
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Ok, then... How about..

I've never seen this movie. Now, Lara Croft and Sherlock Holmes in the same photo, that's not something you see every day.

Played briefly with a 'new to me' Octek 286-16 with 4Mb in SIMMS motherboard, boots up just fine. Spent some time over the last few weeks trying figure out one of my other 286 boards: DFI Concorde-L r.2 and add SIMMS. There are no manuals except for Concorde-V which is different, last night got 1Mb (4x256k) SIMMS+ 1Mb dips working and also 4Mb (4x1Mb) SIMMS working. So now have a 286-16 with 4Mb and a 286-12 with 4Mb that work, and one 286-12 that has tons of issues... Been a good few days for me !

Bruninho wrote on 2020-06-28, 05:25:

Ok, then... How about.. […]
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Ok, then... How about..

Oh man, I have that on laserdisc somewhere.
Hackers and Xanadu are probably my favorite terribad movies.