Attempted to use a k5-pr166 with an Intel HX motherboard. That was a no go, so dropped a rather tired and abused Pentium 233mmx in instead. Hardware is setup in a case and the next step is a 98se install. Not so retro is a free Inpspiron 5315 getting setup with a fresh install of Vista and fixed up to replace a neighbors XP machine.
I've been wanting to repair a pair of DTK 286 boards I've had here for a while. Finally got stuck into it today.
Both boards had bad battery acid corrosion.
Both boards were missing the BIOS ROMs but luckily I could find the DTK BIOS on the net so I could write a couple of 27128s.
One board was doing nothing when powered on, the other would post OK but give a keyboard error, so I concentrated on that one.
With the keyboard connector right next to the battery, I was fairly certain the problem would be a broken trace from the corrosion, but all the keyboard connector pins were connected up correctly, so had to dig deeper. Using the logic probe I found a missing input on the nearby 7407, which was indeed caused by a broken trace, the corresponding output goes to the keyboard data pin. A bit more searching around the keyboard clock signal discovered another broken trace somewhere between a 7404 way up at the top of the board and pin 37 of the 8042 which for some reason ran indirectly via the area of the corrosion.
Bridged the broken traces with hookup wire and gave it a test. With the keyboard working now I can get into the bios an set everything up and get it running, once I put a new battery back on.
Found an alternative use for a spare Cx486DX. Spider attempted to escape, having found the weak point in the top of the tank;
So I used the nearest object which seemed like it would work;
Hopefully, she is not strong enough to push that out of the way, as she was managing to move the folded tape I have over that hole in the lid. I did wonder how long it would take her to discover this weakness and indeed, it did not take her very long considering the small size of her brain. While I am here, have a better quality image of her; http://s26.postimg.org/kckkanp2x/vlcsnap_2016 … 3h55m12s939.jpg
In other news, I am still enjoying my Trinitron;
I discovered it has a secret up its sleeve that I somehow overlooked - a second VGA input is available to the left of the controls which flips out. I did wonder, given the OSD reports "REAR INPUT" and indeed, hitting the input button switches to "FRONT INPUT" and displays and image from the front socket instead. This has a lot of potential uses.
Today I learned that I can, indeed, pack a nice, retro punch with me the next time I'm on a trip:
Oh yeah, I did manage to fix the dead keys problem I was having with this thing. All it took was simply reseating the keyboard cables and the dead keys came back to life! Now to load this with some games...
Finally finished inventorying all my CPUs. Had to do the remaining CPUs in the attic as I had not enough storage to bring all of them downstairs.
Even found a some chips I had forgotten that I had.
Alas, none of my old Pentiums seem to have the FDIV bug, except for the one I already 'found' a couple days ago 😢
Finally finished inventorying all my CPUs. Had to do the remaining CPUs in the attic as I had not enough storage to bring all of them downstairs.
Even found a some chips I had forgotten that I had.
Alas, none of my old Pentiums seem to have the FDIV bug, except for the one I already 'found' a couple days ago 😢
Did something similar and sorted out my humble CPU collection 😀
PhilsComputerLab wrote:Did something similar and sorted out my humble CPU collection :) […] Show full quote
Tetrium wrote:
Finally finished inventorying all my CPUs. Had to do the remaining CPUs in the attic as I had not enough storage to bring all of them downstairs.
Even found a some chips I had forgotten that I had.
Alas, none of my old Pentiums seem to have the FDIV bug, except for the one I already 'found' a couple days ago 😢
Did something similar and sorted out my humble CPU collection 😀
That's actually a good, cheap and effective way to store them, I'm gonna copy that flo...I mean idea! 😁
Today I unsoldered an old coin cell battery off of my 486 machine and soldered a nice holder and put a new battery in. The old one was down to 2.4V and the clock was running slower when the PC was off, now it seems to be working fine.
Awesome! Can't beat a good retro LAN. We're having a LAN tomorrow at my workplace, but it's modern stuff only unfortunately (I'm trying to convince them to play some UT99 at least!). Would love to see some pics of the event in full swing!
Awesome! Can't beat a good retro LAN. We're having a LAN tomorrow at my workplace, but it's modern stuff only unfortunately (I'm trying to convince them to play some UT99 at least!). Would love to see some pics of the event in full swing!
I talked to a friend of mine yesterday and we had a similar conversation about me building 4 retro LAN rigs, all Pentium MMX's, 3 for the LAN at my place (Interstate 76! 😁) and one for him so he can try out playing DOS games in real DOS and with a real ISA sound card 😁
Currently going through all my sound cards though, so the new rigs will have to wait some more...
I tested S370 processors and found two non working ones 🙁 Two others weren't labelled, so I wrote the frequency / FSB on them to make it easier for the future.
Then I played around with V2 SLI. Got two matching STB cards.
Had zero issues, so I'm happy they still work well. Used the latest 3rd party drivers, installed some games and off it went. Happy days.
I'm tinkering on my old system. Two things are under investigation today.
1. SD card is now corrupted and won't boot. Switching the system to a CF to IDE adapter instead. Someone posted about SD reliability recently, and they were spot-on.
2. Noticed that when booting my PC with a certain sound card inside, something on the card "clicks" 1-2 seconds after powering-on. I then de-clicks when powering off the system.
I tested S370 processors and found two non working ones 🙁 Two others weren't labelled, so I wrote the frequency / FSB on them to make it easier for the future.
Then I played around with V2 SLI. Got two matching STB cards.
Had zero issues, so I'm happy they still work well. Used the latest 3rd party drivers, installed some games and off it went. Happy days.
Which CPUs and which board were you testing with?
Soms CPUs have problems on some boards (mostly PPGA Celerons and VIA C3s...along with Tualatins and possibly some 66MHz FSB Celerons that are put in boards that don't want to run below 100MHz FSB)