BetaC wrote on 2024-06-10, 22:37:

I spent the better part of my day getting things somewhat organized while setting up a new computer space in my family's house. I also attempted to see if I could find an MT-32 hat for my Pi, but it seems that the MISTer has ruined any chances of me looking for non-MISTer versions.

I built this one for myself and it works perfectly: https://github.com/chris-jh/mt32-pi-midi-hat

Serdaco also sells a very nifty one for 3A but works on 3B: https://www.serdashop.com/MP32L

iraito wrote on 2024-06-11, 08:03:

I'm the the process of priming and sanding, after that I'm gonna finish with a dark gray.

Very cool. Please show another picture with it installed when it’s complete.

Done, I really like the end result.

iraito wrote on 2024-06-11, 10:20:

Done, I really like the end result.

Very nice. Clever idea!

iraito wrote on 2024-06-11, 10:20:

Done, I really like the end result.

Ooh so this is what it's for, nice! I don't own any midi module so maybe this is a really stupid question, but what's wrong with putting the smaller sc-55 on top of the mt-32?

konc wrote on 2024-06-11, 11:36:

iraito wrote on 2024-06-11, 10:20:

Done, I really like the end result.

Ooh so this is what it's for, nice! I don't own any midi module so maybe this is a really stupid question, but what's wrong with putting the smaller sc-55 on top of the mt-32?

I imagine it's because the SC-55 is longer (length-wise) than the MT-32. Trying to stack an SC-55 on top of the MT-32, the SC-55 would overhang at the back.

Shponglefan got that right.

I see, it makes sense of course. The sc-55 looks a lot smaller in pictures if you've never handled one.

iraito wrote on 2024-06-11, 10:20:

Done, I really like the end result.

That's awesome!

I'm just playing around with a Korg AG-10 (Audio Gallery) that arrived last night. It came out around the same time as the SC-55. I think in a lot of ways the SC-55 sounds better, but the AG-10 is no slouch either. I still need to clean it up but it works fine.

EDIT: a picture I grabbed off the net for the curious

I'd say it's more consumer level. And more like the SC-7, the desktop version of the 55 with few displays etc.

appiah4 wrote on 2024-06-11, 08:11:

BetaC wrote on 2024-06-10, 22:37:

I spent the better part of my day getting things somewhat organized while setting up a new computer space in my family's house. I also attempted to see if I could find an MT-32 hat for my Pi, but it seems that the MISTer has ruined any chances of me looking for non-MISTer versions.

I built this one for myself and it works perfectly: https://github.com/chris-jh/mt32-pi-midi-hat

Serdaco also sells a very nifty one for 3A but works on 3B: https://www.serdashop.com/MP32L

Thanks. Seems like I'm going to have to deal with international shipping if I don't want to get the PCB made myself, 🤣.

I tried to upgrade an Asus AM2 board with nForce chipset to an MSI 785GM-E65 AM3 board so that I could have two 1Gb ethernet ports (one onboard and one on a PCI card), since the nForce only has a 100Mb port. Windows 2000 did not like the other board, however. No matter how much stuff I uninstalled or stripped out of the registry, something kept hanging the service control manager, and then it would spew a nonsense error message "1077 no attempts have been made to start the service" (wtf? I just told you to start it!). In that state, networking was totally broken, and no program that installs its own driver on the fly (eg. CPU-Z) would run.

I eventually gave up on it, but by then I had cloned the HDD to a newer, bigger, and faster one which happens to have similar power consumption rating. The old WD-Green is stamped 0.65A on 5V, and 0.50A on 12V, while the newer WD-Black is stamped 0.68A on 5V, and 0.55A on 12V. The WD-Green also has over 40,000 hours of runtime while the Black is only at 12,000. So I put the newer disk in the original computer with the Asus board. Now a weird thing is happening where Windows wants to run CHKDSK everytime it boots, but it doesn't actually run it because it says it's "not a Windows 2000 disk" 🤣.

I might also drop a faster CPU into the Asus board. Bravedown bilibili downloader started serving 1080x1920 videos again, and now they're using 60fps and HEVC. This is great except that if I want to play portrait format videos on my portrait format monitor, HEVC is too CPU intensive for the Athlon X2 4850e. The problem is that any K10-based CPU I put in is going to run hotter than the K8, especially in a single-power-plane board, because the CPU-NB will start glitching if you lower the voltage too much. And that is bad, because this is a microATX case with a dinky power supply. So I haven't decided yet. I could just re-encode the videos.

bakemono wrote on 2024-06-12, 12:36:

I might also drop a faster CPU into the Asus board. Bravedown bilibili downloader started serving 1080x1920 videos again, and now they're using 60fps and HEVC. This is great except that if I want to play portrait format videos on my portrait format monitor, HEVC is too CPU intensive for the Athlon X2 4850e. The problem is that any K10-based CPU I put in is going to run hotter than the K8, especially in a single-power-plane board, because the CPU-NB will start glitching if you lower the voltage too much. And that is bad, because this is a microATX case with a dinky power supply. So I haven't decided yet. I could just re-encode the videos.

If you can sneak a 1030GT low profile in, you can let that do the HEVC stuffs. Not sure what AMD options there are in graphics, GCN 3 upward has the support, but they kept dragging over Oland cores for teh low power low end, so not sure where the next low power card is that does it....

.. yeah nearly nothing from AMD until near modern.

edit: RX 640 or WX 3200 maybe but they are weirdos, might find one under $50 to screw around with, but they don't do older DX so well as nvidia either.

bakemono wrote on 2024-06-12, 12:36:

I eventually gave up on it, but by then I had cloned the HDD to a newer, bigger, and faster one which happens to have similar power consumption rating. The old WD-Green is stamped 0.65A on 5V, and 0.50A on 12V, while the newer WD-Black is stamped 0.68A on 5V, and 0.55A on 12V. The WD-Green also has over 40,000 hours of runtime while the Black is only at 12,000. So I put the newer disk in the original computer with the Asus board. Now a weird thing is happening where Windows wants to run CHKDSK everytime it boots, but it doesn't actually run it because it says it's "not a Windows 2000 disk" 🤣.

Wonder if a scan from within Windows would fix the fact that it is trying to scan at boot?

Repaired a Kensington Mouse-in-a-box serial mouse that hasn't worked in 4 years. 1 25V 10uF capacitor later, she's back to working order. Why is it that they used 85°C rated capacitors on these things, eh?

Also made a couple of Socket 370 Tualatin boards nice and shiny, but the capacitors are an eyesore and will get taken care of once I order capacitors for the boards. That and I cleaned the Apple Macintosh Classic M1420 logic board and RAM expansion board since they were dusty and had some spots I didn't see (under chips, it's hard to see that).

bjwil1991 wrote on 2024-06-13, 01:59:

Repaired a Kensington Mouse-in-a-box serial mouse that hasn't worked in 4 years. 1 25V 10uF capacitor later, she's back to working order. Why is it that they used 85°C rated capacitors on these things, eh?

I'm picturing an engineer saying: "Why has the cap in my mouse PCB design been changed from 105C to 85C rated??"

Boss answers: "How hot do your hands get???"

Engineer: 🤦

The nerve of some people. Even my Orion TV1333 has 85°C rated caps and the inside can boil water for crying out loud.

I'm just glad I fixed the mouse after all these years. Almost tossed it out, but I decided to keep it and see if replacing the cap would fix it or not make it work. Got so lucky that I was able to fix the thing. Now, I need to flatten the optical serial mouse pad since it's not flat anymore.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2024-06-13, 03:09:

The nerve of some people. Even my Orion TV1333 has 85°C rated caps and the inside can boil water for crying out loud.

I'm just glad I fixed the mouse after all these years. Almost tossed it out, but I decided to keep it and see if replacing the cap would fix it or not make it work. Got so lucky that I was able to fix the thing. Now, I need to flatten the optical serial mouse pad since it's not flat anymore.

Just curious, but what is the significance of this particular mouse?

(Not judging! I actually replaced the left click button on a first generation Logitech Optical Mouse almost 20 years ago because I wanted to keep using it on a second PC... I still have it!)

bjwil1991 wrote on 2024-06-13, 01:59:

Repaired a Kensington Mouse-in-a-box serial mouse that hasn't worked in 4 years. 1 25V 10uF capacitor later, she's back to working order. Why is it that they used 85°C rated capacitors on these things, eh?

Pretty sure I have one of these in a sealed box somwhere.

Today, I got a Wyse Cx0 thin client (which doesn't have Windows 9x drivers for its 3D accelerated video or onboard audio), running Windows XP, to very convincingly fake Windows 98SE.

(Sure, there are little things, like Printers, Scheduled Tasks, and Web Folders being missing from My Computer and the Open/Save dialogs are definitely not 9x-original... but it's a very convincing fake. As far as "How immersive is it for someone who knows it's not really Windows 98SE?" goes, I'd say it's less of a problem than how 86box has no option to make floppy drive and hard drive noises.)

EDIT: Found the X-Teq X-Setup Pro option to hide the places sidebar in Open/Save dialogs. They look Win9x original now too.

Here's a screenshot from my HP t5530 running actual Windows 98SE for comparison:

EDIT: Oops. Forgot to set a 24-hour clock on the Windows 98SE one and rename My Network Places on the Windows XP one. Those are now fixed on the actual machines.

The process is basically:

1. Use Windows XP's own theming support (don't forget System > Advanced > Performance: Settings > Adjust for best performance to get rid of stuff like the transparent backgrounds on desktop icon labels) to get 95% of the way there.
2. Apply the Inexperience Patcher to convert stuff baked into binaries like the Start button's icon into "Windows 2002 Professional" (You did use things like Show Small Icons in Start Menu in step 1 to hide visual elements where that name would appear, like the banner down the left side of the classic Start Menu, right?)
3. Grab your preferred desktop icons and background from Plus! 98 or a Wayback Machine'd Tucows'd win98full.icl or sc2kthm.zip or wherever and set the desktop icons via Display Properties > Desktop > Customize Desktop.
4. Use TweakUI for XP and X-Teq X-Setup Pro to fix the last few visible XP-isms that are normally only controllable via registry keys. (eg. setting auto-login, copying the theming settings to the login/logout status dialog so it feels Windows NT/2000 instead of Windows XP, hiding the Places sidebar in Open/Save dialogs, etc.)
   
   (I haven't got the boot screen changed because, the first time I tried it, BootSkin for XP got the system into a reboot loop that left me having to pick "last good configuration" from the F8 menu, and it's not yet a high enough priority.)
   
   Next step. See if removing the WiFi module (which is an option most Cx0 models apparently don't have installed anyway) will allow me to replace the 8GB disk-on-module I'm using (8GB can go a long way for Windows XP with Windows 9x-era apps if you're using leveraging "minimal install" and Samba to have your CD images for Alcohol 52% Free Edition and your media for WinAMP 2.95 on network shares on your regular PC.) with the kind of 90° 44-pin to CF adapter that my Igel 3/2 came with. (I could probably fit both if I can find a right-angle version of those active 44-pin to MicroSD adapters.)

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-06-13, 04:11:

bjwil1991 wrote on 2024-06-13, 03:09:

The nerve of some people. Even my Orion TV1333 has 85°C rated caps and the inside can boil water for crying out loud.

I'm just glad I fixed the mouse after all these years. Almost tossed it out, but I decided to keep it and see if replacing the cap would fix it or not make it work. Got so lucky that I was able to fix the thing. Now, I need to flatten the optical serial mouse pad since it's not flat anymore.

Just curious, but what is the significance of this particular mouse?

(Not judging! I actually replaced the left click button on a first generation Logitech Optical Mouse almost 20 years ago because I wanted to keep using it on a second PC... I still have it!)

It has 3 buttons (second is I believe the left double-click or maybe for scrolling). It's for my 386 desktop so it can have a mouse connected to the KVS box I have.