Re: Bought these games today
Posted on 2022-05-04, 19:19
I played Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as a kid and really enjoyed it. I've never gotten around to playing Fate of Atlantis. Some day I will, and I'm sure I'll love it.
Re: eBay steal turned out to be a charred wreck
Posted on 2022-05-04, 19:17
I know what I need for an upgrade. It's just that it will be extremely expensive to do so. Louis Rossman is great. I've learned a lot of great tips from watching his videos.
Re: eBay steal turned out to be a charred wreck
Posted on 2022-05-04, 18:44
At a minimum I would need a new microscope so people can actually see what I'm doing. That's the biggest expense I'm wrestling with, since I already have a microscope, and it wouldn't provide any improvement in my ability to do repairs. I'll get one eventually. I just can't afford to do it right now …
Re: One of my computers caught fire today
Posted on 2022-05-04, 18:04
Yes, I understand. I've seen some of those videos as well where they're digging through the layers and you can even see small traces appear and they solder to them. Given the importance of the component on this motherboard, the amount of damage that I had done trying to remove it, and its location ( …
Re: Emulation on MS Windows 3.1x ?
Posted on 2022-05-04, 17:57
This is pretty cool. I love Windows 3.1.
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2022-05-04, 17:51
Same here. I'm not even nostalgic about 486 computers and older, and is quite difficult to get decent components for these platforms nowdays. I don't mind the 486. When I was a kid, my dad let me used his Compaq 486 laptop to play Doom. It also ran Windows 3.1 and, later, Windows 95. It had 24 MB …
Re: One of my computers caught fire today
Posted on 2022-05-04, 17:43
That's a good warning. I don't think there is any good way to test for this without ripping up the top layer and digging underneath. I will be testing for shorts between the voltage rails and ground plane, but at some point I'll have to plug it in and see what happens. I have a certain unloved Dell …
Re: One of my computers caught fire today
Posted on 2022-05-04, 17:30
I now have further evidence (sample size of 2) that these kinds of pyrotechnic events can lead to the component welding itself to the board. This makes repair extremely difficult, with a high chance of the board becoming damaged during component removal. The danger here is that due to the welding …
Re: eBay steal turned out to be a charred wreck
Posted on 2022-05-04, 17:16
I really want to do a Twitch or YouTube channel of my repairs, but I don't have the recording equipment for it. If I'm going to be doing all of this repair for anyways as a hobby, I would like to share it with people. One of the big expenses is that I would need a new trinocular microscope head with …
Re: eBay steal turned out to be a charred wreck
Posted on 2022-05-04, 17:09
I removed the MOSFET from this today. It came off "alright", but I had the same problem as with the burned up FET on my Gigabyte GA-P35-DS3P where the component welded itself to the board. I almost got it off safely except for a very small piece that was stuck to the component and tore a hole …
Re: A graphics card I bought lasted only a few seconds before dying
Posted on 2022-05-04, 17:02
I've since removed all of the capacitors from this card and they all test fine. They're all polymer capacitors, so I would have been surprised if this was the issue. I also lifted one side of each tantalum capacitor and verified that none of them are shorted. Since I'm confident that it's already …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2022-05-04, 16:51
If it were me, the only period I hate the most is anything 486 and older that's strictly ISA only . Add PCI, an onboard HDD controller, and I'd greatly take it. The reason I hate anything lower than PCI based 486 - you need offboard cards for almost everything, not just VGA and sound. I have a …
Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Posted on 2022-05-04, 14:26
I bought a sheet-fed scanner for this exact reason. Scanning thousands of pages of books and manuals? No thank you. It's a lot of work to cut up books, and there is some expertise that goes along with it, but I have too much bulk. I'm fine with scanning most of this stuff and just letting the paper …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2022-05-04, 14:20
I had the same feeling about Super Socket 7 for years. I've only recently bought a single Super Socket 7, just to flesh out my collection a bit. I also have no Socket A boards, of which I am equally uninterested. I've read about the CPU dies easily damaging, overheating if the cooler isn't on …
Re: Some eBay sellers are assholes
Posted on 2022-05-03, 22:38
Just my personal experience with this a t work, we had one UPS driver that left deliveries outside in the parking lot and entered the managers name as the person receiving the shipment. That could be easily done with a home delivery, just use the name on the label. We lost some deliveries this way. …
How to start Unreal Gold with timedemo and on a particular map?
Posted on 2022-05-03, 18:37
Is there a way to automate starting Unreal Gold with the timedemo activated? I want to do this on the castle flyby specifically. The sequence of console commands is: open unreal timedemo 1 Is there a way to automate this procedure so that I don't have to open the console and type the commands …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2022-05-03, 01:56
How can I stick my finger on it when the fan is spinning? 😜 I have not tried it, but I think it should be alright.
Re: Some eBay sellers are assholes
Posted on 2022-05-03, 01:54
I've had this issue a couple of times recently. "Item was damaged" or they can't find it or something. I asked to still buy the damaged item but they wouldn't even respond. I guess they don't want my money or...
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2022-05-03, 01:28
Someone replaced the cooler on the GF3 with a massive Socket 370 copper cooler they glued on. That thing is really heavy. That's silly. The GeForce 2 Ultra and GeForce 3 series didn't get very hot at all. Maybe the fan died or the previous owner wanted to do some crazy overclocking. It's a terrible …
Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Posted on 2022-05-02, 01:22
I've never tried a good scaler. I've seen a lot of them around, but it's a complex problem and have largely ignored it.
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