I've been trying to get my Tecra A4 to work properly, but the GPU won't accept the drivers. The drivers install just fine on Win7, WinXP and Linux Mint, but they refuse to initialise the GPU after the reboot. Basically:
XP Pro SP3: Driver installs, after reboot reports the device couldn't start.
7 Pro: Driver installs, after reboot freezes on boot logo.
Mint 19.3 32-bit: Doesn't load graphical environment unless I use XVesa.
Looks like the GPU IS toast after all. I got my hopes up for nothing because the laptop looked mostly clean outside and inside and the screen didn't artifact all over the place. Might try to fix it later.
I also found a plastic clip for my GA-K8VT800Pro in good condition. In my own room, no less. I'm slowly getting to the point where I don't remember where I even got some of my stuff. Good thing I keep some stuff that otherwise looks useless 😀

Tonight I booted up a 2008 MacBook with a dead screen after hooking it up to an external monitor, waited extremely long until the thing had actually booted, got logged in automatically, and noticed how the whole thing was extremely slow. I spent about half an hour disabling all of the useless crap the previous owner had installed on it (including Flash Player and about every single remote desktop software that existed for the thing, all active and with no password protection*), ran Disk Utility twice in a row, deleted all wireless networks it automatically logged on to (95% of which were insecure), and then discovered that it hung when trying to access the printer preferences. Removing the printer driver that was installed twice (both active) lead to a considerable speed up, and got rid of about 250 Mb of RAM usage. One reboot later and it was considerably more nimble.

* What's the use of the firewall if you're going to leave a machine wide open by any other means possible?

The worst thing is that this was owned by someone who has a technical university degree and otherwise isn't a stupid person... 🙄 They still want their data, so the next step is to get a USB stick, back up the data, and then wipe and reinstall (which should rid the laptop from the remaining crap that can't be uninstalled). And do something about the cleanliness, too. Yuck.

Let's stay on topic, please?

seleryba wrote on 2020-06-14, 17:47:

About pr0n: I have sent PM for @OldCat, if anyone is intrested too, just give me note and I will just upload it here.

Let's not do that either.

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-18, 09:12:

I finished upgrading and restoring my Compaq EN-SFF. I also did a few days 'sunbrighting' in the process and I must say the reu […]
Show full quote

I finished upgrading and restoring my Compaq EN-SFF. I also did a few days 'sunbrighting' in the process and I must say the reults are extraordinary with absolutely no chemicals.

Before:

After:

Great result of the brighting! And absolutely great design of that air duct! Very aeronautic 😀

Today I tested some old SDR SDRAM on my MSI MS6147 VER:1.1. It was my first 90's hardware back in 2014. I was so excited with it, being also my first fully functioning 10+ year old PC, when it was in a Packard Bell Pulsar400. It was along with three others that ranged from 2000 to 2003. I have long since thrown away the case, because it was in terrible condition. It was also one of my first successful board repairs in 2018. I was so anxious to test it back then, that I made plenty of other mistakes (connecting the floppy cable backwards, not jumpering the HDD properly, and thinking I blew it because I hadn't noticed those mistakes 😁) I noticed them later, and after fixing them, everything worked just fine. What a day. I sure have learned a lot since then 🤣
Anyway, back to the present, the RAM sticks were just fine. I also noticed it had pads for an SB-Link header, and I soldered one in right away (it's a good thing I 'scrap' motherboards that are useless, like some 845GV crap, seriously, avoid GV chipsets if you can). Can't wait to test it. I also made a second SB-Link cable.

Retro activity: went thru all my old DOS and Windows books, found a bunch from DOS 2.1 thru 6.22 plus many Window 3, 3.11 and WFW books.

Today I ran out of space on my Pentium MMX machine. It seems the 4GB of the CF card I used with it were not enough for DOS+Win98. So, I looked for (and found!) my xbox's original 10GB hard drive. It has been stored a long time (like 5-6 years) since it was replaced by a 320GB SATA drive. But the HDD was locked so I had to open the xbox, boot it again with its old HDD, unlock the drive, and then reassemble the xbox. Then, I took a full image of the HDD because...one can never be sure if it will be needed. I'm currently, taking an image of the 4GB CF card I use on the Pentium MMX. Since it's already late here, tomorrow I'll write the 4GB image on the 10GB HDD and grow the win98 partition (the DOS one is OK so far, plenty of free disk space).

Edit: it surprised me that the HDD image was taken at about 30MB/s, but the CF card could only manage 3MB/s (both using the same PC, writing the images to the same SATA HDD, connected to the same PCI PATA card). I thought CF cards were way faster reading, but whatever.

[EDIT] To quote Phil in 2014:

Mau1wurf1977 wrote on 2014-07-12, 14:33:

The idea is that you can post anything and everything that you did that has something to do with retro computers. This way people don't need to open new threads when they just want to tell people about what they are doing and not really asking for any help.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program - talking about retro computer activities. 😀

Unlocked.

I tried installing 98 on a FX 8320 and an Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0.

I failed horribly.

mastergamma12 wrote on 2020-06-19, 06:50:

I tried installing 98 on a FX 8320 and an Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0.

I failed horribly.

What got you? Lack of chipset support?

appiah4 wrote on 2020-06-19, 06:52:

mastergamma12 wrote on 2020-06-19, 06:50:

I tried installing 98 on a FX 8320 and an Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0.

I failed horribly.

What got you? Lack of chipset support?

Installing the unofficial nvidia driver for a 7600 GS.

It worked fine under an Nforce 610i based board, but on this 990FX board, black screen after driver install.

Could try a Quadro FX 1300 or an ATi X600 down the road.

@Stiletto: thank you for clearing all of the BS that was on here. You're awesome.

As for retro activity, I attempted to repair the TI Extensa-Scholar ESS3/Acer Extensa E610CDT keyboard and it decided to not work at all (rubber contact pads on the domes were disintegrated and beyond repairs) and the floppy drive was not accepting any diskette I threw in there (always said drive not ready with a diskette inserted, attempted repairs, and no dice). Currently looking hi and lo for both a working floppy drive and keyboard since I really need to do an OS refresh on the system and I'm too lazy to install the HDD into another computer to do the refresh of the OS as once I install the HDD, it'll reinstall every driver and ask for a CD since sometimes the CD drive won't get detected in Windows until the drivers for the IDE controller are installed unless I run the CD drivers in config.sys and autoexec.bat for DOS, which has hiccups sometimes.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-06-19, 06:56:

@Stiletto: thank you for clearing all of the BS that was on here. You're awesome.

Thanks, glad some people here like me! 😁

What retro activity I got up to today: moderating VOGONS posts like I have done off and on since 2002. 😜
To be fair to Qbix and DosFreak: They've got more duration at that job than me, I took, oh, at least five-seven years off?

(That BS is all here - for now at least. 🙄)

Thanks Stiletto. 😀

It's good to have a topic back on its tracks.

Retro activity : Tried to compile a WPF launcher for .NET Framework 4 (the last version to be compatible with Windows XP)

x86 .NET Framework without async/await, and only the very first version of the TPL API (no Task.WhenAny for you !).

In this age of .NET Core 3.1 (and .NET 5 in the near future), this sure feels very retro for a .NET programmer.

Alas, it had too much .NET 4.5 dependencies...

Also WPF was released in 2006, and since then UWP, WinUI, Xamarin Forms, Web apps, and now .NET MAUI all tried to kill it.

Sure it was ported to .NET Core 3.X in 2019 by Microsoft, but the good ol' Windows Forms is in the same boat. And I use WinForms since the Windows 98 days.

To use that technology nowadays could be considered quite retro indeed. After all, it's still DirectX 9 under the hood.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-06-19, 03:56:

Today I ran out of space on my Pentium MMX machine. It seems the 4GB of the CF card I used with it were not enough for DOS+Win98. So, I looked for (and found!) my xbox's original 10GB hard drive. It has been stored a long time (like 5-6 years) since it was replaced by a 320GB SATA drive. But the HDD was locked so I had to open the xbox, boot it again with its old HDD, unlock the drive, and then reassemble the xbox. Then, I took a full image of the HDD because...one can never be sure if it will be needed. I'm currently, taking an image of the 4GB CF card I use on the Pentium MMX. Since it's already late here, tomorrow I'll write the 4GB image on the 10GB HDD and grow the win98 partition (the DOS one is OK so far, plenty of free disk space).

Edit: it surprised me that the HDD image was taken at about 30MB/s, but the CF card could only manage 3MB/s (both using the same PC, writing the images to the same SATA HDD, connected to the same PCI PATA card). I thought CF cards were way faster reading, but whatever.

Well, I just wrote the 4GB image to the 10GB hard drive and that went well, however after installing the 10GB, the MMX machine's BIOS only sees it as a 4GB one. Is 4GB a common limit on HDD sizes for BIOSes? it uses an Award v4.51PG BIOS. I'm looking for options to make it see the whole drive, any ideas guys?

got one of my industrial boards set up and running now that I finally got a CPU for it... went browsing through the BIOS as the manual wasn't very detailed in that regard, did not find any settings regarding the ISA and DMA (for the ISA)... doesn't make me very hopeful for future soundcard trials, but then again, went into this fully expecting them not to work in the first place x3 so I can't really be disappointed.

Moved my 8088/XT build and reconnected it all up for testing. Tested out the keyboard, joystick & ran a few games from the MFM HDD. All still working great, in fact I think the keyboard is working better now since I've moved it. I'm pretty sure last time I used the system, the keyboard was a touch over sensitive on some keys and a little under sensitive on others, but now it's working perfectly - I'm not complaining. 🤣

So I also took the opportunity to finally test it out with my Gotek with FlashFloppy firmware. I was expecting to have to alter some settings in the cfg file, but nope it just worked as soon as I plugged it in and I was using it to load some PC Booters and play a few games.

Also was able to properly test how well this build works on a Vestel-made Toshiba 32" LCD TV, via CGA Composite output. Aside from the occasional sync failure causing horizontal distortion (easily resolved), it works pretty well though not 100% ideal as text can be hard to read on some games that use Palette 0. I'd tested it out on this TV briefly in the past so I knew it worked, but hadn't really tried playing a variety of different games using it.

After a 2 year respite I jumped back on my W95c/ P3-667@500/ Abit BH6/ QDI Legend-8mb(Rendition)/ Voodoo2-12mb/ Montego2 build and resumed installing a testing a host of games 1995-2001, for the last week or so. About 2/3 of the 80gb HD is filled with games including a comprensive digital image and patch library of almost everything currently installed. A few more things to try, including controller setups. Got it all backed up 1:1 on a second identical internal HD. The only fly in the ointment is the inability to boot from CD with this particular Abit board. For that I have a boot manager startup utility to try out but I need to source fresh floppies to experiment. I use Acronis 8 to image C: at regular intervals (no data on C:\ just OS and vanilla apps) and will rely on the Acronis recovery CD if I get borked - so need to get that functioning before I consider the project done. Overal little Win95 is snappy!

While looking for some manuals stumbled on this Catalog from Walnut Creek CDROM from late 1995. Maybe someone will find it interesting.
http://bitsavers.informatik.uni-stuttgart.de/ … r%20Catalog.pdf

Stiletto wrote on 2020-06-19, 06:12:

We now return you to your regularly scheduled program - talking about retro computer activities. 😀

Unlocked.

Thanks and Sorry if I got carried away yesterday, was not my intent.

As per my "addictions", I went through Dark Forces and Jedi Knight yesterday and today respectively. I did Dark Forces on my Pentium II setup, using my original disk despite having the DeHacker, and I just used my Steam copy of JK this time. I'm probably the only person on steam with over 60 hours in Jedi Knight.

It's always good to play the game with high LOD mods and modern resolutions, even if it's hilarious looking when played the way it was "meant" to be on my Voodoo 3. And, before anyone asks why I say addictions, I play through these two games in full every few weeks, and thanks to Limited Run Games, have purchased them both three separate times.