I hacked together this ATX-To-Amiga PSU-cable today. Tested and working flawless.
Going to need more power for my Amiga's in the future, and my original a500 PSU are dead.
Took a couple of hours, taking the dead PSU apart, and doing the build.

Killed Windows ME from my Toshiba TECRA 8000 and installed Windows 2000 Pro instead. Currently running with only 64 MB RAM, but will get upgraded to 192 MB tomorrow.

More soldering work. The Amiga500, that I am in the process of bringing back to life, was missing one joystick port, and the other was in bad shape. It was rusty and green and had a white layer here and there. I removed the one remaining one, and cleaned all solder pads up with IPA. Found some spare ones, that has never been used, and soldered them in. I need to go over my work on a few of the pads, and will wait until tomorrow, when there are more daylight. I will attend the sound ports as well. I have two spare ones, that I can use. The ones on it right now, are just too damaged.

EDIT:
Both ports are working. I did a quick testsetup, running "systest" and used my newly build powercable this time.
One step closer to a second working 500 in my collection.
Later this month, I will be having a visit from an fellow Amiga owner. He will bring a keyboard and an RF shield.
Then we will test it out and do a little trade with a C64 floppy drive that I have.
Keyboards are not that rare, though this is a Danish layout and they are rare, unless I buy a complete unit.

appiah4 wrote:

McBierle wrote:

While i'm waiting for a Slot-A heatsink for this newly bought board+cpu:

Where did you get one? I have an Athlon 700 that needs a Slot-A heatsink..

Got it on ebay. Not sure if this thing is any good, we'll see. Seems to be remaining stock, still 5 left. The seller is "cbo-do" (Germany).
I'm not allowed to post ebaylinks, right?

Installed an IDE SD Card adapter into an ex-cd rom case, that I modified. Now I have to find some sort of yellowish color to paint the front of the bay to match the rest of the case...

#Turbo->
Well done sir. 😀

MMaximus wrote:

AlaricD wrote:

Typically a function of the BIOS itself; is it AMI, Award, Erso, or Phoenix? You could also try the "stuck key" trick and see if it tells you what to press when there's a stuck key-- or even remove the keyboard to see what it says to do.

The Bios is from Phoenix - on post it says "Phoenix 80286 ROM BIOS PLUS Version 3.10.22"

It seems I'm only able to enter the Bios setup when I mess with the system configuration - i.e. removing the floppy drive or the hard disk. Then the system displays the "Invalid configuration information" message and offers me the option to press the F2 key to run the setup utility. On the other hand if the system configuration is correct, no amount of "F2 bashing" will allow me to enter setup...

This PC looks great!
Tried CTRL-ALT-ESC for Setup?

Can you add your BIOS here?
Suntac 80286 Mainboards

You can also try the others if you like, they are interchangable.

I managed to dig up some of my old computer hardware from my parents' place: a Tandy 1000 TL/2, a Packard Hell PackMate 450 (a model that seemingly never existed and I presume made only for Canada or only for Future Shop), a Laser 128EX, and a Mac Classic. I was unable to locate my old 386, 486, and Pentium systems, and I presume that they got tossed.

I reached out to a couple friends who were looking to sell some of their old hardware and came home with a dozen processors, ranging from 286 to Pentium II, and am going back to pick up another ~25 processors next week. I also nabbed a couple motherboards, a couple video cards, a tray of 30-pin and 72-pin RAM, and a Gravis Ultrasound w/ the 8 MB memory upgrade. I have to go back to pick up a couple more video cards and some ISA network cards for some limited network connectivity for the Tandy and Packard Hell.

The past couple days have been spent cleaning up the computers and firing them up. They all work well, though I hold little hope of being able to restore my backup tapes on the Packard Hell's Conner tape drive as I cannot remember what backup software shipped with the computer and it looks like before it went into storage ~20 years ago, I had nuked the drive and installed Windows 95 and so no backup software is installed.

The Packard Hell was originally a 486 of some vintage but I remember us buying the Pentium Overdrive, which is installed in it now.

The past couple days, I have been building a 486 from the parts available. So far, a PC Chips motherboard (not so good) and an Intel 486 DX2-100 (good) with a Matrox Millenium II and a Gravis Ultrasound. My adventures included downloading the last GUS driver disks released and finding that with Windows 10 and the way it handles disks, all of the disks took 1-2 kb more that the disk capacity. I imagine if I looked more, I could have found actual .img files for the install disks but instead, I downloaded fdformat and formatted the floppy disks to 1.68 MB and then copied the contents over. Then, it would refuse to see disk two inserted, so I eventually just copied all of the contents over to a folder on the HDD and installed from there. Spent a lot of time getting acquainted with the GUS. Software made for it, no problem. Other software, it was first fiddling with SBOS and eventually, Megaem. Started with what I had, v3.06b, which locked the PC up regularly when starting apps and emulating MIDI or the MT-32. Finally nabbed v3.10 (and I know v3.11 is out there) and that resolved most issues. Then, because the HDD was only 100 MB, I rummaged through my pile of disks. The BIOS hits the 8 GB limit, and rather than try to find a dynamic disk overlay for the Seagate drive I was going to use, I just installed a 6 GB Fujitsu HDD. (I've since found that Kroll has agreed to release Ontrack Disk Manager, the same software that most HDD manufacturers licensed for their DDO, and so it'll work with any HDD.) The next step was to install MS-DOS 7.10 so that I would have FAT32 support so I wouldn't be stuck with a pile of 2 GB partitions. Less an issue now, but if I go with a larger HDD, it'll become an issue.

After that, it was mostly just poking at some of my old games and enjoying it, though the work is far from over.

Impressive collection and welcome!

Thallanor wrote:

I hold little hope of being able to restore my backup tapes on the Packard Hell's Conner tape drive as I cannot remember what backup software shipped with the computer and it looks like before it went into storage ~20 years ago, I had nuked the drive and installed Windows 95 and so no backup software is installed.

128/256mb tape's? I had one of those, yet have no software at all from back in 1995. Yet... I remember the software well. There was a Dos and a Win-3.11 version of that software, and it was cross compatible. Did some googling and came up with this description of a piece of software.

ftp://ftp.brain.it/public/Old_Driver/Driver%2 … dows/README.TXT

brostenen wrote:

Thallanor wrote:

I hold little hope of being able to restore my backup tapes on the Packard Hell's Conner tape drive as I cannot remember what backup software shipped with the computer and it looks like before it went into storage ~20 years ago, I had nuked the drive and installed Windows 95 and so no backup software is installed.

128/256mb tape's? I had one of those, yet have no software at all from back in 1995. Yet... I remember the software well. There was a Dos and a Win-3.11 version of that software, and it was cross compatible. Did some googling and came up with this description of a piece of software.

ftp://ftp.brain.it/public/Old_Driver/Driver%2 … dows/README.TXT

I have the Conner tape drive I got brand new 2 years ago, as well as a tape, but, that got eaten alive by another tape drive that had a goopy center (where the tape meets and it makes the tape spin left and right). It's in my current Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus, and I have the software installed in MS-DOS, and the Windows Backup is the other option I have.

brostenen wrote:

128/256mb tape's? I had one of those, yet have no software at all from back in 1995. Yet... I remember the software well. There was a Dos and a Win-3.11 version of that software, and it was cross compatible. Did some googling and came up with this description of a piece of software.

ftp://ftp.brain.it/public/Old_Driver/Driver%2 … dows/README.TXT

Yup! Well, 250 GB w/ compression. (I presume specifically, it's 128/256.) This software _does_ look familiar. I've Googled it to look up screen shots. It's kinda funny that it's Backup Exec. I think every company has owned the rights to this software at some point in time. Thanks for the lead!

bjwil1991 wrote:

I have the Conner tape drive I got brand new 2 years ago, as well as a tape, but, that got eaten alive by another tape drive that had a goopy center (where the tape meets and it makes the tape spin left and right). It's in my current Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus, and I have the software installed in MS-DOS, and the Windows Backup is the other option I have.

I have had the exact same thing happen with another tape drive, and also with cassette tapes. Fun! I'd be curious what software you have installed in MS-DOS. Also, if memory serves (the computer is right here but under a stack of other computers) the tape drive uses a FDD interface.

I don't think I used Windows Backup, but I know I also have a couple tapes that I used a piece of software that made the tape drive look like a (really slow) drive that you could just access as needed. Those (and even some of the normally backed-up ones) I suspect won't work that well after 20-25 years. Even back then, I remember I was starting to get some errors because I used these tapes non-stop. Basically, I just want to pull what I can from them now that I can store them almost anywhere.

Thanks for the advice!

canthearu wrote:

Now that I have it working, the biggest thing is that I wasn't able to get the existing MFM controller to play with the XT-IDE controller. I believe this might be due to the XT-IDE bios, as it seems to completely replace the drive routines in the PC's BIOS. Any suggestions on how to fix this?

I did actually get this going now. Installed 2.0.0beta2 of the XTIDE firmware, with full mode enabled, now can boot from old hard drive and new XTIDE device.

Now, need to pull the XTIDE card and give it a really good clean and drying so it looks nice 😀 Lots of flux left on the back, makes it look kinda a bit knarly

Used some leftover scraps I'd saved from building my SNES/PSP game shelf to put a quick and dirty extension for 3.5" floppies on the bottom, then designed and printed out some labels for the plastic disk boxes. Yes, that is a Zip 100 case being used to store a couple of floppies in the bottom-right corner.

(Some of the wood was slightly warped and I botched the alignment by 2-3mm when installing it, but, right now, I'm too tired to feel like taking it down and glueing toothpicks into the screw holes to try again. At least it's in a place where it's not easy for people to notice the problem. Likewise for the handful of typos in the labels.)

I also still need to stop by the hardware store to pick up a couple more wall anchors before I can install the bracket for the bottom-right corner.

ssokolow wrote:

Used some leftover scraps I'd saved from building my SNES/PSP game shelf

Pray, do tell. Or do show, rather.

Also: My Rose-Coloured-Glasses Builds - clicked it and spend 15 minutes reading. You are OCD, that's for sure, but it's sooo impressive. Also, a distinct "one of us" vibe - my first computer bought with my own money was Duron 800MHz with GF2, so roughly the same era/price bracket.

Audio ports are now changed as well... I still have to change the ports for external floppy, serial and parallel.
That however is a job for the future, as I have no spare parts for those.
Next up, I need to find a new floppy drive and I need to get that keyboard and the shield.
Finally. I need to paint the case in some funky colour. Then I have brought an Amiga500 back to life.
One can actually see how bad the original ports were in the picture below.

Looks pretty good. Last night, I used Norton Ghost to copy every file and folder from the 2GB CF card to the 4GB CF card I made for my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus as I'm planning on adding more games to the system (all of King's Quest, as well as the other games I purchased on GOG.com or Steam (DOS games)).

I am going to take a trek out to my garage and see if I can make any sense of all these computer parts.
I want to box up parts for some ideas I have for future audio builds.

Going to see what parts I have and what I need.

486 builds.
AMD K63+ builds.
Pentium-3 builds.
Macintosh restorations.
IMac systems.
Mac Pro upgrades.
Old laptop repairs.

OldCat wrote:

ssokolow wrote:

Used some leftover scraps I'd saved from building my SNES/PSP game shelf

Pray, do tell. Or do show, rather.

As requested. Sorry about the little bit of perspective distortion. I couldn't find a satisfying-looking correction, so I left it raw.

The shelf is built using the remains of some kind of broken IKEA furniture that a family friend was going to throw out otherwise. (I also built several others from said remains. I think it might have been some kind of bed frame.)

The labels on both the floppies and the stacking boxes are done using the same "plain paper + glue roller" technique I described for making index cards into nice shelf dividers.

The top three rows of the wall shelf are sized for SNES cartridges. The next one down is sized for PSP keep cases. Then, below that, two rows sized to fit either my tallest floppy boxes or N64 and Sega Genesis carts. (For shelves that I didn't build to be adjustable, I like to leave myself options.)

The SNES carts are stored label-left (in plastic so I can handle them without feeling worried about the labels) because Nintendo invariably puts the backup battery in the top-right corner of the cartridge when viewed from the front (confirmed on my entire collection of GB, GBC, GBA, SNES, and N64 carts) so, if I drop the ball on battery inspection and replacement and they leak, the electrolyte will attack nothing but the battery traces before it flows off the PCB and onto the inside of the shell. (The one caveat being the handful of SRAM-based GBA carts with batteries, where the battery straddles a surface-mount IC to save space.)

On the PSP row, I bought "Capcom Classics Collection Remixed", "Lumines", and "Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters" as loose UMDs for $2-5 CA each at the local pawn shop or used games store, then I spent 20¢ each on empty PSP cases and printed inserts for them.

In the case of the Capcom Classics Collection Remixed, I had to reinvent the spine portion of the label since The Cover Project didn't have a complete, print-ready insert. I got lazy there and, one of these days, if I have nothing better to do, it'd be nice to track down the actual fonts Capcom used and redo it. Likewise with the Ratchet & Clank insert, which was printed on an inkjet that was running out of black ink and doesn't have the inner art properly aligned, since I have little experience with double-sided printing.

As for the bottom rows, those aren't all of my 3.5" floppies, but the other cardboard-boxed ones are on a different shelf, next to my Gameboy and Gameboy Color games. (Speaking of which, I should probably tidy up and share the template I cooked up for making labels that fit those Gameboy clamshells using Inkscape and some digital calipers.)

I know I'm missing some floppies, since I no longer have my childhood copies of Treasure Mountain and Ducktales: The Quest for Gold, and my set of OS/2 1.20 floppies is incomplete.