Re: What is your unconscious motive for retro hardware ?

Posted on 2021-05-05, 00:08

by

by kdr

in Milliways

in Milliways

I'm particularly fond of my 8088 based machines (IBM PC, XT, and turbo XT clones). They're built from 100% through-hole chips (DIP and PLCC) and most of the 'glue logic' holding everything together is generic 74LS series TTL. I have full schematics and source listings for the IBM gear. The clones …

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Re: Help (re)building a 486

Posted on 2021-05-01, 11:01

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

2. My motherboard only has a DIN port for keyboard and DB-9 mouse interface through an expansion interface board. I have an early PS/2 IBM mouse and keyboard that I want to use here, how would I go about to do that? You can use a PS/2 keyboard with your motherboard, it just requires an adapter …

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Re: Let's improve video output quality of VGA ISA/VLB cards

Posted on 2021-04-29, 23:59

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Here's a trident tvga8800br which must have one of the worst video quality I've ever seen on a video card. Not only it suffers from various video artifacts, but there are also graphical glitches caused by the ramdac itself. And I think that if I can get this one to look decent and share it with you …

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Re: $10 386DX/486DLC machine adventures: repairs, upgrades, and feature installations

Posted on 2021-04-25, 23:58

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

No, it has not! DO NOT PUT EISA CARDS INTO THE SLOTS. I clearly can read the printing "LOCAL BUS". It is not EISA, but OPTI local bus. https://www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?f=46&t=64133 Oh yikes, thanks for the correction, today I learned about OPTi local bus. :) That's insane that OPTi reused the …

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Re: TEAC FD-55GFR-541-U refuses to read floppies

Posted on 2021-04-24, 23:47

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Unfortunately I’m still getting “Drive not ready” when I try to access it from DOS itself though. I’m getting pretty desperate. Maybe it’s the jumper settings, even though I already spent hours checking those :( I have an FD-55GFR 142-U installed in one of my turbo XT machines (as the B: drive) so …

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Re: $10 386DX/486DLC machine adventures: repairs, upgrades, and feature installations

Posted on 2021-04-24, 23:31

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Oh cool, it has EISA slots, shame there were no EISA cards installed in the system!

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2021-04-24, 23:28

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A friend's employer decided to get rid of the junk and old spare parts stored in the attic and let me splurge a little. The place hasn't been cleaned in 50 years and everything was covered in dust. Nice finds! In the set of three network cards, the one on the right is almost certainly an IBM token …

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Re: CGA light pen strobe and latching?

Posted on 2021-04-24, 23:21

by

by kdr

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Yep, so on the CGA there is a flip-flop (half of chip U11) with its Q output connected to the CRTC's LPEN input. (Check the schematics at e.g. http://www.minuszerodegrees.net/oa/OA%20-%20IBM%20Color%20Graphics%20Monitor%20Adapter%20(CGA).pdf for the gory details.) When you access port 3DB this …

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Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Posted on 2021-04-23, 04:42

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I haven't seen a case like the left one before. It opens like the front of a car; there are no screws to close it permanently, only those two buttons to press in and it'll swing open. As if it's made for constant repairs. I's amazing. I love this style of case. Two of my turbo XT clone machines …

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Re: Help with invalid OPCODE error message on Packard Bell

Posted on 2021-04-22, 22:25

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

kingcake wrote on 2021-04-22, 20:49: clearing 120 tiny holes is a pita IMG_3588.jpg At least the board has a footprint for installing a proper connector...... 😀

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-04-22, 22:23

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

the Creative and Aztech cards were dead simple: a perfectly normal sound card with a perfectly normal modem that just happened to be sharing a PCB. Good to know! I'm hoping the card actually works. Not terribly excited about the Vibra chipset on it, though. When I crack open a mid 90s PC case and …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2021-04-22, 05:43

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Salvaged some nice e-waste from the shredders today: IMG_20210422_170323.jpg IMG_20210422_170736_1.jpg Managed to grab a Commodore 128D unit and a Link MC5 serial terminal (both missing keyboards, alas) along with a nice vintage '96 beige box PC. I was a bit sad because the PC's video card had …

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Re: Help with invalid OPCODE error message on Packard Bell

Posted on 2021-04-21, 11:34

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The hex numbers look like they are (16 bit) register values. The last four -- 0012 0010 0014 0019 -- look like they're 16-bit selector values for CS/SS/DS/ES segments. Are you loading EMM386.EXE in your CONFIG.SYS? That error message looks like it could come from EMM386's exception/fault handler. …

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Re: Challenge: Install W95 with only a HDD

Posted on 2021-04-18, 10:31

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ Software

in Marvin \ Software

When I'm installing Windows 95/98, I always copy the setup files to the HDD first and then run SETUP from there. I feel like the installation goes faster this way. As a bonus, in the future Windows usually won't bother to ask you to insert the Windows CD-ROM every time it finds new hardware to …

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Re: SSH2DOS - Updated for 2021 standards

Posted on 2021-04-14, 22:29

by

by kdr

in Release Announcements

in Release Announcements

Great work! It'll be nice to have a working SSH client for my systems without mucking around in sshd_config on all the servers...

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Re: Mystery chip on Trident PCI graphic card

Posted on 2021-04-13, 23:46

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Or a pencil eraser. Fixed dozens of cards this way. :) Just don't erase the PCB traces or gold-plated contacts! :) I once made the mistake of trying to "fix" some corroded gold card edge contacts using sandpaper. Oops. It did a great job at removing the corrosion... along with all the gold …

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Re: What is your unconscious motive for retro hardware ?

Posted on 2021-04-13, 23:43

by

by kdr

in Milliways

in Milliways

For me, my first PC experiences were on a late-era 286 with VGA and soon after that a 386 Compaq. So I've been really interested in the dawn of the PC: the old IBM machines that kicked everything off, along with the myriad XT and turbo XT clones. Since I never experienced that era myself. A lot of …

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Re: Tiny Vortex86-based DOS gaming PC - weeCee

Posted on 2021-04-13, 23:35

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

It works really well. Although the processor is 800MHz, the Vortex86 is much slower per clock than Intel processors, and can even be throttled in the bios for running speed-sensitive games : ... I'm gonna do a bunch more tests and benchmarks on it, but I have run it (and some other Vortex CPUs) …

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Re: Mystery chip on Trident PCI graphic card

Posted on 2021-04-12, 23:23

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Try dumping the video BIOS while the card is in the PC and see if the checksum is correct. I'm sure you've already tried this, but quite often I can fix intermittent issues like this by thoroughly cleaning the gold fingers using isopropyl alcohol.

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Re: Chossing an ISA graphics card

Posted on 2021-04-06, 08:54

by

by kdr

in Marvin \ Video

in Marvin \ Video

Nothing that you install in an ISA slot will come close to the performance of a VLB chip...

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