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

Posted on 2019-04-01, 09:24

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Gahh! The heaped mannequin parts are hilariously creepy... I have been to places like that where the owner says "There's more in the basement..." and you go down there and see things that make you wonder how you got to this point in your life (while looking over your shoulder to be sure the door …

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Re: Heatsink and fan for ASUS p5A-b

Posted on 2019-03-31, 21:14

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

That's a regular P55C? It's a pretty cool CPU and doesn't need anything bigger than the CPU itself. Just go for a square heatsink with ~3cm-4cm high vanes and a simple 50mm fan on top. Shouldn't foul either AGP or DIMM.

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Re: Pentium II clock speed detected incorrectly

Posted on 2019-03-31, 18:38

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

In that case it could be running at 3x 66MHz indeed. OP, if you suspect that might be the case, please be more specific than: switching the jumpers on the board does not seem to make a difference. Exactly which settings did you try with which jumpers?

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Re: Pentium II clock speed detected incorrectly

Posted on 2019-03-31, 17:21

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

A P2-400 is a 100MHz FSB CPU with fixed multiplier, so you won't be able to run it at stock speed on an i440LX board in any event, as the LX only support 66MHz FSB, and 4x66=266MHz. Some LX boards wil run stable up to 83MHz, but that still means max 333MHz. Given the multiplier is locked at 4x …

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Re: 5.25"(1/4") floppy drive color and usage ?

Posted on 2019-03-30, 23:11

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep. I never had a 5.25" floppy (IBM PS/2 in 1988, in use until 1996...) which was a major handicap back then. I basically had to smile sweetly at a friend with a more regular 286 to get him to copy everything to 3.5", which worked fine with drivers etc, but games with copy protection were another …

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Re: 5.25"(1/4") floppy drive color and usage ?

Posted on 2019-03-30, 20:57

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Yep. I never had a 5.25" floppy (IBM PS/2 in 1988, in use until 1996...) which was a major handicap back then. I basically had to smile sweetly at a friend with a more regular 286 to get him to copy everything to 3.5", which worked fine with drivers etc, but games with copy protection were another …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-03-30, 14:03

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

oeuvre wrote: may or may not have bought an IBM Model M keyboard Is this a kind of Schrödinger's Cat experiment? Only once you open the box is it clear what you did. Until then it's both bought and not bought...

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

Posted on 2019-03-30, 10:43

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Many of the FDDs can be repaired by replacing the small electrolytic capacitors on them. They don't age well. I suspect that's up with the FD-55GFR, it's electrically completely dead, which suggests something in the power circuitry has failed, and it's not a tantalum (no short). But of course, 3. …

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

Posted on 2019-03-29, 22:19

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Figured out why not a single floppy drive I had tested recently seemed to work: *both* cables I was using were actually ST-506 (MFM/RLL/ESDI) HDD control cables. Same 34 pins, same connectors, but a different twist. Yet another reminder that I need to tidy my shit up better... Turns out two of the …

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Re: My new Olivetti M24

Posted on 2019-03-28, 23:38

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Neither actually. I got this: https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Xerox-Keyboard-6067-6068-Olivetti-M24-AT-T-PC6300-38E-110S80777/283407883469?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 Which should work on an M24. Interesting, doesnt look like either keyboard but certainly has the …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-03-28, 23:06

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Fixing those pins will take some time but it's a reward definitely worth the effort.. Messed up the C3-800 - broke one there when trying to get it to fit, but second attempt was better: the 2002-vintage 5x86 is sitting happily in my SiS496-board running as if it were a 486DX4-100. Now to find the …

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Re: My new Olivetti M24

Posted on 2019-03-28, 22:13

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Beautiful systems, even if this one is in a shitty state to start with. Getting an external video card to run is non-trivial, so that VGA cable mod is probably the easiest and definitely least invasive option. Beware shorting, sparky PSUs. I have had three, one was dead to start with, the other died …

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Re: Socket 5

Posted on 2019-03-28, 18:05

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

i430FX is vastly faster than the previous Intel chipsets like the i430NX. What forced Intel to clean up its act was the SiS 501 chipset, which had almost the same feature set (just no PLB), but was released a year earlier and completely outclassed i430LX and i430NX. It remained the fastest single …

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

Posted on 2019-03-28, 16:41

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

[...] Then there's always the hack-job method of cutting into the existing RTC, which I see a lot of people do but I have no idea why since newly manufactured replaced are still made for $10 each. When desoldering the old one, just install a DIP socket for easy future replacement. I found that …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-03-28, 16:23

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Indeed, it's risky to generalize across continents. I first travelled to Central and Eastern Europe on my own (as opposed to with parents or school in the 1980s and early 1990s) in 1999. I clearly remember passing a computer shop on the Rákóczi út in Budapest which was still selling Pentium 1 non- …

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Re: Socket 5

Posted on 2019-03-28, 16:07

by

by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Don't underestimate the impact of 60MHz FSB (and 30MHz PCI) on those scores. Unless you are doing a pure CPU-limited benchmark, a P120 hardly scores any better than a P100 (which does run at 66MHz FSB). The gap between the P120 and P133 is huge, but it's multiple factors: - 13MHz clock speed - 10% …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2019-03-28, 12:15

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I found one of those cases a year or so ago. Someone I knew was so desparately looking for one he showered me with nice vintage stuff in exchange for it. Must be a nostalgia thing, apart from the odd front serial port, it's a bog-standard AT minitower, although relatively well-finished. My little …

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Re: Which Build do I go with. 486 Vs Pentium 1? Decisions...

Posted on 2019-03-27, 15:10

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

matze79 wrote: Yeah just keep your hands away from OPTI Chipsets 😉 Now they have soul. A dark impractical one perhaps, but vastly more fun - assuming you're not just looking for a stable, fast-performing PC : 😵

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Re: Which Build do I go with. 486 Vs Pentium 1? Decisions...

Posted on 2019-03-27, 13:49

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

a Pentium is much better if you want a allround machine for msdos Depends on the board and what you want to do. I find later Pentium motherboards a pain in the rear end when it comes to non-PnP hardware (or rather: the combination of non-PnP and PnP). But if it's a nice simple generic i430FX board …

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Re: Socket 5

Posted on 2019-03-27, 12:53

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by dionb

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Thing is that So5 and So7 are pretty much the same standard, so it's an academic discussion. As far as the pins go, the difference is that So7 has a second multiplier pin (allowing 2.5x and 3x) and it allows for (but does not mandate) split voltage. So an So5 board will take any So7 CPU that uses …

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