Run into problems with my Hercules Tandon hardware - see below, on some games (usually emulated) the screen goes bonkers.

Not sure what to do, as the monitor doesn't have any V.HOLD and H.HOLD dials. *cries a little*

Not so much today as the past week. Tried to dualboot DOS and Windows 98, and was clearly going about it the wrong way from the first picture.

Then installed System Commander 2000 which made life so much easier. But then a nasty graphical glitch, swiftly solved with a mod of SYSTEM.INI.

Now just driver tinkerage, hopefully

Not much help in this thread, but fortunately Vogoner 133MHz came to the rescue and gave advice as follows:

133MHz wrote:

That looks like the card is putting out 60Hz vertical frequency when running those games and the monitor is only syncing to the standard 50Hz for MDA/Hercules. A quick tweak of the V.HOLD control should sort it out, but if your monitor doesn't expose said control to the outside you'll have to open it up and look for it on the circuit board to adjust it while looking at the screen. You can find a balance where it will work on both 50 and 60Hz so you don't have to fiddle with it anymore.

I did, very cautiously, and - lo and behold - it worked!

Awesome!
Love your amber goodness 😁

appiah4 wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Why? It is working like a charm. It is the same compound, found in the glue that you use for plastic model building. Just checke […]
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appiah4 wrote:

Acetone and plastics is a big no no you should have used plastic cement easily found in most scale model / hobby shops.

Why? It is working like a charm. It is the same compound, found in the glue that you use for plastic model building.
Just checked to see if there was beginning to show any damage on the outer surface, other than the pink'ish colour.
And everything seems like it is ok. The part that I have fused and the rods are feeling rock hard now.

Going to paint it anyway. I just have not found any colour that I like yet. Thinking about warm orange, earthtoned brown or
some other kind of 70's palette of cosy colour.

Pure acetone and diluted acetone found in plastic cement are not the same thing, that's like cleaning your electronics with pure acetic acid because vinegar cleans rust well 😀

Been thinking a bit. Are you reading "concentrated" when I write "pure"? By pure, I am talking about the standard one, that you buy to clean brushes, after you have painted ouside fences and woodwork. You know, the liquid type.

The Amiga500 case still holds up. Nothing has eaten through the aprox 5mm thick plastic case.

Installed MS-DOS games that are on my ESS1869 driver CD in DOSBox:

1Raptor: Call of the Shadows (Apogee)
2Blake Stone: Aliens of Gold (Apogee) --> Wolfenstein 3D clone
3Dynamite Joe (Computers Communications & Visions) --> sounds like it's based off of the movie or TV show from the 1960's
4Iko San (Computers Communications & Visions) --> Tetris clone
5Krypton Egg (Computers Communications & Visions) --> Breakout clone

These are all shareware (meaning not full versions).

bjwil1991 wrote:

Raptor: Call of the Shadows (Apogee) --> 1943/1944 clone

May you be forgiven for this blasphemy.

OldCat wrote:

bjwil1991 wrote:

Raptor: Call of the Shadows (Apogee) --> 1943/1944 clone

May you be forgiven for this blasphemy.

Fixed it.

OldCat wrote:

Not much help in this thread, but fortunately Vogoner 133MHz came to the rescue and gave advice as follows: […]
Show full quote

Not much help in this thread, but fortunately Vogoner 133MHz came to the rescue and gave advice as follows:

133MHz wrote:

That looks like the card is putting out 60Hz vertical frequency when running those games and the monitor is only syncing to the standard 50Hz for MDA/Hercules. A quick tweak of the V.HOLD control should sort it out, but if your monitor doesn't expose said control to the outside you'll have to open it up and look for it on the circuit board to adjust it while looking at the screen. You can find a balance where it will work on both 50 and 60Hz so you don't have to fiddle with it anymore.

I did, very cautiously, and - lo and behold - it worked!

it_works.jpg

I don't know.... First up, Bubble Bobble looks so cool in monochrome. I am just not shure if it is yellow or green that are the most cool one. 😀

brostenen wrote:

I don't know.... First up, Bubble Bobble looks so cool in monochrome. I am just not shure if it is yellow or green that are the most cool one. 😀

I like both. Got Amstrad CPC with green monitor (GT65), for example. But love amber.

Was there not red monochrome too? Or do I mistake colours for one another.

brostenen wrote:

Was there not red monochrome too? Or do I mistake colours for one another.

When my mom worked for Hartford Insurance for Database entry from the late 1980's early 1990's, the Wang computers had monitors that would allow someone to change the color of the font to their preferred choice and I believe red was one of them. It depends on the make and model of the monitors.

I did a bit or surgery on the USB/Firewire/Sata card i recently bought.

I'll be testing the card here in a bit in a PC. I just ordered replacement flash chips from mouser. Larger ones. For the uninitiated, you can flash a different bios onto the SIL 3112 based sata cards to let them work on Macintosh machines. I intend to use this card in my desktop beige G3. this will let me connect a proper mouse, and boot from sata. The firewire is just for show. The last 2 pci slots are for Voodoo 2 cards. That fills all 3 slots I have.

Interesting to see something like this.

the_ultra_code wrote:

That's why you go on Amazon and pay $20 less. :) […]
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dionb wrote:

Actually, this StarTech ATX PSU should do the trick, no?
https://www.startech.com/Computer-Parts/PSUs/ … ply~ATXPOWER300

Yep, that has -5V and nice beefy 3.3V and 5V lines. If (big question) it's reliable and actually can deliver those specs it should be ideal for retro stuff, albeit at a stiff price for a noname low-end thing. An ATX-to-ATX adapter with -5V converter would be cheaper...

That's why you go on Amazon and pay $20 less. 😀

I'll try out the StarTech solution (I mean, it's not like at least a quarter of the parts I have used in both my Pentium 3 and 4 machines are StarTech 🤣); I prefer new vs. old, and purpose-built over adapted, but that's just me. 😀

But I'll keep that pre-2002 rule in mind for PSUs if I plan to do anymore Pentium-and-before builds in the future. You can find plenty of great deals on ebay for great parts. I think today, though, I'm too lazy to do the ebay search. 😀

Thanks!

So, I finally got that StarTech PSU, and hooked it up, flipped the switch, and... nothing. Same damn behavior.

However, I noticed something new. If I remove the CMOS battery, and turn on the motherboard, and flip the PSU's switch, it does nothing (which is good?). Re-insert the battery, and again nothing happens, just like a normal board. Only when I press the power switch connected to the motherboard to normally turn on the board that the same aforementioned behavior re-appears, and, like before, I can only turn off the board by flipping the PSU's switch. See for yourself.

https://youtu.be/4Px8A7YSf2o

It makes me wonder: Could it be a BIOS problem? At this point, I'm grasping at straws. I'm not as knowledgeable and/or skillful as some of you here, and from what I can tell, the motherboard seems to be in great condition. Not dirty, normal-looking caps, no obviously missing parts, etc.

So, I'll get one of those USB BIOS-chip flashers, and manually flash the chip and see if that magically works. If it doesn't... I'll give up on it, and look for an alternative (unless anyone else here has another suggestion). It would be sad, though, to call this board "dead". It seems to be so rare that it was the only one of its kind on ebay. I found another third-party seller selling a similar if not the same version of this board, but for around $200 - IMO too much that it isn't worth it. The only other board that I can see so far that offers most of what this board offers is the Asus SPAX, a SiS-chipset board with one less PCI and ISA slot, but I think that won't cut it (just a gut feeling). I think I'll finally have to break with my year-old tradition of only buying Asus motherboards. Bummer. 😒

It could be a corrupt BIOS EEPROM, either due to misflash by previous owner, or just age-related degradation.

An EEPROM flasher is never a bad investment - but don't get your hopes up too much for this board.

Similar situation here, but self-inflicted:

I bought a load of boards containing an Abit BE6-II. Thing had bad, leaking caps all over the place, but it actually POSTed when I tested it. So turned it off and put it in 'must solder' box. Took a while to get all the needed caps (tiny 1500uF 6.3V are hard to come by), but 11 of those and 6 1000uF 10V caps later I was ready for a test run just now...

...and it didn't get as far as with the bad caps. Hung on 0d on my POST cards. That's the famous "doesn't occur in official documentation but indicates board is very not happy" AWARD code. Did a double check of my soldering, re-touched all 34 legs, found two suspect ones I re-did and... no change whatsoever. I fear I've toasted something :'(

dionb wrote:

An EEPROM flasher is never a bad investment - but don't get your hopes up too much for this board.

Oh, I promise you, I'm not. 😀

I've had it pretty lucky up until now, so I would think it would make sense that I would finally start running into... bad luck, eh?

Besides, this just screams "Problems that only the gods know how to fix.", it seems just that strange. I've never in my whole career of this hobby of my (a whole year 🤣; it's a drop in the bucket compared to you guys) anything like this before.

the_ultra_code wrote:

*snip* https://www.flickr.com/photos/157233298@N06/4 … 57688404666285/ *snip*

There is no ram in that board, it aint gonna do jack. The flashing led tells me it's trying to tell you that. Is the beeper plugged into the right place? It looks like you have the beeper and power led swapped.

that said, it is possible some boards will flash the power LED instead of beep, but i've never seen one do that before.

honestly you need some pc100 ram in that before I'd try anything else.

Update: (11/5/2018) Sorry. Accidentally deleted the video linked below a long time ago. :p

https://photos.app.goo.gl/g15JPkvDFq5mMQDR8 (dead link)

I think I speak for myself in the video.

Also, now that I think about it, that stick of SDRAM in the beginning of the video most likely isn't from a server, since it's non-ECC. Stupid me. 😀

it is supposed to be non-ecc. But in honestly it should not matter. experience has taught me ecc ram in a non-ecc board will work fine, just wont be used.

is there any pattern to the led blinking?