VOGONS


Reply 20660 of 27182, by BitWrangler

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uridium wrote on 2022-01-11, 03:17:
Hi Pan, […]
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Hi Pan,

Thanks for the tip. I've tried a number of combinations of shift+ctrl+alt+del but it seems to ignore it.

Quite a puzzle that's for sure. I'm really wondering if it's the type where you boot it and run a config util.

Anymore ideas, I greatfully accept. 😀

Thanks!

Though I'm wondering why someone who has has "plenty of XTs" hasn't thought of the obvious yet... as a class, CMOS setup in ROM is really uncommon.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 20661 of 27182, by pan069

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uridium wrote on 2022-01-11, 03:17:

Thanks for the tip. I've tried a number of combinations of shift+ctrl+alt+del but it seems to ignore it.

Quite a puzzle that's for sure. I'm really wondering if it's the type where you boot it and run a config util.

Damn, that's a bummer. Maybe you can get in touch with this guy [1], he seems to have the same machine as you. Unfortunately on this page he's not disclosing the magic key combo to get into the BIOS settings.

[1] https://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/pcs86.html

Reply 20662 of 27182, by gex85

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2022-01-11, 00:22:
You've replaced the belt, but can the stepper / worm gear turn freely? If it's giving DIR then I Guess it's spinning and can rea […]
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gex85 wrote on 2022-01-10, 12:00:
I have been experimenting with some newer and freshly formatted (in a different PC) disks today, but still without success. The […]
Show full quote
Thermalwrong wrote on 2022-01-09, 00:37:

Since the floppy drive is so important in these somewhat older computers, make sure to exercise it! A fast/ slow / too-tight belt is usually tolerated quite well by old floppy drives - they've got sensors to tell where things are. As long as the drive motor isn't just freewheeling it should be okay.

I've been trying to get a 5.25" floppy drive working the last few days. Had to design up and 3d print a replacement for the arm that hold the disk clamp in place.
I had a bunch of 5.25" disks that are 2HD but were old enough that the formatting was no good (this drive is calibrated and can read 360KB disks just fine). I just kept formatting until it got it right (I was kinda drunk at the time, but I was going the right way). Now with a little bit of oil on the head's motor's worm gear, the drive is able to read and format disks quite reliably 😀

I have been experimenting with some newer and freshly formatted (in a different PC) disks today, but still without success. The drive would just give various read errors all the time.
What makes it complicated is that the drive has a proprietary 24-pin connector and a flat-flex cable. So I can neither hook it up to a different machine for diagnostics and alignment, nor can I swap in a replacement drive or GoTek without wiring up an adapter (pinout is known and documented, but I don't have the necessary FFC/FPC connectors at hand).
I have no experience fixing this sort of problem with floppy drives either, so I'll probably put the whole thing aside for now and decide what to do with it later. Options are probably:
- Try to get the original drive fixed
- Build the adapter and throw in a replacement drive or GoTek emulator (would need to cut the enclosure for that)
- Sell it as-is and let someone else have the fun

You've replaced the belt, but can the stepper / worm gear turn freely? If it's giving DIR then I Guess it's spinning and can read, but maybe it can't move the heads well? Letting some PTFE lubricant soak into the bronze bushings for the stepper motor / worm gear can help. Also sometimes when I jostle the worm gear around, it can fall out of its bronze bushing and get jammed, so slotting that back into place can help. But that would usually be obvious from the sound.
If the drive can seek okay, open a file at the end of the disk a couple of times to see if the head moves freely, if the disk's tracking is off then I've found read errors can happen.

Having had a think about your situation, since the floppy drive is a non-standard laptop type and the laptop doesn't have a hard drive? Then yeah, that's quite a catch-22. I would look at soldering up the adapter to put a regular floppy drive in there honestly. It's not too tough to do with some enamel wire, you can scrape back the FPC to get to the wires and solder onto those if the pitch is over 1mm.

This isn't of much help to you I guess, but I was previously trying to do alignment of one of my 5.25" drives, by doing reads / formats of known good disks, it's tough. I had messed up the track-0 alignment on my Teac FD-55GFR by not realising the drive's main PCB had that sensor and was factory aligned. Somehow I did eventually get the alignment 'good-enough', but it was just guess work and lots of trial and error. I wasn't sure if the drive really worked properly.

Then as I mentioned the other day, I got a working 1.2MB 5.25" drive with its factory calibration intact. This Samsung SFD-560D needed the broken disk clamp cam replaced with a 3d printed one before I could use it 😀
Repaired-5.25-drives-2.JPG
I was able to compare results using IMD / ImageDisk's alignment tool. Imagedisk can step the head over all tracks and you can see in realtime how good the read quality is from each location. This video covers how to use the tool really well: https://youtu.be/VZ9xhFkHZ5c?t=525
It's really impressive, I was able to check that the disk formatted on the Samsung could be read on the Teac and vice versa, across all the tracks. Which means I can now read things like the 5.25" cover disks / games, and the two drives can read files moved from one drive to the other, all the way across the disk.

If there was a way that you could run Imagedisk on that drive / laptop, you could check whether it can step to each track and whether it can read well at each of those tracks. If the drive was disassembled, in some cases the track 0 sensor / motor position could've got out of calibration, so it'd need to be re-done. It's less tough to get right than I initially thought.

I've got a total of 4x 5.25" drives and they've caused me a great deal of frustration, since I only buy the ones sold 'for parts' rather than tested.
2x are very similar Toshiba drives - the ND-08DE-A (FDD6782) and ND-08DEG-A (FDD6784). One has a problem with the bottom head, the other didn't seem to have a working upper head. I had inadvertently ruined the track 0 alignment on both. It took using the IMD alignment tool to really work out what was going on, since it can switch the head it's reading from as well as move tracks.
Repaired-5.25-drives-1.JPG
So I transplanted the less damaged front panel & the top head across onto the newer of the two drives. It didn't take more than a couple of hours to get the bottom head, then the top head properly aligned so that it could read across all 80 tracks. This isn't perfect since this wasn't an alignment disk, just a known good 5.25" DS/HD disk formatted on the known-good drive. But it does work!
Something else I did on the Toshiba drives was replace the electrolytic capacitors, they'd leaked and corroded nearby traces. I think any drives over 25 years old may have bad electrolytic capacitors and are worth checking.

So now I've got 3x working drives - they need installing in PCs, I didn't really intend to have so many but sometimes that's what it takes to get things working. I'm really happy that they're not just decorative any more 😀
Repaired-5.25-drives-3.JPG

Thank you so much for your support!
Mechanically, everything is fine with the drive. Heads move back and forth as they should, disk spins freely, heads are clean, etc... the factory alignment seems to be intact, too - no screw has been moved (the drops of varnish on the screws are intact).
I did not find any way to get ImageDisk or any other software onto this machine that could help with further diagnostics, so I figured I'd try the adapter solution. I desoldered the connector from the original floppy drive and soldered it to a standard floppy drive connector + floppy power connector (pinout here).
I had it all sitting on the desk in parts, wired it up, and... success! Adapter works, reading and writing disks just fine. Yeah!
So then I made some slight modifications to the case to make the new drive fit, put some hot glue onto the solder joints on the connector so they don't fall apart, put everything back together, fired it up... read error. Sector not found. Every time. ARGH! Seems this cursed thing just does not WANT to get fixed.

My retro computers

Reply 20663 of 27182, by bjwil1991

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Got the 20MB HDD in my Colt to work (somewhat). Oiled and greased both the platter and head motors and it still needs an oil on the platter shaft since the drive requires a whack-a-drive with the screwdriver to get it to start (might need to fix the motor).

It has a lot of goodies on it, like the shareware version of Lemmings, it has Tetris, a card/banner software, to name a few.

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

Reply 20664 of 27182, by creepingnet

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More messing with the Compaq DeskPro 386s/20.....(yeah, I tend to focus on one project at a time and tune it to perfection, hence the lack of activity on anything else).

Seems the press-fit upgrade does make a difference in some applications. Sim City and Arachne run almost as well as they do on my 486 DX4-100. Apparently the upgrade in question is an IBM "Blue Lightning" BLX4 25/75. Got some suggestions on VCFED to try Cyrix Utilities to unlock it's true powers. Ultima VI and Wolf 3D were what kind of got off to a rocky start. I think also Arachne would feel like an improvement as I run this on my GEM 286 usually for a web browser.

Tried the mouse port first time last night, with the NEC Version of the Compaq mouse I bought (Logitech PS/2 2 button). The Compaq mouse just shipped yesterday. Funny thing is all the parts are coming out of Texas, I know Compaq is from Texas, almost seems I found some kind of "Oldskool" Compaq Warehouse on e-bay (LOL). By the time this thing is done I probably should find a proper Compaq monitor for it, 🤣.

Setup the multi-boot menu system last night. Seems I'm doing great with Memory Management on this one, still 547K minimum with every TSR I use loaded, and the 9MB extra above UMB is pretty capacious for a DOS system this old. The stuff that runs fast and is well optimized screams open surprisingly fast considering this is the original 212MB HDD this PC shipped with in 1991. Feels more like my 486 with the PTI-255W and an ATA-133 in PIO4.

~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 20665 of 27182, by BetaC

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Today I finally got around to figuring out the issue with my Sega 32X. As it turns out, the yellow video was being caused by a pin on one of the chips having a solder trail that had connected to a trace. Now I can use my full abomination to it's full extent, you know, playing the five games that require both a 32X and a SegaCD. Of course, I need to eventually get around to replacing the Voltage Regulators in my genesis, as they're creating snow when both add-ons are powered at the same time.

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Reply 20666 of 27182, by Stiletto

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pan069 wrote on 2022-01-11, 07:28:
uridium wrote on 2022-01-11, 03:17:

Thanks for the tip. I've tried a number of combinations of shift+ctrl+alt+del but it seems to ignore it.

Quite a puzzle that's for sure. I'm really wondering if it's the type where you boot it and run a config util.

Damn, that's a bummer. Maybe you can get in touch with this guy [1], he seems to have the same machine as you. Unfortunately on this page he's not disclosing the magic key combo to get into the BIOS settings.

[1] https://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/pcs86.html

John Elliott actually has an account here, although he hasn't used it since 2006, and he only used it once, and therefore sending him a PM might result in the email notification bouncing.
John Elliott

"I see a little silhouette-o of a man, Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you
do the Fandango!" - Queen

Stiletto

Reply 20667 of 27182, by Jed118

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I live streamed me fixing an old KDS CRT.

It ended up being salvaged!

(James May levels of patience required to view the whole thing at once 🤣)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im6wjCgiFxM&a … l=TheKombinator

Youtube channel- The Kombinator
What's for sale? my eBay!

Reply 20668 of 27182, by brostenen

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I have lately messed around with my Amiga-1200. And it is beginning to become a great machine. First I wanted to stack up TF-1230 against Tsunami-1230 accelerators, and keep the one I like the best, then sell the other again. It turned out that I actually like the Tsunami better, but then I messed up, ripping a cap from the TF-1230 on the underside of the card. I have absolutely NO idea how I did it, but the cap went off while I closed the trapdoor lid. Went to exxoshost forum, and asked around what the component does. It turns out that it is a leftover component from the TF-330 card, and Mister TerribleFire (the designer him self) answered that it will probably run fine without. However I have the component, the BOM-List and need to get it fixed. Better safe than sorry.

Then I got a copy of Zeb's HDD image, and installed it on a 16gb CF card. Fixed two lines in the Startup-Sequence file. Copied the Kickstarts to the WHD-Loader folder and played some more. I was surprised that the PCMCIA-CF adaptor software comes as a default in the image. This Tsunami suits me better, as I have a few issues because of the lack of the timing bug fix. The TF-1230 requires that fix, in order to run as perfect as possible, compared to the Tsunami that just works on my board revision. I ran a systest on the system, and it gave around some 9330 to 9340. I can not remember the exact number, think it was 9335 or something. The HDD-Speed is just around 2.4 megabyte/second, when doing the run 3 times in a row.

So now I am left with a TF-1230 that have a cap ripped off, that acording to the designer, really have no impact on the way the card runs it self. So I guess I will be selling it at a really low price now, and point out this issue in the sales add. But the good part, is that I now have my dream 1200. I have an IndivisionAGA MK3 installed, and it has HDMI output. The sound is routed through a passive analog audio-switch that I have also bought. This way I can have 3 things hooked up to the speakers at the same time, and not fiddle with cables all the time.

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What I need to get now, is a new case for my 1200. I have my eyes on a grey one, in order to hide the yellowness of the keycap's better. Eventually I will need to retrobrite them in one way or another. Or I will need to source replacement keys that have not yellowed. That is perhaps the biggest task, as Danish layout is rather rare on a global scale.

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

001100 010010 011110 100001 101101 110011

Reply 20669 of 27182, by gex85

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gex85 wrote on 2022-01-11, 13:07:
Thank you so much for your support! Mechanically, everything is fine with the drive. Heads move back and forth as they should, d […]
Show full quote
Thermalwrong wrote on 2022-01-11, 00:22:
You've replaced the belt, but can the stepper / worm gear turn freely? If it's giving DIR then I Guess it's spinning and can rea […]
Show full quote
gex85 wrote on 2022-01-10, 12:00:
I have been experimenting with some newer and freshly formatted (in a different PC) disks today, but still without success. The […]
Show full quote

I have been experimenting with some newer and freshly formatted (in a different PC) disks today, but still without success. The drive would just give various read errors all the time.
What makes it complicated is that the drive has a proprietary 24-pin connector and a flat-flex cable. So I can neither hook it up to a different machine for diagnostics and alignment, nor can I swap in a replacement drive or GoTek without wiring up an adapter (pinout is known and documented, but I don't have the necessary FFC/FPC connectors at hand).
I have no experience fixing this sort of problem with floppy drives either, so I'll probably put the whole thing aside for now and decide what to do with it later. Options are probably:
- Try to get the original drive fixed
- Build the adapter and throw in a replacement drive or GoTek emulator (would need to cut the enclosure for that)
- Sell it as-is and let someone else have the fun

You've replaced the belt, but can the stepper / worm gear turn freely? If it's giving DIR then I Guess it's spinning and can read, but maybe it can't move the heads well? Letting some PTFE lubricant soak into the bronze bushings for the stepper motor / worm gear can help. Also sometimes when I jostle the worm gear around, it can fall out of its bronze bushing and get jammed, so slotting that back into place can help. But that would usually be obvious from the sound.
If the drive can seek okay, open a file at the end of the disk a couple of times to see if the head moves freely, if the disk's tracking is off then I've found read errors can happen.

Having had a think about your situation, since the floppy drive is a non-standard laptop type and the laptop doesn't have a hard drive? Then yeah, that's quite a catch-22. I would look at soldering up the adapter to put a regular floppy drive in there honestly. It's not too tough to do with some enamel wire, you can scrape back the FPC to get to the wires and solder onto those if the pitch is over 1mm.

This isn't of much help to you I guess, but I was previously trying to do alignment of one of my 5.25" drives, by doing reads / formats of known good disks, it's tough. I had messed up the track-0 alignment on my Teac FD-55GFR by not realising the drive's main PCB had that sensor and was factory aligned. Somehow I did eventually get the alignment 'good-enough', but it was just guess work and lots of trial and error. I wasn't sure if the drive really worked properly.

Then as I mentioned the other day, I got a working 1.2MB 5.25" drive with its factory calibration intact. This Samsung SFD-560D needed the broken disk clamp cam replaced with a 3d printed one before I could use it 😀
Repaired-5.25-drives-2.JPG
I was able to compare results using IMD / ImageDisk's alignment tool. Imagedisk can step the head over all tracks and you can see in realtime how good the read quality is from each location. This video covers how to use the tool really well: https://youtu.be/VZ9xhFkHZ5c?t=525
It's really impressive, I was able to check that the disk formatted on the Samsung could be read on the Teac and vice versa, across all the tracks. Which means I can now read things like the 5.25" cover disks / games, and the two drives can read files moved from one drive to the other, all the way across the disk.

If there was a way that you could run Imagedisk on that drive / laptop, you could check whether it can step to each track and whether it can read well at each of those tracks. If the drive was disassembled, in some cases the track 0 sensor / motor position could've got out of calibration, so it'd need to be re-done. It's less tough to get right than I initially thought.

I've got a total of 4x 5.25" drives and they've caused me a great deal of frustration, since I only buy the ones sold 'for parts' rather than tested.
2x are very similar Toshiba drives - the ND-08DE-A (FDD6782) and ND-08DEG-A (FDD6784). One has a problem with the bottom head, the other didn't seem to have a working upper head. I had inadvertently ruined the track 0 alignment on both. It took using the IMD alignment tool to really work out what was going on, since it can switch the head it's reading from as well as move tracks.
Repaired-5.25-drives-1.JPG
So I transplanted the less damaged front panel & the top head across onto the newer of the two drives. It didn't take more than a couple of hours to get the bottom head, then the top head properly aligned so that it could read across all 80 tracks. This isn't perfect since this wasn't an alignment disk, just a known good 5.25" DS/HD disk formatted on the known-good drive. But it does work!
Something else I did on the Toshiba drives was replace the electrolytic capacitors, they'd leaked and corroded nearby traces. I think any drives over 25 years old may have bad electrolytic capacitors and are worth checking.

So now I've got 3x working drives - they need installing in PCs, I didn't really intend to have so many but sometimes that's what it takes to get things working. I'm really happy that they're not just decorative any more 😀
Repaired-5.25-drives-3.JPG

Thank you so much for your support!
Mechanically, everything is fine with the drive. Heads move back and forth as they should, disk spins freely, heads are clean, etc... the factory alignment seems to be intact, too - no screw has been moved (the drops of varnish on the screws are intact).
I did not find any way to get ImageDisk or any other software onto this machine that could help with further diagnostics, so I figured I'd try the adapter solution. I desoldered the connector from the original floppy drive and soldered it to a standard floppy drive connector + floppy power connector (pinout here).
I had it all sitting on the desk in parts, wired it up, and... success! Adapter works, reading and writing disks just fine. Yeah!
So then I made some slight modifications to the case to make the new drive fit, put some hot glue onto the solder joints on the connector so they don't fall apart, put everything back together, fired it up... read error. Sector not found. Every time. ARGH! Seems this cursed thing just does not WANT to get fixed.

Quoting myself here for context.
Yesterday, the moment before I applied the hot glue, I had noticed that one solder joint had come loose. So I soldered it back in place quickly, without doing any testing afterwards. Today I decided to double-check the adapter and this solder joint in particular, so I disassembled the whole thing again, pried off the hot glue and indeed: I had soldered the loose cable to the wrong pin. So I fixed that, verified it resolved the issue (which it did) and put everything back together. Now finally, everything works and I can start figuring out what on earth I could possibly use this little machine for.
I still have the vertical coin cell holders on their way from China so once they arrive I can also fix the dead BIOS battery.
However, here's a photo for you guys:

hellovogons.jpg
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My retro computers

Reply 20670 of 27182, by TrashPanda

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gex85 wrote on 2022-01-12, 13:27:
Quoting myself here for context. Yesterday, the moment before I applied the hot glue, I had noticed that one solder joint had co […]
Show full quote
gex85 wrote on 2022-01-11, 13:07:
Thank you so much for your support! Mechanically, everything is fine with the drive. Heads move back and forth as they should, d […]
Show full quote
Thermalwrong wrote on 2022-01-11, 00:22:
You've replaced the belt, but can the stepper / worm gear turn freely? If it's giving DIR then I Guess it's spinning and can rea […]
Show full quote

You've replaced the belt, but can the stepper / worm gear turn freely? If it's giving DIR then I Guess it's spinning and can read, but maybe it can't move the heads well? Letting some PTFE lubricant soak into the bronze bushings for the stepper motor / worm gear can help. Also sometimes when I jostle the worm gear around, it can fall out of its bronze bushing and get jammed, so slotting that back into place can help. But that would usually be obvious from the sound.
If the drive can seek okay, open a file at the end of the disk a couple of times to see if the head moves freely, if the disk's tracking is off then I've found read errors can happen.

Having had a think about your situation, since the floppy drive is a non-standard laptop type and the laptop doesn't have a hard drive? Then yeah, that's quite a catch-22. I would look at soldering up the adapter to put a regular floppy drive in there honestly. It's not too tough to do with some enamel wire, you can scrape back the FPC to get to the wires and solder onto those if the pitch is over 1mm.

This isn't of much help to you I guess, but I was previously trying to do alignment of one of my 5.25" drives, by doing reads / formats of known good disks, it's tough. I had messed up the track-0 alignment on my Teac FD-55GFR by not realising the drive's main PCB had that sensor and was factory aligned. Somehow I did eventually get the alignment 'good-enough', but it was just guess work and lots of trial and error. I wasn't sure if the drive really worked properly.

Then as I mentioned the other day, I got a working 1.2MB 5.25" drive with its factory calibration intact. This Samsung SFD-560D needed the broken disk clamp cam replaced with a 3d printed one before I could use it 😀
Repaired-5.25-drives-2.JPG
I was able to compare results using IMD / ImageDisk's alignment tool. Imagedisk can step the head over all tracks and you can see in realtime how good the read quality is from each location. This video covers how to use the tool really well: https://youtu.be/VZ9xhFkHZ5c?t=525
It's really impressive, I was able to check that the disk formatted on the Samsung could be read on the Teac and vice versa, across all the tracks. Which means I can now read things like the 5.25" cover disks / games, and the two drives can read files moved from one drive to the other, all the way across the disk.

If there was a way that you could run Imagedisk on that drive / laptop, you could check whether it can step to each track and whether it can read well at each of those tracks. If the drive was disassembled, in some cases the track 0 sensor / motor position could've got out of calibration, so it'd need to be re-done. It's less tough to get right than I initially thought.

I've got a total of 4x 5.25" drives and they've caused me a great deal of frustration, since I only buy the ones sold 'for parts' rather than tested.
2x are very similar Toshiba drives - the ND-08DE-A (FDD6782) and ND-08DEG-A (FDD6784). One has a problem with the bottom head, the other didn't seem to have a working upper head. I had inadvertently ruined the track 0 alignment on both. It took using the IMD alignment tool to really work out what was going on, since it can switch the head it's reading from as well as move tracks.
Repaired-5.25-drives-1.JPG
So I transplanted the less damaged front panel & the top head across onto the newer of the two drives. It didn't take more than a couple of hours to get the bottom head, then the top head properly aligned so that it could read across all 80 tracks. This isn't perfect since this wasn't an alignment disk, just a known good 5.25" DS/HD disk formatted on the known-good drive. But it does work!
Something else I did on the Toshiba drives was replace the electrolytic capacitors, they'd leaked and corroded nearby traces. I think any drives over 25 years old may have bad electrolytic capacitors and are worth checking.

So now I've got 3x working drives - they need installing in PCs, I didn't really intend to have so many but sometimes that's what it takes to get things working. I'm really happy that they're not just decorative any more 😀
Repaired-5.25-drives-3.JPG

Thank you so much for your support!
Mechanically, everything is fine with the drive. Heads move back and forth as they should, disk spins freely, heads are clean, etc... the factory alignment seems to be intact, too - no screw has been moved (the drops of varnish on the screws are intact).
I did not find any way to get ImageDisk or any other software onto this machine that could help with further diagnostics, so I figured I'd try the adapter solution. I desoldered the connector from the original floppy drive and soldered it to a standard floppy drive connector + floppy power connector (pinout here).
I had it all sitting on the desk in parts, wired it up, and... success! Adapter works, reading and writing disks just fine. Yeah!
So then I made some slight modifications to the case to make the new drive fit, put some hot glue onto the solder joints on the connector so they don't fall apart, put everything back together, fired it up... read error. Sector not found. Every time. ARGH! Seems this cursed thing just does not WANT to get fixed.

Quoting myself here for context.
Yesterday, the moment before I applied the hot glue, I had noticed that one solder joint had come loose. So I soldered it back in place quickly, without doing any testing afterwards. Today I decided to double-check the adapter and this solder joint in particular, so I disassembled the whole thing again, pried off the hot glue and indeed: I had soldered the loose cable to the wrong pin. So I fixed that, verified it resolved the issue (which it did) and put everything back together. Now finally, everything works and I can start figuring out what on earth I could possibly use this little machine for.
I still have the vertical coin cell holders on their way from China so once they arrive I can also fix the dead BIOS battery.
However, here's a photo for you guys:
hellovogons.jpg

Sometimes its nice to have a unique little item in the collection for no other purpose than it gives you pleasure to know you restored it to working order, this little machine may not be very useful but it looks like a lovely show piece for the shelf !

Reply 20671 of 27182, by PTherapist

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Received an SD-512 cartridge for my Toshiba HX-10 MSX today, a 512KB RAM expansion & SD card solution. So I have been testing it out for most of the day.

I used a 4GB SD card and created 4 partitions, 2x FAT16 & 2x FAT12 (for MSX-DOS 1). Nextor DOS boots from the FAT16 partition and I've copied across stuff like Sofarun and a bunch of games in various formats. So I've just been testing a bunch of MSX games, as well as some Colecovision conversions & Sega SG-1000 ROMs.

I love that Sofarun has LFN support inside zip files, so I just zip up all the games. Doesn't take too long to extract and run either.

Also having some fun using Nextor/MSX-DOS and figuring out how everything works. It's cool how similar the OS is to DOS on the PC, so it's pretty easy to move around on the commandline and run programs outside of Sofarun.

Reply 20672 of 27182, by Thermalwrong

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gex85 wrote on 2022-01-12, 13:27:
Quoting myself here for context. Yesterday, the moment before I applied the hot glue, I had noticed that one solder joint had co […]
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Quoting myself here for context.
Yesterday, the moment before I applied the hot glue, I had noticed that one solder joint had come loose. So I soldered it back in place quickly, without doing any testing afterwards. Today I decided to double-check the adapter and this solder joint in particular, so I disassembled the whole thing again, pried off the hot glue and indeed: I had soldered the loose cable to the wrong pin. So I fixed that, verified it resolved the issue (which it did) and put everything back together. Now finally, everything works and I can start figuring out what on earth I could possibly use this little machine for.
I still have the vertical coin cell holders on their way from China so once they arrive I can also fix the dead BIOS battery.
However, here's a photo for you guys:
hellovogons.jpg

That's awesome 😀 I was kind of stumped when you said the other drive didn't work so it's great it was just a loose wire. I'm not sure what I'd do with an 8088 laptop either, but the early Panasonic laptops look really cool and the backlight on it is nice, so it's nice to have. Playing Prince of Persia or Lemmings on that screen could be quite an experience.

Reply 20673 of 27182, by seleryba

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gex85 wrote on 2022-01-12, 13:27:

I can start figuring out what on earth I could possibly use this little machine for

That's so common thought in my retro journey. Anyway, often the hardware without any idea from my side turns out very inspirational for the other projects. I had this feeling with IBM PC 5140 Convertible - how on earth I can use it, especially that Pentium/Pentium II is my favourite era? But it quickly turned out for a amazing experience - not only with 720k floppies, which were new for me in the PC world, but also with 8088 software - old DOS versions, testing games which I know but with this time with this oldie with non-standard screen. Running Planet X3 on this machine was a 'wow' experience 😁

Nice laptop btw!

---

Today I've fixed the Matrox G100 AGP card. There was no video. I found the recovery package on the web (added to the attachment below), inserted the PCI graphics as primary adapter, connected the monitor to it and I've ran the 'recover.exe' file from the package. After that, it started to work. That was just the BIOS issue!

matrox1.jpg
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matrox2.jpg
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matrox2.jpg
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Also, I've cleaned the STB Horizon 64 with Falcon64 chip on it. There was also no video. I've removed the EPROM, cleaned the pads carefully (DIP and PCI as well), checked the BIOS with XGEcu programmer. After that, this atypical card works just fine.

falcon1.jpg
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Attachments

  • Filename
    matrox-recover.zip
    File size
    927.35 KiB
    Downloads
    38 downloads
    File license
    Public domain

Reply 20674 of 27182, by debs3759

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seleryba wrote on 2022-01-12, 22:18:

Also, I've cleaned the STB Horizon 64 with Falcon64 chip on it. There was also no video. I've removed the EPROM, cleaned the pads carefully (DIP and PCI as well), checked the BIOS with XGEcu programmer. After that, this atypical card works just fine.
falcon1.jpg

Could you please let me know the numbers off the back of the card? There should be a number in the form 210-****-*** (VGA Museum has 210-0187-001), and another that is of the form 1X0-****-*** (VGA Museum has 1X0-0338-007) . I'd like to add it to my list of STB cards waiting to be added to gpuzoo. Got to find out about the Falcom64 chip as well 😀

Last edited by debs3759 on 2022-01-12, 23:10. Edited 1 time in total.

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 20675 of 27182, by seleryba

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debs3759 wrote on 2022-01-12, 23:01:
seleryba wrote on 2022-01-12, 22:18:

Also, I've cleaned the STB Horizon 64 with Falcon64 chip on it. There was also no video. I've removed the EPROM, cleaned the pads carefully (DIP and PCI as well), checked the BIOS with XGEcu programmer. After that, this atypical card works just fine.
falcon1.jpg

Could you please let me know the numbers off the back of the card? There should be a number in the form 210-****-***, another that is of the form 1X0-****-***, and the FCC-ID. I'd like to add it to my list of STB cards waiting to be added to gpuzoo. Got to find out about the Falcom64 chip as well 😀

Sure. On the label it's
1X0-0338-009
10 39/1995

on the top it's 210-0187-001. FCC ID is EKSVSA15064PCI

If you would like any additional things around this card (benchmarking or something else), just let me know.

Reply 20676 of 27182, by debs3759

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seleryba wrote on 2022-01-12, 23:04:
Sure. On the label it's 1X0-0338-009 10 39/1995 […]
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debs3759 wrote on 2022-01-12, 23:01:
seleryba wrote on 2022-01-12, 22:18:

Also, I've cleaned the STB Horizon 64 with Falcon64 chip on it. There was also no video. I've removed the EPROM, cleaned the pads carefully (DIP and PCI as well), checked the BIOS with XGEcu programmer. After that, this atypical card works just fine.
falcon1.jpg

Could you please let me know the numbers off the back of the card? There should be a number in the form 210-****-***, another that is of the form 1X0-****-***, and the FCC-ID. I'd like to add it to my list of STB cards waiting to be added to gpuzoo. Got to find out about the Falcom64 chip as well 😀

Sure. On the label it's
1X0-0338-009
10 39/1995

on the top it's 210-0187-001. FCC ID is EKSVSA15064PCI

If you would like any additional things around this card (benchmarking or something else), just let me know.

Great, thanks. I edited my above comment as found it on VGA Museum as well. The label is slightly different, PCB number is the same. If You are able to test the clock speeds (core and chip), that would be good. I plan to use PowerStrip to test all my older cards at some poine (old shareware app that can no longer be registered, but numbers are available online)

See my graphics card database at www.gpuzoo.com
Constantly being worked on. Feel free to message me with any corrections or details of cards you would like me to research and add.

Reply 20677 of 27182, by creepingnet

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Well, it looks like the faceplate and screws might be in after work, so I can finally put the Compaq together and do some initial photos of it as a "full setup" for the "My Computers" section of my website, which is what I've been doing probably the most is writing documents on as much as I can of what I know on vintage PC's for the vintage computing section. I'm hoping I can finally FINISH or at least get a substantial amount of document section stuff put together finally, so I can focus more on new things as they come along, rather than focusing on stuff I've been trying to put online for the last 20 years.

~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 20678 of 27182, by BetaC

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Yesterday I managed to switch out the Voltage Regulators in my Genesis to get rid of some of the noise that is seen when you have a 32x and SegaCD attached at the same time. As the system heats up it does get some snow in the BIOS screen, but it goes away when you actually play a game.

ph4ne7-99.png
g32zpm-99.png
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7y1bp7-6.png

Reply 20679 of 27182, by bjwil1991

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I was in the middle of my stream (part 3) and my Colt decided to die. It shows a code on the POST card saying FF-7E. The monitor has power and shows a black screen (not in power save/sleep mode) and the keyboard has all 3 lights illuminated. I checked the BIOS and char ROMs, retraced badly corroded traces, reflowed some vias, and still nothing.

Also working on my Sony PVM-9L1 to have RGB, yet that isn't 100% complete since the caps I have are polarized and the wrong style, yet the correct capacitance of 0.1uF or 100nF.

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