Re: Ultimate retro keyboard?

Posted on 52 minutes ago

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice keyboard! Particularly with Alps NIB is really nice as those switches handle dirt badly and get a very rough keyfeel if not immaculately clean. My SGI Granite Bigfoot urgently needs a thorough clean of its switches and feels awful until I do. But ultimate? Nasty big-ass enter (and worse: tiny …

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

Posted on Yesterday, 00:01

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Must be the keyboard port itself. Given the oxidation I'd be tempted to believe that, but I have my doubts. It looks like the spurious keypresses are coming out of some buffer. Last example: I had previously entered "c:". Then realized I needed to be on floppy after all. I pressed "a" and got "ac". …

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

Posted on 2020-03-28, 23:10

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Iiiitsss aliiiive! (more or less) How's this for a Frankenstein: 15854354208380.jpg ECS SL486E EISA / ECS Local Bus motherboard BusTek BT-747 SCSI/floppy controller SMC Ether 10/100 NIC Compaq Advanced VGA Am5x86 on VRM interposer 4MB FP Miniscribe 8425S (yes, ancient 21MB 1987-era drive) This is a …

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Re: ISA PATA/IDE adapter vs HBA vs ? for larger drive, ISA-only PC

Posted on 2020-03-28, 19:58

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have a Pentium 60 machine (of some personal sentimental value) that I am trying to upgrade to a better version of itself. Some potentially unique considerations: - I believe this is one of the earlier Pentium machines (original BIOS was dated 1994 I believe) and it only has ISA slots - The …

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Re: Vogons members average motherboard collection size

Posted on 2020-03-28, 19:05

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Zero. :D I decided some time ago only to keep complete PCs. If your PCs are complete, there are most likely motherboard in them in some form or another ;) Here I contemplated only having a few fully fitted-out PCs, but then I started listing use cases and figured out that no way could I cover …

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

Posted on 2020-03-27, 15:12

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Hmm is it a Pheonix bios ? Have had some old pheonix that were quirky that way, one required F2 (on 486 ?? yeah odd). Seems the old AMI/Awards always allowed DEL to get in no matter what. Yep, it's a Phoenix BIOS, so F2 was first thing I tried. If I do it before memory test, it gives me a …

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Re: Does anyone know this pc's name

Posted on 2020-03-27, 14:18

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'm wondering if this Pc is real but does anyone know what it is, hint I think it's from 1984 and this low quality picture is the only one I have Look suitably 1984-ish with all those logic chips. Could you give a bit more context about where the still is from to be able to focus a bit? At first …

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

Posted on 2020-03-26, 21:40

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I love old computers but I positively hate ancient BIOS. Today de-soldered the dead RTC datecode 91 from my 386SX SFF PC, had huge problems with the GND pins as usual, eventually managed to get the holes clear and stick in a socket. Added the new RTC datecode 19 and it works. But... Can't for the …

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Re: Planning to install SSD in my Windows 98 machine. Help, advice, suggestions, etc.?

Posted on 2020-03-26, 12:35

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] So something like this should work: hhttps://www.ebay.com/itm/Silicon-Power-SSD-A55-128gb-SLC-3D-7mm-2-5-Internal-Solid-State-Drive-SATA-III/264655582402?epid=4015424813&hash=item3d9eb3b4c2:g:B5QAAOSwXYxeXxrN Lies, damned lies and eBay auction titles: https://www.silicon-power.com/web/product …

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Re: Planning to install SSD in my Windows 98 machine. Help, advice, suggestions, etc.?

Posted on 2020-03-25, 22:35

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Not much really - at least, all the things to really avoid aren't present in SLC drives anyway. The affordable ones will be small enough, and they all have good random write performance. That's the Achilles' heel of low-end SSDs. The old JMicron monsters were so bad at it you could almost hang a …

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Re: Planning to install SSD in my Windows 98 machine. Help, advice, suggestions, etc.?

Posted on 2020-03-25, 17:52

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, it´s a good thing I didn´t start changing anything before asking for insight :D Main conclusions thus far: - For what I want to do, this particular SSD is simply the worst choice - Quick search showed that the desired SSDs (SLC) are INSANELY expensive Things like this can be found with …

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Re: Planning to install SSD in my Windows 98 machine. Help, advice, suggestions, etc.?

Posted on 2020-03-25, 15:12

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

To be fair, IIRC the only thing that happens when you don't TRIM is the throughput drops -- and since I'm bound hard by my 815E's UDMA-100 controller, I doubt I'd even notice a difference. No, it's not the throughput that changes, but write access time (reading is not affected). Without TRIM, every …

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Re: DS1287A

Posted on 2020-03-24, 09:49

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The reason for doing this is for two reasons. The first is it'll be fun and the second is the battery will be the only thing that ever needs to be replaced. I've ordered a CR2042 button battery holder, a DS12887 chip, a 24 pin socket and a 6pF 32.768kHz crystal. This should be fun :) Thanks for the …

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Re: DS1287A

Posted on 2020-03-23, 07:18

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The reason for doing this is for two reasons. The first is it'll be fun and the second is the battery will be the only thing that ever needs to be replaced. I've ordered a CR2042 button battery holder, a DS12887 chip, a 24 pin socket and a 6pF 32.768kHz crystal. This should be fun :) Thanks for the …

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

Posted on 2020-03-22, 23:53

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Yep, G80-3000. I have a Wyse PCE INT'L with vintage MX blacks somewhere. It's kinda nice but not very nice. Last time I moved to a different country, I gave away a large box full of mechanical keyboards, including two genuine Alps boards (made in Ireland) with dyesub PBT keycaps. One had …

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

Posted on 2020-03-22, 22:30

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Some time ago I got a Cherry keyboard with MX Black switches. I got it ridiculously cheaply, for 15€ including shipping... and it didn’t work. It would briefly flash the LEDs when the PC was switched on and that’s it. Today I disassembled it and found a capacitor that went open circuit. Replacing …

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Re: Micro ATX 486 - what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2020-03-22, 22:22

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Just a very small comment, as I don't really want to particpate in this thread :D: The initial posting was about having a test platform for 486-cpus, because many people still have some cpus, but no mainboards. So an AMD Elan board makes zero sense for that. The original post was for a board …

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Re: Micro ATX 486 - what's the degree of interest?

Posted on 2020-03-22, 16:23

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Perhaps an interesting angle on the FPGA front. I took a better look at my smallest 486 board today - a Digital Logic MSM586SEG It's PC/104 board, so 90x96mm. Why is this interesting? It's based around the AMD Elan 520, so basically an Am5x86 with build-in SDRAM memory controller and PCI bridge, …

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Re: DS1287A

Posted on 2020-03-22, 15:40

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] yeah but if you already have the chip removed from the motherboard why screw around with a battery mod? Just grab a brand new module and enjoy the next 25 years of reliable, maintenance free RTC performance Money? Delivery? Challenge? I for one ordered a new Maxim DS12887 last night, but …

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

Posted on 2020-03-22, 13:59

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Sent this morning cleaning. Started with this: 15846517831540.jpg A filthy little keyboard missing a keycap and stinking to high heaven of stale tobacco smoke. Removing the keycaps it looked even worse: 15848843390240.jpg Looks like coffee... So dumped keycaps and membranes into a pillow case for …

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