PTherapist wrote:

Was playing around with an old iMac G3 333MHz, trying out some spare RAM chips I had. At one point I thought it's PSU had died as it point blank refused to power on - luckily however it was just the CPU/RAM card that wasn't reseated correctly after I swapped out the chips.

Wow those early G3 iMacs were horrible, a pain in the backside to upgrade and also extremely picky about the RAM chips they will accept. I put 2x 256MB PC100/133 SODIMM chips in and it only recognised half the RAM and was unstable. Think I'll have to settle for 192MB that I had before. Whilst it was running though I did give it a brief test playing Tomb Raider The Last Revelation whilst booted into Mac OS 9.1 and it ran ok but not really spectacular.

Also got around to installing a new OS on my Coppermine Pentium III 1.0GHz system, with Geforce 4 MX 440 AGP 8x. Funnily, the PC boasts stickers such as "designed for Windows 98" and yet I've found Windows XP seems to run much better so far - definitely something I'm going to have to look into (could possibly be because I have 768MB RAM installed, so will investigate further and actually I just remembered I hadn't tried installing the Via 4-in-1 drivers yet). For instance I used the PC version of Tomb Raider The Last Revelation as a test and despite being designed in the 9x era, I could only get it working somewhat okish in XP (has Graphics glitches that I've seen on several PCs), whereas 98 refused to go above 640x480 16-bit without crashing.

Could be that the newer drivers for the geforce 4 play better with XP than 9x. Could be the version of directx that's running?

oeuvre wrote:

Got an Optiplex GX1 and an IBM NetVista, both PIII era machines. Cleaned them up and the Optiplex was FILTHY (even worse than the pictures) but look what an air compressor, magic eraser, and sand paper can do! http://imgur.com/a/Do1Jk

Congrats on saving a dell. It'll last you a long time. I had one of those GX1's for a long time. Real workhorses.

Upgraded my iMac G3/600 RAM from 256MB to 512MB since I had an extra module lying around, and I believe I have a 512MB module somewares in my house. Hell, Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger's performance increased, and booted faster than before. Next up, a new CMOS battery, and possibly install 1GB PC133 RAM in the iMac.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Upgraded my iMac G3/600 RAM from 256MB to 512MB since I had an extra module lying around, and I believe I have a 512MB module somewares in my house. Hell, Mac OS X 10.4.11 Tiger's performance increased, and booted faster than before. Next up, a new CMOS battery, and possibly install 1GB PC133 RAM in the iMac.

Mac OS X definitely cries out for at least 512MB to be remotely useful, so 1GB would be ideal for Tiger.

In addition to the earlier iMac I have, I also have 2 iMac G3/400 DV systems and I maxed them both to the officially supported 512MB, though apparently they will unofficially support 1GB. Luckily you have a later model which does officially support 1GB, so you should hopefully have no problems.

The old 333MHz iMac G3 I posted earlier only officially supports 128MB SODIMM, which is why it's such a pain. Out of all my Macs, it's probably my least favourite and it certainly struggles running Mac OS X 10.3 Panther.

xplus93 wrote:

Could be that the newer drivers for the geforce 4 play better with XP than 9x. Could be the version of directx that's running?

I installed the latest available versions of both the Graphics drivers & DirectX, so definitely something I'll also be having a play around with.

Though I have a feeling it may also have something to do with me not having installed the Via chipset drivers yet, I remember how much of a pain Via chipsets could be.

I also have a spare PCI GeForce FX 5500 256MB card, which I might try out if I continue to have no luck.

So I ordered a CH FlightStick Pro, which arrived yesterday. Unfortunately, none of the buttons (or HAT switch) worked!

After bugging the seller for a partial refund, I looked into repairing it. After confirming there was no issue in the unit base, I started opening up the stick itself. Unfortunately, it uses Torx T10 screws, and some of the screw shafts are too deep to fit my bit driver. Looks like I'm going to need a proper Torx screwdriver to finish the repair.

I was also inspired to "mod" my original non-pro CH FlightStick to remove that annoying clicking noise on the throttle. After opening it up, I noticed there was just a simple extra piece of plastic that was intentionally catching the grooves on the bottom of the throttle. I removed it (stashing it in a bag in case I ever change my mind), and the click is now gone.

I managed to kill an ISA Mach32 somehow - Left it out of the case for a week or so, and when I went to put it back in, 1 beep followed by 8 long beeps.

2MB NVRAM version too. So sad now.

I went ahead and took my Unisys 486 machine apart. Inspection finds nothing out of the ordinaery at first glance.
Hope this will keep turning out without any defect.

What I found, was the CPU socket is a 486 overdrive socket. Currently a 486dx33 in it.
The second nice thing I found, was that it has a 1gb Seagate Hawk 50-pin SCSI Harddrive.
I really hope this drive is working as well as the rest of the machine.
First I have to clean it as good as I can, then inspect the PSU. Finally see what can be added.

What else is in this machine... Well... Adaptech SCSI and S3-805-1mb (P86C805), both onboard.
I am thinking that if this machine is working, I will add a SCSI CD-Drive, dx2-66 and a SB16.

Finished cleaning the entire Unisys. I had it all taken apart, and cleaned with a damp cloth, using some soap-water.
The PSU looks good, no swollen cap's, no leaking cap's and voltage is stable (only fluktuating 0.1 to 0.2 volt on each rail)
Reassembled it. Powered on, and behold a dead BIOS battery. Luckily it can hold settings when doing soft-reboot.
The harddrive is working, vga is working, ide and scsi channels are working and it can boot both Win98 bootdisk and
MS-Dos installer. The harddrive can be partitioned and formatted using "format c: /u /s". And it ran speedsys.
Just keep in mind, that I am still using the dx33 at this point.

I have used Postimage... (Click for a larger version)

This below, is the harddrive after i cleaned it from dirt and dust.... (in case someone want to know what model it is)

brostenen wrote:

Finished cleaning the entire Unisys. I had it all taken apart, and cleaned with a damp cloth, using some soap-water. The PSU loo […]
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Finished cleaning the entire Unisys. I had it all taken apart, and cleaned with a damp cloth, using some soap-water.
The PSU looks good, no swollen cap's, no leaking cap's and voltage is stable (only fluktuating 0.1 to 0.2 volt on each rail)
Reassembled it. Powered on, and behold a dead BIOS battery. Luckily it can hold settings when doing soft-reboot.
The harddrive is working, vga is working, ide and scsi channels are working and it can boot both Win98 bootdisk and
MS-Dos installer. The harddrive can be partitioned and formatted using "format c: /u /s". And it ran speedsys.
Just keep in mind, that I am still using the dx33 at this point.

I have used Postimage... (Click for a larger version)

This below, is the harddrive after i cleaned it from dirt and dust.... (in case someone want to know what model it is)

Nice system, man. I'm surprised the 486 motherboard has SCSI onboard. That's rare to see that on vintage hardware.

As a follow-up to my previous post, I picked up the Torx T10 driver I needed and succeeded in fixing the CH FlightStick PRO. The primary problem was the ground wire was broken somewhere between the base and the buttons on the top, so I ran an additional ground wire and patched it in. When I was testing, I noticed the primary trigger didn't work very well at all. When I looked at it again (and used a continuity tester on the button), it looked like the plastic for the trigger wasn't fully depressing the microswitch. Age-related failure, perhaps? I did notice there was a small plastic tab sticking out that seemed to be limiting the motion of the trigger. At this point, it was limiting it too much, so I filed it back a little bit.

And voila! A fully-functional CH FlightStick PRO! Did a full functional test in Descent and it worked GREAT 😀

Replaced the battery in my iMac G3/600 that I purchased at RadioShack, which unfortunately, they're closing down for good... I also purchased a AA battery holder that I'll be installing in my Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus in place of the temporary CR2032 battery that's installed right now, and I might install the CR2032 battery holder in my GameBoy Game Pokemon Trading Card Game (provide if it'll work).

zerker wrote:

And voila! A fully-functional CH FlightStick PRO! Did a full functional test in Descent and it worked GREAT 😀

Great work! I purchased one new back in the day and murdered it playing F1GP and X-Wing excessively. Would love another.

Thanks brassicGamer. Depending on your wiring skills or the failure in question, yours might not be beyond repair either. Something to investigate, perhaps?

bjwil1991 wrote:

I might install the CR2032 battery holder in my GameBoy Game Pokemon Trading Card Game (provide if it'll work).

Speaking from experience, a battery holder won't fit inside a GameBoy cartridge. However, you can just buy CR1616 or CR2025 batteries which include welded soldering tabs to at least replace the existing battery. Last time I did this, I ordered from the Nintendo Repair Hut.

More of a retro meme.

I have begun building my 486dx2-80 VLB system. I had some trouble getting the CF card to work on the controller.
It turns out, that I have to lower the IDE speed on the controller by aprox half, compared to a platter that runs full speed.
Can someone perhaps explain why a faster solution needs a slower controller settings?

Hardware (so far)
- Abit AH4T motherboard
- AMD 486dx2-80 WT running on 3.3v
- 24mb Ram
- S3-805-1mb VLB
- Goldstar Dual-Channel IDE controller VLB
- Pentium era AT case. (recently got it, PSU tested stable)

I really do not know what soundcard I will put in, what optical drives I am going to use.
Testing and tinkering will tell what hardware I will end up with on this Dx2-80/VLB system.

brostenen wrote:

I have begun building my 486dx2-80 VLB system. I had some trouble getting the CF card to work on the controller. It turns out, t […]
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I have begun building my 486dx2-80 VLB system. I had some trouble getting the CF card to work on the controller.
It turns out, that I have to lower the IDE speed on the controller by aprox half, compared to a platter that runs full speed.
Can someone perhaps explain why a faster solution needs a slower controller settings?

Hardware (so far)
- Abit AH4T motherboard
- AMD 486dx2-80 WT running on 3.3v
- 24mb Ram
- S3-805-1mb VLB
- Goldstar Dual-Channel IDE controller VLB
- Pentium era AT case. (recently got it, PSU tested stable)

I really do not know what soundcard I will put in, what optical drives I am going to use.
Testing and tinkering will tell what hardware I will end up with on this Dx2-80/VLB system.

IMG_20170416_163416567.jpg

It could be that the CF card is too fast for the system to handle since the 486's IDE bus speed (on-board or ISA/VLB card) is rated from 16MB/s up to 66MB/s and certain CF cards are rated differently (from 66MB/s to 133MB/s).

My Packard Bell Pack-Mate 28 Plus would lock up when I was trying to autodetect the CF to IDE adapter, and I found out my IDE cable was on backwards on the CF to IDE adapter.

Out of curiosity, how big is your CF card? If over 2GB, try a smaller one. Also, it could be the brand CF card that's installed that could have issues. I have 3 SanDisk CF cards (1GB, 2GB, and 4GB) that are rated at different speeds. The 2GB card is rated at 15MB/s, whereas the 4GB card is rated at 30MB/s, and I believe my 1GB is about 7.5MB/s for the speed (could be wrong since my 1GB CF card is a Type 1, and the 2GB; 4GB cards are Type 2).

zerker wrote:

Thanks brassicGamer. Depending on your wiring skills or the failure in question, yours might not be beyond repair either. Something to investigate, perhaps?

bjwil1991 wrote:

I might install the CR2032 battery holder in my GameBoy Game Pokemon Trading Card Game (provide if it'll work).

Speaking from experience, a battery holder won't fit inside a GameBoy cartridge. However, you can just buy CR1616 or CR2025 batteries which include welded soldering tabs to at least replace the existing battery. Last time I did this, I ordered from the Nintendo Repair Hut.

Didn't know that site existed. Thank you very much.

oeuvre wrote:

More of a retro meme. […]
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More of a retro meme.

Lol, did you just buy that diamond viper VL?

Picked up an IBM Wheelwriter 10 Series II typewriter at a local thrift store for $5.98 and it's in great shape.

I also found old documentation from the company that fixed it or used it from the early 90s up until the late 90s.

It needs 3 new AA batteries since they're long dead (one battery had corossion on it, but the battery holder is in prestige condition (no corossion whatsoever)), and the ribbon was somewhat dry, but after adjusting the ribbons (standard and correction), the text is clear; I'm planning on getting replacement ribbons and some more font wheels.