Kahenraz wrote on 2021-12-25, 17:15:

I happened to really like this era of laptops. A low TDP Core 2 Duo with dedicated GeForce 8 series is a powerful combination. I had a great HP laptop with this combination around this time.

I asked a professional repair service if it was worthwhile getting one of these GPUs reballed and professionally reconditioned but was told that the business had a very low success rate and that there was some other underlying cause for the failure. This is everything I know.

The reason of failure was simple - the GPU substrate between the die and chip itself was crappy.
There were two batches of chips because of that:
- the first run of the chips were the bad batch - the easiest way of finding those is looking at the chip part number - bad chips are numbered even (eg. G86-770-A2 for 8600M GS, G86-730-A2 for the 8400M GS)
- the second run of the chips were the good ones - these not only were numbered odd, but can also be identified by a milky white underfill glue around them, the same one present on most mobile Geforce 9 series chips. (eg. G86-771-A2 for 8600M GS, G86-635-A2 for 8400M G and G86-731-A2 for 8400M GS. Of worthy note is that the G86-635-A2 was also rebranded as 9300M G, at least for Acer - I do not know of any other manufacturer that uses G86-635-A2 as 9300M G, rather switching to the G98-630-U2 which is the 9300M GS in most cases)

That's very useful information. Thank you!

been joining #dosbox on libera.chat servers these days with an old win98 box and mIRC. I'm amazed to see that IRC is still alive these days

I've been adding articles to the Higher Intellect Vintage Wiki as i've been Untangling a lot of the mysteries behind early 90's 80386 and 80486 laptops, notebooks, and their makers...

- AT&T bought out NCR in 1990, started their Safari product lines based on Samsung Notemasters for the low end, and NEC Versa for the higher end starting in 1993. NCR was used as branding for awhile, then AT&T, then NCR, it changes back and fourth, and a lot of duplicate models are the same thing under different names, such as the Globalyst 200 is the same thing as a Safari 3151.

- NanTan....I'm trying to find out as many models of these as I can find out. I've been also digging up more and more of the brands to look them up as. I have personally owned a Notebook 3500, a Duracom Branded 9200 sold as a 5110D, and a Prostar 9200M (FMAK9200M). Very interesting. Was able to track down a LOT of models using FCCIDs.

- Getting all the first GEN NEC Versa laptops up there too, since I have all the data on those. I'm planning to start with the 2000/4000/6000 series before too long (probably won't be buying them though), and work my way back through the Ultralite, ProSpeed, and other lines as well so we have a clear picture of their product lines.

I think I also have a line on a connection between Twinhead and Zenith Data Systems - Twinhead SlimNote 486 was my first laptop (DTSN model I kit bashed, no PSU, battery I charged using the chassis from the old one wired up to a HP Printer power supply....had to use oven mitts to put the battery in the computer).

So many great systems out there nobody talks about....

Also working on my website, trying to get the PC Games section whittled down.....so much Ultima/LucasFilm/Sierra/FNaF stuff...I could have six pages of just that stuff alone. Going to rewrite the docs section to include all my other research in there on specific machines as well (including the machines I'm adding to that Wiki). It's a nice passive thing to do in the background when taking care of things.

There was a Packard Bell that was a Zenith too I think, zlite or zsport line 4/25 or something like that.

Tested the newly acquired serial optical mouse that uses a special mousepad on my Austin TFT laptop after I disabled the internal trackball mouse and it works, even if the mouse is at 45° angles (NW/SE or NE/SW).

Cool, did you print a pad or source a real one? I've got a pad-n't one I've had years and never got a pad for, only heard there were some printable ones around this year, haven't got round to finding and making one yet.

Tested out:
AT Socket 7 board that I bought for the Winchip C6 240Mhz CPU. Board works and the jumpers were set for the CPU to boot at 75x3.5 (266Mhz) at the default 3.5v. I wonder if it will POST at a higher clock speed in a SS7 board... hmm.
Also found out that My 4MB Matrox MGA card that I thought was dead works fine. On the other Socket 7 board I tried it on all I got was a screen full of garbage.

AT "Socket 7" Cyrix MediaGX P5GX-M board that I bought about a month ago. Had a 233Mhz 2.9v CPU that I received in a scrap lot years ago. Had to straighten out pretty much all the pins. It does work though and posts at 300Mhz (33.3? x9)
The 10x multiplier is a not go though even if I raise the voltage. Maybe the 10x multiplier doesn't work. I'll have to try the 30 and ~25Mhz fsb settings to see if it is any different.
Also bought a couple of the 233Mhz 2.5v (low voltage) CPUs to play around with.

The Cyrix MediaGX is weird. It runs the RAM at the same speed as the fsb... but there is a strange RAM divider setting in the BIOS. System also seems very picky with RAM.

It does have the nice features of having onboard video as well as onboard Sound Blaster 16 clone capability. With 2x PCI and 2x ISA this thing is definitely going to be some sort of build. Just not sure what yet.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-28, 04:18:

Cool, did you print a pad or source a real one? I've got a pad-n't one I've had years and never got a pad for, only heard there were some printable ones around this year, haven't got round to finding and making one yet.

Sourced a real one (came with the mouse itself). Might print a bigger one (if the ones online aren't too blurry) and laminate it to preserve the printout.

Also attempted to upgrade the 344MB HDD to a 2GB SD card (SD2IDE) on the same laptop and it won't boot past the PIO enabled message. The old 344MB still runs, but sourcing an actual 44 pin IDE drive can be a hit and miss: either they work or they're totally dead, like the Areal PITA A260 HDD that I took out of the NCR laptop.

For those of you who like to keep your vintage hardware driver databases current.

Cardinal SNAPplus driver & software archive is now updated. Now weighs in at 202MB.

Change: Added "Cardinal SNAPshot SNAPtest Release 2.15" driver IMA disk image and photo of the disk.
- The archive now has v2.15 and v2.20 of that particular software.

Great going liqmat, putting a lot of work in there. I am still no closer really to having a system assembled/running appropriate to firing up the SNAPplus I've had kicking around. I was eyeballing an ISA 486 board the other day though so mayyybe getting a little warmer.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-12-28, 16:53:

Great going liqmat, putting a lot of work in there. I am still no closer really to having a system assembled/running appropriate to firing up the SNAPplus I've had kicking around. I was eyeballing an ISA 486 board the other day though so mayyybe getting a little warmer.

Yessir. Labor of love. That card was very good to me in the early 90s when I was doing video overlay titling on a 386 system and a stack of VCRs. Back when I started the archive 3-4 years ago I was surprised nothing had been archived on the card. So it began. I would definitely say this archive is now complete. Anything related to the Cardinal SNAPplus showing up on Ebay is fairly rare nowadays so I am glad I did it when I did.

Speaking of which. I finally completed the Mathematica, Inc. Tempra historical archive, as well, which is, in some ways, related to the Cardinal SNAPplus. A light version of Tempra Pro (called Tempra GIF) and Tempra Show came with the Cardinal SNAPplus. Tempra software supported numerous ISA video capture cards such as the Cardinal SNAPplus and the Hercules Graphics Station.

Ugg, my fat brain misread Tempra as tempura. Took me a good 30 sec to actually process it correctly. I guess I know what I'm having for my cheat day...

But on a more serious note, I honestly miss the early 3d. Nobody does that acid-trip amalgamation of colors and textures like that box anymore. Everything is just so.... high-res, and "real" looking. It feels so commercial and uninspired.

Finally got my 2GB SD card to work on my 486 laptop. Had to run fdisk /mbr and it boots up.

Not a 386 laptop (typo on my part as I was dead tired after work).

Assembled some adapters.

ADB to USB adapter to use my Apple Extended Keyboard II on some modern machines. tmk_keyboard firmware.

BlueSCSI. This was a lot of soldering 😀

The 17" CRT arrived to day and it works perfectly but I've noticed some minor flaking of the antiglare coating, I cant fault the seller for this as its difficult to even see it unless you have the right light angle. But now I know its there I cant unsee it, does anyone have some advice in how to either remove the coating safely or how to repair it if at all possible.

Personally I would prefer to just remove it since once the rot starts it'll keep spreading and the coating does visibly make the monitor darker.

I snagged the old Roland VSC from the late 90's/early 2000's and am using it to listen to the QuestStudios MIDI files and a bunch of other MIDI files that can fully show what it's capable of and where it fails. So far, it's pretty good, but it occasionally falls short on the files that were made on desktop modules and represent non-game music. For the game files, it seems to be more or less correct.

luckybob wrote on 2021-12-28, 18:23:

Ugg, my fat brain misread Tempra as tempura. Took me a good 30 sec to actually process it correctly. I guess I know what I'm having for my cheat day...

But on a more serious note, I honestly miss the early 3d. Nobody does that acid-trip amalgamation of colors and textures like that box anymore. Everything is just so.... high-res, and "real" looking. It feels so commercial and uninspired.

Check out Affinity Designer:
https://affinity.serif.com/en-us/designer/

The problem is that graphic design has taken a turn for the worse.

On the topic of my retro activity.. I "refurbed" the Inspiron 8500 laptop I received the other day. Cleaned the clogged CPU heatsink and fan, took the dumb aluminum film off the cooler that was used as the TIM, cleaned up the cooler and the CPU and applied decent thermal paste.

Also did similar for the GPU.

I took the display bezel off and tightened up the hinge screws.

Haven't cleaned up the rest of the system or replaced the HDD with an SSD either. This will be set up as a Win98SE laptop... no DOS sound support but it does have the UXGA screen so it should be a pretty decent retro gaming machine.
It originally came with XP which but of course most older laptops are much better with a previous OS on them.

I'm starting a discord for retro tech and retro PC gaming:

https://discord.gg/WyxnnJJ8 - Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone

I'm setting up text channels, voice, user roles, etc. We will have private channels for content creators and developers.

(The primary impetus of this is I'm going to start thinning my collection out a bit as its taking over, and I'll be using this server as a hub for that).

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2022-01-01, 00:12:

I'm starting a discord for retro tech and retro PC gaming: […]
Show full quote

I'm starting a discord for retro tech and retro PC gaming:

https://discord.gg/WyxnnJJ8 - Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone

I'm setting up text channels, voice, user roles, etc. We will have private channels for content creators and developers.

(The primary impetus of this is I'm going to start thinning my collection out a bit as its taking over, and I'll be using this server as a hub for that).

Just joined your channel. Not very active on discord, but interested to see how it works out 😀