Jed118 wrote:

Just for the copper?

Wow, this guy would lose his mind if he saw the amount of heavy duty power cables we simply throw out every week.

Copper prices are roughly 4 times what they were in 2000; dollar terms 400% return in 20 years is pretty neat.. Don't you wish you had saved them instead now?

We still have boxes of them, but not the space.

So, I finally brought home an old PC a coworker've given me for cleaning his Athlon XP. It was a nice one too, but he had for some use for it. I'm happier for getting this one anyways. I was tinkering with it at work when I had some idle time, added an HDD and a CD drive, took out a card, added another to test if it turns on.

It actually did. Had some RAM beeps, but it turned out it was just dirt in the slot. The most surprising thing was the contents of the HDD I had for the past 15 or 20 years but never turned on. It had a Windows 95 installed and was used in a PC at the local university. It might have some interesting data on it.

These drives were the closest to be period correct currently available in my collection. I'm thinking whether I should use a HDD about twice the site and add a 5" floppy drive. I have a free one whit a neat red led.

I don't khow how good the motherboard were back then, it seems alright to me. It still has its product page up at Gigabyte (at least it had in February). The only major issue I'm having with it is the placement of the CPU socket. I was planning to use a voodoo with a 4MB Matrox Millennium, but the cards are too long for this one. I'm thinking that maybe a Mystique or a 2MB Millennium would work (my G450 is short enough). However it had 64MB SD RAM and a 200MHz Pentium MMX.

These were the cards installed when I got the thing. I'm planning to use the Vibra 16S in the K5 PC I've shown last time. The Voodoo will go back inside. I took it out to see if it works and I was lucky with this one too.

The other cards it will get or already had are an S3 Trio64V+ with 2MB memory, at least until I finde the perfect Matrox that fits, this 10Mbps network adaptor, it only has cosmetic damage. I'll probably replace that eprom socket at a later time. And finally a Sound Blaster AWE64 Value I picked up 1 or 2 weeks ago especially for this PC. I'm also considering adding an USB controller to make it easier to transfer data, but I'd like to keep it as close to be period correct as I can and adding the PC to my home network will also make it unnecessary.

So... Happy Easter!

Please take a detailed picture of that AT io-shield! There's another topic here in the forum for 3d printing one.

This JTS "CHAMP" hard drive gives me an even more uncanny feeling than the L&C power supply.
The design was done by infamous Kalok.

Never seen a working drive of this brand.
Does the drive actually sound "Kaaaaaa-looooookkkk" as some people suggested back then?

You can hear one running in this video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWJ6ZjSn580

I have one that works by the way, I guess all the bad ones were put in the bin decades ago !

Then maybe I should replace the PSU though it was probably a set with the case. As for the HDD, I only turned it on once in february I think, it's not a silent one, but I don't remember the exact sound. A lot of older drives work really loud.

How about a Delta DSP300PB-2 A or a Forton FSP145-50NI? I trust FSP, but I don't know how good their earlier PSUs are and I heared good about Delta Electronics, but I have no experience with them.

RandomStranger wrote:

...this 10Mbps network adaptor, it only has cosmetic damage. I'll probably replace that eprom socket at a later time.

I have a box full of mint 10Mbps PCI NICs with both BNC and RJ-45 ports that I want to dump for just the cost of shipping. So PM me if interested in some.

There exist L&C power supplies that are not bad. If you are lucky this is one of them.
Maybe take some pics and post them in the thread "A tale of two PSUs", to let others judge.

retardware wrote:

There exist L&C power supplies that are not bad. If you are lucky this is one of them.
Maybe take some pics and post them in the thread "A tale of two PSUs", to let others judge.

Thank you! I will after I cleaned the dirt out of it. But it's really light so I don't expect much.

And I just noticed that the board actually have an USB controller so all I need is a backplate with an 8pin connector.

I moved my Pentium 233mmx setup into the case I picked up recently. Made every effort to try and keep the cabling as tidy as possible!

Ordered some stuff on eBay to modify my Goteks. OLED screens and an USB adapter to flash the FlashFloppy firmware.

So after soldering new caps and reassembling the 5,25 Floppydrive i mentioned earlier, it is living again, which was the last missing part in my DX2-80 system:

- Soyo Sy-025J2 with 16MB Simm-30
- (Octek) Machspeed VGA Gui 2300 (VIO 2300) CL GD5424
- SB16 CT2890 with a Dreamblaster Module
- Aska SST-2946 (UMC Enhanced) VLB-Controller
- 2GB Hdd, CDROM, 3,5" and the mentioned 5,25" Floppydrive

Greetings!

I have been working on some minor upgrades for my Tandy. I rummaged through my processors and found an 80287XL math co-processor that I decided to install. 😀

Went and picked up this item that I ordered, today:

Amstrad CPC 464 with CTM 644 Colour Monitor, 3 joysticks, a lightpen, the instruction manuals & around 90 or so games!

Been playing around with it briefly today. I'll probably be spending most of the weekend on this thing. 😎

As expected with age, the joysticks are in need of some cleaning and tlc. I already have plenty of joysticks & controllers for these 8-bit micro systems though, so nothing major.

I'll probably purchase the disk interface, SD card reader & 512KB RAM upgrade at some point this week, for faster game loading and the ability to use CP/M!

I keep meaning to move one of the Dell 2007FPbs on the bench to replace my plain 2007, so I can test the Commodore. I still need to order a cord (or just go find one) for the Commodore 1071 (which is still in my car).

Still not 100% sure it will work but it was used for NTSC surveillance cams so I think it will handle the signal.

Testing MAC RAM. Keep looking around for things I can do without expending energy.

I think I figured out how to attach the monitor to a 1" upright from my steel shelving without buying a $30 mount. If I do it I'll get pics. It's not *that* creative. But it might work.

I found a Pentium 233 MMX in my Box O Processors. Will have to see if either the PB or the Compaq P1s support it so I can test it.

Still have that Oki printer in the car, also haven't brought that up to test it.

Lazy week.

PTherapist wrote:

Went and picked up this item that I ordered, today: […]
Show full quote

Went and picked up this item that I ordered, today:

Amstrad CPC 464 with CTM 644 Colour Monitor, 3 joysticks, a lightpen, the instruction manuals & around 90 or so games!

Been playing around with it briefly today. I'll probably be spending most of the weekend on this thing. 😎

As expected with age, the joysticks are in need of some cleaning and tlc. I already have plenty of joysticks & controllers for these 8-bit micro systems though, so nothing major.

I'll probably purchase the disk interface, SD card reader & 512KB RAM upgrade at some point this week, for faster game loading and the ability to use CP/M!

Nice pickeup! I've just recently discovered the Amstrad scene is pretty vibrant and has some impressive releases. Makes me wish I'd kept my 6128.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcZ7-E7Mx-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DetN_pol6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WkvRkQexOY

I'd love to try those games on real hardware 😀

PTherapist wrote:

Went and picked up this item that I ordered, today: […]
Show full quote

Went and picked up this item that I ordered, today:

Amstrad CPC 464 with CTM 644 Colour Monitor, 3 joysticks, a lightpen, the instruction manuals & around 90 or so games!

Been playing around with it briefly today. I'll probably be spending most of the weekend on this thing. 😎

As expected with age, the joysticks are in need of some cleaning and tlc. I already have plenty of joysticks & controllers for these 8-bit micro systems though, so nothing major.

I'll probably purchase the disk interface, SD card reader & 512KB RAM upgrade at some point this week, for faster game loading and the ability to use CP/M!

I love tape loading. Feels way more in place, with 8-bit machines like Amstrad and C64.
And you can still buy blank NOS casette tapes from places like Japan. Still decent priced.

Going 8-Bit my self today.

Testing a new SD2IEC drive and a new Epyx FastLoader Redloaded. Load times are reduced dramatically. One cracktro loaded in 11 seconds with the Fastloader, and 53 seconds without the Fastloader.

Duouk2000 wrote:

Nice pickeup! I've just recently discovered the Amstrad scene is pretty vibrant and has some impressive releases. Makes me wish […]
Show full quote

PTherapist wrote:

Went and picked up this item that I ordered, today: […]
Show full quote

Went and picked up this item that I ordered, today:

Amstrad CPC 464 with CTM 644 Colour Monitor, 3 joysticks, a lightpen, the instruction manuals & around 90 or so games!

Been playing around with it briefly today. I'll probably be spending most of the weekend on this thing. 😎

As expected with age, the joysticks are in need of some cleaning and tlc. I already have plenty of joysticks & controllers for these 8-bit micro systems though, so nothing major.

I'll probably purchase the disk interface, SD card reader & 512KB RAM upgrade at some point this week, for faster game loading and the ability to use CP/M!

Nice pickeup! I've just recently discovered the Amstrad scene is pretty vibrant and has some impressive releases. Makes me wish I'd kept my 6128.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcZ7-E7Mx-Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_DetN_pol6g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WkvRkQexOY

I'd love to try those games on real hardware 😀

I just received a DDI5 From Zaxon at "Sell my Retro" 2 weeks ago, has 512k ram, USB and floppy interface, and an OLED display, and 3D Printed case.
Overall very happy with it. It's the only way You can get the most from these machines.
Only problem He includes no documentation whatsoever, but a bit of research or asking for help on cpcwiki will get You running quickly.