infiniteclouds wrote:

Rare PC Technologies 286 Express card made for the 8088 Tandy 1000s. The daughterboard houses the 8088 and connects the cards to […]
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Rare PC Technologies 286 Express card made for the 8088 Tandy 1000s. The daughterboard houses the 8088 and connects the cards to the motherboard's CPU socket through the ribbon cable, so you don't lose your XT speeds. You can toggle between the the 8088 and 286, as well as enable/disable cache with keyboard shortcuts.

The 1000SX has 4 speeds now:

8088:
4.77mhz
7.16mhz

286:
7.16mhz w/Cache (8KB)
7.16 w/o Cache

The socket in the main card is for a 80287 which is on the way. Many thanks to the gentleman on VCF who sold this to me -- I had given up trying to find one.
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That's cool! Do you have a picture of the motherboards CPU socket side?

So much sweat and backache but working on the old sturdy rack cabinet goes on 😀

Old rack cabinet, finally

Haven't really accomplished anything retro unless you consider a nightmarish Win7 install on a Vista-era machine "retro."

I spent about 15 minutes in the heat yesterday (107?) trying to open a power supply from a PowerMac 8500 that was made like the devlish puzzlebox in those Hellraiser movies (never really seen it but I know the box).

There were clips and bent metal and screws behind parts of the cover and everything seems to be locked to something else... after all that I'm not sure I want to see what's inside that power supply. Probably better to bury it under a stone slab and replace it with a Sparkle.

i know that power supply. I dont remember it being hard to open. worst case, replacements are cheap on ePay.

luckybob wrote:

i know that power supply. I dont remember it being hard to open. worst case, replacements are cheap on ePay.

Must be a different PS. This one is mostly one piece bent around with t-shaped "tabs" pressed down into grooves. I figure I will get it open eventually, but between the heat and the smoke (I'm in CA in the path of the cloud you may have seen on the news), not right now.

I mean, I could do it indoors, but the point is cleaning the 1/2 lb of dust and ash out of it (maybe not quite that bad).

This weekend I changed the OS on my Dell Inspiron 4000 from NT4 to...........ME :p
Always wanted to try it and it's a test because I'm still not done deciding which OS for my K6-3 build: 98SE or ME

Murugan wrote:

This weekend I changed the OS on my Dell Inspiron 4000 from NT4 to...........ME :p
Always wanted to try it and it's a test because I'm still not done deciding which OS for my K6-3 build: 98SE or ME

98SE, no doubt. ME was one of the worst MS system ever. Everything sucked: day to day operation, compatibility, stability, everything. 98SE all the way.

Why would ME be less stable than 98SE? I thought the only problem with it was the removal of DOS.

Errius wrote:

Why would ME be less stable than 98SE? I thought the only problem with it was the removal of DOS.

Stability issues were widely reported by "some users" and, though I didn't get much use out of the copy I pirated in high school out of curiosity, I did experience it being more unstable than the 98SE upgrade that my father bought me. (Our PC came with 95 OSR2) I'm assuming it was a case of "some people saw increased stability from the removal of DOS but others tripped over regressions."

DOS also wasn't the only thing they removed. They also removed various features targeted at enterprise customers, like automated installation (through means other than installing once and then cloning the disk on your assembly line), the System Policy Editor, and several options from the Explorer menus. There was also never a Resource Kit for it.

Errius wrote:

Why would ME be less stable than 98SE? I thought the only problem with it was the removal of DOS.

Me was released at a time when WDM drivers were very immature and did not play well with VxD drivers, there were a lot of hardware in the market that had issues with other hardware (Live! cards having issues with PCI Buses, Voodoo 3s not working in all AGP slots, VIA having terrible 4-in-1 drivers etc.) and hardware PnP was pretty terrible.

It was a recipe for a disaster, and for a long while it was. I went from Win98 to WinMe for about a month or two before going back to Win98 and eventually skipping it for Win2K and never looking back. Many other people had such terrible experiences.

Nowadays I use WinMe for my PIII system and I really love it. Funny how things change.

Tossed in a 160GB 10,000RPM HD in the dx2300... I think some more upgrades should come later today.

Errius wrote:

Why would ME be less stable than 98SE? I thought the only problem with it was the removal of DOS.

The WDM driverset was horrible. I ran ME and had an ESS Maestro-2 ES1968S (Diamond Multimedia Sonic Impact S70) and the sound card would lock up the system because of the drivers. Windows 98SE worked with the card (of course, with its drivers, not the WDM).

VXD MASTER RACE!

OldCat wrote:

98SE, no doubt. ME was one of the worst MS system ever. Everything sucked: day to day operation, compatibility, stability, everything. 98SE all the way.

I must have been doing something wrong back in the day, because it worked fine for me for years on multiple machines with various hardware.

That being said, as a "retro" option, SE has much better "retro community" support, for example some of the "unofficial updates" work on SE but not ME.

if i had to choose between vista and ME, i'd pick me. hands down.

why not BOTH?!

Heh. Windows "Mistake Edition". I believe I only paid like $40 for my copy because of rebates they gave people who owned win95/98, so I didn't rage too hard about an OS that was obsoleted by XP within maybe 8 months of purchase.

Funny how they followed that disaster up with the only version of Windows I ever truly enjoyed using (XP).

You paid for Windows??

i did for vista. so pissed off by that decision, i pirated every version after out of pure spite.

Unpopular Opinion: Windows ME is great for a late 1999/early 2000 machine. Its more adaptable than 98SE (it has built in USB Keyboard/Mouse support, and built in USB Mass storage drivers). The UI has a sleek updated yet still very millinium culture feeling vibe. It supports most 9x drivers which is a huge bonus if your running some sort of odd configuration. It has superior file management, and it handles higher resolutions slightly better.

My Gateway GP7-800 (P3-800, 192MB RAM, V3 3000 AGP) has had ME on it since I got it and I've never had any issues (sparring my icons being black with my Voodoo3 for whatever reason. Everything else works flawlessly... its weird). My 98SE rig which is very similar (P3 933, 384MB RAM, GF256SDR) needs to be reinstalled about every 8 months as I'm finding out.

I even was able to get ME running on a Sony P4 era laptop with working 3D acceleration (though it was never really stable and my pixel shaders didnt work)