wrote:I found an Athlon "classic" (750) on an ASUS motherboard for $15.
I didn't own one back then until the Thunderbird, or maybe XP.
I got it, it still works. But wow, is that fan loud and the CPU get hot.I forgot about the early 2000's and CPU heat... 😀
wrote:Got a NIB (maybe not IB? but never used, nonetheless) HP SK-2511A keyboard for the HP Pavilion. There's one more available on eBay here
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-HP-104-Key-Intern … gh/302038451232
Anyone used these? No idea if they're decent but for that price I figured it'd be somewhat period-correct.
They are mushy. I would only bother if you want to match to whatever HP Brio (or maybe late Vectra) it goes with...
wrote:wrote:I found an Athlon "classic" (750) on an ASUS motherboard for $15.
I didn't own one back then until the Thunderbird, or maybe XP.
I got it, it still works. But wow, is that fan loud and the CPU get hot.I forgot about the early 2000's and CPU heat... 😀
Hmmm I thought at one point AMD was kind of low dissipation for a good chunk of time one reason I didn't really want to upgrade after the P4 3.06GHz. The damn jet engine fan cooler could drive you nuts. What was the best AMD with lowest wattage and heat back in the day?
wrote:wrote:Got a NIB (maybe not IB? but never used, nonetheless) HP SK-2511A keyboard for the HP Pavilion. There's one more available on eBay here
http://www.ebay.com/itm/NEW-HP-104-Key-Intern … gh/302038451232
Anyone used these? No idea if they're decent but for that price I figured it'd be somewhat period-correct.
They are mushy. I would only bother if you want to match to whatever HP Brio (or maybe late Vectra) it goes with...
Aw, oh well. Thanks. It's going with a '96 HP Pavilion
HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
wrote:eBay also has the option of using "stock" images and also asks users.. or at least use to if the pictures they uploaded could be added to the database for pictures for the products they are selling IF the user is making a posting for an item for which information for the exact item in the eBay database.
Just an FYI, that's only for New items. Used items are explicitly -NOT- allowed to have or use stock images as the only image for a listing in ebay, it's actually a policy. I've reported a lot of sellers on ebay that try to sell used items with stock photos and no actual photo of the actual item. Ebay can and will delete their listings for it.
wrote:wrote:eBay also has the option of using "stock" images and also asks users.. or at least use to if the pictures they uploaded could be added to the database for pictures for the products they are selling IF the user is making a posting for an item for which information for the exact item in the eBay database.
Just an FYI, that's only for New items. Used items are explicitly -NOT- allowed to have or use stock images as the only image for a listing in ebay, it's actually a policy. I've reported a lot of sellers on ebay that try to sell used items with stock photos and no actual photo of the actual item. Ebay can and will delete their listings for it.
I don't think that is entirely true. I was offered to use stock photos from ebay when i sell some used items.
I don't use them, but I have been offered on more common items.
It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes.
wrote:I don't think that is entirely true. I was offered to use stock photos from ebay when i sell some used items.
I don't use them, but I have been offered on more common items.
http://pages.ebay.com/help/policies/picture.html
under "Not Allowed": "Stock photos for used, damaged or defective items"
wrote:Make sure you hook up that 20pin MFM Hard drive connector that's loosely hanging almost off the pins or that Seagate hard drive […]
wrote:Looked quite unmodified to me so I powered on. All drives initialized and Post-Beep was there, but no picture on the screen. Was also not reproducable. Here we can see the reason why...
Make sure you hook up that 20pin MFM Hard drive connector that's loosely hanging almost off the pins or that Seagate hard drive won't be detectable.
Never seen such memory expansion connector
Haven't seen this before but boards like this existed back in the day from systems like the IBM PC where you had 64KB and needed some board to boost it 384KB or more. I think judging by the connector it's really an ISA 8-bit. But the problem is the board was too damn long so they decided to put another 8-bit ISA slot if you look at the far right stacked. So if you didn't put this into a case and removed the motherboard I think that memory board will work in any ISA slot. I think they customized this board for balancing the board rather than one end kind of dangling.
Yes sure, I also noticed the cable on the MFM connector. The Drive is a Seagate ST251-1 and seems to be working.
The Mainbaord seems to be similar to this one
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/AU … M-12-16-II.html
So it is not ISA but a 32-bit external memory card (8MB).
I inserted my diagnotic card in the front slot by mistake and it didnt work...so no ISA at all in this slot.
Not that much time at the moment, but I didnt want to wait too long to remove this battery. Therfore disassembled verything, the case enjoyed a bath in the dishwahser.
Cleaned the board but now it gives
00-02
(02)[Beep]=1-1-3 CMOS write/read test in-progress or failure.
Fixed the 5V trace on the board, but all others seem to be OK. Have to take a closer look at this.
Install a battery holder and appropriate battery. Some systems won't boot without a battery present.
wrote:Install a battery holder and appropriate battery. Some systems won't boot without a battery present.
Or a 5.5v memory super capacitor can be used in placed of the NiCd battery, or using a cordless phone NiMH battery pack to the motherboard (mounted somewhere safe, that is) since some boards don't have jumpers for an external battery pack.
Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser
wrote:Yes sure, I also noticed the cable on the MFM connector. The Drive is a Seagate ST251-1 and seems to be working. […]
wrote:Make sure you hook up that 20pin MFM Hard drive connector that's loosely hanging almost off the pins or that Seagate hard drive […]
wrote:Looked quite unmodified to me so I powered on. All drives initialized and Post-Beep was there, but no picture on the screen. Was also not reproducable. Here we can see the reason why...
Make sure you hook up that 20pin MFM Hard drive connector that's loosely hanging almost off the pins or that Seagate hard drive won't be detectable.
Never seen such memory expansion connector
Haven't seen this before but boards like this existed back in the day from systems like the IBM PC where you had 64KB and needed some board to boost it 384KB or more. I think judging by the connector it's really an ISA 8-bit. But the problem is the board was too damn long so they decided to put another 8-bit ISA slot if you look at the far right stacked. So if you didn't put this into a case and removed the motherboard I think that memory board will work in any ISA slot. I think they customized this board for balancing the board rather than one end kind of dangling.
Yes sure, I also noticed the cable on the MFM connector. The Drive is a Seagate ST251-1 and seems to be working.
The Mainbaord seems to be similar to this one
http://stason.org/TULARC/pc/motherboards/A/AU … M-12-16-II.html
So it is not ISA but a 32-bit external memory card (8MB).
I inserted my diagnotic card in the front slot by mistake and it didnt work...so no ISA at all in this slot.Not that much time at the moment, but I didnt want to wait too long to remove this battery. Therfore disassembled verything, the case enjoyed a bath in the dishwahser.
Cleaned the board but now it gives
00-02
(02)[Beep]=1-1-3 CMOS write/read test in-progress or failure.Fixed the 5V trace on the board, but all others seem to be OK. Have to take a closer look at this.
A very strange motherboard indeed. From the link you provided.
SL1
32-bit external memory card (2MB)
SL2
32-bit external memory card (8MB)
So this indicates somehow it can get up to 8MB. How much onboard RAM could you install and would it add the 8MB on top of that or replace it? That would be impressive for a 286 back in the day. I think the most I would have seen typically might be 1MB on board but maybe 4MB could have been doable back then with a card.
But that link also warns on the 2MB card Note: The 512KB and 1.5MB settings are not recommended. So you are stuck with 1MB or 2MB .
I think the 8MB version was meant for certain motherboards with that peculiar slot placement. I don't think I ever had any of those. I only recall standard 8-bit and 16-bit ISA slots.
What is the name of that diagnostic board you are using?
I seem to recall one with name Blue in it that I have somewhere used in a computer store for testing systems.
Personally I'd hook up a regular internal PC speaker to the motherboard. Then get a VGA ISA card if you only got newer monitors for display output. Sometimes if you can't see the BIOS boot screen then you have some other issue that requires high level fixing which could be replacing capacitors or something more intense which I'd just move onto another MB unless you are an Engineer. Also some real older motherboards I had there was a MONO / COLOR switch so if this was set on Monochrome you would not get output possibly on VGA cards. So if you do own a monochrome monitor which I still have a few you could hook up a Monochrome graphics card to that. But what was common in that time era would have been a CGA card so finding those types of monitors are harder to come by if they still work. A few of mine have died over the years so VGA 8-bit cards are usually the best way to use these older relics. On top of all that I'd also hook back up that Floppy Disk/HD Controller card with a 5 1/4" 360KB drive with a bootable DOS disk like 3.30. Earlier 2.10 would have been great for these systems. If that controller card doesn't boot try another one. Sometimes these could also be bad and be the culprit. Also unhook the MFM Hard drive two cables 20pin and 34pin and disconnect the power on the Seagate hard drive side so it doesn't try to detect this. Sometimes a bad hard drive can stall the entire system from booting. I had a few Maxtors that gave up the ghost and I think it would try and detect it forever.
Trying to figure out the Hard Driver parameters was also another pain unless it was written on the drive. Then making sure your BIOS supported it. Assuming that Seagate still works I'd still go the Floppy Drive boot test first. Then you can try booting with the floppy drive lever disabled to see if the Hard drive can boot up to DOS if not you'll need the Floppy Disk method to low level format or use spinrite first to detect and fix any possible errors on the hard drive before using. These MFM hard drives always had tons of errors depending on the amount of usage it got. And not knowing the history of this computer this is the way to go before putting any data on it or you'll end up with a ton of CRC errors when accessing the files you thought successfully copied.
I can't remember if these memory upgrade boards simply worked and it recognized the full 8MB or did you have to load some DOS based driver before a memory manager to utilize it. Most of the systems I used the memory was socketed on the motherboard. And once 386 started using SIPPS or SIMMS it was less of a headache than cranking each chip one at a time.
wrote:wrote:Install a battery holder and appropriate battery. Some systems won't boot without a battery present.
Or a 5.5v memory super capacitor can be used in placed of the NiCd battery, or using a cordless phone NiMH battery pack to the motherboard (mounted somewhere safe, that is) since some boards don't have jumpers for an external battery pack.
The motherboards that could use 4 AA batteries were the nicest. But you had to make sure to replace these before they died or leaked and could damage the motherboard. I can't remember how long they typically lasted but they were easier to change. But from memory I don't recall any motherboards that didn't boot up without a battery pack. A lot of the earlier ones you had to buy a special I/O Clock card so that had a lithium battery on it to keep track of the date and time. Otherwise 1-1-1980 was usually the date. But I don't think that prevented any machine from booting. Which motherboards did you see this problem not booting up without a working battery?
wrote:wrote:Install a battery holder and appropriate battery. Some systems won't boot without a battery present.
Or a 5.5v memory super capacitor can be used in placed of the NiCd battery, or using a cordless phone NiMH battery pack to the motherboard (mounted somewhere safe, that is) since some boards don't have jumpers for an external battery pack.
Yes the board has an external battery header. I connected 3V to it (do not have something better at the moment) but it didnt change anything. Never seen a board that requires a battery connected to power on...
I am almost sure POST passes the 1st time I turned on the PC as I heard the seeking noise from both floppies. I think the VGA didnt initialize because the 5V trace was already broken, therefore the screen was black.
Hope I didnt destroy the board by powering on with a shortage...
wrote:Yes the board has an external battery header. I connected 3V to it (do not have something better at the moment) but it didnt cha […]
wrote:wrote:Install a battery holder and appropriate battery. Some systems won't boot without a battery present.
Or a 5.5v memory super capacitor can be used in placed of the NiCd battery, or using a cordless phone NiMH battery pack to the motherboard (mounted somewhere safe, that is) since some boards don't have jumpers for an external battery pack.
Yes the board has an external battery header. I connected 3V to it (do not have something better at the moment) but it didnt change anything. Never seen a board that requires a battery connected to power on...
I am almost sure POST passes the 1st time I turned on the PC as I heard the seeking noise from both floppies. I think the VGA didnt initialize because the 5V trace was already broken, therefore the screen was black.Hope I didnt destroy the board by powering on with a shortage...
Sounds like you have better engineering background to troubleshoot this. Usually if you see a spark or smoke or smell smoke that's a bad sign and it happened once when I inserted my 8-bit Sound Blaster into a 486. Luckily whatever popped or smoked didn't kill the Sound Blaster.
But I'd try all the methods I have outlined to troubleshoot but if it already fried I don't see any more harm it could do hooking up the PC internal speaker and removing your diagnostic card. Use a cheap VGA 8-bit card and hook it up to a monitor. You can forget about hooking up the HDD/Floppy controller. It should still boot up or count the memory with ticks. Now if it doesn't show any video output or hear any ticking on the PC internal speaker then it could be the CPU or the onboard memory is not installed or possibly one of the chips is defective causing it not to start the memory count. Oh you'll also need to hook up a 5 PIN DIN keyboard to see if the keyboard LED lights turn on for Caps lock, Num lock, and Scroll Lock. If this doesn't light up on the keyboard or able to turn it off and on then you might have more serious problems.
What was the 8-bit diagnostic board you were using in that picture?
wrote:The motherboards that could use 4 AA batteries were the nicest. But you had to make sure to replace these before they died or leaked and could damage the motherboard. I can't remember how long they typically lasted but they were easier to change. But from memory I don't recall any motherboards that didn't boot up without a battery pack. A lot of the earlier ones you had to buy a special I/O Clock card so that had a lithium battery on it to keep track of the date and time. Otherwise 1-1-1980 was usually the date. But I don't think that prevented any machine from booting. Which motherboards did you see this problem not booting up without a working battery?
I have my second 486 here that I did just that with. I got a set of 4 x AA re-chargable NiCad cells. Put em in a battery holder and hung it inside the case from the bottom of the power supply. Connected the leads to the connector for an old PC Speaker and plugs into the battery header. The board handles the initial charge of like 5-6 volts just fine. Charged up first charge literally 8 years ago. Pulled this thing out last week and the battery pack was down to 1.45v overall across all 4 cells and still held the bios information. Just charged em up in about 6 minutes (1000 mAh cells) and should be good to go for another 8 years.. 😁 😁 😁
I've been wanting an early VIA C3-based ITX motherboard for a while, so I finally got one: a VIA EPIA-VE5000. A sticker on the PCI slot dates it to the 29th week of 2003. Has a passively-cooled 533MHz Samuel 2 chip (labeled as "VIA Eden ESP 5000" but identified by the BIOS and CPU-Z as a C3), and a FDD connector by virtue of being an "EPIA-V" series board.
Currently testing it out with WinXP, where it's slow, as expected. I hope to load up Win98SE soon, and also find a smaller case for it.
Alright so that HP keyboard is mushy but still okay... good enough for retro use. It's a nice match for the Pavilion AND I found Windows 95 drivers for the hotkeys. Anyone wants it, let me know.
HP Z420 Workstation Intel Xeon E5-1620, 32GB, RADEON HD7850 2GB, SSD + HD, XP/7
wrote:I've been wanting an early VIA C3-based ITX motherboard for a while, so I finally got one: a VIA EPIA-VE5000. A sticker on the PCI slot dates it to the 29th week of 2003. Has a passively-cooled 533MHz Samuel 2 chip (labeled as "VIA Eden ESP 5000" but identified by the BIOS and CPU-Z as a C3), and a FDD connector by virtue of being an "EPIA-V" series board.
Currently testing it out with WinXP, where it's slow, as expected. I hope to load up Win98SE soon, and also find a smaller case for it.
I'm not sure how those compared to a P3 in performance but I'd keep that rig for 98SE only and DOS. XP would be good for not real gaming but networking files between two machines. But looks like it has one PCI slot which you've maximized effectively using a USB card! WTG. 😊 Was this a VIA or NEC USB card chipset? Can't see the part number but looks similar to one of the two I have.
wrote:wrote:The motherboards that could use 4 AA batteries were the nicest. But you had to make sure to replace these before they died or leaked and could damage the motherboard. I can't remember how long they typically lasted but they were easier to change. But from memory I don't recall any motherboards that didn't boot up without a battery pack. A lot of the earlier ones you had to buy a special I/O Clock card so that had a lithium battery on it to keep track of the date and time. Otherwise 1-1-1980 was usually the date. But I don't think that prevented any machine from booting. Which motherboards did you see this problem not booting up without a working battery?
I have my second 486 here that I did just that with. I got a set of 4 x AA re-chargable NiCad cells. Put em in a battery holder and hung it inside the case from the bottom of the power supply. Connected the leads to the connector for an old PC Speaker and plugs into the battery header. The board handles the initial charge of like 5-6 volts just fine. Charged up first charge literally 8 years ago. Pulled this thing out last week and the battery pack was down to 1.45v overall across all 4 cells and still held the bios information. Just charged em up in about 6 minutes (1000 mAh cells) and should be good to go for another 8 years.. 😁 😁 😁
Ingenious. You used the internal PC speaker to recharge your Clock AA batteries? I know that it should work. I remember ages ago I had the motherboard bare on a cardboard box for testing. Somehow I saw the two speaker wire headers a bit bent and too close to each other. I didn't power down the system and tried to fix it on. I can't remember if I used my fingers to try and pry them gently apart or use some tweezer tool anyhow got quite a little shock going as I was separating the two pins apart to get them straight and burned my skin I think enough to start melting flesh. Did you run any special DOS PC tweeter games to juice it up faster? 😈
Hmm, I wonder if the two PC internal speakers pins touched and left touched would something on the motherboard fry? 😢
wrote:I'm not sure how those compared to a P3 in performance but I'd keep that rig for 98SE only and DOS. XP would be good for not real gaming but networking files between two machines. But looks like it has one PCI slot which you've maximized effectively using a USB card! WTG. 😊 Was this a VIA or NEC USB card chipset? Can't see the part number but looks similar to one of the two I have.
Thanks. From what I've read, it'll be much slower than a P3 at the same clockspeed (especially when it comes to FPU), but should still be better than my laptop with Pentium MMX @ 133MHz. The USB 2.0 card is a Vantec UGT-PC210 with VIA VT6212L chip; as the board only provides four USB 1.1 ports, this feels like a natural thing to add to it (and also allows me to keep it all-VIA, heh).
wrote:Ingenious. You used the internal PC speaker to recharge your Clock AA batteries? I know that it should work. I remember ages ago I had the motherboard bare on a cardboard box for testing. Somehow I saw the two speaker wire headers a bit bent and too close to each other. I didn't power down the system and tried to fix it on. I can't remember if I used my fingers to try and pry them gently apart or use some tweezer tool anyhow got quite a little shock going as I was separating the two pins apart to get them straight and burned my skin I think enough to start melting flesh. Did you run any special DOS PC tweeter games to juice it up faster? 😈
Hmm, I wonder if the two PC internal speakers pins touched and left touched would something on the motherboard fry? 😢
Why do some people intentionally misunderstand things?
It's just a black plug with two wires coming out of it. It just so happens to be 4x1 connectors and is a perfect fit to the battery header... just cut the pc speaker off and use the plug end. I don't connect batteries to the actual pc-speaker-out connector.. I'm not a moron. Nice of you to imply that I am though. 😒
wrote:wrote:Ingenious. You used the internal PC speaker to recharge your Clock AA batteries? I know that it should work. I remember ages ago I had the motherboard bare on a cardboard box for testing. Somehow I saw the two speaker wire headers a bit bent and too close to each other. I didn't power down the system and tried to fix it on. I can't remember if I used my fingers to try and pry them gently apart or use some tweezer tool anyhow got quite a little shock going as I was separating the two pins apart to get them straight and burned my skin I think enough to start melting flesh. Did you run any special DOS PC tweeter games to juice it up faster? 😈
Hmm, I wonder if the two PC internal speakers pins touched and left touched would something on the motherboard fry? 😢
Why do some people intentionally misunderstand things?
It's just a black plug with two wires coming out of it. It just so happens to be 4x1 connectors and is a perfect fit to the battery header... just cut the pc speaker off and use the plug end. I don't connect batteries to the actual pc-speaker-out connector.. I'm not a moron. Nice of you to imply that I am though. 😒
You're right I misread what you were doing. I was too mesmerized by your new avatar but I only knew of the 2 wire and the 4 wire internal PC speaker header. It's been a while since I looked at my 486 which had the AA battery pack adapted to it. Without photos I couldn't visualize what you were saying. Where is that new avatar from? You had a less animated one that was less distracting not too long ago. 😐
How were you charging these batteries for 6 minutes so fast?
