aha2940 wrote on 2020-10-17, 13:08:

Yesterday I kind of restored an old laptop that was given to me for free several years ago. It's a 2007 HP (so it has heating issues) with AMD Turion X2 @2GHz, 3GB RAM, 15.4" screen and an ATI mobility HD3XXX video card. Had to disassemble it completely to replace the thermal paste on the CPU and reconnect the CPU fan (it was unplugged, no idea why or how). After doing that, the laptop can at least stay on and do several memtest passes (previously it would last a couple minutes tops, before overheating). Now I have to find a SATA HDD for it. I tried a 500GB one, but it does not seem to like it, it says there's no HDD (disk is tested OK).

Well, I managed to find an HDD for this laptop. I set it up and it works fine, even though it has no battery and there are a lot (15!) missing screws under it. It's currently held together by just 6 screws. No idea if I got the laptop like that or if i took the screws and battery away and put them somewhere else, since I can't remember anything about when I got this machine. Anyway, after installing an HDD, I did what I had never done in my life: Installed Windows Vista. Why? well, first of all, curiosity. I never used it, went straight from XP to 7 back in the day. Also, originally the laptop came with Vista preinstalled. Finally, there are no drivers for other OS available for this model. Anyway, after installing all drivers, the thing works fine, except for the missing battery.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-18, 18:30:

Tinkered some more with a recent Socket A build (MSI K7N2 motherboard) with stability issues.

Removed the Radeon 9600 card & it's drivers and installed a GeForce FX 5700VE instead, with the 61.76 forceware drivers in Windows XP. This too was unstable just like the Radeon was. But after tweaking the AGP voltage settings in the BIOS, raising the voltage slightly, it is now rock solid (something which did not work with the Radeon). 3DMark scores have increased and games now play perfectly. All temperatures within normal specs etc. So I guess I'll stick with the GeForce FX for this build.

It's very odd, either this motherboard is faulty (no visibly bad capacitors however), or it's just extremely picky with AGP graphics cards!

Sounds like you have a PSU with a low wattage 5V rail to me.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-10-19, 13:22:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-18, 18:30:

Tinkered some more with a recent Socket A build (MSI K7N2 motherboard) with stability issues.

Removed the Radeon 9600 card & it's drivers and installed a GeForce FX 5700VE instead, with the 61.76 forceware drivers in Windows XP. This too was unstable just like the Radeon was. But after tweaking the AGP voltage settings in the BIOS, raising the voltage slightly, it is now rock solid (something which did not work with the Radeon). 3DMark scores have increased and games now play perfectly. All temperatures within normal specs etc. So I guess I'll stick with the GeForce FX for this build.

It's very odd, either this motherboard is faulty (no visibly bad capacitors however), or it's just extremely picky with AGP graphics cards!

Sounds like you have a PSU with a low wattage 5V rail to me.

The installed PSU isn't great, it's from about the same era as the PC and is only rated for 20A on 5V, but has the 4-pin power connector connected to the motherboard. I know how power hungry the Athlon XP can be, which is why I also tried another PSU rated 30A on 5V, but it made no difference. The only thing I actually didn't test with the Radeon was upping the AGP voltage with the 30A PSU.

As it stands though, the GeForce FX 5700VE is behaving perfectly. I've installed a lot more games and it hasn't had a problem with anything I've thrown at it so far. This board just did not seem to like either my Radeon 9200SE or 9600.

Took an old hp pc and upgraded it with a geforce mx4000 I used to use in an old optiplex GX1 PC. I can't seem to run WinQuake at any resolution higher than the default though, can't even switch to windowed mode. GLQuake is no different. i wouldn't mind the default resolution if it actually didn't stretch past the boundaries of my monitor

I updated the BIOS of my GA-7IXE (slot A), and my Abit HotRod 100. Because having the CD-rom connected to onboard IDE, combined with my harddisks on RAID0 were causing stability issues.

The Raid Controller update did the trick 😀

Testing of mbf and duke3d on windows xp 32bit with videprt proxy on 980ti.

I replaced the analog stick on my PSP because it had way too serious drifting AND ghost movements at once. At the time I got it back in August, it was only mildly noticeable that something was off, to the point I could beat Maverick Hunter X, NFS Carbon OTC and GTA CW without difficulty (save for the games themselves 😀 ), but it had gotten unusable after a month, and I had sort of stashed it in my drawer until I repaired it
Anyway, the whole procedure was quite easier than I expected. I also cleaned it up internally while at it and now it works like a charm. Looks crisper too, now that the display doesn't have dust on it 😀
I also replaced the 4GB MS Pro Duo with a 32GB Apacer microSD + microSD to Memory Stick adapter. About time I got some decent space. And yes, it actually works fine so far. Just make sure to format it first from within the PSP before putting anything in the card.
It should be obvious that I played the crap out of it when I was done, since I hadn't played anything on it in a while 🤣

DosFreak wrote on 2020-10-19, 23:25:

Testing of mbf and duke3d on windows xp 32bit with videprt proxy on 980ti.

Could you elaborate on what videprt proxy is? It sounds interesting.

Does anybody know if Microsoft Chat (Win98) can be used without being connected to the internet on a Windows 98 computer, but still on an isolated network?

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-10-20, 02:42:

Does anybody know if Microsoft Chat (Win98) can be used without being connected to the internet on a Windows 98 computer, but still on an isolated network?

Probably not, but WinPopup might work.

Was working on the 486 the other night. Got the 5.25 inch floppy drive working, now I need the CD rom to work (which it was previously) and sound card.

https://imgur.com/gallery/UEgc5j5

Dug out a G41 chipset board this afternoon to make a media centre PC for a friend. Turns out the clips are broken on the heatsink - and she's not getting one of my Noctua NH-D14 😀 At least she gets a Q8300 I had laying around.

Guess that project is on hold for a few days until the stock cooler I just bought on fleabay arrives. At least I had a spare 500 GB drive I could give her, and can replace the DVD drive with a Blu-Ray, so she'll be able to play anything, and store well over 100 movies. Going to install XP (that's all she needs, and I have a pre-activated copy) and K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 13.8.5 (last version to support XP SP3). I hope her TV has a spare HDMI port so I don't have to buy a cheap switch and another cable. Not going to do any major optimising, as I can't see a 63 year old getting into heavy gaming 😀 Might install a solitaire collection for her though.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 17:55:

Dug out a G41 chipset board this afternoon to make a media centre PC for a friend. Turns out the clips are broken on the heatsink - and she's not getting one of my Noctua NH-D14 😀 At least she gets a Q8300 I had laying around.

Guess that project is on hold for a few days until the stock cooler I just bought on fleabay arrives. At least I had a spare 500 GB drive I could give her, and can replace the DVD drive with a Blu-Ray, so she'll be able to play anything, and store well over 100 movies. Going to install XP (that's all she needs, and I have a pre-activated copy) and K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 13.8.5 (last version to support XP SP3). I hope her TV has a spare HDMI port so I don't have to buy a cheap switch and another cable. Not going to do any major optimising, as I can't see a 63 year old getting into heavy gaming 😀 Might install a solitaire collection for her though.

Personally I wouldn't recommend building a Media Centre PC/HTPC with any kind of stock cooler, it will be much too loud.

Also, is the Blu-Ray drive just for data usage? As I think you'll have problems playing back actual Blu-Ray movie discs on Windows XP, Windows 7 would probably be better for that.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-20, 18:49:

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 17:55:

Dug out a G41 chipset board this afternoon to make a media centre PC for a friend. Turns out the clips are broken on the heatsink - and she's not getting one of my Noctua NH-D14 😀 At least she gets a Q8300 I had laying around.

Guess that project is on hold for a few days until the stock cooler I just bought on fleabay arrives. At least I had a spare 500 GB drive I could give her, and can replace the DVD drive with a Blu-Ray, so she'll be able to play anything, and store well over 100 movies. Going to install XP (that's all she needs, and I have a pre-activated copy) and K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 13.8.5 (last version to support XP SP3). I hope her TV has a spare HDMI port so I don't have to buy a cheap switch and another cable. Not going to do any major optimising, as I can't see a 63 year old getting into heavy gaming 😀 Might install a solitaire collection for her though.

Personally I wouldn't recommend building a Media Centre PC/HTPC with any kind of stock cooler, it will be much too loud.

Also, is the Blu-Ray drive just for data usage? As I think you'll have problems playing back actual Blu-Ray movie discs on Windows XP, Windows 7 would probably be better for that.

It'll probably be the cheapest option for transferring rips, but I didn't know XP wouldn't offer good BD playback. Unfortunately I have never seen a pre-activated copy of 7, and I'm not sure I want to trust keys off ebay to activate.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 19:27:

Unfortunately I have never seen a pre-activated copy of 7,

🤣, hadn't searched in quite some time, but just found one with all updates.

Yesterday I installed Office 97 on the HP, and today on the same HP I got 3d nascar pinball installed and set-up a Doom source port that supports OpenGL 1.2 on 98SE and played that in 8006x600.

Three years ago I got hold of a (then wet) red-power-light OCS Amiga 500 rev5 (KS1.2) with a bottom full of mud, a missing trapdoor and a severely corroded memory add-on (some parts of the motherboard near the trapdoor RAM connector and the audio filter were badly greenish as well) due to barrel battery leakage. I had to get this poor machine up and running, but was afraid to just power it up. Back then, my first reaction was to tear it all apart, remove the totalled A501, clean the motherboard and test for discontinuities, fully recap it and wash the plastics thoroughly. Didn't have floppies with software at hand at the time (other A500 was packed away), so I just verified that it could boot to the hand-holding-a-disk screen only after the clean-up and recap.

So, the plan since 2017 was to actually do what my other A500 got away with. A toy from abroad arrived last week! Fast-forward to last weekend, I replaced the 68000 with an Apollo V500V2+ board and the floppy with a Gotek with FlashFloppy firmware, so the last two days I've been playing around with it. Soon it'll get a HDD (probably a SD2IDE with Coffin) and an Ethernet adapter, together with a few more mods... More pics to follow in a month or so (I hope). Also in the to-do list is to fix three broken keys (probably bad contacts/membrane) - escape, capslock being two of them 🙁 Either that or I'll switch keyboards with my other working stock A500 until a solution is found. For the time being, I'm fine with a joystick and the tank mouse and some Lotus III action until I get the full AmigaOS+Vampire RTG-graphics experience 😜 Won't paint/retrobrite it, I really want to keep the stock looks albeit the case is a bit yellowed, not too bad though - seen much worse.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 19:27:

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-20, 18:49:

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-20, 17:55:

Dug out a G41 chipset board this afternoon to make a media centre PC for a friend. Turns out the clips are broken on the heatsink - and she's not getting one of my Noctua NH-D14 😀 At least she gets a Q8300 I had laying around.

Guess that project is on hold for a few days until the stock cooler I just bought on fleabay arrives. At least I had a spare 500 GB drive I could give her, and can replace the DVD drive with a Blu-Ray, so she'll be able to play anything, and store well over 100 movies. Going to install XP (that's all she needs, and I have a pre-activated copy) and K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 13.8.5 (last version to support XP SP3). I hope her TV has a spare HDMI port so I don't have to buy a cheap switch and another cable. Not going to do any major optimising, as I can't see a 63 year old getting into heavy gaming 😀 Might install a solitaire collection for her though.

Personally I wouldn't recommend building a Media Centre PC/HTPC with any kind of stock cooler, it will be much too loud.

Also, is the Blu-Ray drive just for data usage? As I think you'll have problems playing back actual Blu-Ray movie discs on Windows XP, Windows 7 would probably be better for that.

It'll probably be the cheapest option for transferring rips, but I didn't know XP wouldn't offer good BD playback. Unfortunately I have never seen a pre-activated copy of 7, and I'm not sure I want to trust keys off ebay to activate.

Yes, ripping them would probably be the easiest option. The reason XP isn't good for Blu-Ray playback, is that PowerDVD 11 is the latest version that will run on either XP or Vista and PowerDVD 11 will struggle with a lot of newer titles due to updated DRM.

However another issue is if the onboard graphics has HDCP support? Otherwise it won't matter which OS you use as it still wouldn't work without 3rd party tools such as AnyDVD HD.

Fitted a Diamond Monster MX300 with my new Korg Wavetable board into my machine today. Getting a bit crowded in there sound wise now, but I have one ISA slot left which I'm thinking about filling with a SB16 with either a DB50XG or the Dreamblaster X2. I used the No_SB Drivers off Phil's site, as I don't need SB compatibility in Windows. I will manually add the dos drivers into dos mode. Another thing I need to do is figure out the mixing. I've done the Line-In > Line Out thing so far but I'm leaning towards getting a mixer.

Cards are like this

SB Audigy
MX300
Turtle Beach Maui
>SB 16 (DB50XG or X2 TBD)

Today I repaired a Radeon 9250 that had bad memory.
When I got it was artifacting even on the desktop. So I took out a dead 9600SE from the junk box and pilfered some of its RAM and tried it in the 9250. Obviously as the card has 8 chips, I found the bad one on the 8th attempt.
Now 2D mode was fine, but 3D was still a no go*. As desoldering and soldering back these chips got old pretty fast, I decided for a nuclear approach. I removed all of the original memory, and swapped it with 6 chips pulled from an old Samsung 256MB PC2700 SODIMM. While I was in there i also did a cheapo recap on the Vram rails (apparently this thing runs the memory off two separate, completely independent rails, not even set at the same voltage (one is 2.5 and the other is 2.7V)), from 2x470uf 16V Gluxons to 2x510uf 4v used OsCons.

Surprisingly enough in all of this mess I only lost two pads, a ground and a NC, so no big deal, and even stranger, now the card works properly.

* The only way it was kinda working was with the RAM downclocked to 120 Mhz with a massive volt mod that gave it 3 volts. Has anyone ever heard of memory (6ns 16Mx16 Elixir from 50th week '07, in this case) degrading so badly?