I took my Amiga 1200 and C64C out on the terrace and sat in the sunny weather while I gave them both a good scrub with a solution of sugar soap and warm water. It really did a number on the rub-off stains the case had gotten from other object. The Amiga 1200 was really gunky after 20+ years in a basement.

Then I let them dry and after that, took the C64C indoors and played some Raid over Moscow.

Oh, and also won the bid for an Ultima III cloth map off ebay for my collection.

The urge to build a proper WinME/2k system I've had for some time now keeps getting stronger and has proceeded to planning phase. Pretty much settled with a LGA 775 AGP build for reasons but there's an issue: I already have a LGA 775 Pentium 4 PCIe system for late Win9x - early WinXP games and the new system is going to overlap with it a lot.

The solution: joink the Cedar Mill P4 out of there and shove it in the new system once it starts materializing and upgrade the old machine, so the Asus P5K / P4 3.4GHz got replaced with Asus P5Q Deluxe / C2D E8600. I didn't really NEED to swap the motherboard as P5K supports E8600 but I've had couple issues with it, namely I couldn't get AHCI to work and also there's something iffy with USB2 with it. If I set it to full HiSpeed (480 Mbps) in BIOS the system hangs once it starts loading OS and also if I try to install an OS, but if I set it to FullSpeed (12 Mbps) the system loads OS just fine and weirdly USB still seems to work at full HiSpeed as far as I can tell. So when I stumbled upon a cheap Asus P5Q Deluxe I figured why not.

So now I've got a C2D system that is faster, more power efficient and quieter. Just two problems:

1. Once the WinME/2k system is up and running it's going to take care of games from 1999-2002. And I also already have an Ivy Bridge system that can take care of nearly all DirectX 9-11 era games up to 2013 or so. Meaning the only use for this system is going to be for games that don't like to play nice with a too modern GPU like GTX 960 and I'm currently aware of exactly ONE game like that in my collection, and I haven't yet even confirmed that yet.

2. C2D is boring to me. Hardware starts getting unintersting to me in general around that time period, it's superior to P4 in every way but I find it so very bland in comparison. Also now I need to start keeping my eye out for games that might not like two CPU cores and force them to use only one.

Yeah this system might not get much use in the long run, but we'll see. Maybe I'll find use for it as a backup/testbench machine.

Sombrero wrote on 2023-04-19, 18:10:

Meaning the only use for this system is going to be for games that don't like to play nice with a too modern GPU like GTX 960 and I'm currently aware of exactly ONE game like that in my collection, and I haven't yet even confirmed that yet.

How about Splinter Cell, which doesn't like post-FX cards, and Gothic 1 which has inventory issues on anything newer than a GeForce4 Ti.

Also, any games that only run in 16-bit color depth (e.g. Thief 1&2, System Shock 2) will look like crap on cards newer than the Nvidia 7xxx series and Radeon 1xxx. Later cards don't support 16-bit dithering.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-04-19, 18:25:

Sombrero wrote on 2023-04-19, 18:10:

Meaning the only use for this system is going to be for games that don't like to play nice with a too modern GPU like GTX 960 and I'm currently aware of exactly ONE game like that in my collection, and I haven't yet even confirmed that yet.

How about Splinter Cell, which doesn't like post-FX cards, and Gothic 1 which has inventory issues on anything newer than a GeForce4 Ti.

Also, any games that only run in 16-bit color depth (e.g. Thief 1&2, System Shock 2) will look like crap on cards newer than the Nvidia 7xxx series and Radeon 1xxx. Later cards don't support 16-bit dithering.

The WinME/2k system is going to have Ti 4200, could take care of all of those though I currently own just SS2 and Thief 2 of those examples. The 6800 GT I had in the P4 system which is now in the new C2D system was/is precisely for dithering support and for general compatibility, but I currently own just one DirectX 9 game that (probably) needs it and might not run great with Ti 4200.

And even with SS2 I might just mod it and get DirectX9 with 32-bit color support along the way, as much as I love SS2 the enemy models still look a bit stiff to me without the rebirth mod.

_StIwY_ wrote on 2023-04-19, 17:38:

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-19, 14:11:

Mild dish soap like Joy Ultra or Dawn if it's really stuck on. Alcohol can also help, but you need the soap and water for rinsing anyways.

It sounds like flux residue from the wave soldering machine during manufacture. These chemicals are soluble in alcohol with some scrubbing, but try soap and water first.

WD40 will leave a really gross film of its own. It's meant for mechanical parts to prevent corrosion. I don't know why it's abused so much for other things that it's not even good at. Just use soap.

I tried, even with a brush....this misture it's sticky. I can rub it away with my finger, there is a film of grease all over the motherboard, i also tried with alcohol but nothing. I will leave everything as it is to avoid damages, but never mind!

That's weird. Alcohol should dissolve it. Maybe it was used in a shop that had some kind of oil vapor in the air that got deposited on the board.

upgraded to 16mb of ram .... recently ... seems stable.

P.S. If you cannot get sticky stuff off , use acetone instead. (don't use wather on electronics).

Playing with Dell Latitude C840 and Win98SE, some driver tricks, but now it works fine.

DundyTheCroc wrote on 2023-04-20, 10:35:

Playing with Dell Latitude C840 and Win98SE, some driver tricks, but now it works fine.
c840.jpg

I bet you can get a better score than that. If you start a dell Latitude trade , I will join 😀

ediflorianUS wrote on 2023-04-20, 11:41:

I bet you can get a better score than that. If you start a dell Latitude trade , I will join 😀

Maybe if I overclock the GPU, but not so sure if the laptop will take it.

DundyTheCroc wrote on 2023-04-20, 12:14:

ediflorianUS wrote on 2023-04-20, 11:41:

I bet you can get a better score than that. If you start a dell Latitude trade , I will join 😀

Maybe if I overclock the GPU, but not so sure if the laptop will take it.

Here's my score on the Dell Latitude C610.... a bit low... ,no? ( I also have a broken C600 or so with a broken pcb-mb-power connector, somewhere , still working from battery only). and maybe a 3rd latitude/inspiron dell that I totally missplaced. And a Precision (old gen) I never got around testing/repairing/installing.

My retro activity today was doing a motherboard swap on a dead Sony PSP 3000.

I bought a PSP recently that had an issue with a very simple fix... until it wasn't after I screwed up with the soldering iron. Lessons learnt and all that, so I put that motherboard aside until 1 day when I have the required equipment to do a proper repair (it is salvageable with aid of a microscope which I don't have) and I ordered a replacement motherboard instead, which arrived today - I wasn't expecting it for another couple of weeks, so a very speedy delivery.

Unfortunately the replacement motherboard is newer than the original and requires a replacement D-PAD due to a different ribbon cable pinout with the WiFi & memory card activity LEDs being included on the D-PAD membrane instead of part of the motherboard as on earlier models. I'd love to understand the rationale behind that silly decision.

Apart from that though everything else seems functional except for the D-PAD, I'll just have to wait on the replacement from China.

I once dropped a piece of wire on the back of an open MacBook Pro and the whole thing burst into flames. I just kind of stared at it for a moment, my brain not really comprehending what just happened. Then I realized that I had forgotten to unplug the battery from the board before working on it.

That was a very hard, very expensive lesson.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-20, 21:27:

I once dropped a piece of wire on the back of an open MacBook Pro and the whole thing burst into flames. I just kind of stared at it for a moment, my brain not really comprehending what just happened. Then I realized that I had forgotten to unplug the battery from the board before working on it.

That was a very hard, very expensive lesson.

Ouch, now that does suck!

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-04-20, 21:27:

I once dropped a piece of wire on the back of an open MacBook Pro and the whole thing burst into flames.

So Apple cr*p battery cells don't have internal protection fuses in the cells themselves, which even Acer chinesium made ones have?
This is yet another case of "think different" Apple genius engineering?

I had finished replacing a bad BGA chip prior. The laptop was fixed; I was DONE. The battery was plugged in because I was testing it.

I don't recall the sequence of events. I think I wanted to adjust the bodge wire I'd added to the board, but I forgot that the battery was still connected (the laptop was off and not connected to AC). The wire I dropped shorted *something*, and it was like a tiny fireworks display on my bench. Traces all across the board burst into flame and a power IC turned to carbon.

It could have been worse. The lithium cells could have erupted, for example.

I recovered from work a Power Macintosh 7100/80 with external SCSI CDROM drive but without keyboard and mouse.

The PRAM battery hasn't leaked and inside everything looked normal. So I ordered an Apple DB15 connector to VGA adapter from amazon.com in order at least to see if it was alive.

And it is! So now I have to find also compatible keyboard and mouse.

I thought VGA was DB15 😀

debs3759 wrote on 2023-04-21, 14:32:

I thought VGA was DB15 😀

Not for Apple since they re-arranged the pins in only two rows!

mrfusion92 wrote on 2023-04-21, 14:34:

debs3759 wrote on 2023-04-21, 14:32:

I thought VGA was DB15 😀

Not for Apple since they re-arranged the pins in only two rows!

In my "lifecycle of an Apple engineer" headcanon, that would be year 2 or 3.

( Year 1, get hired, trapped in a too good to be true 5 year contract or something, and first year they're drinking the koolaid, singing from the hymnbook, and patching up the worst flaws in soon to be released products so they are fit to sell even. Year 2 and 3, disillusionment, anger and revenge sets in and they start deliberately trying to sabotage the place by rearranging and deleting standard connectors and doing evil stuff, year 4 and 5, they've got that out of their system and know their way around Apples internal system, and sneak a good product out through the bars, in spite of the visual design and marketing folks, i.e. the odd powermac, mac mini etc. )

Set up an IBM PS/1 Imagination System 486 SX25 and played some Hocus Pocus and Commander Keen
The CD-Rom and the sound card dont work at the moment though