PeterLI wrote:

Got a HP Brio Pentium 200 MMX in today. Paid $41 including shipping from GA. Works great except for the PSU fan. CPU fan (indirect) works. Came with 3.5" HD FDD, SCSI CD-ROM, Adaptec AHA-2940 and 3COM 3C509. Was sold for parts / repair. Need to work on a bit more. For s*** and giggles I hooked up my ST-296N on the AHA-2940. It does not allow me to boot from it. Probably needs a low level. Works fine with FDD boot though. 🤣 Playing Thexder II music. Groovy!

Got a CM-32L in today as well. Paid $65 including shipping from TX. Works great. Some stains. 😀 I love it! Was sold for parts / repair.

CM-32L for $65?

Yeah....I don't like you. 😎 🤣

You need to hit BIN! 😀

It appears the MOBO IDE on the HP Brio is dead. Working with the AHA-2940 now to get a ST-1480N to boot.

After that I need to find an ASPI driver to get the TEAC SCSI CD-ROM to work.

Cleaned the in/outside of the HP Brio this morning: deep black soot.

Update 1: boots fine from SCSI after low level format. Interesting how that is usually required for SCSI HDDs.

Update 2: CD-ROM works but only with regular CDs: not with CD-(R)Ws. 🤣

Update 3: put a spare AT PSU in. Works: including CPU fan.

Update 4: opened up the old PSU. Did not work after closing it. 🙁

Worked on Ultima Underworld level 2 (almost explored it all now) and completed mission 2 of the first campaign in Tie Fighter Collector's CD. Then I made some updates to the benchmark database I maintain (link in sig).

Tested a Pentium-60 machine for it's very first time.

Had been stored away for 10 years after acquiring it, and 'rediscovered' it the other day...
Last used in very early 2000 I believe.

To my surprise, it powered on immediately, though took a loong time testing the (plentiful) memory, before moving on with the boot process.

Even the time of day and date was still perfectly correct, on the minute(!).
Dallas RTC from summer 1994 !
Granted, it had the year wrong for some inexplicable reason, it said 1916 and not 2016 - millennia rollover ?, go figure... (easily fixed it to 2016)

48MB(!) of memory, 6 sticks of 8mb each.

But why using just ISA for hdd controller card when plenty PCI slots available (and given that silly amount of memory), I don't understand though.

Has a 200W PSU. Still works, but the fan did not, at first.
So, just for the heck of it, I poked around and spun it manually , and... after quite a few false starts, it too was chugging along at full speed. Although that fan is making 'chugging' noises at random intervals, so better replace either fan or PSU.
And, regarding a different topic, it has only 20A on the 5V line (100W), so even a modern PSU should be fine as replacement I think ?

Finally the CPU cooler looks rather funny - a ROUND(as in fully circular!, not square) layered cake of stuff, metal part on top, some black plastic thing below that, closest to CPU. Though that might just be the retaining mechanism with a metal center, not sure how it really looks when dismantled yet.

Sounds like a nice machine, although when would you need 48 megs of memory in a P66 machine? I assume it's running DOS or Win 9x.

keenmaster486 wrote:

Sounds like a nice machine, although when would you need 48 megs of memory in a P66 machine? I assume it's running DOS or Win 9x.

No idea, 🤣 ... Was like that when I got it 10 years ago, been sitting untested until today...

I assume it must've been running early WinNT or something(Win311 ?), in a business enviroment if I remember correctly.
Currently running nothing/no OS, lack of installed hdd(was removed before I got it).

Just wanted to finally the test the thing for the first(!) time, to see if anything worked - after all these years hiding away forgotten in the attic. All while enduring the joys of no isolation, with +35c summer and -20c winter time...

I've been testing a Voodoo3 3000 I recently purchased, very happy with it, good image output and great compatibility 😀. So I've spent a couple of hours in the morning testing it, and also updated bios (I don't appreciate any difference, but that's ok with a newer one 😀 ) and installed a fan over it, following Phil's advice.

This thing gets really hot! Now I have a big cloud of hot air inside the tiny AT case, maybe installing an additional fan in the front to intake fresh air?? The ATX psu with a big 120mm fan helps a lot to exhaust it, but not enough. Still have to test!

mmx_91 wrote:

I've been testing a Voodoo3 3000 I recently purchased, very happy with it, good image output and great compatibility 😀. So I've spent a couple of hours in the morning testing it, and also updated bios (I don't appreciate any difference, but that's ok with a newer one 😀 ) and installed a fan over it, following Phil's advice.

This thing gets really hot! Now I have a big cloud of hot air inside the tiny AT case, maybe installing an additional fan in the front to intake fresh air?? The ATX psu with a big 120mm fan helps a lot to exhaust it, but not enough. Still have to test!

<images>

I put a fan about half that size on my Voodoo3 3000, and it runs perfectly fine and is now cool to the touch and barely makes any heat. I did take the heatsink off and put some modern thermal paste under it though. Might of helped a lot. They do get incredibly hot on their own though. I don't know how they ever sold them fanless.

I booted up an MS-Dos-6.22 box, and quietly watched my daughter play Doom (ultimate Doom using AWE32 CT:3900) and my son played Raptor and Epic Pinball.

They simply love these old games and constantly asks for me to start up a computer for them. My rule are not to game during the day, only after 5pm.

Barely had a chance to go near a computer today, instead my day involved wood, saws, drills and tape measures. My kind of day! Whilst I wasn't really doing anything interesting, I do like an excuse to play with the tools every once in a while, the only down-side is that my stairway is now covered in sawdust and random off-cuts of 2x2.

brostenen wrote:

I booted up an MS-Dos-6.22 box, and quietly watched my daughter play Doom (ultimate Doom using AWE32 CT:3900) and my son played Raptor and Epic Pinball.

They simply love these old games and constantly asks for me to start up a computer for them. My rule are not to game during the day, only after 5pm.

You should set up another one and let them play against each other on lan in dos, it's easy to do. Give em a multiplayer experience. 😀

Or -with- each other cooperatively and foster cooperative team skills to work together.

kithylin wrote:

brostenen wrote:

I booted up an MS-Dos-6.22 box, and quietly watched my daughter play Doom (ultimate Doom using AWE32 CT:3900) and my son played Raptor and Epic Pinball.

They simply love these old games and constantly asks for me to start up a computer for them. My rule are not to game during the day, only after 5pm.

You should set up another one and let them play against each other on lan in dos, it's easy to do. Give em a multiplayer experience. 😀

Or -with- each other cooperatively and foster cooperative team skills to work together.

They are still too young. He is 5 and she is 7.

Somehow I ended up multi-tasking 4 games this weekend. 🤣. I've been playing Ultima Underworld and Tie Fighter Collector's CD, then yesterday I started Far Cry and Wing Commander 4. Today I've played at least 30 minutes in each game and I think it's going okay. I didn't think I'd be able to handle 4 games at once. Finished level 2 on UU and explored level 3 a bit; completed mission 3 on 1st tour on Tie Fighter; on Far Cry I got through the Japanese air craft carrier (currently going to the top when the chopper and all the guys start attacking); and completed a few missions of WC4. Serious gamer brain now.

Wrote a new entry on my retro-blog. Was surprised that I did not write anything else in 2016. 🤣
Have been busy with other stuff I guess.

brostenen wrote:

Wrote a new entry on my retro-blog. Was surprised that I did not write anything else in 2016. 🤣
Have been busy with other stuff I guess.

Enjoyed the blog post! 😀

FYI, I once used to dual-boot my system without a boot manager. I used my BIOS boot menu and two hdds, each with its own OS install. When I turned my PC on, I'd hit F9 to go to the BIOS boot menu then just pick the drive I wanted to boot to. I believe at the time my primary OS was Win2k (the BIOS default that would load automatically if I didn't hit F9), and the secondary OS was Ubuntu 7.04. I remember it was 2007 and Win2k was having more and more compatibility issues. I did not want XP, so I was evaluating Ubuntu. I ended up eventually moving to Ubuntu for many years and still use a (different) linux distro today as my main OS at home.

clueless1 wrote:

Enjoyed the blog post! 😀

Thanks. And sorry for my shitty english. After all, English and German are my second language's.

Finally assembled my high-density floppy drive controller/serial port combo card.

Waiting on the floppy controller chip to arrive in the mail today, and had to run by Microcenter to pick up a header. Goodbye 720k, hello 2.88mb. I'M SO EXCITED.

I also need the serial port connector and backplane; I forgot to order those from Mouser. 🙁

keenerb wrote:

Finally assembled my high-density floppy drive controller/serial port combo card. […]
Show full quote

Finally assembled my high-density floppy drive controller/serial port combo card.

Waiting on the floppy controller chip to arrive in the mail today, and had to run by Microcenter to pick up a header. Goodbye 720k, hello 2.88mb. I'M SO EXCITED.

I also need the serial port connector and backplane; I forgot to order those from Mouser. 🙁

Looks really cool. Going to use it alongside a SCSI controller or just IDE?

I have a lo-tech XT-IDE compact flash adapter I'm also using