VOGONS


What retro activity did you get up to today?

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Reply 30420 of 30428, by TechieDude

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Not today, but I revisited the cable of my monitor. I just needed to bridge the color ground pins and connect them to the rest of the ground, and voila! Perfect, clear image.
What I DID do today, is try connecting and posting here from an old PowerMac G5 running 10.5 Leopard, using AquaFox. Works perfectly fine, surprisingly.

EDIT: Hmmm, now that I had more time to pay attention, I can see two rendering errors. One is that all avatars here are blue for some reason, and the other is the search button, while fully functional, has the magnifying glass rendered slightly to the left. Honestly, I expected worse.

Reply 30421 of 30428, by Locutus

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Locutus wrote on 2025-11-03, 07:26:

Disassembled Zenith Z-286 LP that does not POST for inspection…

The attachment IMG_2640.jpeg is no longer available

I have determined that the 82C206 controller is damaged and needs to be replaced.

The attachment 82206_REM.jpg is no longer available
The attachment 82C206_NEW.jpg is no longer available

After the replacement, the Zenith came back to life 😀

The attachment Z-286.jpg is no longer available

Reply 30422 of 30428, by PcBytes

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Trying to troubleshoot an TEAC CD-C68E drive from 1997.

"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB

Reply 30423 of 30428, by pentiumspeed

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Locutus wrote on 2025-11-03, 22:21:
I have determined that the 82C206 controller is damaged and needs to be replaced. […]
Show full quote
Locutus wrote on 2025-11-03, 07:26:

Disassembled Zenith Z-286 LP that does not POST for inspection…

The attachment IMG_2640.jpeg is no longer available

I have determined that the 82C206 controller is damaged and needs to be replaced.

The attachment 82206_REM.jpg is no longer available
The attachment 82C206_NEW.jpg is no longer available

After the replacement, the Zenith came back to life 😀

The attachment Z-286.jpg is no longer available

Great job, Another note, this computer also accepts 386SX daughterboard. Back in the day when were new, as in came in boxes around 1990 or so, we upgraded some of them to 386SX and this was at Queens University, when I was working with computing dept servicing them during summer break between high school.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 30424 of 30428, by Ozzuneoj

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I tested some old graphics cards today and ran into this weird situation.

This is what the desktop look like on a Creative CT6710 (Riva TNT 16MB AGP) in Windows 98SE. I've tried a few different driver versions from that time period and they all did this on this particular card. I have tested hundreds of cards and never seen this before so I'm inclined to think it is some kind of defect with the card, but it's just so weird...

The attachment 20251103_221013.jpg is no longer available

Basically, the desktop is rendered squashed and off-center with a black area on the left side. The cursor draws in the correct location. You can see how the cursor is highlighting a button in the file explorer window. I can interact with everything as normal as long as I keep the cursor exactly that distance from what I need to click on.

Windows says it is at 1600x1200 (native res of this monitor), but it is definitely squashed horizontally. Changing resolution causes the monitor to drop to standby. I can press escape and it will return to the previous res, so it isn't crashing. Running a game or other full screen program causes the monitor to drop to standby as well.

The BIOS, DOS and Windows in basic VGA mode (with no drivers installed) are centered properly.

I've inspected the card pretty thoroughly and I can't see anything wrong with it. It's actually in very nice condition.

Anyone have any ideas?

Also, just to be clear... it isn't the monitor.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 30425 of 30428, by H3nrik V!

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sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-03, 18:32:
Unfortunately closing JP16-17 gives 55 fsb. […]
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H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-11-03, 09:43:
sunkindly wrote on 2025-10-31, 17:51:

So JP16 and JP17 seem to set the fsb, but for JP19, JP20, and JP22 no matter what I set them to...it didn't change from 2.5x at 166MHz. Even setting it to something "normal" like 133MHz at 2x, nothing changed. The only thing that seemed to affect change was changing the FSB through JP16-17. But unfortunately, it doesn't support more than 66MHz.

If that clockgenerator (W49C65-03H) is similar enough to W49C65-01, then according to https://public.dhe.ibm.com/rs6000/PPC_support … ass2/ltspec.pdf I would suspect that both JP16 and JP17 closed would give 75 FSB?

I can't seem to see where the other jumpers are located from your image, though? [Edit:] Found them. Weird, though that JP21 is "skipped" 🤣

Unfortunately closing JP16-17 gives 55 fsb.

Yeah, some things are kind of strange in terms of the jumpers. JP15 is also unpopulated.

The QDI board comes with a 200 MMX so I'll have two. I might put the second one into the M-Tech board just to see if anything changes but for now it looks like the M-Tech will be a spare Socket 7 board.

FWIW, I noticed that the silk screen inside the CPU socket only mentions P54C and P54CS CPUs. Albeit, the multiplier selectors should be there for selecting at least 2x.

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 30426 of 30428, by sunkindly

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H3nrik V! wrote on Yesterday, 06:47:
sunkindly wrote on 2025-11-03, 18:32:
Unfortunately closing JP16-17 gives 55 fsb. […]
Show full quote
H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-11-03, 09:43:

If that clockgenerator (W49C65-03H) is similar enough to W49C65-01, then according to https://public.dhe.ibm.com/rs6000/PPC_support … ass2/ltspec.pdf I would suspect that both JP16 and JP17 closed would give 75 FSB?

I can't seem to see where the other jumpers are located from your image, though? [Edit:] Found them. Weird, though that JP21 is "skipped" 🤣

Unfortunately closing JP16-17 gives 55 fsb.

Yeah, some things are kind of strange in terms of the jumpers. JP15 is also unpopulated.

The QDI board comes with a 200 MMX so I'll have two. I might put the second one into the M-Tech board just to see if anything changes but for now it looks like the M-Tech will be a spare Socket 7 board.

FWIW, I noticed that the silk screen inside the CPU socket only mentions P54C and P54CS CPUs. Albeit, the multiplier selectors should be there for selecting at least 2x.

Yeahhh, it's all good. I guess the Retro Web entry is for some kind of later revision. The QDI Titanium 1E arrived today and I used the same CPU and it's at 200 so onwards with the Socket 7 build!

SUN85-87: NEC PC-8801mkIIMR
SUN89-92: Northgate Elegance | 386DX-25 | Orchid Fahrenheit 1280 | SB 1.0
SUN95-97: QDI Titanium IE | Pentium MMX 200MHz | Tseng ET6000 | YMF719
SUN98-01: ABIT BF6 | Pentium III 1.1GHz | 3dfx Voodoo3 3000 | AU8830

Reply 30427 of 30428, by zapbuzz

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got my 256mb WD caviar disk from 1995 out today hooked it up to my main via USB to IDE adapter cable and formatted it to EXFAT file system. I then proceeded to tell brave browser to use it for the web cache. I smiled as I listened to a windows 95 hard disk struggle to just be a browser cache disk. Then I reformatted to fat32 and put it back in its shelf. I have to test things from time to time but I haven't had a windows 95 computer for so long!

Reply 30428 of 30428, by Locutus

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pentiumspeed wrote on Yesterday, 00:42:
Locutus wrote on 2025-11-03, 22:21:
I have determined that the 82C206 controller is damaged and needs to be replaced. […]
Show full quote
Locutus wrote on 2025-11-03, 07:26:

Disassembled Zenith Z-286 LP that does not POST for inspection…

The attachment IMG_2640.jpeg is no longer available

I have determined that the 82C206 controller is damaged and needs to be replaced.

The attachment 82206_REM.jpg is no longer available
The attachment 82C206_NEW.jpg is no longer available

After the replacement, the Zenith came back to life 😀

The attachment Z-286.jpg is no longer available

Great job, Another note, this computer also accepts 386SX daughterboard. Back in the day when were new, as in came in boxes around 1990 or so, we upgraded some of them to 386SX and this was at Queens University, when I was working with computing dept servicing them during summer break between high school.
Cheers,

Thanks !
I was surprised by the presence (and usefulness) of the six LEDs indicating the results of internal tests.
In fact, after checking result displayed on them in documentation, I was almost certain that the 82C206 is faulty.
Running the SUPERSOFT diagnostic ROM test was just a formality to confirm that.