I was right on my hunch about that Inspiron 9300 on eBay that had the badly worn ASWD keys and plam rest wear.

It arrived, and it has a 1920x1200 display with a 256MB GeForce 6800 series GPU. Top equipped for the model except for CPU, which is the 2nd fastest model available.

It also had a repair manual CD for an Internation semi-truck, so I would assume this laptop was a truckers main form of entertainment. Hence the wear and tear.

I spent many years gaming on a 6150LE as a kid, so the GeForce 6000 series has always been the most sought after line of cards for me. To have the mobile version of the 6800 is really nice, I could even swap it to the 6800 Ultra from the XPS Gen2 if I wished.

ON A SIDENOTE: The eBay sellers are doing a great job at saving me money. Apparently now some have their auto reject best offer set pretty stupidely, considering I was autorejected for $10 off a $45 item, not unreasonable by any means I don't believe.

Today I worked on setting up my Commodore 128 and Packard Bell P1 setup. Neither one is quite working, the floppy drive on the C128 wouldn't read a disk and something I did to the Packard Bell made it stop posting.

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-03-06, 03:11:

something I did to the Packard Bell made it stop posting.

Get used to this feeling, it happens a lot in this hobby.

If you aren't spending more time fixing your mistakes or whatever your half baked idea caused than actually using the hardware you are doing it wrong.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-03-06, 03:13:

EvieSigma wrote on 2020-03-06, 03:11:

something I did to the Packard Bell made it stop posting.

Get used to this feeling, it happens a lot in this hobby.

If you aren't spending more time fixing your mistakes or whatever your half baked idea caused than actually using the hardware you are doing it wrong.

Well the only things I did was put in a new CMOS battery and try to add video and sound cards so I'll just try removing said cards and see what happens.

Recapped a Rhino MVP3 AT motherboard which I got recently. I want to combine this with AMD K6-2/400 and TNT2 Pro AGP.

Figured out the entire situation of getting a Gotek (SFR1M44-DU26) to work on my oldschool Thinkpads (the ones that would only boot off external floppy drives)

I was messing with getting FFC26 ribbon cable/extension adapters to try and get the original IBM external floppy drive enclosure to work with the enclosure and the Gotek.
Then my wife looked at it and was like..."why are you still retaining the plastic enclosure on the Gotek?"

(Behind every successful pedantic idiot with too much tech toys is a patient woman with a massive spiked cluebat waiting to pounce)

So yeah, enclosure removed, the Gotek guts were mounted using on the IBM floppy enclosure via Ikea double-sided tape.

Here's what it looks like in the original enclosure.

So now I'll have to populate the headers for the LED display (so I can mount one) and the TX/RX/PWR/ground so I can use HxC or Flashfloppy with it. I would like to set the device up so it can do 1.88MB floppy images.

Ultimate goal would be to install OS/2 Warp 3 Blue, Rhapsody or BeOS R4 on my Thinkpad 560E without resorting to a PCMCIA CDROM drive.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-03-06, 16:37:

Figured out the entire situation of getting a Gotek (SFR1M44-DU26) to work on my oldschool Thinkpads (the ones that would only b […]
Show full quote

Figured out the entire situation of getting a Gotek (SFR1M44-DU26) to work on my oldschool Thinkpads (the ones that would only boot off a external floppy drives)

I was messing with getting FFC ribbon cable/extension adapters to try and get the original IBM external floppy drive enclosure to work with the enclosure and the Gotek.
Then my wife looked at it and was like..."why are you still retaining the plastic enclosure on the Gotek?"

(Behind every successful pedantic idiot with too much tech toys is a patient woman with a massive spiked cluebat waiting to pounce)

So yeah, enclosure removed, the Gotek guts were mounted using on the IBM floppy enclosure via Ikea double-sided tape.

Drive Replacement.jpg

Here's what it looks like in the original enclosure.

Bezel.jpg

So now I'll have to populate the headers for the LED display (so I can mount one) and the TX/RX/PWR/ground so I can use HxC or Flashfloppy with it. I would like to set the device up so it can do 1.88MB floppy images.

Ultimate goal would be to install OS/2 Warp 3 Blue, Rhapsody or BeOS R4 on my Thinkpad 560E without resorting to a PCMCIA CDROM drive.

nice, very snug fit

Upgraded the heatsink in the "slightly accidental Pentium 4 build" from Intel boxed to the recently acquired Thermalright XP-90 and the power supply from no-name to Seasonic.
Plus, I repartitioned the hard drive in order to prepare the system for dual-booting Windows XP and 98 SE and installed the Acronis OS Selector that comes with Disk Director 11. I never used that tool before, so I'm curious to see if it's any good.

I'm actually not entirely sure what to do with this build once it's finished. I have a very nice Athlon XP 3200+ system with a Radeon 9800 Pro that can do anything the P4 system can do. Reselling it would probably not cover the (already pretty low) cost of putting it together, since the P4 platform does not (yet) seem to be very sought after among retro computing enthusiasts and complete systems still pop up everywhere dirt cheap. Hmmm....

One use for the P4 would be multiplayer lan games with friends.

I switched out the internal floppy in my Amiga 1200 with a gotek drive and mounting kit.

Oh, got my old 8" Windows 8 tablets (Z3740, 2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC) out of storage and updated their software stack (latest Win10 32 bit Build), threw DOSBox+MUNT into one of them, and paired it to my Rii bluetooth keyboard + trackpad. Let's see what I can do...starting with the easy emulation stuff...

Space Quest 3

Day of the tentacle

Test Drive 3: The Passion

Wing Commander 2 (with the speech pack installed)

And the original TIE Fighter (with the Defender of the empire mission packs)

...now, what else can it do?

...emulators?

Let's see. How about console emulators?
N64.

Mario Kart 64?

Wipeout 64?

...PSX?
Ridge Racer 2?

Macross Digital Mission VFX:2?

...how about the PSP?

...what else can we do with it?

Unpacked the 2nd to last package from Europe I will likely receive. In it, a beautiful Kompakt Serie III case, with (as always with these cases) anything but a 386 SX inside. Instead, a DX-40 386. The 7 segment was set to 40 as well, so I am not sure if VOBIS quality control just got lazy or wtf.

Again, the original hard disk came in one of those caddy cases. This is like the 3rd or 4th one I receive like this. Replaced with a CDROM.

I also added 4Mb of RAM for a total of 8, erased most of the German software that was on there, put in a soundcard, removed the mobo and took out the battery (almost no corrosion!!) and replaced it with an external cell. The hard disk was moved to the mounting point beside the power supply, I cleaned up the insides, loaded Windows 3.11 and put on the proper drivers for everything.

Doesn't even need retrobriting:

I also got a bunch of AGP cards and LGA 478 CPUs, and then I have to figure out what I'm going to do with this:

An IBM 4694 - I left it in the back of my dad's car long ago and when it came time to unbury it from dust and dis-use, I totally forgot about it.

Now it is my intention to play Burntime on an appropriately German imported PC. 😁

...more old DOS classics like Comanche?

Or, oh, I don't know. Use it like a tablet and do useless tablet-y things with it.

Probably less than 50 bucks for a device like that (Lenovo Miix 2 8 or Dell Venue 8 tablet) on evilBay. They are kinda useless, but also fun if you know what you are doing.

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-03-07, 05:18:

...emulators? […]
Show full quote

...emulators?

Let's see. How about console emulators?
N64.

Mario Kart 64?
MK64.jpg

Wipeout 64?
Wipeout 64.jpg

...PSX?
Ridge Racer 2?
RR2.jpg

Macross Digital Mission VFX:2?
VFX2.jpg

...how about the PSP?
Outrun 2006.jpg

...what else can we do with it?

I'm doing a research paper (completing a certificate on technical writing) on the DeSmuME emulator- run that plox, as detailed as possible.

I gotta do something about that Turbo LED. I recall over a decade ago I redid my first wife's HVAC controls on her Tiburon. The answer was: Sand the LED down.

Fast forward to now - I'll use a grinder.

Completely disassembled, cleaned, and reassembled a Dual Shock 2 controller yesterday. Was quite surprised to see how Sony implemented the analog nature of the buttons. 😁 (hint: they are just rubber domes, with the resistance measured instead of just open/closed)

Today, I'm doing the same with the PS2 and than play some Burnout 3. 😀

Jed118 wrote on 2020-03-07, 06:31:

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-03-07, 05:18:

...emulators? […]
Show full quote

...emulators?

Let's see. How about console emulators?
N64.

Mario Kart 64?
MK64.jpg

Wipeout 64?
Wipeout 64.jpg

...PSX?
Ridge Racer 2?
RR2.jpg

Macross Digital Mission VFX:2?
VFX2.jpg

...how about the PSP?
Outrun 2006.jpg

...what else can we do with it?

I'm doing a research paper (completing a certificate on technical writing) on the DeSmuME emulator- run that plox, as detailed as possible.

Plox...?

Well, I already have an NDSLite with about as much 3rd party add-ons as possible (CycloDS Evolution, 3-in-one RAM expansion+rumble pack+GBSP Cart), so running an emulator for that console isn't that big, and I am honestly not convinced that the Atom Z3740 is powerful enough to run it well, so here goes...

SM64 DS...

GRiD DS...

ElectroPlankton...

Densha De Go Yamanote Line...

And of course, GTA: Chinatown Wars, which is one of the best games ever made for the NDS, and one that never fails to put a smile on my face for so many reasons...

Generally the NDS games require Dynarec (Dynamic Recompilation) to be turned on, frameskip to be set to 2 or above and I run them with OpenGL 3.2, and it's still not quite smooth. My guess is that this really should be run on something like a Broadwell Core-m (or a Haswell-U) as I am not sure if the
current Cherry Trail Atoms have the firepower to handle it (it's also not that much faster than the Bay Trail Atoms - the slow eMMC storage and the 2GB RAM doesn't help it too much either). I also think that the PSX/N64 stuff looks better, and the PSP games provide more bang for the frameskip buck...so no, not one of my favorite emulation on the go. I might give Dreamcast emulation a try though...Shenmue 2?

Jed118 wrote on 2020-03-07, 05:21:

Unpacked the 2nd to last package from Europe I will likely receive. In it, a beautiful Kompakt Serie III case, with (as always […]
Show full quote

Unpacked the 2nd to last package from Europe I will likely receive. In it, a beautiful Kompakt Serie III case, with (as always with these cases) anything but a 386 SX inside. Instead, a DX-40 386. The 7 segment was set to 40 as well, so I am not sure if VOBIS quality control just got lazy or wtf.

Again, the original hard disk came in one of those caddy cases. This is like the 3rd or 4th one I receive like this. Replaced with a CDROM.

I also added 4Mb of RAM for a total of 8, erased most of the German software that was on there, put in a soundcard, removed the mobo and took out the battery (almost no corrosion!!) and replaced it with an external cell. The hard disk was moved to the mounting point beside the power supply, I cleaned up the insides, loaded Windows 3.11 and put on the proper drivers for everything.

Wow, nice looking 486. Good job ! Ahh red wine, is it a cabernet' or pinot ?

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-03-07, 05:12:

Oh, got my old 8" Windows 8 tablets (Z3740, 2GB RAM, 32GB eMMC) out of storage and updated their software stack (latest Win10 32 bit Build), threw DOSBox+MUNT into one of them, and paired it to my bluetooth keyboard + trackpad to it. Let's see what I can do...Let's start with the easy emulation stuff...

Those cheap Intel based Windows Tablets are pretty cool. I have a 7" tablet with a slightly earlier CPU and 1GB RAM still running Windows 8.1. I took it on holiday with me last year for emulation purposes, playing Mega Drive, SNES, N64, Commodore 64, Atari 8-Bit & PS1. I tried Dreamcast too, but the poor Atom just wasn't up to the task. 🤣

We used PS4 controllers for gaming and controlled the mouse & keyboard in Windows over WIFI via the Unified Remote phone app.