TheAbandonwareGuy wrote:

Standard Def Steve wrote:

I finally installed WinXP MCE 2005 on my Super P3. I've always liked the MCE theme, and it runs great on this machine. The MCE i […]
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I finally installed WinXP MCE 2005 on my Super P3. I've always liked the MCE theme, and it runs great on this machine. The MCE interface runs at a full 60 fps. It even plays that MCE demonstration video (with the people playing pool) completely stutter-free. That's a 720p WMV-HD encoded video!

Specs of the machine are:
PIII-S @ 1575
2GB DDR-300 CL2
6800GT AGP
X-Fi
QDI Advance 12T
XP MCE 2005 SP3...yeah baby!

PureVideo HD engine on the 6800GT is responsible for that feat. Hardware decoding.

IIRC, PureVideo was disabled or broken in the AGP variants of GeForce 6, so the processor is doing the heavy lifting. I've found that the PIII-S is fast enough to handle offline 720p video in most formats after a quick and easy overclock to 1575MHz. Even 720p H.264 @ L4.1 is playable with older versions of CoreAVC.

KCompRoom2000 wrote:

Interesting. Media Center Edition is one of my favorite versions of Windows XP. My favorite feature (and I'm not sure if this was built into the MCE Edition or if it was an OEM program) was the Dancer program which let you put a dancing person on your screen while you were listening to music.

FYI the Royale theme (included in Media Center and Tablet PC Edition) was available for download for users of other editions of Windows XP.

The dancers are alive and well here, so it must be a standard MCE feature. 😀

Struggling to gather data for setting up the AlphaPC system I posted about earlier. I want to make a dual-boot machine, WinNT and Linux. The problem is there are 2 types of firmware for Alpha machines: ARC which is used to boot Windows and SRM which is for Unix-like OS. ARC cannot boot Linux (well sorta) and SRM cannot boot NT (definitely not). And there's only enough space in the flash ROM for one at a time. I don't want to have to flash the firmware every time I want to boot a different OS. There's a special hacked bootloader that can be used to start Linux from ARC, named MILO. But it hasn't been updated since about 2001, and apparently it can't boot a modern Linux kernel. I was on IRC most day today with some developers who maintain Gentoo Alpha, and I was told nobody has used MILO for years and it's essentially a no-go. I did find a possible solution: apparently SRM can launch a special file containing the ARC firmware from floppy, and from there NT can be booted... will have to test. But for that I need to receive the memory I ordered for this motherboard, because with the current 16MB RAM neither NT nor Linux will be happy.

I'm uploading the firmwares below, the SRM one is hard to find (took me a few hours of internet searches) and the ARC one is impossible to find in downloadable form anywhere; this one came from the floppy which I got with the motherboard. Maybe someone wants to add them to vogonsdrivers.

Since it's blazing hot nowadays and even hotter in my stuffroom, things are slow ATM.
Bought some boxes to organise some more and finally I finished one of the pc's that was in a lot I bought (the other 2 motherboards are being recapped).

Some info on it (and info about this PC is scarce):

* Unknown motherboard (probably made by Intel) with 386SX-16 + 387 coprocessor
* Onboard CL-GD510A-32PC-B CL-GD20A-32PC-C but I added an ET4000AX and disabled onboard graphics.
* 4MB RAM
* HD that came with it still works but forgot which one. 100mb'ish
* 1.2MB and 1.44MB drives
* CT1350B that I added

Some more pics are here + some info in the latest post from me there. I found it particularly interesting.
Info on this motherboard

Errius wrote:

the_ultra_code wrote:

https://c2.staticflickr.com/2/1800/28886235407_f64166fbd6.jpg […]
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That's one of those fake BTX cases that were popular in the middle of the last decade.

The more you know. 😀

stamasd wrote:

I'm uploading the firmwares below, the SRM one is hard to find (took me a few hours of internet searches) and the ARC one is impossible to find in downloadable form anywhere; this one came from the floppy which I got with the motherboard. Maybe someone wants to add them to vogonsdrivers.

Here the last Firmware Update CDROM iso image with support for the AlphaPC 164 board. Has both the SRM Console firmware you found, and the AlphaBIOS ARC ROM image. You can use FWUpdate.exe to flash both images. Hopefully the SRM updated console supports the "arc" command to boot the ARC NT firmware image from the floppy drive.

Remember... Use the files of the ALPHAPC164 folder. ALPHAPC164LX and SX folders are for the dimm version of the board, will not work with the board you have.

In any case... Don't throw your original floppy which came with the board. It will allow you to downgrade to the original working image via the emergency jumper if the update goes wrong.

Got my 80GB Seagate 7200.7 SATA I hard drive in the mail today, so I threw that guy into my P2 machine and installed Win98SE. It works, so, yay. :]

It has been the weirdest install of 98SE to date for me, though, due to the driver situation. Technically, AFAIK, the motherboard as a "PCIset," and so there is no "chipset utility" that I need to install for it - Windows handles those things for me. However, the closest thing I could find to some driver that pertains to the board was the "Intel Bus Master IDE Driver" - which turns out that both the version that PhilsComputerLab has on his website and this later version from this random file server are only compatible with Windows 95. And yet, thankfully, though, a version of that driver for Win98 was provided with Win98 and was installed when I installed Win98, so I guess I don't have to try to find a version compatible for Win98 and install it myself, no?

Similarly, the drivers for the on-board Yamaha chips were also provided by Win98, so I didn't even bother trying to install the Windows 95 drivers for it on the system.

The above photo also illustrates probably the weirdest thing I have seen. Even though I disabled all of the COM ports and the printer ports in the BIOS, Windows detected them any how, and then complained about them being disable via the BIOS. I tried disabling them outright in Device Manager (not removing them, well, just in case), but still, Windows still gives me the yellow-circled exclamation point of warning. I guess everything is fine though, so *shrug*.

Besides that, I installed the driver for the Adaptec ASH1205 SATA PCI interface card being used, as well as the latest Windows 95 drivers for that Diamond S3 Virge Stealth 3D 2000 card in the system (if any one knows of Windows 98-specific drivers for that card, please let me know) (also, question: Doesn't that S3 Virge card only support DX5, like stated here?). I also installed IE6, the latest version of WMP, and installed the latest Adaptec ASPI driver, 'cause that's good to do, no?

The last things I have planned for this system include installing a beige 5.25" drive bay cover for that empty bay, replacing the passively-cooled Klamath 300MHz PII in there with a more efficient actively-cooled Deschutes 333MHz PII (the fatest CPU I believe this board can handle), throw in an AWE64, and upgrade the RAM from 32MB to between 128MB and 256MB of EDO RAM. Once all of that is said and done, I think I can say I have truly done this PC a service. 😀

Just finished up de-soldering the old ODIN batt/RTC, installing a DIP socket, and installing a new Dallas batt/RTC. (Asus P55TVP4 motherboard)

Link to DIP socket that I used, perfect fit: https://www.ebay.com/itm/AUGAT-324-AG19DC-IC- … 872.m2749.l2649

I replaced a capacitor that was on the edge of failure on an MSI Pentium 4 motherboard, chainging a bloated Sanyo 16V 1000uF capacitor with a 16V 1500uF capacitor.

The brown Capacitor is the replacement. The green ones below it are the original Sanyo that was badly bloating.

P4's like to cook their capacitors 😀

hyoenmadan wrote:

. […]
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stamasd wrote:

I'm uploading the firmwares below, the SRM one is hard to find (took me a few hours of internet searches) and the ARC one is impossible to find in downloadable form anywhere; this one came from the floppy which I got with the motherboard. Maybe someone wants to add them to vogonsdrivers.

.

Here the last Firmware Update CDROM iso image with support for the AlphaPC 164 board. Has both the SRM Console firmware you found, and the AlphaBIOS ARC ROM image. You can use FWUpdate.exe to flash both images. Hopefully the SRM updated console supports the "arc" command to boot the ARC NT firmware image from the floppy drive.

Remember... Use the files of the ALPHAPC164 folder. ALPHAPC164LX and SX folders are for the dimm version of the board, will not work with the board you have.

In any case... Don't throw your original floppy which came with the board. It will allow you to downgrade to the original working image via the emergency jumper if the update goes wrong.

I had typed a longer reply earlier, but just when I was about to post the vogons.org site SSL certificate expired (at 7pm on Sat) and Firefox ate my reply. So henre's a shorter version.
Thaks for the link. I have tested the firmware file from that CD image by loading it from the SRM console without flashing. It doesn't work (whereas the file from my floppy does). I wish it had worked, because it's supposed to be version 5.4 whereas the one I have is 4.49-9. Fortunately I didn't flash it because I don't want to brick this machine. Oh well, I'll keep the current one. It works pretty well.

I do have a problem with video on this machine. The video card I'm using is a Compaq PowerStorm 300, made specifically for DEC Alpha machines. It even has a DEC label on it. It works well in ARC, but after I flash the SRM firmware I get no more video output. I tested it by flashing back and forth between ARC and SRM several times (I can blindly type commands in SRM to switch back to ARC) and it's very reproducible. I tried it in all 4 PCI slots and it doesn't make a difference. If I can't make the card work in SRM I can't install Linux. Any ideas?

I decided to dig up my Voodoo2 card and chuck it into the Power Mac 9600 to see if it'd perform appreciably better in Unreal Tournament than the Rage 128 does, mostly because UT with the RAVE renderer has this awful banding in the GUI that I don't see with other renderers.

It does... but only by a few frames. It's still chugging hard in CTF-Face with 8 bots and 15 FPS or so at the worst, dreadfully unplayable. The fact that I'm running the RAM non-interleaved for stability reasons isn't helping one bit.

Maybe I should go a step further, yank the Radeon 9200 PCI out of my main MDD G4 (which resides there strictly for OS 9 acceleration), throw it into the PM9600 and make sure the CPU/RAM is where the bottleneck lies.

SWL activity using old radio equipment can fit into the definition of retro activity? I did some order and set up my scanners next to the main and "recent" rig I use in my bunker (i7 860-based) - now I have everything at my fingertips and ear. The scanners and receivers I use are an oldie but goldie Commtel COM205 for VHF/UHF (re-brand of the famous RadioShack Pro 2006 for the EU market), a vintage Kenwood R2000 for HF, various SDRs and a cheap Baofeng UV-5R+, together with various stuff. That 13v linear PSU on the top is 30 years old, I have recently fixed it.

This is my roof station, with 'long'-wire, discone, ScanKing, ADSB collinear and boxed Raspberry Pi 3B:

Just wondering if there were any other SWLs in the forum, loving old but great radio stuff.

@Kadath: nice. These days I only do QRSS in 40m and 20m. Out of all the equipment in your picture, I have a Baofeng (an even older model than your canary box, rarely use it as local 2m/70cm traffic is more of less dead) and the same thermometer on top of the coaxial switch. 😀
73
KC1BJW

stamasd wrote:

Thaks for the link. I have tested the firmware file from that CD image by loading it from the SRM console without flashing. It doesn't work (whereas the file from my floppy does). I wish it had worked, because it's supposed to be version 5.4 whereas the one I have is 4.49-9. Fortunately I didn't flash it because I don't want to brick this machine. Oh well, I'll keep the current one. It works pretty well.

Not sure if you already updated your SRM firmware to latest version, but AlphaBIOS and SRM come as a pair so the "arc" command can work. That means you have to update first your SRM console with the one included in the CD, and only then attempt to run the ARC image from floppy.
As for the brick risk... Don't worry. Alpha boards are nothing like PC BIOS boards. Them have always an emergency procedure loaded in mask ROM, so you can always enable it with a jumper in the board. If the update fails, you can always restore your firmware from the original floppy which came with the board enabling such jumper.

The version of SRM that I used is 5.5, the same as the one from the CD. It loads ARC 4.49-9 but not ARC 5.4. I don't have any other version of SRM available.

Decided to replace the HDD in my Athlon 64 Windows 98SE machine since the drive space on the HDD was very low (30.7GB used of 31.5GB <-- HDD limit set since my Socket 7 system has a limit) to the new 60GB Maxtor HDD I purchased last year, hooked up the HDD to the secondary channel, removed and created the partition (NTFS was on there), formatted the HDD and made it bootable, inserted the Norton ghost diskette (the .exe file), and copied everything from the old HDD to the new one overnight.

I then plugged in the HDD into the primary channel and hooked up the CD drives to see if it boots and it does. I unplugged the machine after turning off the PC properly and installed the HDD inside the computer. It's a lot faster than it was. Also dragged the files just in case.

stamasd wrote:

@Kadath: nice. These days I only do QRSS in 40m and 20m. Out of all the equipment in your picture, I have a Baofeng (an even older model than your canary box, rarely use it as local 2m/70cm traffic is more of less dead) and the same thermometer on top of the coaxial switch. 😀
73
KC1BJW

73 to you, dear OM - nice to know, that same thermometer I'm using to monitor the temperature in and out of the wall-mounted box with all the networking stuff, pretty useful to know when to start the pull out fan, waiting for the thermostate 😉

Started restoring an Alcatel 8551-500 PC today. Based on a custom mainboard made by Acer which can work as either 386SX-25 or 486DX2/50. Not much to show yet, though.

Created a USB-to-SATA power cable for a thin client PC that had an onboard SATA connector, but no SATA power connection (so I could hook up a SATA SSD without an external power supply). Turns out the SSD in question just needs the 5V connector (in general, a SATA power connector can have 3.3V, 5V and 12V lines), and the USB ports provide enough amps, so splicing together a SATA-power-to-molex cable with an old USB printer cable allowed for powering the SSD just fine.

I might still change the cable to connect directly to a unused USB header on the motherboard and take the 5V off there, since right now the USB cable goes out at the back of the case to a USB port (on the other hand, the thin client in question also has an external SATA connector (not eSATA, just SATA data), so the USB cable has its advantages if I'm going to keep the SSD on the outside of the case...

Trying to figure out the correct JP2 setting on my Amiga500 for chipmem upgrade. Asked about it in a seperate post.
So far it is running 512k Chip and 1.5mb slow (what systest are telling me) Need more chipram.

Also. I have been exposing my girlfriend to Amiga gaming. We played Pinball Dreams on my 500.
We had a blast playing that game, and she was actually pretty good at it. Like REALLY good.
The best part, was that we had fun together with a computer game. It was like gaming with a good friend in the 80's.
This is a more social way to play games. Sharing one computer, not sitting solo, and gaming on network.

Perhaps not exactly 100% retro activity, but I finally finished wooden compartments on my desk to reclaim some space (not sure what the actual word for this is - could any native speaker help out?). Parts of it are reserved for retro equipment: Tandon 286 already in place, DOS laptop - soon, possibly also ZX Spectrum (if I manage to convert the output to small crt TV I have - would land on the top right) or the original Game Boy with modded screen. Other than that, two slots are for my work laptop (bottom left) and my personal computer (X230T - bottom right).

Also, I should soon have new monitor, more apt for retro things (spoiler alert).