Merovign wrote on 2020-04-08, 22:43:

That's probably my fault. :( […]
Show full quote

Horun wrote on 2020-04-08, 22:03:

Merovign wrote on 2020-04-08, 21:20:

Still trying to improvise storage methods. The PO must love me about now (honestly I use your boxes for shipping too!).

download/file.php?mode=view&id=80265

I know I will finally get everything in its place and then some haul will show up. 😀 Kind of hope and kind of dread that.

Looks Good !! Are you paying for those ? My local PO charges $1 each iirc for the small ones, double that for the large ones. I remember when they were free a few years ago but my area has all these new rules, the large grocery stores charge 5 cents for a paper bag and plastic ones are not allowed unless you bring them in your self.

That's probably my fault. 🙁

Edit: You can make your own boxes or box grid if you're creative with tape and have raw cardboard. Usually you can get free boxes from grocery stores or sometimes business parks, or if you know someone at a business that gets a lot of shipments.

Wine boxes might work to store cards diagonally.

I have some 12" wire cube shelving and I was thinking of using it for odd-size boards by zip-tying cut cardboard to form sub-shelves.

I do not think all PO are charging for them, just those in cities that have the stupid extreme recycle laws like the one I live in.
Ahh I use some of those partitioned large water bottle boxes, they hole motherboards quite well. Usually get them from the cardboard recycle bins at work.

Getting TCP/IP networking going on Windows 3.11 (not Windows for Workgroups) with my Thinkpad 760ED and 3Com 3C589D PCMCIA card.

Oh my. The last time I had anything to do with Windows 3.x and the internet was 1994 or 1995 and it was dialup and my dad had configured it all himself, so I knew nothing of the pain of getting networking going in this version of Windows. Here on this laptop, I actually installed Windows for Workgroups first because I had read TCP/IP networking was easier to get working on it versus plain old Windows 3.1, and yeah, it was definitely easier, though still a bit of a challenge.

But I do not own a physical copy of Windows for Workgroups, so decided to try getting the same basic set up working with my copy of Windows 3.11. Fair bit more confusing, and I don't have a Microsoft Network client or anything, so I still cannot browse the public Samba share on my network as I could with the WfW setup, but it's a start! I don't think I'll really need to go that far anyway, I can just access files off my network via FTP for now.

Today I connected (passed through) the Line Out of my Ultrasound Classic to the Line In of my Sound Blaster 16 and this seems to work perfectly. In the early nineties I had the same GUS and a Sound Blaster Pro in the same system and never realized that this was possible. I spend numbers hours switching the speakers from card to card...

pan069 wrote on 2020-04-09, 00:59:

Today I connected (passed through) the Line Out of my Ultrasound Classic to the Line In of my Sound Blaster 16 and this seems to work perfectly. In the early nineties I had the same GUS and a Sound Blaster Pro in the same system and never realized that this was possible. I spend numbers hours switching the speakers from card to card...

Wow that is great ! So now you do not have to switch the speakers leads and depending on the game setup it works seamlessly ? Tried that once with an SB and Yamaha but never succeeded. Did not do anything of value except clean controls on some old audio hardware.

keenmaster486 wrote on 2020-04-08, 17:47:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-07, 03:11:

Played a bit with the original Wolf3D source code, and managed to create a DOS binary with added "mouselook" and "always run" options. The mouselook option all it does is disable the y-axis of the mouse and make the left-right keys to strafe instead of turning. Tomorrow I think I'll play a bit more to make a Spear of Destiny binary with these features. If anybody is interested in the hack, I can share the patches or the binary. Screenshot attached.

Oh I am very interested in this.

I am attaching the patches to the original Wolf3D source code that I made to add mouselook and alwaysrun options. In the case of Spear of Destiny, the copy protection was also removed. I also attach two compressed files: signon.obj and gamepal.obj which are needed to compile SoD binary (the ones in the source code work for Wolf3D, not for SoD). I also attach the binaries, in case you want to ruin the fun of compiling them yourself, 🤣. Also, the binaries were tested with the registered version of SoD and Wolf3D.

Rebuilding a Tulip AT Compact 3. Only to have it spit fire in my face 🙁

Replaced them and now all is fine.

Took apart, cleaned and did some minor repairs on my newly acquired Prinztronic Micro 5500 console. Gotta love 1970s hardware:

Yep, just a rebadged Radofin console -

Didn't want to fully take this apart due to those 45-50 year old soldered ribbon cables that would no doubt immediately snap off -

Inside one of the game Cartridges and pretty much the brain of the operation. A shame that AY chip is soldered and not socketed like the ones on my Grandstand:

Finally reassembled after cleaning and minor repairs to the broken stick on the Right joystick:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-04-09, 01:51:

I am attaching the patches to the original Wolf3D source code that I made to add mouselook and alwaysrun options. In the case of Spear of Destiny, the copy protection was also removed. I also attach two compressed files: signon.obj and gamepal.obj which are needed to compile SoD binary (the ones in the source code work for Wolf3D, not for SoD). I also attach the binaries, in case you want to ruin the fun of compiling them yourself, 🤣. Also, the binaries were tested with the registered version of SoD and Wolf3D.

Thank you! I'll give this a shot!

Messed about with another 98se build...

With a P3 700 slot one on a Gigabyte GA-6BXE board.
512 mb ram
FX5200 GFX
Ensoniq PCI audio
Promise 133 ATA card
USB 2 card
100mb nic

All to go in an old Supermicro Full Tower case, that I had in the hoard. It's not yellowed at all. Although it has gone a bit rusty in places.

texterted wrote on 2020-04-09, 19:07:

Messed about with another 98se build...
All to go in an old Supermicro Full Tower case, that I had in the hoard. It's not yellowed at all. Although it has gone a bit rusty in places.

Case looks great to me !
Tore a part a non-working Mac Performa 600 today, given me a few weeks ago in the "shed" deal. Board is toast from battery leakage but found a IBM 160Mb scsi HD, four odd dual 30 pin SIMM to 30 pin adapters full of 1mb non parity 70nS AND a Media Vision NUBUSPAS16 in imacculate shape [missing the external dongle 🙁 ] The 72pin 8MB simm was in a old Oki 800e printer. Tonight will test the ram and HD...

Got the 4164 / 41256 DRAM tester yesterday. Have been going thru a bunch of ram. Found a bad one that I tried to find with simple "swicth it out" but never did. So maybe can get that Protek 286 up and running w/o a mem error now. YAY ! Or at least it is a step in right direction. Ever try leap-frogging 18 DIPS to find a bad one ? Easy to get confused 🤣

Divide and conquer.

on 286, if you have 2 banks of memory, divide it to one bank, I call this bank 0. If no error, swap whole ram out since it is known good, put the memory chips that was in bank 1, now are in bank 0, error? Good. Swap the 4 or 8 or 5 or 9 if your have parity of memory in the row in the bank 0 out using the known good chips. Still no error?, Do again. Now error?, Now divide the row in two in bank 0. Chances you will be down to either 3 or 5 chips do. Ok, Swap half again of that 3 or 5 chips or 2 or 4. Either way you find the bad one, Now swap one of them till you find last one.

Cheers,

pentiumspeed wrote on 2020-04-10, 02:14:

Divide and conquer.

on 286, if you have 2 banks of memory, divide it to one bank, I call this bank 0. If no error, swap whole ram out since it is known good, put the memory chips that was in bank 1, now are in bank 0, error? Good. Swap the 4 or 8 or 5 or 9 if your have parity of memory in the row in the bank 0 out using the known good chips. Still no error?, Do again. Now error?, Now divide the row in two in bank 0. Chances you will be down to either 3 or 5 chips do. Ok, Swap half again of that 3 or 5 chips or 2 or 4. Either way you find the bad one, Now swap one of them till you find last one.

Cheers,

🤣 Thanks but I know how to do the swap tests. Sometimes a mem tester is a the best way to figure it out unless you do not work and do not have a family and do not have a TON of free time on yours hands. Thanks but the $30 tester saved me another few days of testing AND it could also be the board itself and wanted to eliminate the ram as the issue.

Edit: I appreciate the l33ts, Oldbies and long time members for putting their country of origin in their profiles. For some reason I find it comforting when you do that. Thank You !

Been away awhile.....working on car stuff (replaced my own clutch). But today....I'm back. Broke out the Tandy 1000 and stated messing with surfing BBSes in that.....about as authentic as it gets.

Today I have mainly been cleaning and testing an old IBM ThinkPad laptop and playing Who Wants To Be A Millionaire on it and it turns out I dont as the most I got up to was £1,000 with 3 lifelines left so I should have used them!

Put in the 486 board, CPU, and RAM and hitting a lot of snags: detects cache as 32KB instead of 256KB (checked the jumper settings and swapped cache chips without success) and the floppy drive went south (not working on the VLB I/O card and the jumpers are set correctly).

While doing the Dallas RTC mod for my new 386 board, I was thinking how I'd tackle the battery holder. Putting it on top of the RTC would block the top 8 bit ISA slot, so I had to place it elsewhere. However, then I remembered I still had a baggie of vertical 2032 holders, originally bought to replace the soldered-in, dead ML2032 in my Dreamcast. I'd figure there was enough space right of the Dallas RTC, that the vertical holder could neatly sit next to the SIMM slots. So I got to work, and glued on the vertical holder to the Dallas chip. Looks pretty neat, and given I'll make a custom "socket" for the Dallas RTC by placing pieces of round connector strip in the through holes for the RTC, I can run the wires underneath the RTC, nicely out of sight.

Must be the day for it... Fixed dead Dallas clock syndrome on my Biostar 8433UUD motherboard. Module was not socketed and chances of desoldering it from a multi-layer board without damage looked minimal. With patience and a Dremel tool I was able to grind into it "in place" (just enough clearance between chip and adjacent bus connector). Glued a new coin-battery holder on top and everything works a treat!

vtgearhead wrote on 2020-04-11, 13:22:

Must be the day for it... Fixed dead Dallas clock syndrome on my Biostar 8433UUD motherboard. Module was not socketed and chances of desoldering it from a multi-layer board without damage looked minimal. With patience and a Dremel tool I was able to grind into it "in place" (just enough clearance between chip and adjacent bus connector). Glued a new coin-battery holder on top and everything works a treat!

Great ! There are some boards where grinding in place versus trying to desolder is the better choice due to SMT or other sensitive parts nearby.

I've messed around with OS/2 Warp 4 at length and brought the kernel up to Warp 4.5 level and ultimately wiped it clean. I had a few reasons; first, Warp 4 was not an OS I was nostalgic to begin with as I was a Warp 3 user primarily, and second it did not grow on me as I thought it would. So in the end my 1997 Budget OS/2 Warp 4 Workstation build turned into a 1997 Budget Gaming Build and I threw in a Voodoo card for good measure, as they would be fairly affordable by the end of 1997 I presume.

I then set up all MS-DOS Mode stuff I would need on the system. It now boots me into MS-DOS 7 and I have all the batch files set up so that my comfortable Cyrix 6x86MX-PR233 with a Dreamblaster S2 GM wavetable can with a simple batch file turn into a Cx486DX50 with an MT-32 thanks to SETMUL, ESSVOL, Dreamblaster DB-15, USB MIDI Interface and a Raspberry Pi3 running MUNT. Ok, typing it out it does sound a bit convoluted but it's really not.

Now I need to set up Windows 98SE stuff and install some GLIDE games. This will probably become my new daily driver.