Murugan wrote:

This project had been slacking for quite a while. I started with an Intel Premiere PCI II but due to an empty Dallas RTC and IDE […]
Show full quote

This project had been slacking for quite a while.
I started with an Intel Premiere PCI II but due to an empty Dallas RTC and IDE problems, I abandoned this one and tried 2 Asus Socket 7 boards ( P/I-P55TVP4 but 2 different revisions). Still the same problem with the empty soldered on RTC. Since I can't do it myself, I didn't want to have them modded at that time so I bought a VTECH 35-8258-03 (MB520N). This solved my problems of settings not being saved.

Today I have a day off so I finally tackeled the 'mut' 😊

* The case is a mix of parts: chassis, tray and cover are from 3 different pc's that were too far gone. I couldn't get the power button from the PSU attached to the power button on the case so I mounted it in the back
* Motherboard: VTECH 35-8258-03 (MB520N)
* CPU: Pentium 75
* RAM: 64MB
* HD: Quantum Fireball LCT 8GB
* GPU: Tseng ET6100 with 4MB (was doubting between this and some S3 cards)
* Soundcard: SB Vibra 16 PnP CT2890 (I wanted to install a SB32 but it doesn't get detected)
* Drives: 1.44Mb floppy and a CD RW that sounds like a jet turbine
* OS: Windows 95B (going to install Plus! for fun)

Beautifull.... Nice machine. I have one of them CT2890's and they have great bass response. And they are quiet enough for my taste (line noise). Personally I would choose an S3 for that CPU, or still go for an CL5446. This is like the border territory between S3 and CL in my book. Yet on a P133 to P233, then I would have gone for an S3. On the other hand. The Tseng just gives it this really awesomme feel.

In other words. Good job.

Thanks! I almost tossed the case out since it lacked the tray and the cover. Luckily after a while, I got the other stuff too.
I know about the S3. Reason I went for the Tseng is that I already have a lot of socket 7 machines with S3 in it. I wanted this one to be different from the rest. To be honest: I'm doubting of changing the souncard for a Mozart or a Mediavision Jazz 16 :p Just to be the oddball in the pack ...

Murugan wrote:

Thanks! I almost tossed the case out since it lacked the tray and the cover. Luckily after a while, I got the other stuff too.
I know about the S3. Reason I went for the Tseng is that I already have a lot of socket 7 machines with S3 in it. I wanted this one to be different from the rest. To be honest: I'm doubting of changing the souncard for a Mozart or a Mediavision Jazz 16 :p Just to be the oddball in the pack ...

The only times that I have tried any Mozart card, I found them to be disappointing. Those are not my friends. Yet Jazz16 cards. Well... I have only tried one card, and I must say that I am really impressed by it. Sounds extremely close to an Soundblaster-Pro2 card. (CT-1600)

I have it in my dx33:
http://to9xct.blogspot.com/2018/11/intel-486d … 3-new-case.html

I bought a couple of Thin Clients a couple of days ago and received the first one today. Upon opening the package though, no power supply and this thing uses a weird non-standard 4-pin connector. 😢 Seller is sending one out to me, but I won't get it until Thursday.

So faced with a device I couldn't test at the moment, I decided to open it up and have a look inside. I looked at the specs online before I bought it and knew what to expect.... or so I thought. Imagine my surprise when I opened it up and discovered I'd hit the jackpot - it's the later revision motherboard! 🤣

So it has a 512MB DDR2 DIMM instead of 128MB DDR SODIMM, it has an extra 44-pin IDE port and it has 2 SATA ports! I could probably squeeze in an mSATA SSD with an adapter for faster storage. 😎

But the sweetest thing of all - this motherboard has a standard ATX power connector!!! 😎 😎 😎 So I can temporarily bypass the weird 4-pin plug and actually test this thing out with a regular PC power supply.

Actual specs:

Devon IT LT 310 Thin Client
ECS C7VCM2 V1.0 Mini-ITX Motherboard
VIA C7 1GHz CPU
VIA CN700 Chipset
512MB DDR2 RAM
VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro Onboard Graphics
VIA AC’97 Onboard Audio
RealTek RTL-8110SC Onboard Ethernet

I'm going to run some utilities on it to check everything out and then for fun I might try and setup Windows 95B onto the 128MB DOM. Driver availability would be about the only issue that could probably hinder that plan. The ECS website has official support for Windows 2000, Windows XP & Windows Server 2003, but nothing earlier.

My issue with these thin client things is that none of them seem to have onboard sound that does SB Pro compatibility in Win9x.. Are there any that do?

PTherapist wrote:

[...]
I'm going to run some utilities on it to check everything out and then for fun I might try and setup Windows 95B onto the 128MB DOM. Driver availability would be about the only issue that could probably hinder that plan. The ECS website has official support for Windows 2000, Windows XP & Windows Server 2003, but nothing earlier.

I have run a CN700-based thin client on 98FE some years ago and it ran fine (same for a phantom floppy drive) with drivers available for everything. The mainboards might change but the actual components stay the same (CN700 north with Unichrome graphics and 8237A south with integrated Rhine network and Vinyl AC97 sound).
Anyway don't listen to what ECS says and go look for drivers at the source: http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp

When you're making Thin Clients do things they were never intended to do, the parkytowers.me.uk site is a valuable resource. Yours is here.
it also posts the lspci of a different Wyse model that uses the same CN700 receipe,

100:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
200:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
300:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
400:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 Host Bridge
500:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
600:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
700:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
800:0b.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 8d)
900:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
1000:10.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1100:10.1 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1200:10.2 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1300:10.3 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1400:10.4 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
1500:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
1600:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
1701:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/P4M800 Pro/P4M800 CE/VN800 Graphics [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01)

So it looks like if you can't get "true" CN700 drivers working on 95 you might get something if you "force" drivers made for other more conventional VIA chipsets.

Got some soldering backlog done today:

- Replaced a blown tantalum cap on a Morse P1 486 board. After three tries getting it into the original location between the ISA slots gave up and soldered it onto the back instead.
- Replaced the dead power switch in the PSU in my recently acquired ShiTec desktop case.
- Added the formerly missing MOSFET onto this little beauty, a PGA-DX4/2 interposer. Still need to add a little heatsink for it though, it supposedly gets rather hot...

andrea wrote:

I have run a CN700-based thin client on 98FE some years ago and it ran fine (same for a phantom floppy drive) with drivers avail […]
Show full quote

PTherapist wrote:

[...]
I'm going to run some utilities on it to check everything out and then for fun I might try and setup Windows 95B onto the 128MB DOM. Driver availability would be about the only issue that could probably hinder that plan. The ECS website has official support for Windows 2000, Windows XP & Windows Server 2003, but nothing earlier.

I have run a CN700-based thin client on 98FE some years ago and it ran fine (same for a phantom floppy drive) with drivers available for everything. The mainboards might change but the actual components stay the same (CN700 north with Unichrome graphics and 8237A south with integrated Rhine network and Vinyl AC97 sound).
Anyway don't listen to what ECS says and go look for drivers at the source: http://download.viatech.com/en/support/driversSelect.jsp

When you're making Thin Clients do things they were never intended to do, the parkytowers.me.uk site is a valuable resource. Yours is here.
it also posts the lspci of a different Wyse model that uses the same CN700 receipe,

Copy code to clipboard

100:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
200:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
300:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
400:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. PT890 Host Bridge
500:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
600:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/VN800/P4M800CE/Pro Host Bridge
700:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
800:0b.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 8d)
900:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
1000:10.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1100:10.1 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1200:10.2 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1300:10.3 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
1400:10.4 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
1500:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
1600:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
1701:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. CN700/P4M800 Pro/P4M800 CE/VN800 Graphics [S3 UniChrome Pro] (rev 01)

So it looks like if you can't get "true" CN700 drivers working on 95 you might get something if you "force" drivers made for other more conventional VIA chipsets.

Yeah parkytowers is a great site, that's where I looked up the specs initially and then discovered I had the later model, which was cool.

I did try some drivers on Windows 95 earlier and ended up screwing up the whole OS. Only had it installed for a couple of hours, I'd forgotten just how temperamental Windows 95 could be. 🤣 I'm going to format and try again later this week with other drivers from the VIA site.

I too got the phantom A drive in Windows 95.

Installing 95 on a 128MB DOM was just for novelty purposes really, as I'm going to replace it with a 30GB mSATA SSD (+SATA adapter) and dual boot 98SE & XP to make life easier.

Put this together as my Voodoo 3/M3D/Fast DOS build. I have been wanting to do a build around this board for a while now for the 2 ISA slots and decided to put the Pentium into storage and have a play about with this.

Specs are as follows

Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 - AMD 751/756 chipset
Athlon 1200B@1320 (110x12)
256mb Ram
AGP Voodoo 3 3000
Matrox M3D PCI 3D Accelerator
Sound Blaster AWE32 CT3980 With a Turtle Beach Pinnacle HOMAC Wavetable Board
Yamaha SW60XG
Plextor 16/40 CD-RW
Panasonic Floppy
80GiG HD
Win98SE

Today I listened to/watched this way too many times to be healthy.

The whole channel is genius, but I thought you guys would appreciate this one in particular.

xjas wrote:

Today I listened to/watched this way too many times to be healthy.

The whole channel is genius, but I thought you guys would appreciate this one in particular.

reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16KpquGsIc

Found this old picture.

luckybob wrote:

xjas wrote:

Today I listened to/watched this way too many times to be healthy.

The whole channel is genius, but I thought you guys would appreciate this one in particular.

reminded me of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q16KpquGsIc

Nice, I love a good Youtube poop.

...wait, that sounded wrong. 😖

Apparently the one I posted above is a remix of a remix of a rabbit hole of remixes. Here's the previous one. They're both good.

Bancho wrote:

Put this together as my Voodoo 3/M3D/Fast DOS build. I have been wanting to do a build around this board for a while now for the 2 ISA slots and decided to put the Pentium into storage and have a play about with this.

Ooh super nice build! Great sound options and that Voodoo3 is a perfect fast DOS card in my experience - fast and excellent image quality.

Fixed the bent legs of a Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 PRO and reorganized the hardware storage room..

Really running out of room so I put some AT Socket 7 motherboards and a couple video/sound cards on sale..

Bancho wrote:

Put this together as my Voodoo 3/M3D/Fast DOS build. I have been wanting to do a build around this board for a while now for the […]
Show full quote

Put this together as my Voodoo 3/M3D/Fast DOS build. I have been wanting to do a build around this board for a while now for the 2 ISA slots and decided to put the Pentium into storage and have a play about with this.

Specs are as follows

Gigabyte GA-7IXE4 - AMD 751/756 chipset
Athlon 1200B@1320 (110x12)
256mb Ram
AGP Voodoo 3 3000
Matrox M3D PCI 3D Accelerator
Sound Blaster AWE32 CT3980 With a Turtle Beach Pinnacle HOMAC Wavetable Board
Yamaha SW60XG
Plextor 16/40 CD-RW
Panasonic Floppy
80GiG HD
Win98SE

I've got one of those 7IXE4's but I've got to recap the sucker as basically the entire power delivery section is bloated.

Created my first bootdisk for Amiga. Totally easy.

- Format a floppy.
- Open CLI, and type "install df0"
- Create a directory, called "s" on the floppy.
- Create a file called "Startup-sequence" in s.
- Add any command you wish to that file.

So I have made a bootable floppy with Sysinfo 4.0

Received my 2nd Thin Client that I ordered today. This one was totally as expected, no surprises.

Full specs:

IGEL M310C Thin Client
VIA Nano U3400 800MHz
VIA VX855 Chipset
1GB PC2-6400 DDR2 SODIMM RAM
1GB CF Card (I've now replaced this with a 32GB CF card)
VIA Chrome9 HCM Onboard Graphics
VIA VT8251 Vinyl HDA Onboard Audio
RealTek RTL-8110SC Onboard Ethernet

System came with an IGEL customised Linux desktop, allowing access to stuff like RDP sessions etc, as you'd expect. I tested it out as an actual Thin Client by logging into my Windows 10 PC. Was fun, but nah I think I'll stick to the original plan of a retro gaming + utility system. 🤣

Also received a 30GB mSATA SSD + adapter, so that's going to go into my first Thin Client.

Going to setup Windows 98SE & Windows XP dual boot on both Linux clients and see how they compare and function.

My 40-pin IDE - CF adapter doesn't seem to co-operate well in the other Thin Client, causes severe boot lag etc. Either it is defective, or my IDE cable is. Either way no big deal, I'll test that out another time on 1 of my actual retro PCs. 1GB would come in handy possibly for my Socket 5 PC.

doogie wrote:

Sorry for rewinding a couple of pages.. […]
Show full quote

Sorry for rewinding a couple of pages..

blougaville wrote:

I've been putting more retro computers together lately and decided I needed a more era appropriate file server to load my drivers/software from. I have a modern Win Server 2016 machine with multiple guest VMs running so rather than building a dedicated retro server (which would have also been fun), I decided to see how hard it was to get Windows 2000/NT4 server running as 2016 Hyper-V guests...turns out it wasn't very difficult at all!

Installing these old server OSes brought back a lot of memories - mostly of me installing & reinstalling daily as a kid who was trial and erroring my way through understanding networking. I'm trying to think of more fun things that I could run practically on these VMs, but even if I just use them as file servers I'll be happy!

vms.jpg

Awesome!!
I have a pretty good amount of retro "infrastructure" on my network. I use a dedicated VLAN for old machines, and a Windows Server 2003 R2 server (in a VM, like what you're showing here) runs the show.
I've put a decent amount of time into a combination of RIS and PXELinux, so I can boot most tools from the network and install OS's either from scratch or from CloneZilla image.

For software and games, I mount .iso images from the file server and of course keep a driver repo.
Saves huge amounts of wear and tear on already aging optical and floppy drives.

Hey, thanks for commenting! I'm jealous of your LAN booting. That's the next thing I would like to do! I'm working on assembling an arsenal of OS install media on USB/CD/Virtual Floppy so network booting needs to happen so I can just dig into a new project with all the tools on hand. Like you, I have a dedicated hobby VLAN. While I originally blocked all internet traffic to this VLAN, I just rolled out a script to all of my retro machines that grants temporary internet access by doing some port knocks on my edge router. This way I can sleep a little better at night knowing that my vulnerable unpatched babies aren't opened up to any weird internet exploits but let me grab quick access if I need to track down something that's not nearby on my W2K file server!

I'm also trying to decide if I should set up a domain and join my 2000/XP machines to it...or just stick with workgroup file sharing. I have a lot of fondness for the advent of the Windows domain but at the same time I feel kind of weird having machines domain-joined that are primarily intended for gaming...

I upgraded my 286 machine from CGA to VGA. No more dumb programs refusing to run in graphics mode. Also upgraded to windows 3.1.