Re: Compaq LTE 5400

Posted on 2013-05-01, 00:19

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

I must bump this to save anybody who reads this thread from repeating my mistake: I've also found it's compatible with the same power supply as a P2/P3 era Thinkpad, which I just happen to have a car adapter for. This didn't work. The LTE is marked to handle up to 18V, the P2/P3 era Thinkpad supply …

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Re: Suggestions for Desktop pentium M build

Posted on 2013-04-30, 22:03

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

Playing games while power outages? LOL, seems not sense for me. Laptop like desktop PC..... True, laptop would be efficient. But my laptop is old and weak, and buying a better one would be expensive. But buying oversized batteries for the UPS is also expensive, so if I look at what everything costs …

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Re: (Maybe it's) Dead 430TX Mobo

Posted on 2013-04-30, 21:52

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If it runs for 2 seconds that sounds like some other problem, probably not a short. If it was a short circuit it would only run for a very tiny moment. It's normal that many ATX motherboards will run for about 2 seconds and then turn off until you use the switch on the motherboard. So it sounds like …

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Re: Suggestions for Desktop pentium M build

Posted on 2013-04-30, 00:18

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ System Specs

in Marvin \ System Specs

At one time I was thinking about building a low power gaming capable PC for use during power outages. It would be powered by a modified UPS with large batteries attached. I never went forward with it but the Pentium M seems like a great candidate for that. I wish they were more common. Our outages …

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Re: (Maybe it's) Dead 430TX Mobo

Posted on 2013-04-30, 00:07

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Trying a fresh battery is a good idea. I mean does any of the fans move a tiny bit the first time you plug it in and try to turn it on? What I'm talking about would be a very short movement, just a tiny twitch. Yes... The fan move for a while and turn off How long? Less than a second? Do you have to …

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Re: (Maybe it's) Dead 430TX Mobo

Posted on 2013-04-29, 05:33

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I mean does any of the fans move a tiny bit the first time you plug it in and try to turn it on? What I'm talking about would be a very short movement, just a tiny twitch.

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Re: (Maybe it's) Dead 430TX Mobo

Posted on 2013-04-29, 04:20

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

If you unplug the machine for 30 seconds, then plug it in and try to turn it on, does the fan twitch? If it twitches for a moment, that would mean that the PSU is getting overloaded and automatically shutting off. Once that happens, it will stay off until you unplug it for several seconds. If this …

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Re: Old PC or DOSBox?

Posted on 2013-04-29, 04:15

by

by shamino

in PC Emulation

in PC Emulation

Another place to look for old hardware is local thrift stores. The most common stuff I find in those places are P4 Dell machines, but there's older stuff occasionally. I've seen a few different slot-1 systems in the past year with Intel-made 440BX boards, I think all of them were Dell. Browsing …

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Re: Is SATA worth it?

Posted on 2013-04-27, 04:55

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

ncmark wrote: So if you have only one drive on an ATA133 cable, does that mean the one drives gets the full through-out or only half? The one drive will get all the bandwidth that is available on that channel. There can be various other bottlenecks in the system though.

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Re: Caps replacement

Posted on 2013-04-26, 04:09

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I have soldered before but never on a motherboard - I am afraid I might be to chicken to try it on a motherboard If you have any junk motherboards you don't care about, they're perfect for practicing on. You don't really have to suck out the solder, instead, you can just melt the solder and walk …

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Re: Is SATA worth it?

Posted on 2013-04-26, 03:15

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Well I know this may sound stupid but don't ATA133 drives transfer at 133 MB/s.....isn't that what ATA133 MEANS, versus ATA100, ATA66, ATA33?? That's how fast the interface is capable of transferring data. That doesn't mean the drive will achieve that, or do so consistently. For example, an ATA133 …

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Re: Dead S3 Trio32 vga card?

Posted on 2013-04-26, 02:53

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

It's possible there's just a cracked solder joint somewhere. You could try reflowing the joints if you want to bother. Removing the RAM chips is more difficult but if you have much interest in them they could be worth saving for other hobby type things.

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Re: Caps replacement

Posted on 2013-04-26, 01:09

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

I used some 560uF Sanyo OS-Con and 680uF Nippon PSA to recap a P3 socket-370 board once, and also 2 or 3 slot-1 boards. They worked well on all of them. Not really necessary though. The biggest pain about it is that the legs are thicker on polymers so they're harder to get installed. On the CPU …

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Re: Is SATA worth it?

Posted on 2013-04-26, 00:50

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Newer drives are more dense. This translates into a faster linear transfer rate, because at the same rotational speed more data is passing under the head per second. (As far as I'm aware, modern drives don't use interleaving and keep up with every bit, but I could be wrong) Depending how old your …

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Re: Is there a way of formatting a damaged hard drive to squeeze some extra usage out of it?

Posted on 2013-04-23, 11:30

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I'd use HDAT2 to run a thorough surface scan, if you haven't done that already. Once you know where the problematic areas are, you might be able to avoid them. Partition the drive such that the bad regions won't be used. Bad sectors should be marked once you've scanned for them, but more of them …

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Re: I've never seen memory modules like these

Posted on 2013-04-23, 05:55

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Damn, I've been wanting one of those HP Kayak machines for a while. What are the fastest Xeons one of those will run? Sorry, I was out of town for several days. The model is a Kayak XW 6/450. It came with a Xeon 450, I added a 2nd of those afterward. I've never tried anything faster. I vaguely …

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Re: Computer Chronicles: i486

Posted on 2013-04-17, 00:57

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

d1stortion wrote: Fuck'n'shit 9,000 for a portable 486?? WTF?? Who's gonna by that when you can get an iphone with 1000x the power. Who the hell wants an iPhone? I'd rather have a portable 486. 😀

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Re: I've never seen memory modules like these

Posted on 2013-04-17, 00:37

by

by shamino

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

They're marked KTD-PC100X72RC3/256I 9852222-002.A00 so they should be made by Kingston but I've been unable to find any datasheet about them. I think KTD is the prefix Kingston used for memory they made for Dell. I know KTC is Compaq and KTM is IBM. This page http://www.allquests.com/question/ …

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Re: Preservation measures/tips for (vintage) electronics

Posted on 2013-04-15, 04:49

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

Devices with tantalum capacitors should be powered up occasionally. Those type of capacitors like to turn into firecrackers if they've been sitting idle for too long. I don't know how long, but I've had it happen and I've read that it's pretty common. I'm curious about "stiction" on old hard drives. …

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Re: The downfall of Firefox

Posted on 2013-04-13, 01:12

by

by shamino

in Milliways

in Milliways

On that subject, I did come close to installing Chrome. The last thing that gave me pause was reading their web page and realizing they had it set up to automatically update itself without permission. I dislike that kind of behavior and the attitude it indicates. New Firefox versions do the same …

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