Re: What is your weirdest troubleshooting experience when dealing with retro computers/hardware?

Posted on 2020-06-26, 03:28

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Funniest thing i found in a PC was in a malfunctioning CD-ROM drive that kept opening and closing. It was a small piece of paper that had written on it "Breaks CD-ROM drives. Ha Ha ha". Stupid, but Ingenious. So someone put a piece of paper in the drive to force it to open/close and they thought it …

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Re: My Two Floppy Drives became damaged after trying to duplicate disks of "Thexder". Any ideas?

Posted on 2020-06-26, 03:22

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have heard of weird stories like this but never happened to me or any one I know. More than likely (a few guesses) the original disks media could have had contaminants on them that messed your original drives heads up while they were "cleaned" when you tried to copy the data OR the drives were …

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Re: What is your weirdest troubleshooting experience when dealing with retro computers/hardware?

Posted on 2020-06-25, 03:11

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I used to work at a computer repair store around 1999. One day I got a computer that wouldn't respond to the keyboard. I kept pressing ctrl-alt-del and nothing would happen. So I say "this thing keeps locking up" and guy next to me says "this things keeps rebooting" then we looked at each other's …

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Re: What is your weirdest troubleshooting experience when dealing with retro computers/hardware?

Posted on 2020-06-25, 03:08

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Nice read ! The oddest troubleshoot for me that I remember was a 10 year old single core P4 soc 478 back in 2014. The machine would quickly reboot at random. Tore it apart to basic parts and it ran fine, but still did all the regular clean, reseat, etc and testing things using a few of my known good …

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Re: testing com ports loopback in DOS and CTmouse Question..

Posted on 2020-06-24, 01:59

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by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Great ! Also Check for conflicts: two ports on same IRQ or address can mess up other ports too.

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Re: No beeps, no post, no display...

Posted on 2020-06-24, 01:56

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Guess: Bad cap, bad PSU or BIOS issue. Have you tried a different PSU? I would strip down to basics and use a good PCI vid card and good PSU that I know work with good (that Trust Powermaster only had a 2 year warranty, where many good PSU back then had 5+)

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Re: testing com ports loopback in DOS and CTmouse Question..

Posted on 2020-06-24, 01:40

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ahh so can you get echo off COMM1 but no echo off COMM2 using Kermit ? Is COMM 2 set to standard IRQ3 and 2F8 ? Is this a ISA I/O card or off the motherboard? Need more info !

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Re: testing com ports loopback in DOS and CTmouse Question..

Posted on 2020-06-24, 01:15

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Hmm yes Modem Doctor will check comm ports in DOS if you have a loop-back plug, I used ver 6 for DOS many times. CTmouse should scan COMM1 and COMM2 when trying to load. I have never had any problems with the MS 8.x or 9.x mouse driver is DOS not matter what mouse I used other than IF it was some …

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Re: Advice - zip spanning between modern Windows and MS-DOS

Posted on 2020-06-24, 01:06

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by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Glad you got it working ! Wish you would have said at the beginning you were not actually transferring from a New machine to a Real old one.Transferring to some emulator does make a big difference in how you need to do things.

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Re: Advice - zip spanning between modern Windows and MS-DOS

Posted on 2020-06-23, 13:46

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by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

simbin wrote on 2020-06-23, 07:03: Thanks, I really like the RAR interface too. However, everything seems fine, until this. IMG_20200623_024946.jpg Do not compress with WinRAR 3.93, set the compression to "store" and you should be able to have RAR 2.5 extract it. That is what I did last night and …

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Re: Error: Invalid \ No keyboard code received ?

Posted on 2020-06-23, 01:57

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

You can still find XT/AT switchable keyboards for cheap -- they come up every once in a while. I just set an Ebay search alert a few months back, and within ~30 days or so, I snagged a SIIG Suntouch 101 for around $30 -- it has Alps switches at that. I also built an AT/PS2-->XT converter for about …

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Re: Advice - zip spanning between modern Windows and MS-DOS

Posted on 2020-06-23, 00:45

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

RAR was the best in the old dos days when archiving stuff. You can still use WinRAR on a more modern machine and create the Old style .rar's and use Unrar.exe in DOS to extract. When you create the archives: On the Advanced tab make sure "old style volume names is checked" then set the files size to …

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Re: Chaintech 6LTM-L (6LTM M102) mainboard not starting

Posted on 2020-06-22, 23:28

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Your board uses the 440LX chipset. It may be acting up because you are trying out 100MHz FSB P2 CPUs in them. Do you have a 333MHz or slower P2 CPU with which you can test the board, just to rule out this is the issue here? ^^ This ! You can not run a 100Mhz cpu on a 66Mhz only board, the BIOS …

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Re: Modem usage

Posted on 2020-06-22, 23:09

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by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I have plenty of old modems in storage, both external and external. I just replace them with ethernet cards or use a null modem cable to log into my linux box which is vary easy to do. Do you happen to have an External Supra 28.8? I used to own one of these.. I would very much like to buy one if I …

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Re: Error: Invalid \ No keyboard code received ?

Posted on 2020-06-22, 23:01

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

+++ ERROR: Invalid/No keyboard code received! +++ Normally this message is caused by the keyboard being unplugged. If the keyboard is plugged in, the problem may be in the keyboard or keyboard cable. Replace the keyboard and/or keyboard cable. I think I need a compatible XT keyboard. Can anyone …

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Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Posted on 2020-06-22, 22:36

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Okay, which one of you guy out bid me on this Apple Macintosh Color Classic. I know you guys love Macs. Was not me. If it actually works that is a good buy ! My retro purchase today: stopped at a thrift store and found a 50 pack TDK CD-R media for $4 and 10 pack cd cases for $2. No label on the 50 …

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Re: Choosing 286 motherboard

Posted on 2020-06-22, 03:06

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by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Ex-Kwik Trip Harris 25mhz white box low profile units had an ISA RISER, decent modern bios, good vga onboard and a coin cell, some of these units took 72pin Simms which was interesting. Despite being very late they still had even at the time ancient 40mb or 80mb IDE drives, some had ram soldered …

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Re: Choosing 286 motherboard

Posted on 2020-06-22, 02:46

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

I would try to find a 286 board that has a 12Mhz or 16Mhz cpu and SIMMS slots. The Headland HT12 is a good chipset as mentioned above. Back then most used barrel Varta but most good boards for sale it is already removed, just use a 3 AA battery pack with Alkaline batteries and connect to the 4 pin …

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Re: Soyo SY-5EMA-Pro (Super Socket 7) won't cold boot

Posted on 2020-06-22, 02:08

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

Also try with another CPU, I remembered that one of my socket A processors exhibits something similar, didn't investigate as much as you did with yours, but the system doesn't boot at first attempt with that particular CPU installed, it needs a reset then everything's ok. No FF code when stuck, …

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Re: Collecting rants

Posted on 2020-06-22, 01:45

by

by Horun

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

in Marvin \ General Old Hardware

One local Salv Army outlet has had quite a few computers over the last year, mostly XP era stuff for sub $20 each but all the Goodwills in my area ship them to a Central location where they go up for bid on shopgoodwill.com (just another Ebay). Oregon and Washington, like Cali, has a recycle rule …

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