BitWrangler wrote on 2021-10-15, 18:20:

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 16:02:

oh look, a 486 with an MFM hard drive in it running Windows 95

And if you're wondering, yes, the case's HDD LED is connected to the MFM controller in a display of redundancy.

IMG_20211015_120047.jpg

Heh, I seem to remember doing that in the mid-late 90s, think it was very much "for the lulz" though as a) it only just fit on there and b) it was as bad as 9x can be on limited hardware, only somehow more so. It was only the floppy version too, lightest version around, mind you I think I only had 5MB and a dx33 in the box along with it. (5Mb because it's marginally better than 4MB and the 256k SIMMs keep dust out of the empty 30 pin sockets. 🤣 )

Yep, I installed the 21-disk B version of Windows 95. Technically this machine is sort of a cheater. It has 16MB of RAM and an Am5x86-P75. Not as slow as I thought.

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 20:16:

liqmat wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:41:

MMaximus wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:38:

Now you just need a beige drive bay faceplate 😄

wink

Do any of you have one? 🤣

MMaximus: it's an ST-251

Used to have a bunch. New old stock even, but MMaximus got my last one. He would have had extras, but my first shipment got lost in Europe somewhere when France closed its borders abruptly towards the beginning of the brexit + covid crap. That box was never seen again sadly.

I'd be interested in benchmarks and your experience with it.

I soldered a realtek LAN chip on a m/b, as the old one died.
I lifted 2 traces as it wouldn't come off.
Still no luck, not working. And it's full of components around 🙁
Maybe I should check V and other values.

Nexxen wrote on 2021-10-15, 23:42:

In the meanwhile, do you have a thread on your P-III 1.4ghz? I'd be interested in benchmarks and your experience with it. […]
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mastergamma12 wrote on 2021-10-15, 13:29:

I wonder how long it'll be until the Admin's scrub this again........

In the meanwhile, do you have a thread on your P-III 1.4ghz?
I'd be interested in benchmarks and your experience with it.

---

I soldered a realtek LAN chip on a m/b, as the old one died.
I lifted 2 traces as it wouldn't come off.
Still no luck, not working. And it's full of components around 🙁
Maybe I should check V and other values.

The Tuala-Bus (My 9x/Dos Rig) (Pentium III-S 1.4ghz, AWE64G+Audigy 2 ZS, Voodoo5 5500, Chieftec Dragon Rambus)

I can upload 3dmark and Final Reality and other stuff later.

liqmat wrote on 2021-10-15, 23:40:

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 20:16:

liqmat wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:41:

wink

Do any of you have one? 🤣

MMaximus: it's an ST-251

Used to have a bunch. New old stock even, but MMaximus got my last one. He would have had extras, but my first shipment got lost in Europe somewhere when France closed its borders abruptly towards the beginning of the brexit + covid crap. That box was never seen again sadly.

Well dang. Do you have anything else MFM related?

Unboxed the DataExpert OPTI-495SX rev 1.1 board (386DX-40 integrated).

It needs a lot of TLC, patching, trace repairs, and a lot of other items to make it look clean and efficient.

Here's a picture of the board:

I'd work on it tonight, but after work, I have to go to sleep and take my brother bowling tomorrow. Got spare XT 8-bit slots handy, just needs more than that and lots of corrosion removal.

Thread has been cleaned up. All Right to Repair discussion have been moved to Right to repair discussion (split from What retro activity did you get up to today?)

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-10-16, 02:24:

Unboxed the DataExpert OPTI-495SX rev 1.1 board (386DX-40 integrated). […]
Show full quote

Unboxed the DataExpert OPTI-495SX rev 1.1 board (386DX-40 integrated).

It needs a lot of TLC, patching, trace repairs, and a lot of other items to make it look clean and efficient.

Here's a picture of the board:

IMG_20211015_173057408~2.jpg

I'd work on it tonight, but after work, I have to go to sleep and take my brother bowling tomorrow. Got spare XT 8-bit slots handy, just needs more than that and lots of corrosion removal.

Is it me or it went as far as the OPTI chip?
You are in for a lot of work!
And it's not even one of the worst I've seen. Thanks leaky batteries!!

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-16, 00:35:

liqmat wrote on 2021-10-15, 23:40:

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 20:16:

Do any of you have one? 🤣

MMaximus: it's an ST-251

Used to have a bunch. New old stock even, but MMaximus got my last one. He would have had extras, but my first shipment got lost in Europe somewhere when France closed its borders abruptly towards the beginning of the brexit + covid crap. That box was never seen again sadly.

Well dang. Do you have anything else MFM related?

I don't. I actually have zero vintage hardware personally. I rescue, archive and rehome everything I find.

ST251 wrote on 2021-10-15, 20:16:

liqmat wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:41:

MMaximus wrote on 2021-10-15, 19:38:

Now you just need a beige drive bay faceplate 😄

wink

Do any of you have one? 🤣

MMaximus: it's an ST-251

I have one thanks to my man liqmat 😉 but these seem to be much harder to find than the black ones.

It's in this tower at the moment but the RLL drive behind it doesn't work unfortunately

Nexxen wrote on 2021-10-16, 10:24:

Is it me or it went as far as the OPTI chip? You are in for a lot of work! And it's not even one of the worst I've seen. Thanks […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-10-16, 02:24:

Unboxed the DataExpert OPTI-495SX rev 1.1 board (386DX-40 integrated). […]
Show full quote

Unboxed the DataExpert OPTI-495SX rev 1.1 board (386DX-40 integrated).

It needs a lot of TLC, patching, trace repairs, and a lot of other items to make it look clean and efficient.

Here's a picture of the board:

IMG_20211015_173057408~2.jpg

I'd work on it tonight, but after work, I have to go to sleep and take my brother bowling tomorrow. Got spare XT 8-bit slots handy, just needs more than that and lots of corrosion removal.

Is it me or it went as far as the OPTI chip?
You are in for a lot of work!
And it's not even one of the worst I've seen. Thanks leaky batteries!!

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. There is corrosion on the left side of the 495SX pins. I took the battery off last night and I'll be pulling the chips off carefully and give this thing a vinegar bath, wash the board with soapy distilled water, rinse with distilled water, and spray 99.9% Isopropyl Alcohol on the board to wick away any leftover distilled water.

Another item I'll be doing is take the sockets off and inspect for further damage. The underside isn't that bad, but it needs work (3 traces are bad, but 2 are important and the other is not since I'm not going to use a rechargeable battery on that thing).

MMaximus wrote on 2021-10-16, 14:52:

I have one thanks to my man liqmat 😉 but these seem to be much harder to find than the black ones.

It's in this tower at the moment but the RLL drive behind it doesn't work unfortunately

20210913_212533.jpg

Nice!

You know. These would be prime candidates for a 3D print design. I would imagine you could even print the translucent LED plastic pieces.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-10-16, 15:30:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-10-16, 10:24:

Is it me or it went as far as the OPTI chip? You are in for a lot of work! And it's not even one of the worst I've seen. Thanks […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-10-16, 02:24:

Unboxed the DataExpert OPTI-495SX rev 1.1 board (386DX-40 integrated). […]
Show full quote

Unboxed the DataExpert OPTI-495SX rev 1.1 board (386DX-40 integrated).

It needs a lot of TLC, patching, trace repairs, and a lot of other items to make it look clean and efficient.

Here's a picture of the board:

IMG_20211015_173057408~2.jpg

I'd work on it tonight, but after work, I have to go to sleep and take my brother bowling tomorrow. Got spare XT 8-bit slots handy, just needs more than that and lots of corrosion removal.

Is it me or it went as far as the OPTI chip?
You are in for a lot of work!
And it's not even one of the worst I've seen. Thanks leaky batteries!!

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. There is corrosion on the left side of the 495SX pins. I took the battery off last night and I'll be pulling the chips off carefully and give this thing a vinegar bath, wash the board with soapy distilled water, rinse with distilled water, and spray 99.9% Isopropyl Alcohol on the board to wick away any leftover distilled water.

Another item I'll be doing is take the sockets off and inspect for further damage. The underside isn't that bad, but it needs work (3 traces are bad, but 2 are important and the other is not since I'm not going to use a rechargeable battery on that thing).

Would you mind posting or opening a thread in case any repair gets relevant?
Might be useful to newbs like me. Many other threads and yt videos proved fundamental to repair mine.

Hope it'll end working 100%!

I've spent the whole day doing a, er, Spring Clean in October and now I'm sat down with my motherboard that arrived in the post today: an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe. Considering I usually circle the doldrums of cheap, naff boards on eBay this is quite posh for me! I'm not sure what to put in it; the support page says it can take everything from an Sempron 2100+ to a Phenom II x4 945 (I assume it can take a 950 or whatever too?).

I'm tempted to put a Phenom x4 9550 2.2GHz just because I've never used a first gen Phenom before. With 3 or 4GB of RAM, Audigy 2ZS and XP.

Finished off my 2 rough 2003-era PC builds today.

I say "rough 2003" since today's focus was on my Socket 478 Intel Pentium 4 build, but as I didn't want to buy anything new I just used what I had - a CPU that came out in early 2004, the Prescott Pentium 4 HT 3.0E. Performance wise though, it's only marginally faster than the Athlon XP 3200+ build (not accounting for software relying on SSE2/SSE3), which is what I was hoping/aiming for. At some point in the future I'll look for Graphics upgrades, but the current cards will suffice for now with tweaking settings in games to get by.

2003 Build 1 Specs:
Gigabyte GA-7N400 L, Socket A Motherboard
Nvidia nForce2 Ultra 400 Chipset
AMD Athlon XP 3200+
1GB DDR-400 RAM
Nvidia GeForce FX 5700VE 256MB AGP Graphics
250GB IDE HDD
OS: Windows XP

2003 Build 2 Specs:
ASRock P4i65G, Socket 478 Motherboard
Intel 865G Chipset
Intel Pentium 4 HT 3.0E
1GB DDR-400 RAM
ATI Radeon 9600 256MB AGP Graphics
250GB SATA HDD
OS: Windows XP

I cheated and cloned the HDD from build 1 (to save having to reinstall all my games), ensuring to remove the chipset & graphics drivers and uninstall the IDE channels first before transferring it across. Worked a treat, Windows XP redetected all the hardware and then I installed newer chipset drivers etc. Then benchmarked and stress tested everything.

Was a bit anti-climactic once all was done though, aside from a few minor issues it all just worked. Minor issues being HDD in PIO mode, solved that. RAM in single channel mode, swapped out 1 of the sticks. Finally, front of the case falling apart - nothing a bit of glue couldn't fix. 🤣

So, at last, i've been getting my home engineering laboratory to a state where i can actually use it. I still have a lot missing here (like i want 2 levels of shelves over all the tables with additional working lights underneath), but it's usable now. I've never had a place like this, but at last this dream has come true!

There are multiple "areas" in this room. Starting from the right, there's a old computer diagnostics & repair area (And you can see there one sad desktop machine almost out of frame, that needs a repair), then there's a "retro-computer play area", where i have 386DX40, 486DX100 and Pentium MMX@266MHz with Sony Trinitron screen and connected to network with deliberately painful "thinnet" coaxial cable. Continuing forward, there's "microcontroller development" (Arduino-like things, though i've never done anything with real arduino. STM32 and ESP32 are my jam), which ends in the corner with computer used for software development. On the left side, it's the soldering area.

It's still quite a mess, as i'm just setting it all up, but i already love it.

Amongst other things, i sorted through a small plastic bag i got from my friend, when he was cleaning up a garage that belonged to his (now gone) father.
Seems like someone had diligently removed quite a bit of pieces from different electronics...

Amongst those things, there are some EPROMs. I wonder, if there seems to be something i should try to read and archive with my TL866? Let me know!

I totally feel like Dexter, who at last got his laboratory! 😁

Nexxen wrote on 2021-10-16, 16:01:

Would you mind posting or opening a thread in case any repair gets relevant? Might be useful to newbs like me. Many other thread […]
Show full quote

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-10-16, 15:30:

Nexxen wrote on 2021-10-16, 10:24:

Is it me or it went as far as the OPTI chip?
You are in for a lot of work!
And it's not even one of the worst I've seen. Thanks leaky batteries!!

Your eyes aren't deceiving you. There is corrosion on the left side of the 495SX pins. I took the battery off last night and I'll be pulling the chips off carefully and give this thing a vinegar bath, wash the board with soapy distilled water, rinse with distilled water, and spray 99.9% Isopropyl Alcohol on the board to wick away any leftover distilled water.

Another item I'll be doing is take the sockets off and inspect for further damage. The underside isn't that bad, but it needs work (3 traces are bad, but 2 are important and the other is not since I'm not going to use a rechargeable battery on that thing).

Would you mind posting or opening a thread in case any repair gets relevant?
Might be useful to newbs like me. Many other threads and yt videos proved fundamental to repair mine.

Hope it'll end working 100%!

Definitely will do a thread and a Twitch stream and post it on YouTube.

After finishing off the Trio3D, I decided to give myself a different kind of fun. Which is this specific ATI Rage 128 Pro I got about a week ago. It feels like getting out of water after you almost drowned. I've got through the test runs in Quake, Quake 2, Tomb Raider 2, International Rally Championship, Half-Life, Colin McRae Rally 2.0 and Quake 3 Arena. Half of all the games I chose for testing.

There was only two oddity I've encountered so far. That Half-Life is locked to 72fps and I can't unlock it. The game reaches that both in 640x480 and 800x600. The other is some transparency error in IRC:

Sometimes for a brief moment the bug disappears (like on the screenshot the head and tail lights aren't buggy). I don't know if it's the Rage or I made some mistake when setting it up. I'll do a Psaki with this one.

Almoststew1990 wrote on 2021-10-16, 17:32:

I've spent the whole day doing a, er, Spring Clean in October and now I'm sat down with my motherboard that arrived in the post today: an ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe. Considering I usually circle the doldrums of cheap, naff boards on eBay this is quite posh for me! I'm not sure what to put in it; the support page says it can take everything from an Sempron 2100+ to a Phenom II x4 945 (I assume it can take a 950 or whatever too?).

I'm tempted to put a Phenom x4 9550 2.2GHz just because I've never used a first gen Phenom before. With 3 or 4GB of RAM, Audigy 2ZS and XP.

If the board has unlocking capabilities check out the Sempron 145. It has a almost 100% chance of unlocking a perfectly working second core and turns into a Athlon 64 4550e at 3.0ghz and the CPU's are like $5. There are also 95watt Phenom ii 6 cores that are really fun, hard to find compared to the 125 watt versions tho.

Since I don't need this run-of-the-mill locked Pentium 2, nothing special Pentium 3, and I haven't used my Voodoo 3 in a year, I mounted them all on a wall.