VOGONS


Reply 5260 of 27168, by xplus93

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Anybody know of dell wallpapers from that era floating around?

XPS 466V|486-DX2|64MB|#9 GXE 1MB|SB32 PnP
Presario 4814|PMMX-233|128MB|Trio64
XPS R450|PII-450|384MB|TNT2 Pro| TB Montego
XPS B1000r|PIII-1GHz|512MB|GF2 PRO 64MB|SB Live!
XPS Gen2|P4 EE 3.4|2GB|GF 6800 GT OC|Audigy 2

Reply 5261 of 27168, by bjwil1991

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I upgraded the 428MB HDD in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus to a 1GB CF Card (CF to IDE) on a plastic HDD caddy cover from a busted laptop, and it's faster than it was, however, I still have the HDD in case the CF card gives out.

Here's a proper demo of the Lo-Tech Tandy Compatible Sound Card

Discord: https://discord.gg/U5dJw7x
Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
Twitch: https://twitch.tv/retropcuser

Reply 5262 of 27168, by Nvm1

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I got annoyed by how bad alot of people treat old hardware.
Received an Octek Hippo Pro motherboard in reasonable state, until I noticed the idiot put the bios chip not straight in and 4 pins are gone and 4 others very very weak. 😠
Another let down was the V7 Tseng ET4000AX where one of the tantalums was ripped off during shipment due to only one layer of paper was put around it... 😢 Still will be worth repairing it.
And since all good things come in three..: Received another package with cpu's, and all where neatly put into foam to protect the pins, except a socket 423 P4 1,7Ghz which I now only can use as a keychain.

Hope that while I go through the rest of my still unpacked/untested stuff I don't get more of those let downs 😐

Reply 5263 of 27168, by brostenen

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Tested my ABIT 486 board today. I had it running with a 5428-VLB, VLB-Controller, harddrive, floppy and 24mb ram.
Tested it by installing MS-Dos 6.22 and I ran speedsys on it. All software I tried, ran well.
The way this board and the cards work together, feels like it is rock stable. No funny hickups of any kind.
I tested the board with both a 486dx33 and then a 486dx2-66. Runs like it was new. Lovely. 😀

I got it delivered without any battery, and there is only corrosion on the solderpads were the batterypins used to be.
So I crafted a getto battery mod, to test how well the BIOS keeps the settings.
This little mod was made, by taking two 2032 batteries, and taping them together with wire between battery and tape.
It works and is ok enough for a temporary external battery solution, when the board is set up on a test bench.
For a final solution, I have ordered a batteryholder with room for two 2032's.

So happy, that I finally have a board with VLB, because it is the gap between ISA and PCI. Shure there were EISA and MCA.
Though my collection is focused on what private computer owners usually had, and not every technology ever created.

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 5264 of 27168, by creepingnet

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More 486 fun today.....

- took out 2 of the 32MB SIMMS, was just getting too many errors and lag-issues with 128MB in there, so I'm bumping it down to 64, I can feel the difference already.....massively.

- Registered N-Track 1.1.3 to get the full version - can you believe that a 486 DX4-100 with VLB HDD controller and ISA Sound card is capable of at least recording 3 tracks of audio under the slower-PC buffer settings before performance actually becomes an Issue? Got rhythm guitar, bass, and drums on there. About to try a lead track.

Here's a link to a video of my old 486 playing back Audio I'd recorded, I just improvised this track....

https://www.instagram.com/p/BRXNTjYjQwX/?take … ikeshredz&hl=en

~The Creeping Network~
My Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/creepingnet
Creepingnet's World - https://creepingnet.neocities.org/
The Creeping Network Repo - https://www.geocities.ws/creepingnet2019/

Reply 5265 of 27168, by dexvx

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I just started collecting retro hardware.

First item I purchased and received was an Asus TX97-XV with Pentium 166 MMX installed and 32 MB SIMM's. It's an HP OEM board, as there is a huge HP logo when booting. Seller also gave me a Pentium 200 MMX as a gift (haven't tried it yet, but it looks to be in good condition). System boots up, but with RTC error (ordered some new CMOS batteries). USB keyboard is a no go, so I'm going to have to dig for one or use an adapter.

My cat chewed the fan's wire... so I need to get a new 50 mm fan for the heatsink assembly.

Reply 5266 of 27168, by x0zm_

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dexvx wrote:

I just started collecting retro hardware.

Welcome to the hobby!

dexvx wrote:

My cat chewed the fan's wire... so I need to get a new 50 mm fan for the heatsink assembly.

Welcome to the hobby with having pets... 😉

I have rabbits myself, so I know the pain. Learned quickly to keep them away when I'm working on anything. 😊

Reply 5267 of 27168, by kithylin

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x0zm_ wrote:
Welcome to the hobby! […]
Show full quote
dexvx wrote:

I just started collecting retro hardware.

Welcome to the hobby!

dexvx wrote:

My cat chewed the fan's wire... so I need to get a new 50 mm fan for the heatsink assembly.

Welcome to the hobby with having pets... 😉

I have rabbits myself, so I know the pain. Learned quickly to keep them away when I'm working on anything. 😊

I have a siberian husky here. She's not allowed in my "work room" for any reason and I go outside of my computer work room to pet her and play with her.

Reply 5269 of 27168, by kithylin

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gdjacobs wrote:

Ah, a Siberian fur factory. Great dogs, but man do they shed!

Only if you don't brush them regularly! If brushed often then the fur production is minimal in the house. It's just a matter of owner maintenance.

Reply 5270 of 27168, by FesterBlatz

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I have an Alaskan Malamute who's in the middle of his spring "blow out". The struggle is futile, even when brushing every few days to the point of irritating his skin-the house still gets covered. Thank goodness for the Dyson. 😀 The problem is he seems to shed in phases--his back, then his shoulders, then his butt, then his neck, then his chest... I can spend an hour brushing until most of the loose under-coat is gone, then in 2 days another part of his body is literally blowing out.

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Reply 5272 of 27168, by FesterBlatz

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gdjacobs wrote:

They's buddies forever?

Yep, we rescued the cat when he just a kitten so he's grown up being familiar with his 115lb Malamute brother.

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Now I'll refrain from turning this into a pet topic....

Reply 5274 of 27168, by FesterBlatz

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gdjacobs wrote:

Might be time for a new thread!

Perhaps! Now, for the retro activity topic at hand--last night I begun a performance comparison between the SIS 496/497 and ALi M1487/M1489 486 PCI chipsets. I'll be starting a new topic on this shortly.

EDIT: Thread is here A Tale of Two 486 Motherboards (ALi vs SIS)

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Reply 5275 of 27168, by Skyscraper

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Yesterday I was on a hunt for a Pentium Pro CPU for testing a motherboard when I found this sorry lot in a cabinet.

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It seems memory modules fits perfectly in small Raaco stack-on drawers! I'm sure it's totally ESD safe, it can't be worse than "Ebay ESD protection" also known as bubble wrap...

I think most of my non fancy memory modules will end up in stack-on drawers, at least the SDRAM and DDRx. A single 45 drawer Raaco stack-on unit can fit about 675 SDRAM or DDRx modules, it's a very compact way of storing them! 😀

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New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 5276 of 27168, by stoof

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Skyscraper wrote:

*Much organize*

Nice! I love efficient organization. Maybe I should practise it myself sometimes... *ahem*
I'd be a tad bit more worried about ESD though.

FesterBlatz wrote:

*Dog & kitty being buddies*

What a lovely imgur-esque detour this thread suddenly took. 😀

Reply 5277 of 27168, by Skyscraper

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stoof wrote:
Skyscraper wrote:

*Much organize*

Nice! I love efficient organization. Maybe I should practise it myself sometimes... *ahem*
I'd be a tad bit more worried about ESD though.

If the alternative was that all modules always were fully protected inside ESD bags I would aswell. In reality many of the memory modules would be laying in heaps on top of ESD bags, in that scenario the ESD bag offers very little protection when it comes to ESD.

The Racoo stack-ons are made of metal but the drawers are made of Polypropylene and not the conductive ESD safe kind. Still I would think that they offer better protection than no protection at all.

New PC: i9 12900K @5GHz all cores @1.2v. MSI PRO Z690-A. 32GB DDR4 3600 CL14. 3070Ti.
Old PC: Dual Xeon X5690@4.6GHz, EVGA SR-2, 48GB DDR3R@2000MHz, Intel X25-M. GTX 980ti.
Older PC: K6-3+ 400@600MHz, PC-Chips M577, 256MB SDRAM, AWE64, Voodoo Banshee.

Reply 5278 of 27168, by brostenen

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Did a quick bench of my Abit board. And I think it is wierd that it does not matter if I choose one of the slave or the master VLB slot for the CL-5428 VLB card. Hmmmm... Anyway.

With 24mb Ram, I get 44.3 in 3Dbench 1.0 and 43.6 in 3Dbench 1.0c
I wonder if this is acceptable on a 486dx2-66 and 128kb L2 cache?
What are the normal score for SIS-471 chipset?

EDIT:
Sorry.... Crosschecked and ran them again.
45.4 in 1.0 and 44.3 in 1.0c
My fault, sorry. 😁

Don't eat stuff off a 15 year old never cleaned cpu cooler.
Those cakes make you sick....

My blog: http://to9xct.blogspot.dk
My YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/brostenen

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Reply 5279 of 27168, by creepingnet

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Spent last night trying to figure out why the old 7.2GB Maxtor my DOS/WFWG311 install was on for all these years was going slower - turns out I have a LOT of failed Allocation units on the C partition, I think I'm going to Junk it since it's struggling to even manage to read/write at all (goes "unnnnnnnnh........unnnnnnnnnn......unnnnnnnn"), sounds to me to be a dying hard disk, so it must be. That's okay, that drive has been used HARD.

So I put the 20GB back in the 486 and moved my critical stuff to THAT hard disk for now (all hail removable Drive caddies!), which is fine for now, everything seems to be running a lot faster under that setup for now anyway, and I can continue my multi-track shenanigans on that machine for now (need to figure out how to not record the entire WAV mix audio and just pick up the Line-In) and continue developing the 3 games I've been working on for a few years (the artwork is taking me for-freakin-ever - doing a lot of hand-done Pixel Art).

Looks like I'll be hunting around for an 8GB HDD or so for awhile now for my WFWG/DOS 6.22 stuff. Oh well, I should be able to make that happen. I'm not in any real hurry since I'm kind of enjoying not needing a multi-boot configuration to play everying on Windows 95, and I've been setting that disk up with a bunch of software....things done last night....

- My AGS & GFX-II Dev Setup moved to it
- Started prepping to put AGI Studio and PICEDIT on there too (new stuff for my Tandy 1000 - wee ha)
- Installed Sim City Classic, SIm City 2000, and Sim Tower, already cheating my way through Sim City Classic with my own island that has 2billion saved overnight via carefully planned prosperity
- Installd mIRC on it, this time version 6.91 or something like that, I'm surprised such a new version works and works so well, it has the current logo and everything
- Installed Seamonkey and Mozilla Suite on it - they won't run, probably processor checking
- took of Linux Beachead 2000 - won't run, needs P133
- setup SIDEWTSR to run via AUTOEXEC.BAT (need it - for some reason DOS apps are not picking up my SideWinder gamepad through Windows 95).

Tried reformatting the C: partition on the 8GB drive, once it hit Allocation unit 13 it started to fail and make it's buzzing electronic noises. Probably time to retire that old Maxtor drive.

~The Creeping Network~
My Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/creepingnet
Creepingnet's World - https://creepingnet.neocities.org/
The Creeping Network Repo - https://www.geocities.ws/creepingnet2019/