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

Posted on Today, 01:19

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Finished the work on the 486. Add two heatsinks on the graphics card DAC, retrobright the 1.44MiB floppy drive panel and remove the excess wire connected to the main switch. 20250519_181644.jpg 20250519_142113.jpg 20250519_175936.jpg Nice! That floppy looks new! Those connectors without the boots …

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Re: 3 (+3 more) retro battle stations

Posted on 2025-05-19, 14:51

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Ambra was IBM's low end clone-fighter brand, structured as an independent business unit with the autonomy to operate outside normal IBM structures and strictures to be flexible in the market. They appeared to rely on direct sales on TV advertising and some big box store deals, was also what you …

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Re: Looking for a VGA card that can drive an MDA monitor - what are my options?

Posted on 2025-05-16, 02:14

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

This Oak OTI037 based "VG3000" has the 9 pin on it and works into a CGA monitor for sure, have not personally tested it on mono, but seems like it should do it. Re: Lowend 486 ISA VGA Graphics Quick Test, Mostly Tridents plus Oak, ATI, Tseng .... Not sure if it does EGA on mono but should do CGA on …

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Re: Graph of Pentium 75mhz cost introduction to discontinuation or backup of Computer Shopper

Posted on 2025-05-16, 01:40

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by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Sometime in late 95, early 96, there began to be a lot of "side channel" availability, OEMs dumping stock. Bare CPUs from the tray. "Retail" might have been $150 still, but they were under a hundred and dropping at fairs etc. Going into '97 they were practically "free" with motherboard and RAM, …

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

Posted on 2025-05-11, 02:54

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pondering whether to try some retrobriting. Picked up a "Sharper image sanitiser" which appears to be a UV-C unit with a 4W tube. Has perforated metal around it though, so not sure if it will do a mottled pattern. Has a 10 minute timer, not sure if that would be enough to zap an EEPROM or whether …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2025-05-11, 02:49

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You know, I was actually wondering what that wire was for! Grounding the heatsink done for eliminating the internal current of the chip. The output quality is excellent, but unfortunately the memory bus is 64 bits. https://incompliancemag.com/proper-heatsink-grounding/ :exploding_head: I have never …

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

Posted on 2025-05-11, 02:40

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Pondering whether to try some retrobriting. Picked up a "Sharper image sanitiser" which appears to be a UV-C unit with a 4W tube. Has perforated metal around it though, so not sure if it will do a mottled pattern. Has a 10 minute timer, not sure if that would be enough to zap an EEPROM or whether it …

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

Posted on 2025-05-11, 02:30

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sometimes just taking mice apart and putting them back together again just clinches them tight enough together to compensate wear on the backside of the button "pimple" that presses the switch. Edit: heh, can't believe it didn't occur to mention a very similar thing that happened just today. Got a …

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Re: Pico or small AT PSU options?

Posted on 2025-05-05, 01:47

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Might wanna look at old external 5.25 drive cages, both ones with internal supplies, and later ones, the external power bricks.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2025-05-03, 03:30

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I got six motherboards for cheap. Two are liquidated, because one is missing a pair of pal and another has the vram chips torn and a cache chip burst by an internal short-circuit. Also, all the cache chips that were in sockets are also missing. Hope those ones works without cache, as I have some …

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Re: Cyrix DX2-80 slower than DX2-66?

Posted on 2025-05-02, 13:39

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Interesting stuff. Back in the day, I was sticking the cheapest new CPUs, Cyrix DX2s, on the cheapest used 486 boards, 5V boards with only the 4 pin SX/DX jumper for CPU configuration, and thus thought that Cyrix were "always" 5-10% slower than Intel. In this situation it was highly unlikely the …

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

Posted on 2025-05-02, 12:05

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by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

The machine runs painfully slow, in part because I'm using the original HDD from 2004. The video card actually doesn't have enough RAM to render the Windows 10 user interface; a broken Calculator window is visible in the screenshot. Among the many things that are just wrong or stupid in Windows 10, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2025-05-01, 13:46

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had an HD4670 in 2009 and it seemed like more GPU than I knew what to do with, as I was still picking up cheaper/older games, not paying release prices. Also was at modest monitor res. So seemed like overkill just that. For XP/Vista/Early7 builds sticking with "office" resolution monitors, they …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2025-05-01, 13:37

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by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Thanks, I'll check those things out when I next get over there. I think he's on a Ryzen 7 3rd gen and Samsung mSATA ~500gb. Think he reinstalled just before Christmas to try to make things better, and got rid of some niggles but issues remain.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2025-05-01, 04:19

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I had an HD4670 in 2009 and it seemed like more GPU than I knew what to do with, as I was still picking up cheaper/older games, not paying release prices. Also was at modest monitor res. So seemed like overkill just that. For XP/Vista/Early7 builds sticking with "office" resolution monitors, they …

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Re: Bought this (Modern) hardware today

Posted on 2025-04-30, 22:39

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by BitWrangler

in Milliways

in Milliways

Got an acquaintance who says his games used to run nice on his 1080TI but given 3 years of game and windows updates "helping", things can get randomly stuttery now. So he's asking about "What can I upgrade to for cheap?" and gut feeling is to tell him that there's nothing much that will give him a …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2025-04-28, 13:40

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Probably mistaken for an AM2 by the seller I guess. Though I am not sure that this CPU has taken it's dip yet. What normally happens with the fastest CPU on a platform is that it stays high for years, just because it's the fastest CPU that anyone on that platform can upgrade to, thus the target if …

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Re: List of open-source PC hardware projects

Posted on 2025-04-28, 02:20

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Beut, I've got a feeling I've got a salvageable CL chip on an otherwise screwed up NEC powermate motherboard.

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2025-04-27, 19:45

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by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Random $5 bag of crap time again... GPIO breakout for a Pi, Arduino Uno (genuine), blade throw switch 512Mb DDR333 SODIMM, 50mm fan, shrouded 45mm? fan 80 wire PATA cable, single drive floppy cable. So the attraction of that one was thinking that shrouded fan was a GPU cooler, but maybe it isn't, …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2025-04-26, 21:08

by

by BitWrangler

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Random $5 bag of crap time again... GPIO breakout for a Pi, Arduino Uno (genuine), blade throw switch 512Mb DDR333 SODIMM, 50mm fan, shrouded 45mm? fan 80 wire PATA cable, single drive floppy cable. So the attraction of that one was thinking that shrouded fan was a GPU cooler, but maybe it isn't, …

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