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

Posted on 2024-05-07, 17:57

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I received a Pentium 166MHz CPU that I bought for my Digital Venturis 575, Socket 5 PC. It replaces an IDT WinChip C6 200MHz CPU, which has poor FPU performance. I almost purchased a 133MHz CPU, as I was pretty sure this motherboard was a Version 1.0 that only supported up to 133MHz. Good job …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-04-27, 18:37

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not a very exciting retro purchase for me today, but 1 that I'm shocked I finally had to make - I purchased a bunch of IDE ribbon cables! I don't think I've had to purchase an IDE cable in over 20 years, I always seemed to have an endless supply of them. It seems my supply has finally ran out and …

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

Posted on 2024-04-26, 09:25

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Directly to the motherbaord or to a separate dumb Multi-IO ISA card. That's exactly what I was thinking, XTs don't have on board IDE and don't take 16-bit ISA cards. Unless this Turbo XT is some modern clone that I'm not aware of, for me it always meant "just faster than 4.77MHz". That, is a good …

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

Posted on 2024-04-20, 22:25

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I've been working some more on my Socket 5 PC. Managed to finally configure the XTIDE Universal BIOS properly to get Windows 95 working without being stuck in MS-DOS compatibility mode. Not that I particularly intend to use Windows much on this PC, but useful to have. I was getting some …

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

Posted on 2024-04-18, 18:24

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Decided to do a quick test today to see if my Socket 5 PC would recognise an 8GB CF card natively or would require the XTIDE Universal BIOS. Unfortunately it wasn't being detected by the BIOS nor XTIDE. I tried a different CF card for a few seconds, those few seconds being all that was needed for …

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

Posted on 2024-04-09, 22:05

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

For the past couple of days I've been installing and setting up many games on my 486 DX2 66MHz PC. Something I've been meaning to get around to for the past couple of years. Everything was going smoothly until I tried to setup a joystick and then I discovered that the GAME port on the Opti 82C930 …

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

Posted on 2024-03-25, 05:10

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Haven't seen anybody doing switches instead of the now trendy switchless mod in a long time! (those reset button switchless mods always were finicky for me) You can actually get away with just one switch because the two switches add an impossible region of 50Hz Jap and. I've perfected my switched …

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

Posted on 2024-03-21, 17:18

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I bought a spare Sega Mega Drive recently for the purposes of region modding it, as I didn't want to butcher my childhood original console. So today I set about performing the mod using 2 switches. The hardest part was soldering the switches. I made 1 small wiring mistake on the right hand switch …

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

Posted on 2024-03-16, 17:26

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by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice, I didn't realise there was a version of ManicMiner for the ZX-81 ... I seem to remember you could actually pull composite off the edge connector on the Speccy. Manic Miner on the ZX81 has the added difficulty level of not only running much faster than the Spectrum version, but also having to …

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

Posted on 2024-03-16, 16:10

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I performed a quick & simple Composite Video mod on my Sinclair ZX81. The RF output of these computers is atrocious and pretty much all of my TVs do not like it to some degree. So I'd been having to use a VCR to pass through the signal and deal with the signal drift when the machine warmed up. …

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Re: I/O Back Plate shields AT and ATX cases

Posted on 2024-03-05, 15:19

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by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I went the super-duper cheapskate method instead for my Super Socket 7 build in an ATX case - AT-backplate-cheapskate.jpg No expense or much time taken to solve that problem, which is clearly evident by the super amazing job I did of the cut-out for the keyboard socket. :lol: In all seriousness, …

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

Posted on 2024-02-06, 11:28

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I dug out my old Mac Mini G4 to install & setup some games and turn it into a Retro Gaming Mac. The Mini was already running Mac OS 9 (from the modified install disc image) and I'm going to try and stick solely to this OS and games that require Mac OS 9 or earlier and resist the urge to dual …

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Re: Non-x86 Systems: They are pulling me back in, do you guys also hear the call?

Posted on 2024-01-12, 12:21

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by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an Atari 1040STFM. These can still be had for reasonable prices and the aftermarket is pretty neat. In fact, you can build your own 030 accelerator for like $100 all told (if you’re handy with a soldering iron!) I have been building accelerators and peripherals for my A500 for a while now. I …

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Re: Non-x86 Systems: They are pulling me back in, do you guys also hear the call?

Posted on 2024-01-11, 16:31

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'll probably add a couple of fill-in-the-gap PC builds in the future, but for the time being I too am also more focused on the old Micros instead, in-between collecting retro games consoles. I already had both a Commodore 64 & a Sinclair ZX Spectrum +2A in my collection, computers I'd owned as a …

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

Posted on 2024-01-11, 13:51

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My dad bought a copy of 2000 on launch day and he promptly installed it on the family computer in a dual boot setup with 98 SE. That system never felt faster and was nearly perfectly stable. Any of mine or my siblings games worked just fine we rarely need to use 98. We used 2000 untill we got a …

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

Posted on 2023-11-10, 11:37

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm having a friend around next week for a Retro LAN Party, so have been busy setting up 6 retro PCs & testing them out ready for use, I haven't used them in over a year. Thought I'd start a week early, to give me time to sort any issues. Surprisingly it's all gone mostly smoothly. A few niggling …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-10-12, 20:06

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well the place I worked at finally closed down for good this week, but in the final days they were selling off all of the old staff equipment, so I managed to score an absolute bargain in this 20" CRT TV for just £10 - lg-crt.jpg Nothing super special as far as CRT sets go, but as I didn't have one …

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Re: Olivetti PCS33 (386 SX)/M-300 - Repairing

Posted on 2023-09-29, 13:03

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by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hello, I'm a new user on here and I'm trying to get an Olivetti PCS11 working. I'm unfamiliar with the machine and with PCs in general (I'm more familiar with 8 bit machines), so it would be great if someone on here could give me some advice. When I received the machine, the PSU had no output. I …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2023-09-16, 18:18

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finally, the last batch of noteworthy retro hardware...... A nice Atari 1040STE. A first for me, i never had contact with the ST machines because they tend to go for a pretty penny. So it was on the wish list for ages, until this came along for the low price of 59€ and no shipping !!!!! 1040STE.jpg …

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

Posted on 2023-08-12, 19:34

by

by PTherapist

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Today I did the "eraser mod" on my fat PS3. It's been a bit warm here for the past few days and despite reapplying new thermal paste, my PS3 was simply not happy. The CPU was hitting 78 degrees C just sitting there idle. In gaming it was reaching 84 degrees C and eventually got to 86 and shut down, …

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