Re: My SiS 730S Duron system!

Posted on 2016-01-28, 06:45

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by 133MHz

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I remember building a similar system back in the day for my sister, when she found out her hand-me-down K6-2 500 wasn't able to play 640x480 DivX-encoded videos at anything resembling motion video. I got a good deal on a PCChips M810, a 950MHz Duron and 128MB of SDRAM from some government surplus …

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Re: When did you first get acces to the Internet and what sites did you visit at your first time ?

Posted on 2016-01-24, 02:21

by

by 133MHz

in Milliways

in Milliways

Mid to late 90s at my mom's office (university). I have vaguely heard of this ".com" thing so I started trying common brands + .com at the address bar and sure enough, most of the times a website for said brand came up. Not much later I discovered search engines - Hotbot was the first one and I used …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2016-01-24, 01:50

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

when do we actually have to give up our hobby because of all the hardware is dead? When? 2030? 2040? Naaa... My machines are rarely turned on, looking at a whole year. (I skip between hardware that are powered on) You should turn them on once in a while then, to keep the electrolytic capacitors in …

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Re: max ide hdd limit on 386 rigs?

Posted on 2015-12-28, 07:28

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

504MB tends to be the limit for 386 class machines. It's a BIOS limitation, it can be overcome with an Option ROM type BIOS (either a specific IDE controller with its own BIOS or something more generic like the XTIDE BIOS on a network card) or with drive overlay software.

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Re: Spelling and grammar pet peeves around here

Posted on 2015-12-24, 04:11

by

by 133MHz

in Milliways

in Milliways

ゴミ　means garbage so I guess they misspelled dump. :-P On topic, I try to differentiate between keyboard-induced misspellings (aka typos - pressing an adjacent key or pressing them out of order) and ignorance-based misspellings. Typos I don't mind much unless they are excessive, but I find blatant …

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Re: Dumb things you've done (or have seen someone else do) on a computer

Posted on 2015-12-23, 04:31

by

by 133MHz

in Milliways

in Milliways

Uncooked, right? 🤣 I can totally see a stick of uncooked spaghetti fitting in the manual eject hole in lieu of a paperclip, but can it actually push the tray out without breaking? 😵

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

Posted on 2015-12-23, 04:27

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Test the resistance of the R/W head coils, on some particular drive mechs used in the C= 1541 the head tends to go open circuit internally - if that's the case there's no other solution than replacing the R/W head assembly (or the complete drive mech) with a working spare, since the head itself is …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-12-23, 02:37

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

alexanrs wrote: Also, all AT PSUs should have provides -5V, and all early ATX PSUs have those as well. I happen to have an AT PSU without the -5 line, so keep an eye out for that. 😉

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-12-19, 16:50

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Oh that DRAM's dead for sure. Fortunately the damage tends to be isolated so go ahead and replace it. 😀

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Re: Native PS/2 mouse implementation for 386/486 boards using the keyboard controller

Posted on 2015-12-17, 18:23

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It does look very clean & efficient I must say. 😉 I've also hidden wiring under sockets for neatness but not entire DIP ICs, even though I've seen a similar arrangement on some motherboards.

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Re: Drivers for Sound Blaster 2.0 Clone?

Posted on 2015-12-15, 22:42

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

These are fake part numbers. Neither does a sound card need this type of IC, nor does it have a manufacturer logo and date. I've seen this also on other sound cards, i.e. on the Opti MAD16 the adlib clone has a LS245 or similar part number. No other numbers on the IC package. This IC could be a ROM …

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Re: Woah! Never head of this hardware from 1983 for the apple & pc!

Posted on 2015-12-11, 01:49

by

by 133MHz

in Milliways

in Milliways

It sort of reminded me of this. So this is basically an MSX graphics chip on an expansion card. 😀

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-12-09, 19:49

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I almost didn't feel like going thrifting this week, glad I came to my senses and went anyway: https://133fsb.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/img_20151208_130300631.jpg?w=800 https://133fsb.files.wordpress.com/2015/12/img_20151208_130329204_hdr.jpg?w=800 This is the first SBPro ever to cross my path, so …

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Re: PC Speaker on 486 suddenly stopped working

Posted on 2015-11-30, 19:41

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A quick & dirty way to test the PC speaker in DOS is to execute 'echo ^G' (typed as [e][c][h][o][space][ctrl]+[g]) from the command prompt. Running that should make the speaker beep once.

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Re: Help Identifying Weird 386 Motherboard

Posted on 2015-11-30, 01:00

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Silk-screen, layout and traces look very Juko-ish.

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Re: What to do with old broken HDDs?

Posted on 2015-11-21, 04:53

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Take the magnets out and re-purpose them. I keep some screwed to a wall to hold screwdrivers and other ferromagnetic tools for quick access. With enough of them you could probably build a generator. The platters make for nice wind chimes when hung on strings. Very old drives might have memory, logic …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-11-17, 01:19

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Gotta be on page 486! :-D Got a nice looking PowerBook 1400cs with original charger at the flea market for a song, unfortunately the screen looks like this https://133fsb.files.wordpress.com/2015/11/lcdrota.jpg?w=800 so I shall be on the lookout for a replacement LCD, found one on eBay but shipping …

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Re: Got a big problem with installing windows 95 from CD

Posted on 2015-11-16, 02:55

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you're using a non-English version of Windows the setup program might be under a different name - for example in the Spanish localizations it's actually INSTALAR.EXE

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Re: Got a big problem with installing windows 95 from CD

Posted on 2015-11-12, 03:00

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

AFAIK the Windows 95 CD isn't bootable - you need an MS-DOS boot floppy with CD-ROM support to run the setup program which is in the WIN95 directory. I recommend copying the WIN95 directory to the hard drive beforehand and running SETUP from there to speed up installation and avoid the need to put …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2015-11-12, 02:32

by

by 133MHz

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

HighTreason wrote: This now belongs to me; That coin cell mod looks really nice & tidy. 😁

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