Shagittarius wrote on 2021-02-25, 20:38:

I know you feel you've solved the lock-up issue you were having but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual conflict lies with the TF-534 and the GVC card, particularly with the 8MB ram on that card. Please keep me informed as you are one of the few people who are working with a TF534 on an amiga 2000 like me and its good to hear your notes. I know I get all kinds of memory errors when using the TF534 with my 8Up! 8MB memory board which makes the system unusable. Are you running KS 3.1 as well?

I wish I could do more testing with my A2091 HD Controller but that card currently has it's own issues so I cannot. However I believe the T534 didn't like the 2MB ram on that card either which would cause the system to lock up, sometimes even when just displaying a larger icon in workbench.

There were no issues before with my old Seagate spinning disk that was original to the GVP. This was with the TF534. It only happened with the SCSI2SD once I installed that. With a spinning disk, the system is rock stable and I've never encountered any lockups/guru's/etc. I'm running KS 3.1.4 and Amiga OS 3.1.4.1.

You should probably run diagrom and do some testing of your memory as well, to make sure you don't have any faulty RAM chips.

wiretap wrote on 2021-02-25, 20:52:

Shagittarius wrote on 2021-02-25, 20:38:

I know you feel you've solved the lock-up issue you were having but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual conflict lies with the TF-534 and the GVC card, particularly with the 8MB ram on that card. Please keep me informed as you are one of the few people who are working with a TF534 on an amiga 2000 like me and its good to hear your notes. I know I get all kinds of memory errors when using the TF534 with my 8Up! 8MB memory board which makes the system unusable. Are you running KS 3.1 as well?

I wish I could do more testing with my A2091 HD Controller but that card currently has it's own issues so I cannot. However I believe the T534 didn't like the 2MB ram on that card either which would cause the system to lock up, sometimes even when just displaying a larger icon in workbench.

There were no issues before with my old Seagate spinning disk that was original to the GVP. This was with the TF534. It only happened with the SCSI2SD once I installed that. With a spinning disk, the system is rock stable and I've never encountered any lockups/guru's/etc. I'm running KS 3.1.4 and Amiga OS 3.1.4.1.

You should probably run diagrom and do some testing of your memory as well, to make sure you don't have any faulty RAM chips.

When I ran the system without the TF534 with the A2091 (when it was working) and the 8Up! Memory expansion with the SCSI2SD it all worked fine. So in my case I'm pretty sure the issue is the TF534. It's good to know that the GVP seems to co-exist happily with it. Are you running WHDLOAD? If so I can't run it with my TF534 without turning on the NoAutoVec switch or it crashes almost instantly. What is your experience /config for WHDLoad?

I should also mention that my TF534 is 48Mhz, and I've heard tales of the faster they are clocked the more issues they have, though I've also read where people say its not true...so dont know what to believe there.

Shagittarius wrote on 2021-02-25, 20:56:

wiretap wrote on 2021-02-25, 20:52:

Shagittarius wrote on 2021-02-25, 20:38:

I know you feel you've solved the lock-up issue you were having but I wouldn't be surprised if the actual conflict lies with the TF-534 and the GVC card, particularly with the 8MB ram on that card. Please keep me informed as you are one of the few people who are working with a TF534 on an amiga 2000 like me and its good to hear your notes. I know I get all kinds of memory errors when using the TF534 with my 8Up! 8MB memory board which makes the system unusable. Are you running KS 3.1 as well?

I wish I could do more testing with my A2091 HD Controller but that card currently has it's own issues so I cannot. However I believe the T534 didn't like the 2MB ram on that card either which would cause the system to lock up, sometimes even when just displaying a larger icon in workbench.

There were no issues before with my old Seagate spinning disk that was original to the GVP. This was with the TF534. It only happened with the SCSI2SD once I installed that. With a spinning disk, the system is rock stable and I've never encountered any lockups/guru's/etc. I'm running KS 3.1.4 and Amiga OS 3.1.4.1.

You should probably run diagrom and do some testing of your memory as well, to make sure you don't have any faulty RAM chips.

When I ran the system without the TF534 with the A2091 (when it was working) and the 8Up! Memory expansion with the SCSI2SD it all worked fine. So in my case I'm pretty sure the issue is the TF534. It's good to know that the GVP seems to co-exist happily with it. Are you running WHDLOAD? If so I can't run it with my TF534 without turning on the NoAutoVec switch or it crashes almost instantly. What is your experience /config for WHDLoad?

I should also mention that my TF534 is 48Mhz, and I've heard tales of the faster they are clocked the more issues they have, though I've also read where people say its not true...so dont know what to believe there.

I am not running any special configuration with WHDLOAD -- all I did was install BestWB w/ WHDLOAD v18.5.

So running the TF534 above 40MHz is not good for stability. Yes, you'll have issues at 48MHz and 50MHz with WHDLOAD, among other add-in cards. The memory timing on the TF534 goes out of sync at those speeds, or you have serious issues if you are using any counterfeit chips. This is the reason I went with 40MHz on mine. However on my Amiga 500 with a HC508 @ 50MHz, everything works just fine -- probably because it is a much better hardware design.

Worked on Proliant 1500 project for possible retro gaming setup.

I found a way to modify the processor card to run 66MHz fsb, need a 22 ohm resistor soldered at R124 pads of back of that card according to clock generator datasheet and this works, now reporting 166MHz instead of 150MHz with either 166 or 200MHz (still reporting 166MHz) Pentium processors. I also have dual processor card but need to make sure BIOS is up to date first.

Had to check the 32MB and 16MB modules that came with this bundle, BIOS was reporting wrong speed at 66MHz fsb. Turns out they were set for presence detect as 70ns and fortunately these 4 modules are using 60ns chips. Will reset them to 60ns instead.

This met my goals! Very happy, Oh yes, works well with PCI cirrus logic video cards of 5430 and 5436. and ISA wd90C31 cards. Will try different cards over the time.

Is this possible that Compaq's processor board is set up as 2.5x permanently? I'd love to set it as 3x or 2x for speed adjustment Have to investigate more.

Majority of the Prosigina and 1500 processor cards are set at fsb 60MHz. Easy to do to mod it to 66MHz. Two pads is there for this.

Cheers!

I just had a really not-fun but truly retro activity last night and this evening. I decided to swap over my Voodoo 5 Tualatin PC from my Abit VH6T in an ATX case, to the Micro ATX Chaintech 6VIA5T in an In-Win D500 MATX case. Which was funny since the Voodoo 5 actually hits the floppy drive in its regular position so I had to move that under the CD drive. Then the Voodoo 5's power cable hits the case... side angle molex connector the rescue.

Unfortunately for the VH6T, while taking off the CPU cooler at a bad angle, my flat-bladed screwdriver slipped and hit some traces around the CPU, which sliced neatly through them.

The Abit VH6T is quite rare these days, so I was extremely worried when after that repair, it still wouldn't post, giving C1 on the post card. I was very worried that I had killed a 'unicorn' in my collection.
I tried again with a different CPU and video card after work today, but noticed that there was one very leaked cap by the AGP slot that needed replacing. Now it posts, what a relief.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-02-25, 21:52:

I just had a really not-fun but truly retro activity last night and this evening. I decided to swap over my Voodoo 5 Tualatin PC […]
Show full quote

I just had a really not-fun but truly retro activity last night and this evening. I decided to swap over my Voodoo 5 Tualatin PC from my Abit VH6T in an ATX case, to the Micro ATX Chaintech 6VIA5T in an In-Win D500 MATX case.

While taking off the CPU cooler at a bad angle, my flat-bladed screwdriver slipped and hit some traces around the CPU, which sliced neatly through them.

2016_0122_001519_001a.jpg

2016_0122_002127_002-b.jpg

The Abit VH6T is quite rare these days, so I was extremely worried when after that repair, it still wouldn't post, giving C1 on the post card. I was very worried that I had killed a 'unicorn' in my collection.
I tried again with a different CPU and video card after work today, but noticed that there was one very leaked cap by the AGP slot that needed replacing. Now it posts, what a relief.

Great work! What a relief

We've all been there, I killed a ATi Radeon 8500 AGP by trying to prise the heatsink off with a flathead screw driver, slipped and hit all of the tracks that connect the GPU core... Also when removing a Geforce 4 Ti4600 I left one of the RAM latches down, it pulled off a chip on the card which was so small. Managed to find it at the bottom of the case and got a friend to solder it back on, it worked! (Back in 2003/4)

Not today, but last week a slight craving to play a few Win9x and XP games turned into a wasted 2 days of trying to set up one-of-my-two systems from that period, including multiple slow, grinding Windows installations, and almost but never quite reaching a proper 100% working state on either machine. With a final conclusion that both motherboards have, during their latest Rip Van Winkle, developed the digital equivalent of organ failure (one which fails to boot hard disks in any way, and one whose PCIe graphics slot induces weird and ultimately disabling issues with any card tried in it) and that neither are likely to work again, and that's 2 days of negative productivity which I won't be seeing back. 😀

"Minus 2 machines, at the cost of 2 frustrating days, *tick*".

But meh. Philosophical about it. Now that enough days have passed for it to seem so. 🤣

I far prefer my DOS systems anyway. 🤣

Tested the Compaq Portable 1 I received and made sure the cards were seated properly and not touching the bare metal cages.

The HardCard+ 20 isn't booting up, the floppy drives need a lubrication, and the keyboard needs new foam contact pads (the Postal Service is a bit slow). The Time Spectrum 384 has corrosion from the battery leakage on a few spots, but can be fixed (hopefully) and the plastic pieces that keep the cards from moving broke off, 2 went missing, but 3 remain and no plastic clips to keep them in place on the inside.

On the plus side, it boots up and I'm happy. Just need to do some minor changes and I'm all set.

Spent a little bit of last night tuning FTPSRV on the V/50. Found my previous copy-operation resulted in a lot of corrupted programs. I also addressed the cracks in the lid using BS + Superglue. We'll see how that holds up. So far so good though, looks like it melted the plastic back together and feels a little stronger in those spots.

NExt up will be ordering another NL6448AC30-06 for the 40EC. That comes after my wife's birthday and her sister's wedding (on the same day).

I did try gluing Humpty (Ultralite) back together, but I think this one is a loss guys. a lot of the gray plastic would disintegrate in my fingers. I'm guessing that mussels dinner did something weird to the plastic because it's all unusually brittle, even for an NEC Versa. But I got some useful hardware and boards out of it. Thinking later this year I'll try and nab one of the other Ultralites I've seen around. That said, the case badges I saved off the old one.....maybe I'll put them on a guitar.....a DOS Game themed guitar would be kind of cool.

Today I received a simple passive Phono Mixer from China that I'm going to use to mix the sound from my Amiga 1200 & the attached external IDE CD/DVD-Rom drive for CD audio playback on CDTV & CD32 games. Tested it out and it works well enough - won't win any awards but it works.

And then I started to have one of "those" days of hell -

All WAS working well, until my Amiga decided to start acting up again. It hasn't been powered on for a while and has also been moved so I'm being plagued again by it not wanting to boot with the 8MB Fast RAM expansion installed and randomly crashing when it does. Took me nearly 2 hours to get it working again, which took multiple power cycles and reseating & maneuvering the expansion on the edge connector, as well as completely stripping down the Amiga looking for any possible issues on the board.

Ultimately, as it always does, it started working perfectly again. I'm narrowing the issue down to either a failing PSU, bad caps or faulty expansion card. The caps look ok, no leakage and the expansion is fairly new so I've ordered a modern PSU replacement to test that first. If the new PSU doesn't solve the issue, I'll have to investigate further.... and spend more money. 🙁

Oh and to add to the misery, I stupidly damaged the ribbon cable on the keyboard during all this. Temporarily repaired it for now, but had to order a replacement.

Last night I completed yet again Doom's second episode "The Shores of Hell". Today will be beginning "Inferno".

Finally packed my Amiga1200 motherboard for shipping to a recap service. I have chosen a recap with organic polymer caps.
Going to ship it out tomorrow, and then I hope to have it back again just before the first of April.

Lately I've been going through all of my graphics cards now and again and was busy with my box of GF4MX cards when I noticed one of the cards having SDRAM. Since I found it a bit odd for a GF4MX440SE to have SDRAM, I figured I might as well pop off the cooler and see if it was really a GF4MX440SE. But I got careless and while trying to push the push-pins through the PCB, I knocked off one of the tiny resistors. Was totally my own fault for having been too careless. Luckily it was just a MX440SE, but still kinda a waste imo since it could have been easily prevented. Then again, accidents do happen.
On top of that, when I popped the first push-pin through the PCB, it launched itself to somewhere else in my livingroom and I have been unable to find it. Feeling like a n00b all over again >.<

Just found out that the SID chip in my breadbin are defect. I had a replacement on hand.

Tetrium wrote on 2021-02-26, 21:37:

Lately I've been going through all of my graphics cards now and again and was busy with my box of GF4MX cards when I noticed one of the cards having SDRAM. Since I found it a bit odd for a GF4MX440SE to have SDRAM, I figured I might as well pop off the cooler and see if it was really a GF4MX440SE. But I got careless and while trying to push the push-pins through the PCB, I knocked off one of the tiny resistors. Was totally my own fault for having been too careless. Luckily it was just a MX440SE, but still kinda a waste imo since it could have been easily prevented. Then again, accidents do happen.
On top of that, when I popped the first push-pin through the PCB, it launched itself to somewhere else in my livingroom and I have been unable to find it. Feeling like a n00b all over again >.<

Any dropped screw or spring immediately becomes (a) invisible, and (b) sentient, and bounces about 5 times further than you thought possible, to wedge itself firmly behind any present obstacle. Especially if it's an important, unique piece. And if the screw can sense that the user is stressed out and/or in a hurry, then it will make a special effort to bounce further and faster. :p

I guess we have all had days like this! All one needs to complete the picture, is an angry version of the Benny Hill music.

Got a switch for my desk, so my retro build can finally reach my home network permanently.

This of course raised a question, how do i connect between dosbox and the real machine? What kind of network driver do i use and how does IPX work?

Early results were not promising, the NE2000 adapter could not see my retro pc and at that point i had no clue what the issue was. This also keeps the question how to connect dos over the internet for gaming with my initial thoughts going towards ipxbox which is a Linux based bridge for dosbox ipx and real IPX.

But then i found two great solutions that when combined provide an insanely easy way to hook up a real PC with Dosbox.

The first is Dali by Fraglett (the same guy who made ipxbox). This is a mTCP based solution that connects directly to a Dosbox IPX server over TCP/IP! Which means you can also use this for self hosted online play even if you do not host it on the local network.

The second is pktdrv by Dave Dunfield. This is a big collection of packet driver implementations even if your adapter only supports ODI and has no packet driver. Simply choose your adapter and it drops something that works.

Run whatever driver it dropped, configure your configs, start it all up and boom! Working Dosbox IPX on real hardware!

If there is enough demand or i have extra spare time ill see if i can start a more formal topic about this.

I finally got around to testing out the CT2740 SB16 that I bought recently, and I am surprised by the lack of noise that I am hearing. I turned off the amplifier because I have powered speakers attached, so that might be the entire fix, but still, It was nice to know it is working. At the same time, I reseated the expanded RAM on my Diamond Stealth 64, and that seems to have fixed the black-rectangle issues for now.

brostenen wrote on 2021-02-26, 21:08:

Finally packed my Amiga1200 motherboard for shipping to a recap service. I have chosen a recap with organic polymer caps.
Going to ship it out tomorrow, and then I hope to have it back again just before the first of April.

This is probably what I'll end up having to do soon also, if the new PSU I've ordered doesn't solve my current intermittent boot issues. My soldering skills are nowhere near the level required to tackle that job myself, so best to send it off and get it done properly.

Did any of the capacitors on your board look visibly bad/bloated/leaking? The reason I ask is that mine seems pretty much fine visually, but I have been having issues when the system hasn't been powered on for some time and fails to boot with an 8MB Fast RAM expansion installed. I've ordered a new modern PSU, incase it's just the PSU to blame. But bad capacitors that don't necessarily look bad have always been my major concern.

PTherapist wrote on 2021-02-27, 06:37:

brostenen wrote on 2021-02-26, 21:08:

Finally packed my Amiga1200 motherboard for shipping to a recap service. I have chosen a recap with organic polymer caps.
Going to ship it out tomorrow, and then I hope to have it back again just before the first of April.

This is probably what I'll end up having to do soon also, if the new PSU I've ordered doesn't solve my current intermittent boot issues. My soldering skills are nowhere near the level required to tackle that job myself, so best to send it off and get it done properly.

Did any of the capacitors on your board look visibly bad/bloated/leaking? The reason I ask is that mine seems pretty much fine visually, but I have been having issues when the system hasn't been powered on for some time and fails to boot with an 8MB Fast RAM expansion installed. I've ordered a new modern PSU, incase it's just the PSU to blame. But bad capacitors that don't necessarily look bad have always been my major concern.

The caps on my board look good, however there is a faint smell of fish from one spot. Nothing really bad. The machine is otherwise in working condition.

I have not really been on Vogons that much, so I have not read about your issue, or I have sadly forgotten that I have read about it. But what are your issue with your machine and what model?

Well... Other than those you describe here...

This is so cool... My son actually love C64 over Amiga. Right now he is playing the original Atari version of Pacman for C64. He was not that happy with Super Cycle. He thinks the sound of the SID and the GFX of the VIC-II is the most awesomme in vintage gaming. He does not like OPL nor Paula or Denise.

So I guess I know who will be getting a TheC64 full size now.