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

Posted on 2023-10-06, 02:30

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Turned on the Epson Stylus Color 440 I got at a thrift store to see if it'll power on and it does. I just need to find my cable and copy the drivers to the CF card or SD card since I don't have a CD drive for the laptops yet.

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2023-10-02, 05:41

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got both FMA7600 laptops working once again. Just need to get another charger, a 3Com Ethernet/Modem PCMCIA card, and a GamePort PCMCIA card for the other laptop and find a way to wire a 2nd COM port since the trackballs are having issues, well, except the one works alright after I took it apart to …

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-10-02, 04:37

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thanks. All's that's left to get is another 3Com Ethernet/Modem PCMCIA card and GamePort PCMCIA card. Also need to determine the wiring for the trackball so I can add a second COM port in case I want to do a LapLink connection for DOS gaming.

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

Posted on 2023-10-01, 06:03

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got my other FMA7600 laptop to have its own drive so I don't need to put the one from my other system in there every time. Pics Filename 20231001_012809.jpg File size 1.21 MiB Views 1607 views Filename 20231001_010944.jpg File size 1.26 MiB Views 1607 views

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-10-01, 05:57

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Got it soldered on and it works. Filename 20231001_012809.jpg File size 1.21 MiB Views 1061 views Filename 20231001_010944.jpg File size 1.26 MiB Views 1061 views

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-30, 23:25

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Filename 20230930_185927.jpg File size 938.31 KiB Views 1084 views Quick dirty redneck IDE connection. Got power and ground connected to test a hard drive and it powers on. Going to connect the rest of the wires and hot glue the connector so they won't touch each other.

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-30, 05:08

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Huh. So Compaq used the same thing, eh? I'm actually using a multimeter and a small bit of wire to stick in 1 pin of the IDE side, place one probe on one end and the other on the wire to see which pin goes where. Lots of ground and +5VDC to cover, but at least the +5V one and ground is a piece of …

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Re: What game are you playing now?

Posted on 2023-09-30, 01:51

by

by bjwil1991

in Milliways

in Milliways

Just finished The House In The Cemetery NES game. Fun little adventure game. If you're wondering, the game was Kickstarter funded. I might ask them if they can ask Nintendo to add it to the NES library for the Switch.

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-29, 03:46

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And the boot diskette never worked anyway. Keeps crashing.

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-28, 15:13

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Well, I'm screwed. Is there a way to update the BIOS to support ATA/CF on the fly? I'm unable to find a caddy for the one laptop and no easy way of making a converter adapter from 44-pin IDE to edge connector. ...Or I can desolder that POS edge connector off of the laptop with a 44-pin IDE connector …

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-28, 08:00

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Shit. That's what I did wrong. I put it as DEVICE=PCMSS.EXE, which might've or did cause confusion. Going to redo the config file once I get done cloning the main HDD to the CF card.

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-28, 07:31

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Man. I was hoping I'd get the thing to work off of a diskette so I can access the CF card. Would this make the CF card bootable on a caddi-less/hard drive-less laptop?

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-28, 06:59

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Found out the diskette died. Made a new one after archiving the contents from that diskette. Hope it works this time. Nope. Still nothing. Even the Phoenix Card Management 3.01 says cannot read PCM.INI or cannot find PCM.INI, even though it's on the diskette.

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-28, 04:29

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

And divide overflow errors. Fuck.

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-28, 02:59

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also, the option ROM is not active and no program to activate it in DOS. I'm scratching my head on this one.

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Re: FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-28, 02:09

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

This is what it looks like: Filename 20230927_220833.jpg File size 1.64 MiB Views 1313 views Also tried a 64MB CF card from my Compaq Portable XT and no dice with that either unless I boot from the diskette and access it that way.

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

Posted on 2023-09-28, 00:33

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Trying to figure out how to boot from a PCMCIA card with a CF card installed on Pentium laptops (FMA7600). They both have the option, but they don't boot from it unless I insert a boot diskette with the PCMCIA drivers and UNATA loaded with the msdos.sys file copied from the CF card to the floppy …

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FMA7600 and booting from PCMCIA

Posted on 2023-09-27, 23:09

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Heller, I'm attempting to boot from a PCMCIA CF adapter with a 2GB CF card on my FMA7600 laptops. Both are Pentium laptops (one is 90, the other is 120) and only 1 has a hard drive caddy. Unfortunately, I cannot get the CF card to boot from it on my laptops. I have the PCMCIA boot enabled and I …

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Re: The quest for the perfect retro laptop: a saga

Posted on 2023-09-22, 16:18

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Both FMA7600 laptops are operational. The one actually has a P120 in it (overclocked to 133 due to the system playing tricks with the PCMCIA cards and I've yet to see if the issue is fixed once and for all) and the other has the P90 gold top (no bugs). Both have the same amount of RAM, DIP switches …

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

Posted on 2023-09-21, 06:06

by

by bjwil1991

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Man. I had a 33MB Kalok drive that only had 1 sector at the end that was bad, but booted up just fine. Unlike the FMA7600 laptop that's bitching at me when I have a PCMCIA card inserted and the OS would lock up at the splash screen (Windows 95) until I power it off and back on again. The other one …

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