Got a Teco TR3230F thin client working in Win98 - it's a fairly crapulent SiS550/D&MP Vortex86 based thin client with possibly the worst driver support ever. - the onboard 2D only GPU (SiS550) and the audio driver (SiS 7019 AC97) do not seem to be hosted by SiS, and its vendor seemed to have removed support for it - except for some obscure and forgotten FTP server where the drivers can be found (ftp://icop.com.cn/MSTI/eboxII/) ...still, it was an "interesting" bit of kit. Both Win98 and Damned Small Linux worked relatively well on it. Not sure what it can do, though - The 200MHz CPU is rather slow, it's within the P5 family (no cmov) so modern Linux (Debian 9+) dropped support for it after 2016. It did got me out of a jam troubleshooting a few hardware boards, though.

Opened up an ISIS Imagestream TransPort router (it's a branded version of the Portwell NAD-2050-304) and discovered it to be a VIA ESP5000 based single board machine (Portwell PPAP1610-VL motherboard with an Via Apollo PE133 chipset, so it has a Trident Cyberblade i1 inside...okay for oldschool games) - it's really too bad that the VT82C686B does not have the embedded VIA7012 chip for audio - Going to toss an Aopen Cobra YMF744 inside, grab a PC104 VGA breakout cable, an Apacer PATA DOM and see if I can turn it into an oldschool gamer machine. Performance is expected to orbit around a Pentium II 350 but with better setmul support.

Cleaned the Delta 300W PSU from my latest dual P3 server

Also got Windows 95C to work this time on my Pentium 100 system and it installed every driver. Going to install my Sound Blaster 16 CT2230 in the system for Windows, but I need to install a 2-pin jumper for the drive disable selection on the card as it has nothing except for solder pads. 2 of 3 projects complete, just need to fix my OG Xbox and see if it'll work after fixing the trace issues. I also cleaned up the sound card wire patch by making smaller wiring for the trace repairs and straight wire without the protection sleeve on it for the top of the card to patch the bad traces going from FB2 and FB3 to the jack itself. The line in jack needs the same thing done, so I'll be doing that and hope everything works, plus, my line in and mic jacks need ground repairs (I can use a wire without protection and solder the wire across).

I installed King's Quest I, II and III on my retro pc. Ahhh and yesterday I installed Dark Forces and X-Wing. Such a pleasure to play those games in DOS mode (Win98SE).

This is my pc cave too! hehehe!

Nice. Do you use the same speakers for both PCs?

No pix yet, but hooked my "new" Tandy 1000hx to my 1084S monitor to see if both worked... and they do!
Then played the only game I have available atm that the machine can play... Planet X3
which it played perfectly.

The 1084S had some video issues which I think will "burn in"; I've examined the insides and nothing's wrong in there that I can see... no bad caps etc.
But it first fired up with a scrambly screen, then when I fired up the 1000hx it settled right down.
Then while playing X3, the screen went blank. I checked the connections and the various mode settings on the monitor... even rebooted... restarted the monitor again and it worked just fine.
The monitor slipped while I was checking out why it went blank, so it had a bit of a bang on the desk... but it was after that that it started working okay.

Bit disappointed that Planet X3 only worked with 160 x 200 Tandy mode, because I thought there was also a 320 x 200 Tandy mode; but maybe that's not available because I only have 256k of ram atm. (soon to be changed, I hope!)

I'll get some pictures when my weekend gets here and I can play with it some more.

Hamby wrote on 2020-04-06, 21:33:

Bit disappointed that Planet X3 only worked with 160 x 200 Tandy mode, because I thought there was also a 320 x 200 Tandy mode; but maybe that's not available because I only have 256k of ram atm. (soon to be changed, I hope!)

There's no 320 x 200 Tandy mode. That's because for Tandy, the same assets are used as for Composite CGA. Otherwise, it would not have fitted onto one floppy disk.

Played a bit with the original Wolf3D source code, and managed to create a DOS binary with added "mouselook" and "always run" options. The mouselook option all it does is disable the y-axis of the mouse and make the left-right keys to strafe instead of turning. Tomorrow I think I'll play a bit more to make a Spear of Destiny binary with these features. If anybody is interested in the hack, I can share the patches or the binary. Screenshot attached.

Hamby wrote on 2020-04-06, 21:33:

No pix yet, but hooked my "new" Tandy 1000hx to my 1084S monitor to see if both worked... and they do! Then played the only game […]
Show full quote

No pix yet, but hooked my "new" Tandy 1000hx to my 1084S monitor to see if both worked... and they do!
Then played the only game I have available atm that the machine can play... Planet X3
which it played perfectly.

The 1084S had some video issues which I think will "burn in"; I've examined the insides and nothing's wrong in there that I can see... no bad caps etc.
But it first fired up with a scrambly screen, then when I fired up the 1000hx it settled right down.
Then while playing X3, the screen went blank. I checked the connections and the various mode settings on the monitor... even rebooted... restarted the monitor again and it worked just fine.
The monitor slipped while I was checking out why it went blank, so it had a bit of a bang on the desk... but it was after that that it started working okay.

Bit disappointed that Planet X3 only worked with 160 x 200 Tandy mode, because I thought there was also a 320 x 200 Tandy mode; but maybe that's not available because I only have 256k of ram atm. (soon to be changed, I hope!)

I'll get some pictures when my weekend gets here and I can play with it some more.

Actually, that could sound like dried out caps, or maybe bad solder joints ..

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-07, 03:11:

Played a bit with the original Wolf3D source code, and managed to create a DOS binary with added "mouselook" and "always run" options. The mouselook option all it does is disable the y-axis of the mouse and make the left-right keys to strafe instead of turning. Tomorrow I think I'll play a bit more to make a Spear of Destiny binary with these features. If anybody is interested in the hack, I can share the patches or the binary. Screenshot attached.

Are there patched Doom 1&2 executables with the same kind of mouse options? The Y axies movement really makes playing Doom with a mouse problematic. I know there is a util called NOVERT but I found it to be very unreliable in many cases..

I find novert to be fine.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-04-07, 06:11:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-07, 03:11:

Played a bit with the original Wolf3D source code, and managed to create a DOS binary with added "mouselook" and "always run" options. The mouselook option all it does is disable the y-axis of the mouse and make the left-right keys to strafe instead of turning. Tomorrow I think I'll play a bit more to make a Spear of Destiny binary with these features. If anybody is interested in the hack, I can share the patches or the binary. Screenshot attached.

Are there patched Doom 1&2 executables with the same kind of mouse options? The Y axies movement really makes playing Doom with a mouse problematic. I know there is a util called NOVERT but I found it to be very unreliable in many cases..

AFAIK there are no DOS binaries for doom with disabled y-axis however there is a patched version of novert which supposedly fixes some issues.

kolderman wrote on 2020-04-07, 06:33:

I find novert to be fine.

I find it to work fine as well. For a while. Until it doesn't..

Received a new Games console a couple of days back and finally got around to testing it out today.

A Prinztronic Micro 5500 -

The power supply was DOA, but luckily with a bit of chopping & cable splicing I was able to use a spare power supply to test it out and it works absolutely fine! Just needs a fair bit of deep cleaning.

Came with 2 cartridges - Superstar 5001 (Pong-style games & target games) & 1007 Super Wipeout (Pong meets Breakout). I've also ordered the "1002 Grand Prix" cartridge for a simple racing game.

This console has absolutely no issues connecting to modern TVs and displays perfect colour.

Interestingly, even though all these PC-50X family consoles use practically the same hardware, there seems to be at least 3 alternative cartridge form factors in use. My Grandstand which doesn't work on modern TVs has 18-pin Cartridges, whilst this Prinztronic uses 16-pin cartridges. I've also seen 21-pin cartridges. A damn shame that there's very little documentation or interest for these systems as I'm sure a simple adapter could probably be created to fit the various different formats.

Finally finished the Gotek slimline drive project for the oldschool thinkpad (had to hack a Gotek SFR1M44-DU26 with the 26 pin FFC26 ribbon cable to replace the TEAC FD05 inside).
There were some discrepancies between the standard 34 pin and the 26 pin version (FFC26) that had to be reconciled.

Took a while, but it's finally done complete with an LCD screen (I'll likely need to add something on it to fix the faint display output)

How faint? It's pretty faint.

What's it for?

I call it "project warp" - trying to get Ono-Sendai (my 166MHz Thinkpad 560E) to do OS/2 Warp 3 or 4. Warp 3...didn't work well so far.

That one is still in progress - the OS/2 Warp 4 diskset is 111 disks in total, and even with a Gotek it's still rather time consuming.

Also had to troubleshoot the power plane on my t5720 thin client...for some reason the PCI slot will not work with my nVidia GF6200 nor my AOpen YMF744 Cobra (as in, the machine fails to power up with a card inside), but seems to work fine with an Intel Pro/100 and a Promise TX4 based PATA controller. I suspect I'll need to replace at least one bulged capacitor.

Installed Kermit for MS-DOS 3.14 and Telemate 4.21 ($hareware) on my Packard Bell 486 so that I can run the terminal portion so that I can configure my Cisco Catalyst 2950T network switch and they both work (Telemate is shareware and I cannot find a registered version anywhere, hence the 30-day trial only).

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-04-08, 04:17:

Took a while, but it's finally done complete with an LCD screen (I'll likely need to add something on it to fix the faint displa […]
Show full quote

Took a while, but it's finally done complete with an LCD screen (I'll likely need to add something on it to fix the faint display output)

Yosoko Goteki.jpg

How faint? It's pretty faint.

Faint LCD.jpg

Seems like you need to adjust voltage on the V0 pin of the LCD. It needs to be about 4-4.5V below Vdd (which I assume is 5V). Use a small trimmer resistor (5-10kOhm), connect two ends to ground and 5V respectively and connect wiper to the V0 pin. Adjust until you have clear image.

Alternatively do this:

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-04-08, 08:18:

Seems like you need to adjust voltage on the V0 pin of the LCD. It needs to be about 4-4.5V below Vdd (which I assume is 5V). Us […]
Show full quote

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-04-08, 04:17:

Took a while, but it's finally done complete with an LCD screen (I'll likely need to add something on it to fix the faint displa […]
Show full quote

Took a while, but it's finally done complete with an LCD screen (I'll likely need to add something on it to fix the faint display output)

Yosoko Goteki.jpg

How faint? It's pretty faint.

Faint LCD.jpg

Seems like you need to adjust voltage on the V0 pin of the LCD. It needs to be about 4-4.5V below Vdd (which I assume is 5V). Use a small trimmer resistor (5-10kOhm), connect two ends to ground and 5V respectively and connect wiper to the V0 pin. Adjust until you have clear image.

Alternatively do this:

AD485C7A-29F8-468B-A403-1631C2A3D481.jpeg

Well - it's more of a PEBKAC error. I opened it up and looked at the LCD module specs....and I realized that I made a mistake. The screen is a 5v unit, and I plugged it into the 3.3v power lead on the display connector (the 7 segment display that came with the normal 34 pin Gotek model uses only 3.3v...frankly, that's insufficient). Once I swapped it to the 5v lead (in the back) it's working normally.

That being said, this does bring up 3 issues that I'll like to avoid/work around:

a) The 5v pin is all the way in the back, and it's barely clearing the ThinkPad floppy enclosure as is. Having it plug permanently to the 5v will mean all sorts of issues (the power lead will not clear the chassis)
b) The 16x2 LCD module is kinda big for the job (it really should be much smaller)
c) I'll need to get a longer lead to power it off 5v

I'll most likely swap the LCD unit out for a 3.3v OLED unit (more display capacity and can fit on/inside the case).

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-07, 03:11:

Played a bit with the original Wolf3D source code, and managed to create a DOS binary with added "mouselook" and "always run" options. The mouselook option all it does is disable the y-axis of the mouse and make the left-right keys to strafe instead of turning. Tomorrow I think I'll play a bit more to make a Spear of Destiny binary with these features. If anybody is interested in the hack, I can share the patches or the binary. Screenshot attached.

Oh I am very interested in this.

Still trying to improvise storage methods. The PO must love me about now (honestly I use your boxes for shipping too!).

download/file.php?mode=view&id=80265

I know I will finally get everything in its place and then some haul will show up. 😀 Kind of hope and kind of dread that.