Re: Great collectors of Vogons! What's missing in your collections? :P

Posted on 2023-01-08, 09:18

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Milliways

in Milliways

Which model CP3000? The CP3000, CP3040, CP3044, CP340, CP342, CP344 are all similarly named ~40MB disks. Conner part numbers are notoriously confusing. Really only two things missing from my collection: Kalok Octagon KL-341 (SCSI-1 variant of the KL-343, which might not have ever been made) Computer …

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Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Posted on 2022-11-10, 05:45

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I successfully set up a DTC 7287 RLL controller under Windows 98SE last night. This is mostly for giggles. The DTC BIOS seems... Less than well engineered, shall we say. It has corrupted my CMOS settings a couple times and complained after it tried to low level format a CD-ROM drive on the secondary …

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BIOS Spoof or 1701 bypass

Posted on 2022-11-07, 10:27

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

Hello, I am attempting to recover data from several MFM/RLL disks given to me by a friend of the family, including controllers. Of course, the first two drives went well, but the third one is killing me. Controller: DTC 5150XL Mechanism: Shugart 712 The disk spins up, positions to track 0 and …

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Re: Printer conundrum (images)

Posted on 2022-08-24, 19:12

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by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What kind of cable did you use? There are many kinds of RS-232 cables: - DTE-DCE (straight) and DTE-DTE (crosswired). Similar to RJ45 ones, usually the first is used to connect a computer to a peripheral (modem, printer) and the second to connect two computers directly. If your printer is …

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Printer conundrum (images)

Posted on 2022-08-24, 00:05

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by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Been a while, but I'm stumped on this one, so I figure I'll just hurry up and ask. Most of my vintage computing fun as of late has been in the world of printers, getting a Royal LetterMaster in my collection was the real hit off for this. My local junk store had several printers in an "Interesting" …

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Re: Does this IBM PC 350 support Pentium MMX 233? (re: 200 MHz maximum speed?)

Posted on 2021-08-01, 03:48

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's very possible that the board's chipset doesn't properly support the bus speed you've selected, or has difficulty with it due to age. The power supply being flaky would also cause this. First step is to always simplify configuration, it could just be one random card causing everything to be …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-07-05, 04:51

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Wow, I don't think anybody saw this one coming. My SIIG PCI USB host card seems to be the culprit! POST never saw an issue but Windows 9x continued to randomly crash for no apparent reason and during boot at various points with no obvious cause. However, I noticed that Windows 2000 would only freeze …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-26, 08:13

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well darn. I was hoping I could get away with just cloning the drive and it's partition to a different disk but no such luck. It will boot Windows 2000 which is installed on the other drive but it will not boot from Windows 98SE which is installed on itself. Miraculously the MBR and the NT Boot menu …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-22, 01:44

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, it hangs during POST with the 2.8V VRM and a Pentium MMX running at any speed, but it works fine with the short block and the Pentium 150 it started with, so no harm done. Contrary to the owner's manual AND technical reference manual, this computer DOES support the 512K COAST modules, it works …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-21, 23:06

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Received a 512K Sync COAST module and a 2.8V VRM in the mail today, will be upgrading the system and seeing if maybe that helps these issues.

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-17, 03:27

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The latest (?) BIOS downloads for both machines are still up on the HP ftp network... Rev GX.07.15 for the HP Vectra VE 5/xxx Series 3 - ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software1/vc2009/vc2009en/vub5l1us.exe Rev GW.07.12 (B) for the HP Vectra XM 5/XXX Series 4 - ftp://ftp.hp.com/pub/softlib/software1/ …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-16, 08:47

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmm. I hope it's not an interrupt conflict because that will definitely point me to the motherboard again. It will do it regardless of whether or not there are any expansion cards, memory configuration, cache modules, different CPUs, two different power supplies, VRAM expansion in or out, any given …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-16, 04:34

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It has now developed a new and interesting failure, it will freeze but the mouse will still be active, update very choppily despite nothing else working, and lots of clicking from the system beeper when you do. Is this board also dying?

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-16, 03:54

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Alright, the problem has moved again. Following failure to load several fonts with "Failure code is 0016," the bottom of BOOTLOG.TXT now says: LoadSuccess = USER.EXE LoadStart = MSGSRV32.EXE LoadSuccess = MSGSRV32.EXE Init = Final USER InitDone = Final USER Init = Installable Drivers InitDone = …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-16, 00:28

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I actually backed up these sites, though they're incomplete. Have a look here https://archive.org/details/xxxxxxx-drivers.com Would you like to take pictures of the motherboards and share your bioses for uh19 ? Can't share the BIOSes until the computer is actually working. It freezes randomly, not …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-15, 07:39

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nope, spoke too soon. Machine still hangs on boot at random, regardless of which of my 4 cache modules I try or whether or not there even is one installed. Boot log shows these are the last two items: [00027AD3] INITCOMPLETE = SBEMUL [00027AD4] INITCOMPLETESUCCESS = SBEMUL Any other thoughts? It is …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-14, 07:32

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Would anyone happen to have the driver for the modem in this thing? It's a Boca Research 33.6K ACF ISA PnP modem, no version of Windows I've tried has the drivers by default and the only website which listed having the drivers (modem-drivers.com) has been taken over by lame scam tools and was never …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-14, 04:06

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are you sure the cache module is working good? I had alot of the same random strange errors like you are reporting on my Vectra VL/5 and they all go away and the system works perfectly stable when I remove the cache module. Wow, one hell of a guess because with the cache module out it seems to work …

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Re: HP Vectra VE / XM repair

Posted on 2021-06-12, 03:01

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Are you sure the cache module is working good? I had alot of the same random strange errors like you are reporting on my Vectra VL/5 and they all go away and the system works perfectly stable when I remove the cache module. I will try this tonight and report back. I have 2 more COAST modules I can …

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Re: Tabor III information, limits and bios updates

Posted on 2021-06-11, 06:52

by

by FAMICOMASTER

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The slots are full, because I am running a Voodoo5, a Voodoo2, a Voodoo1, a Sound Blaster Live!, and an AWE32. That leaves me with one slot for either a NIC, a USB card, a USB/NIC combo card, or an IDE controller which will circumvent the issue. I sorta get the dual sound cards, a lot of people …

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