Did some recordings for the VGMPF wiki and uploaded the files there.

Am going through all my boxes of old games, but stumbled onto a box full of old manuals and driver disks which I'm currently sorting out.
Even the manuals are interesting, many even predate Pentium and most of the manuals I don't even own the components the manuals are made for, like IDE/VLB controllers and some motherboard and sound card manuals.
I even found a seemingly complete manual of an old AT Alpha board (PCI 33 something) which consists of 2 booklets, one with "Digital" on the front cover and some kind of window in the front cover.
Going through my driver disks next, it's quite a stack!

Afterwards I'm gonna see if there's stuff that would make sense to be uploaded to vogonsdrivers (might also scan some of the ancient manuals).

Spent the morning and the evening trying to talk to someone over a teletype. I run a copper POTS line and he has VoIP. No matter how lossless of a CODEC he tried we still kept running into line corruption which became apparent in malformed ASCII and the carrier signal being filtered out as noise.

Put together a scrap 478 system to give to a friend to replace his fried Core2 laptop. Because a good P4 is still good enough for basic web browsing and thanks to the rise of HTML can actually play Youtube videos at 360p. Also turning a 3.06/1mb/533 Gateway laptop into a digital picture frame.

Tetrium wrote:

Am going through all my boxes of old games, but stumbled onto a box full of old manuals and driver disks which I'm currently sor […]
Show full quote

Am going through all my boxes of old games, but stumbled onto a box full of old manuals and driver disks which I'm currently sorting out.
Even the manuals are interesting, many even predate Pentium and most of the manuals I don't even own the components the manuals are made for, like IDE/VLB controllers and some motherboard and sound card manuals.
I even found a seemingly complete manual of an old AT Alpha board (PCI 33 something) which consists of 2 booklets, one with "Digital" on the front cover and some kind of window in the front cover.
Going through my driver disks next, it's quite a stack!

Afterwards I'm gonna see if there's stuff that would make sense to be uploaded to vogonsdrivers (might also scan some of the ancient manuals).

Quality scan's of any 386/486 manuals, seem to be in lack on the internet.

brostenen wrote:

Tetrium wrote:

Am going through all my boxes of old games, but stumbled onto a box full of old manuals and driver disks which I'm currently sor […]
Show full quote

Am going through all my boxes of old games, but stumbled onto a box full of old manuals and driver disks which I'm currently sorting out.
Even the manuals are interesting, many even predate Pentium and most of the manuals I don't even own the components the manuals are made for, like IDE/VLB controllers and some motherboard and sound card manuals.
I even found a seemingly complete manual of an old AT Alpha board (PCI 33 something) which consists of 2 booklets, one with "Digital" on the front cover and some kind of window in the front cover.
Going through my driver disks next, it's quite a stack!

Afterwards I'm gonna see if there's stuff that would make sense to be uploaded to vogonsdrivers (might also scan some of the ancient manuals).

Quality scan's of any 386/486 manuals, seem to be in lack on the internet.

Well, I actually went into the attic to seek those NOS 386 boards I bought a couple years ago (these had a paper manual) and I searched for maybe an hour or so, but I failed to locate them (they should be somewhere though...).

I did bring down these external ZIP drives, was planning to do so for some time now and the talk about ZIP USB drives kinda gave me the idea to actually do it.

link to talk about 750 USB ZIP drives:
Bought these (retro) hardware today

But wait! 😲

There's more! 😁

Because I found 2 even more interesting bits which I had both displaced and were lost for years!

In the first pic, the item on the left is confirmed working and I played Tetris for a bit, been like 10 years!! 😁

Recent retro: Tried to get surround sound from current Netflix app on current Roku OS 7.0 on a 2012-era Roku 2 XS to a 2011 Pioneer VSX-52TX audio/video receiver without HDMI.

Setup: Currently HDMI from a LG BD-530 goes into an HDFury3 (with 1080i DIP switches thrown) and then into an ancient Pioneer PRO-610HD 1080i CRT TV. However, the HDFury3 can do digital optical out and when using that, the VSX-52TX only receives a digital Stereo signal, not 5.1. Therefore audio is carried via Digital Coax from the BD-530 to the VSX-52TX. But when the HDMI is switched to a Roku 2 XS, the only possible outputs then become either the Roku 2 XS's analog out, or the HDFury3's digital optical out.

Resolution: Cannot be done, Roku 2 XS only passes through Dolby Digital Plus signals via HDMI. You can get the Roku 2 XS to output stereo sound from Netflix via HDMI (or via the analog output) and have the VSX-52TX apply Dolby ProLogic decoding or various surround effects, but that is all. Also, all (?) HDMI "audio extractors" cannot decode/downconvert/transcode Dolby Digital Plus to Dolby Digital either. There's a firmware update for the HDFury3 that I haven't applied yet, but I don't expect it to make a difference.

Possible Quasi-Affordable Solution(s):
1. Get a streamer that supports decoding/downconverting/transcoding the Dolby Digital Plus down to Dolby Digital 5.1. The Amazon Fire TV (box) seems to do this, possibly others. This may work, for now, until 7.1 becomes the norm. However, would miss out on the Roku channel-agnosticism.
2. ($$$) Get a new audio/video receiver. If sticking with Pioneer, the Pioneer VSX-90 or VSX-1130-K may provide similar power (2015-2016 models). Older 2012-2013 Pioneer models may offer Dolby Digital Plus decoding and as many analog ports as the VS-52TX.

Honestly I need a new setup, but I'll keep applying band-aids until I can drop serious dough on that.

Tetris are the only game that are a must have, when the old brick is in the collection.
The machine just screams TETRIS when you look at it. Never mind mario. You have Tetris.

HighTreason wrote:

I attempted to record a play-through of one of my own Duke 3D maps but getting Fraps to do anything coherent in Windows 7 is not easy and the recording seems to have randomly cut out at times.

That's because when fraps records anything it writes out raw, uncompressed video in real time, which is very demanding on hardware. Essentially you need a storage option that can sustain a constant 100 - 130 MB/s to handle recording video with FRAPS. I delt with that myself years ago and used to try to record with FRAPS. And I used to get dropped frames in video all the time until I figured that part out, then it was smooth sailing.

I went with a hardware raid array myself and that was the end of my fraps problems.

SquallStrife wrote:

Got my IBM 5150 booting from a CF card. Full write-up and video to come!

From VCF:

This card is now working with an IDE->CF adaptor. […]
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I used a 74LS04 inverter, and built the following "translation": […]
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I used a 74LS04 inverter, and built the following "translation":

ISA A0...A2 -> Card A0...A2
ISA A3 -> Invert -> Card A9
ISA A4 -> Invert -> Card A4
ISA A5 -> Invert -> Card A5
ISA A6 -> Invert -> Card A6
ISA A7 -> Invert -> Card A7
ISA A8 -> Card A8
ISA A9 -> Card A3

This card is now working with an IDE->CF adaptor.

Here's the modded ISA IDE card. I desoldered the 74-series chips to "break in" to the address lines and do my translation. I also de-soldered the floppy controller IC since the FDC disable jumper seemed to only work intermittently. Another modification I did was to cut the trace to the "ALE" pin on the card edge, the CF adaptor was sinking it and causing the system not to boot.

<snip>

That seems like an awful lot of effort for something unnecessary to me.... I worked with a friend at his house this past summer 2015 on something similar, getting CF-IDE adapters to work and boot in a 8086 and 286 systems. All we had to do was just use older small CF cards, like 64-512 MB, and just google their C/H/S parameters and then enter em in bios and they worked flawlessly with no modifications to an old ISA IDE adapter, no soldering. Just worked right off and booted normally.

Might be a different story with IBM though, we were using generic PC clone motherboards.

brostenen wrote:

Tetris are the only game that are a must have, when the old brick is in the collection.
The machine just screams TETRIS when you look at it. Never mind mario. You have Tetris.

And, of course, you can't have Tetris on the old grey brick without having this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmCCQxVBfyM

Anyways... Been messing around with my Contura 3/25 some more, erasing the interesting smell it has whilst trying to play Blue Öyster Cult songs on it using the PC speaker audio driver for Windows 3.1. I still want to take an image of the HDD on that thing...

kithylin wrote:

HighTreason wrote:

I attempted to record a play-through of one of my own Duke 3D maps but getting Fraps to do anything coherent in Windows 7 is not easy and the recording seems to have randomly cut out at times.

That's because when fraps records anything it writes out raw, uncompressed video in real time, which is very demanding on hardware. Essentially you need a storage option that can sustain a constant 100 - 130 MB/s to handle recording video with FRAPS. I delt with that myself years ago and used to try to record with FRAPS. And I used to get dropped frames in video all the time until I figured that part out, then it was smooth sailing.

I went with a hardware raid array myself and that was the end of my fraps problems.

My RAID can handle over 280MB/s easily as this is a requirement for my capture setup writing uncompressed 12-Bit video to the drive direct from the card. Fraps doesn't even come close and dropped frames aren't the problem. The problem is the retarded way in which Windows 7 handles audio, selecting Stereo Mix yields nothing unless I go and tick the box to hear each device through the speakers...

This doesn't work as I can already hear the device, so ticking the box causes an echo as it outputs with a delay, very off-putting when I hear my own voice come back to me a second later instead of in realtime. As usual, things which worked fine on the same hardware under XP are a total fucking chore, it is inevitable that some day I will have to get an external mixer. That or break out my old "Butter Box" but that probably isn't good, it is literally a mixer I made age 11 that lives in a butter carton and it never worked well.

I got it to half way work, but I can only use the two "devices" - those being the application and my mic - so no more keyboarding or second music sources in the middle of anything. Also, as the volume is handled by the recording setup thingy instead of by the playback mixer's loopback to Stereo Mix I can't actually tell if the levels are right until I have already recorded it.

Sutekh94 wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Tetris are the only game that are a must have, when the old brick is in the collection.
The machine just screams TETRIS when you look at it. Never mind mario. You have Tetris.

And, of course, you can't have Tetris on the old grey brick without having this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmCCQxVBfyM

Always that sound track! 😁

kithylin wrote:

That seems like an awful lot of effort for something unnecessary to me.... I worked with a friend at his house this past summer 2015 on something similar, getting CF-IDE adapters to work and boot in a 8086 and 286 systems. All we had to do was just use older small CF cards, like 64-512 MB, and just google their C/H/S parameters and then enter em in bios and they worked flawlessly with no modifications to an old ISA IDE adapter, no soldering. Just worked right off and booted normally.

Might be a different story with IBM though, we were using generic PC clone motherboards.

It will be in the full write up, but there's a very specific difference in the original IBM 5150 that necessitates the translation: On the 5150, the I/O range 000-1FF is system reserved, and normal IDE adaptors reside at 1F0/3F0. On the PC/XT 5160 (and all other clones henceforth), the reserved range is reduced to 000-0FF. Thus, if I was using an XT or higher, then simply installing the XTIDE Universal BIOS and connecting the CF card to an unmodified IDE card would be sufficient.

My soldering transposes the card's expected I/O range to 300/308, making it 5150-friendly.

Edit: Also, INT 13h services are provided by XT-IDE Universal BIOS in this system, which auto-detects the drive geometry. 5150 BIOS has no fixed disk support.

There is a little DOS tool that can tell you the drive parameters: http://kevparr.com/misc/whatide.php

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

There is a little DOS tool that can tell you the drive parameters: http://kevparr.com/misc/whatide.php

I was just about to suggest that nice piece of software. Thanks Phil.

Beegle wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

There is a little DOS tool that can tell you the drive parameters: http://kevparr.com/misc/whatide.php

I was just about to suggest that nice piece of software. Thanks Phil.

That doesn't help if you can't communicate with the interface card! 😉

SquallStrife wrote:

Beegle wrote:

PhilsComputerLab wrote:

There is a little DOS tool that can tell you the drive parameters: http://kevparr.com/misc/whatide.php

I was just about to suggest that nice piece of software. Thanks Phil.

That doesn't help if you can't communicate with the interface card! 😉

I agree completely. In my case it was more a reply for this bit :

kithylin wrote:

All we had to do was just use older small CF cards, like 64-512 MB, and just google their C/H/S parameters and then enter em in bios

because searching for C/H/S information on Google is a bit tedious

Sorry for the misunderstanding 😀

Beegle wrote:

I agree completely. In my case it was more a reply for this bit : […]
Show full quote

I agree completely. In my case it was more a reply for this bit :

kithylin wrote:

All we had to do was just use older small CF cards, like 64-512 MB, and just google their C/H/S parameters and then enter em in bios

because searching for C/H/S information on Google is a bit tedious

Sorry for the misunderstanding 😀

No need to be sorry, friend. In this text-based medium, it's easy to get wires crossed. No harm, no foul! 😀

Tetrium wrote:

Sutekh94 wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Tetris are the only game that are a must have, when the old brick is in the collection.
The machine just screams TETRIS when you look at it. Never mind mario. You have Tetris.

And, of course, you can't have Tetris on the old grey brick without having this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NmCCQxVBfyM

Always that sound track! 😁

Still have my original one.. with tetris, super Mario, Teenage Mutant ninja turtles, Robocop and some Mario Puzzle game... 😊
Only the line on the utter side of the screen is getting a bit fade, for the rest everything still works including the click on light for playing in the dark. 😘 I even still have most of the boxes of the games.