Well, it looks like the faceplate and screws might be in after work, so I can finally put the Compaq together and do some initial photos of it as a "full setup" for the "My Computers" section of my website, which is what I've been doing probably the most is writing documents on as much as I can of what I know on vintage PC's for the vintage computing section. I'm hoping I can finally FINISH or at least get a substantial amount of document section stuff put together finally, so I can focus more on new things as they come along, rather than focusing on stuff I've been trying to put online for the last 20 years.

Yesterday I managed to switch out the Voltage Regulators in my Genesis to get rid of some of the noise that is seen when you have a 32x and SegaCD attached at the same time. As the system heats up it does get some snow in the BIOS screen, but it goes away when you actually play a game.

I was in the middle of my stream (part 3) and my Colt decided to die. It shows a code on the POST card saying FF-7E. The monitor has power and shows a black screen (not in power save/sleep mode) and the keyboard has all 3 lights illuminated. I checked the BIOS and char ROMs, retraced badly corroded traces, reflowed some vias, and still nothing.

Also working on my Sony PVM-9L1 to have RGB, yet that isn't 100% complete since the caps I have are polarized and the wrong style, yet the correct capacitance of 0.1uF or 100nF.

Does it get to POST screen if you unplug the keyboard?

I finished the cosmetic work on the Compaq, the bay cover plate and Compaq/HP Screws came in yesterday. Still waiting on the mouse, but it's running pretty well now. Going to spend some time tuning/tweaking/benchmarking/preening this thing, and seeing what it can do.

After half a bottle of wine, I decided, hell, let's re-constitute a Gateway 486/33

Starting with a Dallas RTC mod:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=St1tNTlmV_k

Now, to assemble it 😁

creepingnet wrote on 2022-01-14, 15:30:

I finished the cosmetic work on the Compaq, the bay cover plate and Compaq/HP Screws came in yesterday. Still waiting on the mouse, but it's running pretty well now. Going to spend some time tuning/tweaking/benchmarking/preening this thing, and seeing what it can do.

No way! That was my first computer at 10 years of age. I ground my teeth on that thing. Mine was a Deskpro 386/20e.

I hated that machine so much. Granted it taught me DOS 5 ( I remember my half-sister teaching me the basics of DOS 5 on it) but it was completely static in that what it came with, it was what it was. Computers at school would have a CMOS interface.... yeah, luxuries. You wanted ugradeability? SIMMs? A larger hard disk?

No way I would want to own one again. I have had my chances of repeating my past. Not with that thing. I have better, fonder memories of my 2nd PC, a slower, but DX with 4 Mb of RAM. NCR.

I miss that one more than anything. Kudos to you, in the same way I say kudos to an MKII Jetta driver today: So much work, for so little care....

*Edit - I still have that keyboard. 😁

Jed118 wrote on 2022-01-15, 04:43:

No way! That was my first computer at 10 years of age. I ground my teeth on that thing. Mine was a Deskpro 386/20e. […]
Show full quote

creepingnet wrote on 2022-01-14, 15:30:

I finished the cosmetic work on the Compaq, the bay cover plate and Compaq/HP Screws came in yesterday. Still waiting on the mouse, but it's running pretty well now. Going to spend some time tuning/tweaking/benchmarking/preening this thing, and seeing what it can do.

No way! That was my first computer at 10 years of age. I ground my teeth on that thing. Mine was a Deskpro 386/20e.

I hated that machine so much. Granted it taught me DOS 5 ( I remember my half-sister teaching me the basics of DOS 5 on it) but it was completely static in that what it came with, it was what it was. Computers at school would have a CMOS interface.... yeah, luxuries. You wanted ugradeability? SIMMs? A larger hard disk?

No way I would want to own one again. I have had my chances of repeating my past. Not with that thing. I have better, fonder memories of my 2nd PC, a slower, but DX with 4 Mb of RAM. NCR.

I miss that one more than anything. Kudos to you, in the same way I say kudos to an MKII Jetta driver today: So much work, for so little care....

*Edit - I still have that keyboard. 😁

I had a friend when I was a kid whose dad had a similar computer, I can't remember if it was a 386/20E, or a 386s or what. All I remember is was the same style machine, had Windows 3.1, and we used to play Ultima VI, Wolf 3D, and Champ Donkey Kong on it when my sister would kick us off her 386 (which was an AMT branded tower). His only had the 1.44MB though.

This one was not much of a hassle at all. Everything worked perfectly. I just added a Linksys Nic and SoundBlaster 16 Value to it, and then repaired/cleaned the cosmetics a bit. I may still do a retrobrite to it in the future. I actually, originally, intended to pull the 5.25" for my Versa docking station, but shockingly everything on it works.

Did some more Amiga1200 adventure...

Installed the IndivisionAGA-MK3 setup tool and tried to learn it. This tool is not the most logic one, and I needed to watch a video in German to finally figure out the idea behind the tool's interface. Once loaded you get all the Amiga's screenmodes on the right. Those are not the modes in use, however clicking on one, you can then assign an indevidual VGA mode that the scandoubler uses on it's output, on the left in the tool. Once everything is set up, it needs to be saved. This is noce, because if you screw up then just reboot the Amiga and it is good. Only save when it is set up correctly.

Then I had this annoying thing of the image not beong centered correct, and for that there is a hotkey menu. CTRL+SHIFT+Tilde brings up the menu. Moving the mouse the screen can be moved around. Holding down left and right mouse button the image can be streched or compressed up/down and left/right. Pressing tilde and you shut down the hot-menu. And finally the IndivisionAGA menu need to be loaded up again, and save config need to be pressed again to save this custom config.

I really love this scandoubler, as there are tons of features. However the tool is still a very different beast from anything else out there. The user friendlyness is not the best, however once I realised how it is meant to be used, then it is quite logical. just a different way of setting things up. And perhaps too logic in a way.

Great piece of hardware and my 1200 now outputs any native screenmodes, scandoubled to fit into 2084x1024 resolution at 50hz on mu Dell monitor.

Got to check out three rather cool Socket A boards, two were the same model but one has IDE raid.

First one was a SOLTEK SL-75FRN2-RL Golden Flame, the board is a beautiful all Golden colour, Promise IDE raid
Second was also a SOLTEK SL-75FRN2-L Golden Flame, no Sata-IDE raid, comes with a 3200+ Barton
Third was a Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra Platinum Edition which is a lovely all white board, with Hipoint IDE raid and pink PCI slots 🤣

All boards have been recapped with Nichicon and Rubycon caps and have their IO shields, the only issue is the Dragon board has one DDR slot that is damaged and doesnt work right. Not sure if Ill buy any of these but ... I might buy two of them, the Golden Flame IDE raid board is cool and the Dragon would be great too, the lack of a third DDR slot doesnt bother me as 1gb of DDR ram is more than enough for XP/Vista.

No pics for now, if I can find some ill add them.

Edit - If anyone has replaced a DDR slot how hard was it ? this one is simply missing a pin by the looks of it, night be able to jerry rig a bit of wire in the missing pin hole to get it to work.

creepingnet wrote on 2022-01-15, 05:18:

This one was not much of a hassle at all. Everything worked perfectly. I just added a Linksys Nic and SoundBlaster 16 Value to it, and then repaired/cleaned the cosmetics a bit. I may still do a retrobrite to it in the future. I actually, originally, intended to pull the 5.25" for my Versa docking station, but shockingly everything on it works.

They are durable machines - they survived me aged 11-16 😉

Sat back and watched an Auction for a 386 machine go for a whopping $400 AUD ...thats just the box, no cables, monitor, paperwork or accessories. Saw nothing particularly special about it either, 4mb of ram and a 10meg HDD that was just a nasty Maxtor IDE with a rather common 386SX in it.

I really dont get the stupid prices junk is selling for, especially junk as common as cockroaches, its only saving grace was a working 5.25 drive in it but that alone isn't worth 400 dollars.

Watching another auction for a dirty beat up ACER 486 SX 33 (Box only) currently sitting at 300 AUD with 1 day to go ....seriously makes me wonder who is paying that much for this hardware.

Tried to install OS/2 Warp Connect on my IBM PS/1 DX2/66, but the CD-ROM wouldn't read discs. After a bit of troubleshooting I found it was caused by a plastic part being broken due to age. I even found the broken bit, but gluing it back in place proved impossible, so the drive went into the bin. I will try again next week when I return with another CD-ROM drive from the storage..

Saw a beautiful AT case on eBay and convinced myself to build a 486 and started buying parts.

Got an AMD 486 100mhz CPU, a socket 3 VLB AT mobo with a pretty compatible VIA chipset and a decent Bios, 32 megs of ram, and an IDE/Floppy/serial etc ISA card.

Next is video (thinking a Cirrus Logic VLB SVGA card with at least 1mb), a compatible power supply, I'll dig through my soundcards for something (maybe awe32), a 3.5 bay mounted CF to IDE, and then some flop drives and a CD drive.

Love a new build but not looking forward to the cash hit.

I installed my FX 5900's video driver in Windows 95.

I know, not much of an accomplishment (and I might undo it shortly since I think I'm going to downgrade my 9x's Nvidia driver suite), but it's not even 8AM here.

Cleaned up the outside of the 500 Rev8a.1 with full ECS chipset, that I recieved yesterday. Still need to test it fully, but if it is working, then it is not bad for 157/158 Euro. It is actually fully factory default. Everything is in it, even the plastic standoff on the middle of the RF shield, that acts as a internal keyboard stand to keep the keyboard from bending. Sure a tiny bit of rust here and there and nearly no yellowing. Crossing fingers that it is working....

brostenen wrote on 2022-01-16, 14:22:

Cleaned up the outside of the 500 Rev8a.1 with full ECS chipset, that I recieved yesterday. Still need to test it fully, but if […]
Show full quote

Cleaned up the outside of the 500 Rev8a.1 with full ECS chipset, that I recieved yesterday. Still need to test it fully, but if it is working, then it is not bad for 157/158 Euro. It is actually fully factory default. Everything is in it, even the plastic standoff on the middle of the RF shield, that acts as a internal keyboard stand to keep the keyboard from bending. Sure a tiny bit of rust here and there and nearly no yellowing. Crossing fingers that it is working....

a500-rev8a1-01.jpg
a500-rev8a1-02.jpg
a500-rev8a1-03.jpg
a500-rev8a1-04.jpg

Wow, that sure looks like a clean machine! Just a tiny scuff mark under the spacebar, from what's shown on the photos.
The previous owner must have been a careful user 😀

Anders- wrote on 2022-01-16, 16:37:

brostenen wrote on 2022-01-16, 14:22:

Cleaned up the outside of the 500 Rev8a.1 with full ECS chipset, that I recieved yesterday. Still need to test it fully, but if […]
Show full quote

Cleaned up the outside of the 500 Rev8a.1 with full ECS chipset, that I recieved yesterday. Still need to test it fully, but if it is working, then it is not bad for 157/158 Euro. It is actually fully factory default. Everything is in it, even the plastic standoff on the middle of the RF shield, that acts as a internal keyboard stand to keep the keyboard from bending. Sure a tiny bit of rust here and there and nearly no yellowing. Crossing fingers that it is working....

a500-rev8a1-01.jpg
a500-rev8a1-02.jpg
a500-rev8a1-03.jpg
a500-rev8a1-04.jpg

Wow, that sure looks like a clean machine! Just a tiny scuff mark under the spacebar, from what's shown on the photos.
The previous owner must have been a careful user 😀

And on the space bar as well.... But then again, it is like 30 years old or something.

A co-worker lent me an older notebook to check and see if I'm interested. It's a HP Compaq NC4010.

So far I'm not all that impressed. It's compact, might be decent for retro lan parties for pre-2000 games, but the Radeon 340M IGP just don't have the punch to it that I like. No optical drive or first party Windows 98 drivers either.

What I checked so far (all games on the highest graphics settings 1024×768@32):

3DMark 2000 (default settings): 3039
3DMark 2001 SE (default settings): 1810

Quake II timedemo (demo1.dm2): 49.8 fps
Quake III Arena (GoG) timedemo: 32.1 fps
1nsane: 17.1 fps(avg) 12 fps(min)
Hitman 2: 16,9fps(avg) 8fps(min)

I think I'll just throw in some other games, write a blog or something then give it back.

Lots of “work” to do today testing recent hardware pickups and validating a few problems (such as fan headers and a SCSI CD Drive) on existing hardware.