derSammler wrote on 2020-03-19, 07:42:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-03-19, 01:56:

here comes General Failure and starts reading my disks. All of them. I tried the usual cleaning the drive inside, outside, cleaning the heads with alcohol, etc. to no avail.

That's nothing you can fix by cleaning. If it really says general failure, there's something wrong with the drive's hardware. If it has jumpers, check if they are correctly set to work in a PC. But I assume the problem lies in the heads being out of adjustment, which is the most common culprit for a cleaned and otherwise working drive failing to read disks. You can check this by formating a disk. If that works but the drive fails to read existing disks, re-adjustment of the heads is needed.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-03-19, 18:20:

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-19, 07:42:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-03-19, 01:56:

here comes General Failure and starts reading my disks. All of them. I tried the usual cleaning the drive inside, outside, cleaning the heads with alcohol, etc. to no avail.

That's nothing you can fix by cleaning. If it really says general failure, there's something wrong with the drive's hardware. If it has jumpers, check if they are correctly set to work in a PC. But I assume the problem lies in the heads being out of adjustment, which is the most common culprit for a cleaned and otherwise working drive failing to read disks. You can check this by formating a disk. If that works but the drive fails to read existing disks, re-adjustment of the heads is needed.

I agree, I had an external floppy drive that could only read 1.44MB diskettes and not 720K diskettes. Turned out the heads were off center, attempted to adjust them and clean the heads, and still nothing. Some of my 1.44MB diskette drives do work without issues, except the one is very loud when reading from a diskette. Is it because the heads are sticking that could cause the floppy drive to sound very loud?

Thanks for the information guys. Unfortunately it seems these drives are dead. i tried to format a diskette on both and none will format it, they complain about "Invalid media or track 0 bad - disk unusable". However, the disk is OK, as it works on two other floppy drives I have. Anyway, does anyone have a couple floppy drives for sale? around here they sell them like they are made of solid gold, 🤣.

Tried to make Windows 98 SE (EN version) work correctly with Russian language to no avail. I could get Russian characters in both encodings (CP866 and Windows-1251) display properly under DOS (e.g. in Multi-Edit) and under Windows (e.g. in Notepad), but not in MS-DOS prompt under Windows. After messing with system codepages and translation tables I achieved a spectacular result: all files with Russian symbols in their names have become invalid and can be neither renamed nor deleted (File system error 1026). I will nuke this partition and install Windows 98 SE Russian version when time permits.

I built an adapter to connect a PS/2 mouse to my Socket 7 motheboard's internal header (just 9 pins standing there). I have the manual of the mobo, where all the pinouts of the headers are documented. However, I initially assembled the adapter wrong (inverted GND and +5V) and while testing, fried a Microsoft Optical Mouse. Now the mouse will light when connected to a USB port, but most likely will not move the pointer (sometimes does, which is weird). Anyway, once I realized my error, and inverted the cables and the adapter worked fine. Fortunately I did not test the adapter with my old IBM mouse, which is paired to my IBM Thinkpad 360Ce (486 DX-50MHz and 20MB RAM). It would be a shame to kill suck an old mouse which still works perfectly to this day.

Man, sorry about the floppy drives. Where're you from, eh? I made a USB to PS/2 adapter one time and got 2 of the wires incorrect, and fortunately didn't break the mouse. After fixing the error, the mouse worked without issues. Going to solder the wires together and put some heat shrink tubing on the wires or electrical tape to prevent the wires from touching each other. I might make a PS/2 to serial adapter, but I have plenty of those (came with PS/2 Microsoft Mice in boxes) adapters.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-03-20, 00:09:

Man, sorry about the floppy drives. Where're you from, eh? I made a USB to PS/2 adapter one time and got 2 of the wires incorrect, and fortunately didn't break the mouse. After fixing the error, the mouse worked without issues. Going to solder the wires together and put some heat shrink tubing on the wires or electrical tape to prevent the wires from touching each other. I might make a PS/2 to serial adapter, but I have plenty of those (came with PS/2 Microsoft Mice in boxes) adapters.

I'm from Colombia (Columbia?). I already bought another mouse to replace the fried one. They are like 6 bucks shipped around here.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-03-19, 20:46:

Thanks for the information guys. Unfortunately it seems these drives are dead. i tried to format a diskette on both and none will format it, they complain about "Invalid media or track 0 bad - disk unusable". However, the disk is OK, as it works on two other floppy drives I have. Anyway, does anyone have a couple floppy drives for sale? around here they sell them like they are made of solid gold, 🤣.

Hmm have only had a few 1.44mb drives be dead from all my used drive purchases, given, etc. Most just keep working not matter what. My guess is the lot bad and is why was free. Shipping to SA is too expensive or would send you a good used working one free.

Few weeks ago, I found and ad for a random "PC board" which showed in some rather blurry pictures what I though is a 286/386 baby-AT mainboard, 8-bit ISA VGA and a 16-bit ISA HDD/FDD controller. For equivalent of 14 USD, I decided to investigate.
Picking up the package right before the pandemic broke out, I could see that it is a 286 system running AMD N80L286-16/S CPU. The closest fit to the mainboard is the MINI-AT286 (G2-206) and the GPU appeard to be very similar to this OTI-037 card, all in very nice condition!

Yesterday I decided to test it out. There was a barrel battery which surprisingly did not leak until now, but I desoldered it anyway and in its place put a coin cell battery holder for future LIR2032 3.6V. Nice fit.
I then tested it under power. After switching it on, immediately one of the four tantalum caps near the AT connector blew up - I kind of expected that.
I figured all of them are probably 10uF 16V, so I replaced them with some radial electrolytics I had on hand (3x 10uF 16V, 1x10uF 35V) and tried it again.

...and...success. I am going to have so much fun making a full build out of that...

I installed P3 Coppermine 800/100 MHz and Leadtek GF2 GTS to my Slot 1 machine to give it a bit more oomph. I needed to fiddle little bit with the heatsink of the processor. It had these plastic attachment clips and one of them was slightly broken, which meant that there was practically zero pressure on the die. So, I used good old zip ties which secured the heatsink adequately and while I was at it, replaced old hard silicon paste with MX4. Then I booted the machine, set up the processor in the bios, installed drivers for the card and it works just fine!

This upgrade really shows how rapid the evolution was at that time. My period correct "1998" Slot 1 system with Celeron@450 and TNT+V2 was pretty much top notch in autumn 1998 and with my new configuration with GF2 GTS which was released approximately two years later, the gaming performance is pretty much 2,5 times better according to 3DMark99. That is simply a huge leap.

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2020-03-20, 08:34:

which was released approximately two years later, the gaming performance is pretty much 2,5 times better according to 3DMark99. That is simply a huge leap.

I don't see 2.5 better gaming performance as a huge leap for hardware that was released two years later. This is actually a difference you already had within the same family of graphics cards released at the same time, like between a GeForce2 MX and a GeForce2 Ti/Ultra.

The GF2 GTS is actually about 9 times faster than your TNT. The CPU you use is a huge bottleneck. CPU speed was already way beyond 1 GHz when the GF2 hit the market. You pretty much got 2.5 better gaming performance because that's exactly how much faster the CPU is. The graphics card doesn't even come to play here.

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-18, 18:20:

Not possible, because it has no hard drive. And it has no hard drive because it has no network adapter. 😉

It's a backup PS2 only anyway, the main one has everything and can use SMB, USB, HDD, and burned discs.

There are also the option, of converting the Ps2-DVD-Backup ISO to an DVD movie ISO, and then you can load it using eject button on the console. Works only with DVD backup's.

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-20, 08:52:

CharlieFoxtrot wrote on 2020-03-20, 08:34:

which was released approximately two years later, the gaming performance is pretty much 2,5 times better according to 3DMark99. That is simply a huge leap.

I don't see 2.5 better gaming performance as a huge leap for hardware that was released two years later. This is actually a difference you already had within the same family of graphics cards released at the same time, like between a GeForce2 MX and a GeForce2 Ti/Ultra.

The GF2 GTS is actually about 9 times faster than your TNT. The CPU you use is a huge bottleneck. CPU speed was already way beyond 1 GHz when the GF2 hit the market. You pretty much got 2.5 better gaming performance because that's exactly how much faster the CPU is. The graphics card doesn't even come to play here.

I agree as 3DMark score scaled almost 1:1 to CPU speed. I also tested GF2 GTS quickly with the celeron, and 3DM99 score went up only few hundred points, so it definitely is CPU limited.

Fired up my Windows 98 PC to install unofficial patches for Planescape: Torment. I thought it didn't work at first, because the PST Fixpack would just hang with a message "Copying and patching 1 file..."

But then my wife called me to hold our cat while she was giving her an injection of painkillers (the cat had a surgery 2 days ago). When I returned, the patcher was busy replacing and patching game files. It turned out it took almost 20 minutes for a K6-II+ 550 MHz with 256 MB of RAM to open and parse the VAR.VAR file from Planescape: Torment. In total it took about 40 minutes to install the patch. The Unfinished Business pack and the Tweak Pack each took about 20 minutes to install.

So if you have faster Windows machines (I don't; my other computers are either Mac or Linux), it would be better to patch the game before transferring it over to the period-appropriate hardware...

Installing Sparkle-Linux on an old IBM Thinkpad R52. The machine have 1 gigabyte of memory. Sparkle-Linux can be installed on a machines with no more than 256mb Ram and with a GUI. The command line version only need 128mb. And it can run on Pentium-M processors. The best thing, is that Sparkle-Linux is Debian based. The machine is for my daughter, to explore and get used to Linux.

Spent way too many hours and 3 different set ups trying to get this mouse to work. No luck.

Seen a few posts on here about mice with this switch but I just cannot get any joy from it. Annoying as my current project only has serial for a mouse.

What mouse drivers did you try? 3 buttons mean it's a Mouse Systems mouse, so you can't use a driver that supports Microsoft mice only.

The switch *may* allow selecting between Mouse Systems and Microsoft, but I wouldn't bet on it.

CuteMouse has a flag for Mouse System mice (ctmouse /M), but, I haven't attempted that before with a 3 button mouse on a serial port. Normally, the toggle switch is for PS/2 and AT (serial with the PS/2 to Serial adapter installed). I have a mouse that has that style switch.

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-21, 18:51:

What mouse drivers did you try? 3 buttons mean it's a Mouse Systems mouse, so you can't use a driver that supports Microsoft mice only.

The switch *may* allow selecting between Mouse Systems and Microsoft, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The switch has 2 options "PC" or "MS"

I tried the "standard serial mouse" as well as "microsoft serial mouse" that are part of windows 95.

With both switch settings I cannot get anything from it.

There is a driverset in the Windows 95 CD that contains the Mouse Systems driver. I can upload the drivers here for you in case you don't have the CD. Here you go.

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-03-21, 19:01:

The switch has 2 options "PC" or "MS"

That's why I said it may switch between Microsoft and Mouse Systems. I don't know what "PC" is supposed to mean, and "MS" can be either of the two. One setting is Mouse Systems for sure.

MS is Mouse Systems, and PC is Serial (PC AT), I believe. I'll test that theory on my 486 with the drivers installed and see what happens.