Re: serial mouse

Posted on 2009-10-14, 22:02

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Is it a true serial mouse, or are you using an adapter of some kind? Its a ps/2 mouse connected via an adapter I had in a box of old cables. The mouse says it's serial compatible. Or does the mouse need a particular adapter - hmmm... I seem to recall seeing something about that on this very forum …

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serial mouse

Posted on 2009-10-14, 17:27

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have an 8bit card with serial ports. It's in a 486 running pc-dos. I weant to use it for a mouse. I've found the mouse isn't picked up when connected through a kvm, but is detected when connected direct to this card. Its an MS Intellimouse Pro. However, in Warcraft the mouse speed is non-existent, …

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Re: Recommended PSU for a Geforce 6200 or FX5200??

Posted on 2009-10-09, 15:19

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Calculate your PSU requirements here: http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/Power Still has the FX5200 and pentium 4 listed. I had a micro-ATX system with a 180W PSU and adding an MX440 and SBPCI basically blew it - I think it comes out at about 180W on this page. Maybe it was a cheap PSU [it was …

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Re: Building a really fast Win98 rig...

Posted on 2009-10-09, 13:58

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Another interesting thing is that the GPU temperature is lower - it seems to idle at about 60C now. Your post prompted to to blow the dust out of my 6800gt. I also removed the after-mark heat sink and fan and put new antec 5 on on the GPU and memory chips. Idling at 52 now. [Some of the drop from …

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Re: Building a really fast Win98 rig...

Posted on 2009-10-08, 17:32

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

My 6800gt idles pretty high - lately around 71 because it's full of dust but it's usually about 66 I think. Never seen it much lower than that.

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Re: 486 system I'm building

Posted on 2009-10-07, 06:53

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I need one of those back plates with a ribbon cable to give me a serial port to connect a mouse on this machine [by connecting to a comm pinout on the VLB interface board]. I've seen two on ebay, but there are straight-connected and reverse-connected versions. Is there any way to tell which I need, …

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Re: Disk access beyond 504 Mb in DOS 6.22 ?

Posted on 2009-10-03, 20:57

by

by ratfink

in DOS

in DOS

I have a similar issue on my 486. The bios sees an 8gb drive correctly, and PC DOS 5.02 is running on a 2GB partition, and seems to see all of that. However, fdisk says the drive is 504mb, though it's let me create another partition of 376mb. I formatted it and yes, it's only 376mb. It's like fdisk …

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Re: Does anyone have the jumper settings for Lucky Star 486 VLB mobo?

Posted on 2009-10-03, 16:12

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Have you tried eyeballing all the pictures at stason.org? I found my 486 jumper settings on there eventually, it has an awful lot of boards there.

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Re: What does one do with a SDRAM P4 Willamette 1.5 GHz ?

Posted on 2009-10-03, 16:10

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used a 1.4ghz willamette in my mum's machine with an FX5200 and sb128pci. She was happy with it's performance as all she plays is card games and scrabble on it. Only now someone's given her an xp box so she'll be passing it back soon I think. Think the motherboard was an ECS and took two types of …

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Re: My rigs and collection

Posted on 2009-09-25, 06:42

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I'm finding no reason to have anything "chronologically" between my 486 vlb/ia dos machine and athlon 2000 glide machine, so I'd be interested to know what you would want middle-aged machines like these for. What can they do that something older or younger can't? Reason I ask is I have socket 7 gear …

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Re: 486 system I'm building

Posted on 2009-09-20, 19:32

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Messing about with retro junk is an exciting hobby. :happy: Yeah, I'm mainly building the 486 for the fun. The first computer I took any notice of was a Pentium 100 with 1 EISA slot, so the 486 isn't exactly reliving my past. But some of us get a buzz from playing old games on original hardware, …

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Re: GeForce 6800 SLI works on Windows 98?

Posted on 2009-09-20, 11:33

by

by ratfink

in Windows

in Windows

elfuego wrote: until recently I also had a rig with NF2 chipset and it worked quite nicely in Win98. Yeah, my Abit AN7 has nforce2 and runs Win98SE with all devices identified. In Windows 98 this was not possible, only Second Edition. But it's not a pci-e board, let alone sli.

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486 system I'm building

Posted on 2009-09-19, 16:32

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Going a bit slow building this, here's what I have working so far: QDI Opti 895 motherboard - 3 VLB, 3 ISA, 1 8bit slots, 3 volt button cell, and gui-style AMI bios AMD 486DX4-100 - K6 hsf now fitted, attached with thermal tape. 32mb RAM Diamond Stealth Pro VLB graphics card VLB interface card - …

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Re: floppy drive Not Ready

Posted on 2009-09-19, 16:12

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Problem solved. A 3-wire ribbon cable on the top face of the drive had worked loose from its sockets. Seems to just push in, nothing to tighten or lock, but the drive works.

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Re: My first laptop HDD

Posted on 2009-09-19, 14:17

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Modern single platter (eg 80GB) 7200 RPM 3.5 inch desktop ATA IDE HDDs are both fast and quiet. (But the problem with this is that those specific types of HDDs are getting rare, in terms of buying them brand new from online retailers for instance.) Maplins still list 40gb and 80gb IDE 7200rpm 3.5" …

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Re: Old CD Magazines / Magazine CDs for download

Posted on 2009-09-19, 13:57

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Just been looking for a driver disk and I came across PCW cover cd's for May 96 and December 96, and Computer Shopper March 96. I expect I can copy them but uploading is probably beyond me. Also these for Mac: MacFormat Dec95, xmas95, Mar96, Jul96, Nov96, Dec97 MacAction Jan96, Feb96, Mar96 The Mac …

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Re: floppy drive Not Ready

Posted on 2009-09-16, 19:04

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

The 5.25 drive's connector is keyed and so is the cable, so that shouldn't be the issue. In fact the same is true of the 3.5 connectors. I've had exactly that problem with other pc's though.

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floppy drive Not Ready

Posted on 2009-09-16, 18:25

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have built a 486 machine, it uses a board with an Opti chipset, 3 ISA slots, 3 VLB slots and an 8 bit slot. Seems to be a QDI board according to stason.org. I've used a hard drive from another machine, which has dos on it. It boots into PC DOS 5.02 from the hard disk. I have 3.5" and 5.25" floppy …

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Re: PSU questions

Posted on 2009-09-15, 18:12

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

As it turned out, the jumpers were ok and it now boots 😀 .

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Re: PSU questions

Posted on 2009-09-15, 12:12

by

by ratfink

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Good point, I've now checked the voltages both at the block and to be completely sure, at the AT connector. All OK give or take 5%. Now noticed that the board jumpers are not set for a DX4 cpu - it came with an AMD DX4-100 fitted and I kind of assumed that the jumpers would set right as it was …

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