CrFr wrote on 2024-04-05, 09:16:

Yes, it has 😀

This was actually my father's work computer he got brand new in 1989.

IMGP2360_.jpg

Super sweet, so a family heirloom by now!

We used to have one when I was a kid, it reminds me how far we have come from these 'luggables' to todays ultrabooks

Remember that old radio I was building a Pi based internet radio in?

Spent the last few nights working on the software: https://github.com/mo-g/thewireless

It now compiles and runs on ARM64, can play internet radio streams and has a (janky, I was lazy) web API to control it with - which means almost all the functions needed to implement the hardware interface have also been implemented. So I need to write the HAL, and I need to write the handler. (And clean up the API so it uses something other than GET requests!)

Other than that, the only problem is that it has issues with poor internet connections. So, I need to work out some error trapping and retry logic to handle cases where signal drops. Some heavier buffering might be good too, if I can work it out!

Oh, and "Popcorn" and "Mew" are being picked up today for their PSU repair and Battery removal. Wish them luck! Also please wish luck the Unifi 16 port Switch which is also going for repair. Stupid 150W junk PSU...

TODAY, this 261.3 MB HDD woke-up again after 1993 in single boot!
Still contains, DOS 6.22, WIN 3.11, ALPS (a special word-editor to write in local language, Hindi, Bengali etc.)
This HDD had one bad-sector which is outside the C partition.
I have made a backup in a CF Card.

This HDD was originally with my 486 Setup which got burnt due to SMPS and/or Battery Leak.

In future, I will try to arrange a 486 board to complete the setup.

Moved my DOS/Win3.1 PC into a new case!

I had it in an old Cougar case I had lying around, but it only had a single 3.5 and single 5.25 bay, not enough room for my needs. So I got an Antec VSK4000E-U3_US, simple case, but has 3 5.25 bays and a single 3.5. Now I have room for a CD-ROM should I ever decide to add one. Then I reworked a similar style IO shield to fit my Asus TX97-XE, printed it, now it's all done and in its new home!

Oh, and I hooked up my Sony 2 floppy drive. Looks so weird seeing an "A:" drive in Windows 10. 😀

Lets put this Milltronics board and I/O card (Highscreen Kompakt III) into a nice vinegar bath. I think, and hope, I can save it from the battery corrosion...

If it works I upload it to the retro web. Already dumped the BIOS to a file. So the EPROM works. 😬

(Re)Created what is possibly the most silly P4 build to exist. If you thought RAMBUS, socket 423 and FX5900XT were a troll build... lemme present you the "Subway Blender 9000" 🤣. Sophisticated on the outside, absolute meme on the inside 🤣

Specs:

- Pentium 4 HT 2.8GHz (Northwood core)
- an amazing 1GB worth of Elixir DDR400 RAM
- Sapphire Radeon HD4870 1GB GDDR5
- Hitachi Ultrastar 1TB SATA 2 HDD that's kinda sus on the sounds it makes (92% health, why am I not surprised 🤣)
- Hitachi DVDRW SATA

Currently running thru XP setup. Stay tuned as I'll be back with CPU-Z as well as some 3dMark tests.

And, as promised, 3DMark tests and CPU-Z for the build above.

I made time to strip down and clean the most recent Lian Li case I picked up. It's only a PC-7 but boy oh boy, do these things ever clean up well. A bit unconventional maybe, especially doing it in the shower... but alloy wheel cleaner is acidic enough to take any tarnishing off the raw aluminium parts, and mild enough not to harm the anodized exterior parts. Works a treat, along with some normal soapy water. Just towel dry and air out for a bit.

Comes out looking pretty much as new! Ready for a new build 😀

Shadzilla wrote on 2024-04-06, 18:35:

I made time to strip down and clean the most recent Lian Li case I picked up. It's only a PC-7 but boy oh boy, do these things ever clean up well. A bit unconventional maybe, especially doing it in the shower... but alloy wheel cleaner is acidic enough to take any tarnishing off the raw aluminium parts, and mild enough not to harm the anodized exterior parts. Works a treat, along with some normal soapy water. Just towel dry and air out for a bit.

Comes out looking pretty much as new! Ready for a new build 😀

Those are beautiful cases! Glad to see it looking so clean!

I like seeing "older" cases cleaned and restored. It's so hard to find new cases with the support needed for retro builds. Also, while I think there are a lot or really cool looking modern cases, I do enjoy the look of the older designs. They just seem far more "human".

I recently got an Antec case I put my DOS build in (seen a few posts above this one) and it works great, but it was a pain to find something affordable that had all the bays I wanted. Sadly, older cases are hard to come by in my area.

Finished building a HIDman converter:

Honestly pretty impressed with myself for accomplishing this, having just bought my first soldering iron barely 6 months ago. 😤 This was so beyond anything I'd attempted before that I kinda doubted my ability to get it running, esp when it came to compiling the .bin and flashing the microcontroller. But it works perfectly, yay!!

Also, trying out some 486 parts in AOpen AT case I recently picked up (feat. just a little too much cable management):

Whew... such a relief.

I was testing some rather valuable high end AGP cards in my test system and one was crashing in certain games and benchmarks. I was pretty bumbed and spent quite a while comparing the two identical cards and checked things with a DMM, hoping that it wasn't the GPU or RAM failing. I decided I would retest the one that had seemingly worked fine and I have never been so happy to see a program crash! It crashed in the same way as the other one, so I pretty much knew it wasn't a bad card. Whew!

Now, I was slightly worried about my tester PC because it is my personal system from 2002-2004 which has had the same motherboard, case, CPU and cooler for 22 years. Was something in it finally dying?

First thing I checked was the BIOS, since the old Athlon XP 1700+ Thoroughbred B core has been sitting in the socket on that NF7-S 2.0 overclocked from 1.47 to 2.0Ghz for all these years. I noticed that the multiplier and FSB were set but for some reason the voltage settings were set to defaults. These were great overclocking chips but that seemed a bit... optimistic to say the least. I remembered that back in 2012-2013 (when I got this PC back from my sister who had been using it for several years) I installed a nice custom BIOS which allowed it to run stably with 2GB of RAM (2x512MB in one channel, 1x1GB in the other) while maintaining a 400Mhz FSB. It had previously been running with a 333Mhz FSB (x6 multi) to alleviate some RAM quirkiness with the stock BIOS. I have used the computer off and on for testing AGP cards and light gaming since then but never really put it through a ton of stress. Fast forward 11-12 years and I was really hoping I had taken a picture of the existing BIOS settings back then when I adjusted things.

Sure enough, in a LOT less time than it would have taken me to do research and figure out the proper voltage for this chip with this OC, I found those beautiful blue bios snap shots I took with a camera back in August of 2012. All the voltages were set to the default values except for the core voltage, which was at 1.65v back in the day (with the old 333x6 overclock on the stock BIOS). The default was 1.6v. Either the voltage setting got reset at some point by mistake, or I set it to defaults and just never had a problem until doing more rigorous testing. It's also possible the board or CPU has degraded a tad over the years, but I'm so happy and relieved to say that the system is rock solid now with the core voltage back at 1.65v, the way it had been set for the 10 or so years prior to 2012. I applied some new thermal paste as well for good measure.

I let the system run, playing the game that had been crashing with the video card I thought was having issues and it ran for almost an hour and a half without crashing, so it seems that the issue was just a lack of CPU voltage the whole time.

Talk about good news:
Two very valuable cards are working perfectly
My old NF7-S 2.0 is fine
My old XP 1700+ DUT3c JIUHB is fine

Whew. 😀

EDIT: Here is the old girl. I have probably mentioned this rig multiple times here but I don't think it's ever been pictured.

This is a fairly common case from the time period, but I "custom painted" the trim around the bezel because the gray looked lame. I did the same to the power button but it has obviously worn off over the years. Also, that floppy drive I "custom painted" as well, using paint left over from a project car my brother painted back in the early '90s. I did the same to the CD-ROM drive originally as well, but that drive died and was swapped out.

The only newer parts in this are the Seasonic 550HT PSU and a now-ancient 64GB Crucial C300 SSD (the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 hard drive is original to the PC, but is not connected anymore). The fans are all original to the build... including the northbridge fan, which has needed cleaned and oiled a couple times but is still spinning! Currently have the 80mm Panaflo fan running at 5v for reduced noise when it's running in my office for a while. I can't take that noise anymore now that I'm used to silent PCs. 🤣

I took a picture of the CPU when applying new thermal paste.

Kind of crazy to think all the places this thing has been with me and all the work it has done. I've owned it for more than half my life and that CPU has been significantly overclocked the whole time, sitting in that very socket. I don't think I have ever removed it.

I took this PC to work and used it there at my first job in high school 20 years ago, doing PC repair with extra long PATA and power cables hanging out the back of the computer so I could scan hard drives for malware (PATA is hot swappable if you are careful... and no I don't do this anymore). I also used it for LAN gaming there at work when we were on break. After that it went to my sister for many years. It has never had much of a break. Since getting back into "retro" PC hardware about 8 years ago it is back to being used the way it was at my first job, minus the sketchy PATA drive hot swapping and malware scanning. 😉

I went back to the HP laptop, and I fixed the audio by changing the graphics driver. I don't know how the graphics driver can make the Microsoft MIDI soft synth clip so hard that it sounds like a Metallica meme (and only through integrated audio), but it did. I used ChroMetal 4.5, and I haven't had it lock up while running 3D yet. However, GL Excess crashes on scene 2 now. It had graphics glitches before, so it isn't a big deal. ChroMetal has an overclocking slider, which I'm going to have to try (along with using CPUFSB to change the bus clock - I can get 115MHz out of it).

I also figured out that the game that was crashing to the desktop had corrupt files. For some reason, file transfers from the CD image (using Daemon Tools) kept failing (the installer didn't report any errors, but manually copying files in Windows Explorer did), so I had to copy the files from a working install.

Now all that's left is to figure out why PowerNow! frequency scaling doesn't work in Windows XP after the reinstall (it works in Windows 98). That's why it's running so hot. Then I need to hurry up and get it off the desk because it's giving my other computers secondhand problems.

A Milltronics board work in progress... Vinegar bath, rinsed it with demi water, applied DeoxIT and replaced the BIOS DIP socket, and now checking the clock with an external power supply.
I was curious how much power it draws (28µA), so added a multimeter to the circuit as well. Now lets hope it will POST. If it does, the keyboard controller DIP socket also need replacing.
The corrosion of the leaking battery ate some pins in the socket.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-07, 00:42:

Whew... such a relief. […]
Show full quote

Whew... such a relief.

I was testing some rather valuable high end AGP cards in my test system and one was crashing in certain games and benchmarks. I was pretty bumbed and spent quite a while comparing the two identical cards and checked things with a DMM, hoping that it wasn't the GPU or RAM failing. I decided I would retest the one that had seemingly worked fine and I have never been so happy to see a program crash! It crashed in the same way as the other one, so I pretty much knew it wasn't a bad card. Whew!

Now, I was slightly worried about my tester PC because it is my personal system from 2002-2004 which has had the same motherboard, case, CPU and cooler for 22 years. Was something in it finally dying?

First thing I checked was the BIOS, since the old Athlon XP 1700+ Thoroughbred B core has been sitting in the socket on that NF7-S 2.0 overclocked from 1.47 to 2.0Ghz for all these years. I noticed that the multiplier and FSB were set but for some reason the voltage settings were set to defaults. These were great overclocking chips but that seemed a bit... optimistic to say the least. I remembered that back in 2012-2013 (when I got this PC back from my sister who had been using it for several years) I installed a nice custom BIOS which allowed it to run stably with 2GB of RAM (2x512MB in one channel, 1x1GB in the other) while maintaining a 400Mhz FSB. It had previously been running with a 333Mhz FSB (x6 multi) to alleviate some RAM quirkiness with the stock BIOS. I have used the computer off and on for testing AGP cards and light gaming since then but never really put it through a ton of stress. Fast forward 11-12 years and I was really hoping I had taken a picture of the existing BIOS settings back then when I adjusted things.

Sure enough, in a LOT less time than it would have taken me to do research and figure out the proper voltage for this chip with this OC, I found those beautiful blue bios snap shots I took with a camera back in August of 2012. All the voltages were set to the default values except for the core voltage, which was at 1.65v back in the day (with the old 333x6 overclock on the stock BIOS). The default was 1.6v. Either the voltage setting got reset at some point by mistake, or I set it to defaults and just never had a problem until doing more rigorous testing. It's also possible the board or CPU has degraded a tad over the years, but I'm so happy and relieved to say that the system is rock solid now with the core voltage back at 1.65v, the way it had been set for the 10 or so years prior to 2012. I applied some new thermal paste as well for good measure.

I let the system run, playing the game that had been crashing with the video card I thought was having issues and it ran for almost an hour and a half without crashing, so it seems that the issue was just a lack of CPU voltage the whole time.

Talk about good news:
Two very valuable cards are working perfectly
My old NF7-S 2.0 is fine
My old XP 1700+ DUT3c JIUHB is fine

Whew. 😀

EDIT: Here is the old girl. I have probably mentioned this rig multiple times here but I don't think it's ever been pictured.

AXPworkhorse.jpg
This is a fairly common case from the time period, but I "custom painted" the trim around the bezel because the gray looked lame. I did the same to the power button but it has obviously worn off over the years. Also, that floppy drive I "custom painted" as well, using paint left over from a project car my brother painted back in the early '90s. I did the same to the CD-ROM drive originally as well, but that drive died and was swapped out.

AXP_workhorse2.jpg
The only newer parts in this are the Seasonic 550HT PSU and a now-ancient 64GB Crucial C300 SSD (the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 hard drive is original to the PC, but is not connected anymore). The fans are all original to the build... including the northbridge fan, which has needed cleaned and oiled a couple times but is still spinning! Currently have the 80mm Panaflo fan running at 5v for reduced noise when it's running in my office for a while. I can't take that noise anymore now that I'm used to silent PCs. 🤣

XP1700_DUT3C_JIUHB.jpg

I took a picture of the CPU when applying new thermal paste.

Kind of crazy to think all the places this thing has been with me and all the work it has done. I've owned it for more than half my life and that CPU has been significantly overclocked the whole time, sitting in that very socket. I don't think I have ever removed it.

I took this PC to work and used it there at my first job in high school 20 years ago, doing PC repair with extra long PATA and power cables hanging out the back of the computer so I could scan hard drives for malware (PATA is hot swappable if you are careful... and no I don't do this anymore). I also used it for LAN gaming there at work when we were on break. After that it went to my sister for many years. It has never had much of a break. Since getting back into "retro" PC hardware about 8 years ago it is back to being used the way it was at my first job, minus the sketchy PATA drive hot swapping and malware scanning. 😉

What's the BIOS you're using? I have a NF7 2.0 here (without SATA) that runs a similar memory config (2x512MB Corsair ValueRAM + 1GB Sycron, all DDR400).

Last Friday I received an am386 sx-40
I bought it untested so I needed some time to test everyhing

First I needed to remove the varta battery. The leaking was luckily very minimal. I cleaned it with a toothbrush and white vinegar, then water. I used alcohol for the rest of the card and dried everything with warm air.

I had some trouble to boot at first until I found that a RAM stick was not properly seated.

I tested the system with what I had at hand.

This afternoon I built a proper system with period-correct parts.

I ended up with the following system :
- Motherboard with am386 sx 40
- 4 x 1 MB SIMM 60ns ("Topless" brand 😂)
- Octek Multi IO board based on Acer M5105
- Orchid Prodesigner II (ET4000AX)
- SoundBlaster Pro 2
- Seagate ST3290A 261MB IDE
- Generic Floppy drive
- DOS 6.22 (Not period correct)

I set it up close to my MMX233 system to use the CRT and keyboard.

Works great. Tested Dune with the audio.

acl wrote on 2024-04-08, 16:50:

Last Friday I received an am386 sx-40
I bought it untested so I needed some time to test everyhing…

Very nice, be sure and post updated pics after those pieces find a proper home! 😀

Now that my flash floppy enabled gotek and XTIDE with an SD converter attached are in, I've gotten my 5160 to basically where I want it to be. Sure, I could get an EGA to VGA converter at some point, and get a mouse working somehow through a serial size converter as well, but for now a completely functioning machine is all I really need.

I even have the RTC going, and my soundblaster set up for, uh, eventually playing something using it.

And windows is installed for the sake of showing that it exists.

Flashed a Maxdata OEM CUSL2 to retail and currently installing XP on a spare 15GB Quantum LCT15. Also running the MX460 I had repaired a few pages back.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-04-08, 22:06:

Flashed a Maxdata OEM CUSL2 to retail and currently installing XP on a spare 15GB Quantum LCT15. Also running the MX460 I had re […]
Show full quote

Flashed a Maxdata OEM CUSL2 to retail and currently installing XP on a spare 15GB Quantum LCT15. Also running the MX460 I had repaired a few pages back.

Love your workbench setup!! 😇

PcBytes wrote on 2024-04-08, 09:36:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-04-07, 00:42:

Whew... such a relief. […]
Show full quote

Whew... such a relief.

I was testing some rather valuable high end AGP cards in my test system and one was crashing in certain games and benchmarks. I was pretty bumbed and spent quite a while comparing the two identical cards and checked things with a DMM, hoping that it wasn't the GPU or RAM failing. I decided I would retest the one that had seemingly worked fine and I have never been so happy to see a program crash! It crashed in the same way as the other one, so I pretty much knew it wasn't a bad card. Whew!

Now, I was slightly worried about my tester PC because it is my personal system from 2002-2004 which has had the same motherboard, case, CPU and cooler for 22 years. Was something in it finally dying?

First thing I checked was the BIOS, since the old Athlon XP 1700+ Thoroughbred B core has been sitting in the socket on that NF7-S 2.0 overclocked from 1.47 to 2.0Ghz for all these years. I noticed that the multiplier and FSB were set but for some reason the voltage settings were set to defaults. These were great overclocking chips but that seemed a bit... optimistic to say the least. I remembered that back in 2012-2013 (when I got this PC back from my sister who had been using it for several years) I installed a nice custom BIOS which allowed it to run stably with 2GB of RAM (2x512MB in one channel, 1x1GB in the other) while maintaining a 400Mhz FSB. It had previously been running with a 333Mhz FSB (x6 multi) to alleviate some RAM quirkiness with the stock BIOS. I have used the computer off and on for testing AGP cards and light gaming since then but never really put it through a ton of stress. Fast forward 11-12 years and I was really hoping I had taken a picture of the existing BIOS settings back then when I adjusted things.

Sure enough, in a LOT less time than it would have taken me to do research and figure out the proper voltage for this chip with this OC, I found those beautiful blue bios snap shots I took with a camera back in August of 2012. All the voltages were set to the default values except for the core voltage, which was at 1.65v back in the day (with the old 333x6 overclock on the stock BIOS). The default was 1.6v. Either the voltage setting got reset at some point by mistake, or I set it to defaults and just never had a problem until doing more rigorous testing. It's also possible the board or CPU has degraded a tad over the years, but I'm so happy and relieved to say that the system is rock solid now with the core voltage back at 1.65v, the way it had been set for the 10 or so years prior to 2012. I applied some new thermal paste as well for good measure.

I let the system run, playing the game that had been crashing with the video card I thought was having issues and it ran for almost an hour and a half without crashing, so it seems that the issue was just a lack of CPU voltage the whole time.

Talk about good news:
Two very valuable cards are working perfectly
My old NF7-S 2.0 is fine
My old XP 1700+ DUT3c JIUHB is fine

Whew. 😀

EDIT: Here is the old girl. I have probably mentioned this rig multiple times here but I don't think it's ever been pictured.

AXPworkhorse.jpg
This is a fairly common case from the time period, but I "custom painted" the trim around the bezel because the gray looked lame. I did the same to the power button but it has obviously worn off over the years. Also, that floppy drive I "custom painted" as well, using paint left over from a project car my brother painted back in the early '90s. I did the same to the CD-ROM drive originally as well, but that drive died and was swapped out.

AXP_workhorse2.jpg
The only newer parts in this are the Seasonic 550HT PSU and a now-ancient 64GB Crucial C300 SSD (the Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 9 hard drive is original to the PC, but is not connected anymore). The fans are all original to the build... including the northbridge fan, which has needed cleaned and oiled a couple times but is still spinning! Currently have the 80mm Panaflo fan running at 5v for reduced noise when it's running in my office for a while. I can't take that noise anymore now that I'm used to silent PCs. 🤣

XP1700_DUT3C_JIUHB.jpg

I took a picture of the CPU when applying new thermal paste.

Kind of crazy to think all the places this thing has been with me and all the work it has done. I've owned it for more than half my life and that CPU has been significantly overclocked the whole time, sitting in that very socket. I don't think I have ever removed it.

I took this PC to work and used it there at my first job in high school 20 years ago, doing PC repair with extra long PATA and power cables hanging out the back of the computer so I could scan hard drives for malware (PATA is hot swappable if you are careful... and no I don't do this anymore). I also used it for LAN gaming there at work when we were on break. After that it went to my sister for many years. It has never had much of a break. Since getting back into "retro" PC hardware about 8 years ago it is back to being used the way it was at my first job, minus the sketchy PATA drive hot swapping and malware scanning. 😉

What's the BIOS you're using? I have a NF7 2.0 here (without SATA) that runs a similar memory config (2x512MB Corsair ValueRAM + 1GB Sycron, all DDR400).

I found this "D27 Taipan CPC OFF with 4276 SATA BIOS" zip stashed away on my PC with a file date from August 2012, so I believe that's the one I installed. Judging from the file name, this is probably not the exact version you'd use on yours without SATA, but if you can find a variant of this for your board I'd recommend it. It has been rock solid for me. 😀