Re: Favorite Cleaning Solution for Circuit Boards (the really dirty)

Posted on 2024-09-14, 09:22

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I simply use water with a very low percentage of substances inside and a soft brush. If it is too dirty I use soap to wash the dishes, then leave it to dry for 2/3 days and turn it on. The circuits have always come as new and in perfect working order

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2024-08-29, 12:15

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

@Demetrio considering that you are in Italy, one would think that you'd be more partial towards Olivetti computers. :wink: Nice buy, though. There's just something very nice about the IBM PS/2 machines, at least those in the pizza box form factor. It's just a pleasant and robust looking design. The …

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Re: Check the integrity of floppy disks

Posted on 2024-08-22, 06:52

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in fact i not nedd to read the data… just test if the floppy surface is good…

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Check the integrity of floppy disks

Posted on 2024-08-21, 21:13

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have lots of Amiga formatted 720kb floppies with Amiga software inside. They come from different years and different people. Some have been preserved well and some poorly. In between there are perfectly good disks, disks with bad sectors, disks that are nailed in their case and disks even with …

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Re: Which were the "MUST UPGRADE HARDWARE" games of your past? Which are the consensus games?

Posted on 2024-08-03, 09:30

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

256 color game that use vga convinced me to upgrade from amiga500 with 32mb on the graphic adventure to a pc with 256color vga… and i still love the 320x200 256 color… Monkay Island 2 for exhample is a picture, every screen..

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-30, 14:56

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

EZ Drive 9.09 will be a big time saver if you are just doing Dos, Win3.x , & Win9x. It's the third time I believe that DDO was proposed in a 3-page thread, but OP clearly said he doesn't want to take the software route. I want to use only an Hardware solution. He prefers to use a ROM that contains …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-30, 12:42

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Why do you say it's difficult to use the xt-ide rom with the etherlink? If I use it in the etherlink I don't waste an isa slot and I would have with a single card both a network card and the possibility of mounting large disks. If I used my red card + the etherlink I would have occupied two slots …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-30, 11:14

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Honestly, getting so e nics to work with a rom can be hard. If the rom is working in the xtide controller, you can use that to hold the rom. you just need to shadow it. youdont have to use the ide controller on the 8 bit card. Or if this is all too hard, just use EZ drive 9.09 http://vogonsdrivers. …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-29, 23:23

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I found these cards in my box. These are my thoughts: from top to bottom. PCI version: useless because Pentium computers see large hard drives. ISA without a brand, maybe IBM? I don't know what card it is but it could be the only interesting one, what do you think? The penultimate etherlink: it …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-29, 23:22

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

akimmet wrote on 2024-07-29, 21:02: The extra chip on the bottom 3c509 is an SRAM chip. Not a ROM. As far as I'm aware, no ISA network card ever had the capability to program an EEPROM. ok tnks

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-29, 19:35

by

by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I found these cards in my box. These are my thoughts: from top to bottom. PCI version: useless because Pentium computers see large hard drives. ISA without a brand, maybe IBM? I don't know what card it is but it could be the only interesting one, what do you think? The penultimate etherlink: it …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 20:36

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can down load the 386 rom and the tool that lets you configure and update the BIOS here: https://www.xtideuniversalbios.org/binaries/r629/ If your BIOS doesn't let you shadow (aka copy the rom into RAM at boot time) emm386 is likely the best way to go. the IBM Bios is absolutely minimal. In …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 19:51

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I installed the rom but obviously does not see it, tomorrow I'm looking for the floppy utility to enable it. For now thanks, Vogons is exactly what the internet should be.

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 18:18

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It is not just this. Several SCSI drives perform a linear verify test (much) slower than a linear read test! Speedsys seems be designed to test ATA compatibile drives. It doesnt work with all SCSI controllers, or even all caching IDE controllers for that matter, since they don’t let the computer …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 18:12

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Assuming they have a means to write the eeprom (etherlink III lacks flashing function, iirc), the xtide xub is a better option than using a ddo. We did not have such fun stuff bitd, so had to make do with ddo's (that came free with drives, conveniently!), but the shenanigans ddos do to prevent the …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 13:19

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In my opinion it depends a lot on the Compact Flash... the one I tested is 512MB, therefore very old in technology. I tested 1 GB CF. Two different brands, similar results. I did suggest to check the transfer rate with a USB2.0 card reader, to see if the card is the limit. sorry, you said you have …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 11:27

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What amazes me here is that I get a vastly different result with a 486/40. And I don't mean to just quadruple the test score, it is more like adding two zeros. I just looked it up: with the 486 on deturbo, I get a HDD score of ~1700. That is a factor of 100. On turbo, I get 2700. I get a buffered …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 11:26

by

by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Assuming they have a means to write the eeprom (etherlink III lacks flashing function, iirc), the xtide xub is a better option than using a ddo. We did not have such fun stuff bitd, so had to make do with ddo's (that came free with drives, conveniently!), but the shenanigans ddos do to prevent the …

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 10:17

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

No, test are related only on 512MB Card, each time connected on the XT-CF and Directly to the Mainboard ctrl. I want to use only an Hardware solution.

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Re: Using XT-IDE on 386 with Compact Flash larger than 512MB - My tests.

Posted on 2024-07-28, 10:05

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by AlessandroB

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

What are your considerations? I don't know if it is possible to connect a card to the internal controller (which seems much better to me) and use the XT-IDE BIOS because I wasn't able to do it, that is, leaving the XT-CF card connected to the computer and inserting a Compact Flash from 4Gb (but …

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