yesterday I listed and ordered the required caps to recap four motherboards. Also, did a recap on a FX5200 - success.
Did a reflow on a Geforce256 - no success. I might pull the chip and reball it at some point. Does anyone have an idea what the ball size or pitch is?

Testing this IBM branded TEAC USB floppy drive. Copying some nForce RAID F6 driver files for the XP x64 installation on a future Iwill DK8EW rig. The drive is from 2004, but works flawless in Windows 11.
It came with a travel pouch as well.

I was working on my IBM 760CD for a couple of days in my spare time. Had to remove the connectors of the speakers because they were so flimsy and soldered directly to the solder pads. Had some problems getting all the tiny parts into place but finally I could do it without breaking something. I scratched my head for a long time because the midi player installed on the computer gave very strange noise when playing some tones, so I thought I had some problems with the soldering, but then I played the windows intro wave-file and it sounds normal, also transport tychoon sounds normal. I have no idea whats going on there, maybe the mwave-drivers are messed up.

The only downside of this laptop is perhaps the lack of a built in floppy but the guy who gave me computer actually found it and gave to me, which is awsome because it has no way of booting from CD-ROM in the BIOS. So now I have to decide what to run on it, probably windows 98 just because it is a little more stable than the currently installed windows 95, where I could not get my PCMCIA CF card to read properly. I will also replace the hard drive because it sounds like a grinding machine (I do love the ticking sound though).

Joakim wrote on 2023-08-17, 11:21:

I scratched my head for a long time because the midi player installed on the computer gave very strange noise when playing some tones, so I thought I had some problems with the soldering, but then I played the windows intro wave-file and it sounds normal, also transport tychoon sounds normal. I have no idea whats going on there, maybe the mwave-drivers are messed up.

I had a similar experience with a certain PCMCIA sound card in a 486 DX2 laptop. Someone suggested that MIDI payback may use a software synthesizer, and the slow CPU is the telltale giveaway. I think that all hardware accelerated MIDI devices of this era still required a separate, dedicated chip for both the synthesizer and sample ROM. Did you happen to see a separate chip for this anywhere on the board?

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-08-17, 11:32:

Joakim wrote on 2023-08-17, 11:21:

I scratched my head for a long time because the midi player installed on the computer gave very strange noise when playing some tones, so I thought I had some problems with the soldering, but then I played the windows intro wave-file and it sounds normal, also transport tychoon sounds normal. I have no idea whats going on there, maybe the mwave-drivers are messed up.

I had a similar experience with a certain PCMCIA sound card in a 486 DX2 laptop. Someone suggested that MIDI payback may use a software synthesizer, and the slow CPU is the telltale giveaway. I think that all hardware accelerated MIDI devices of this era still required a separate, dedicated chip for both the synthesizer and sample ROM. Did you happen to see a separate chip for this anywhere on the board?

I have not been into the board itself, only worked on the daughter board where the batteries and speakers etc. are connected. I'm pretty sure this machine has some hardware acceleration of some sort, according to wikipedia it is ISA bus based version of the MWave chip. It is supposed to have some hardware accelerated MPEG playback (and also recording as well I think). It seems to have been a beast of a machine at the time.

Maybe the midi player I was using was playing software synthesizer? I'm not even sure what it was called, but it was yamaha branded and it was just on the desktop so I used it.

I recapped my Aztech Sound Galaxy BXII, and now it sounds a million times better.

This just goes to show that you don't need audio-grade caps to get good sound.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-08-17, 15:50:

This just goes to show that you don't need audio-grade caps to get good sound.

It can help in certain scenarios. My understanding is audio grade caps have much tighter manufacturing tolerances, and are supposed to be more stable in terms of fluctuating as they age.

I doubt you'd ever hear the difference on such a primitive, low cost, unisolated device as an ISA sound card tho.

There are ISA sound cards where they would make a difference, but for this BXII they would absolutely be a waste of money.

The weird thing about "audio grade" is that I have heard that particularly in the case of tantalums, you need an actual high ESR to load some amplifiers and resonant circuits correctly. However you can "crappify" regular caps by putting a half ohm resistor in series.

I only use audio grade resistors in my COVOX Speech Thing.

Speaking of sound cards... I finally got 3D Dinosaur Adventure working properly with full audio, and also got the Sound Blaster's ability to pipe PC Speaker sound through regular speakers on startup. (Rather than starting it manually)

It seems I hit a double whammy:

For the Sound Blaster, you need both the Diagnose utility to start up and the Mixerset utility to adjust the volume.

For 3D Dinosaur Adventure, you need not only the game's Sound Blaster drivers, but also the stock CT___.sys drivers.

Having a little fun with an antique HP 7440A (HP ColorPro) 8 pen serial plotter.

Used a modern aluminum "universal pen holder" (probably for use with modern single-pen marking machines, or with Roland pen plotters, which have a similar grip mechanism) setup to hold onto a very inexpensive ballpoint pen tube.
It was carefully fine-tuned to barely touch the paper.

I need to modify the plot file though. For some reason, it does not actually change the pen to the holder loaded with my papermate inkjoy black for heavy inking. I will make the change, then re-plot.

The source image is (as far as I know or understand) Royalty-Free, having come from an AI image generator. (IIRC, US Copyright office has deemed AI art to be uncopyrightable). Came from Imagine.art from a text prompt.

I ran it through Drawingbotsv3-premium, which is able to make volumetric shading from raster images (and has a subprogram for spoonfeeding these plotters.)

wierd_w wrote on 2023-08-18, 06:42:

Having a little fun with an antique HP 7440A (HP ColorPro) 8 pen serial plotter. […]
Show full quote

Having a little fun with an antique HP 7440A (HP ColorPro) 8 pen serial plotter.

Used a modern aluminum "universal pen holder" (probably for use with modern single-pen marking machines, or with Roland pen plotters, which have a similar grip mechanism) setup to hold onto a very inexpensive ballpoint pen tube.
It was carefully fine-tuned to barely touch the paper.

I need to modify the plot file though. For some reason, it does not actually change the pen to the holder loaded with my papermate inkjoy black for heavy inking. I will make the change, then re-plot.

The source image is (as far as I know or understand) Royalty-Free, having come from an AI image generator. (IIRC, US Copyright office has deemed AI art to be uncopyrightable). Came from Imagine.art from a text prompt.

I ran it through Drawingbotsv3-premium, which is able to make volumetric shading from raster images (and has a subprogram for spoonfeeding these plotters.)

That's neat! The printing style reminds me of illustrations in old books. How long did that take to print though? 😀

Joakim wrote on 2023-08-18, 06:54:

wierd_w wrote on 2023-08-18, 06:42:

Having a little fun with an antique HP 7440A (HP ColorPro) 8 pen serial plotter. […]
Show full quote

Having a little fun with an antique HP 7440A (HP ColorPro) 8 pen serial plotter.

Used a modern aluminum "universal pen holder" (probably for use with modern single-pen marking machines, or with Roland pen plotters, which have a similar grip mechanism) setup to hold onto a very inexpensive ballpoint pen tube.
It was carefully fine-tuned to barely touch the paper.

I need to modify the plot file though. For some reason, it does not actually change the pen to the holder loaded with my papermate inkjoy black for heavy inking. I will make the change, then re-plot.

The source image is (as far as I know or understand) Royalty-Free, having come from an AI image generator. (IIRC, US Copyright office has deemed AI art to be uncopyrightable). Came from Imagine.art from a text prompt.

I ran it through Drawingbotsv3-premium, which is able to make volumetric shading from raster images (and has a subprogram for spoonfeeding these plotters.)

That's neat! The printing style reminds me of illustrations in old books. How long did that take to print though? 😀

About 5 hours. 😜

here you go, no printer needed 😜 :
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2HbnyKJZ9to/Up4Ei5I … 00/DSCN0267.JPG

('my' local church...)

Walked by there so many times, and that AI-picture seemed eerily resemblant.... 😇

Been messing around with the SPDIF capabilities of my Guillemot Maxi Sound Fortissimo (Yamaha YMF744). Managed to connect the CD drive's digital out to the card's SPDIF in. After that, I connected the card's SPDIF out to my Cambridge Soundworks Digital speakers using an active (powered) TOSLINK to RCA SPDIF adapter.

The clarity of the sound coming out of those speakers is pristine. Really happy with the end result.

bestemor wrote on 2023-08-18, 08:04:

here you go, no printer needed :P : http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2HbnyKJZ9to/Up4Ei5I … 00/DSCN0267.JPG […]
Show full quote

here you go, no printer needed 😜 :
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2HbnyKJZ9to/Up4Ei5I … 00/DSCN0267.JPG

('my' local church...)

Walked by there so many times, and that AI-picture seemed eerily resemblant.... 😇

But that's not the part that is retro, and or, FUN! 😜

To be fair, I asked it for a "Line-Art detail of a magical academy's outer courtyard", and got that gothic cathedral. It was a nice monochromatic image that was very suitable for my testing of these new pen adapters.

I also asked it for a "line-art detail of a ruined temple's grounds" and got this:

I might try running it through the plotter some other time.

Well, I just tell myself that taking a stroll by ancient/retro cathedrals can be considered a retro activity these days... 🤣
(but sadly no ruined temples in sight around here, so I'll leave that one for you to plot)

wierd_w wrote on 2023-08-18, 08:32:

But that's not the part that is retro, and or, FUN! :P […]
Show full quote

bestemor wrote on 2023-08-18, 08:04:

here you go, no printer needed :P : http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2HbnyKJZ9to/Up4Ei5I … 00/DSCN0267.JPG […]
Show full quote

here you go, no printer needed 😜 :
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2HbnyKJZ9to/Up4Ei5I … 00/DSCN0267.JPG

('my' local church...)

Walked by there so many times, and that AI-picture seemed eerily resemblant.... 😇

But that's not the part that is retro, and or, FUN! 😜

To be fair, I asked it for a "Line-Art detail of a magical academy's outer courtyard", and got that gothic cathedral. It was a nice monochromatic image that was very suitable for my testing of these new pen adapters.

I also asked it for a "line-art detail of a ruined temple's grounds" and got this:

I might try running it through the plotter some other time.

Is this from Midjourney?