While making fan cables to my cool new CPU coolers on my PR440FX I couldn't help myself and started playing with it.
And while looking for a suitable case I found and old Plextor Plexwriter CDRW hiding in one of my stored chassis.
A nice bonus indeed!

Replaced a fan and 4 capacitors on a Celeron II motherboard. While I had it on a bench, I installed different size CF cards on it, just to write down head, cyls, sect, etc... in my notebook for further use.

Turbo -> wrote on 2022-03-21, 12:58:

Replaced a fan and 4 capacitors on a Celeron II motherboard. While I had it on a bench, I installed different size CF cards on it, just to write down head, cyls, sect, etc... in my notebook for further use.

WhatIDE is an amazing quick tool:
https://archive.org/details/whatide

There is also IDEINFO

I've made some progress building my 486DX4-100 machine:

Last night I used my single floppy DOS+Windows installer to install MS-DOS 6.22, Windows for Workgroups 3.11 and the netware client (that sure saved some time!). Once it was on the network I then proceeded to try and setup my two sound cards: a Creative ViBRA 16 CT2810 and a Gravis UltraSound Classic. Getting the GUS going was a real challenge. I had never actually used it (or any GUS) before and I was actually starting to wonder the card was dead. But in the end I got it going alongside the SoundBlaster, tested a few games (my temporary VGA card really is garbage) and got the CD-ROM drive going too.

I had two challenges with the GUS. The first one and easiest to solve was where to actually put it. In this case there is only a single slot with enough room to actually fit the card - all the other slots are blocked by either the 5.25" drive cage or the left speaker enclosure (the black cone thing).

And then there was actually getting it to work. Current layout of the cards is (from top to bottom):

• Temporary VGA card
• Network card (EtherLink III)
• SoundBlaster ViBRA 16 (CT2810)
• GUS Classic
• Nothing
• Nothing - faulty slot? (NIC driver crashes on startup if the NIC is in this slot, soundblaster fails to detect if its in this slot)
• Temporary I/O card

When I started out the Temporary I/O card and SoundBlaster were swapped around. The Temporary I/O card was in the first VLB slot - where a VLB I/O card will go when I actually locate my box of ISA cards. In this configuration everything worked fine but the GUS. On first try the GUS Setup program would complain about resource conflicts on every possible resource and when it went to do its final test the whole machine would just lock up - the scrolling text would not scroll even slightly. On subsequent attempts the setup program failed to see the card at all regardless of what base port it was set to. In the end swapping the SoundBlaster and the Temporary I/O card around "fixed" the problem and I'm not entirely sure why.

Next up: replace the barrel battery before it leaks, find a way of mounting the 3.5" floppy drive securely (the floppy and hard disk mounting brackets are long gone), find some VLB cards to replace the temporary cards, find a working 5.25" floppy drive (the one I grabbed from storage doesn't respond at all), upgrade the RAM on the GUS, replace the volume control potentiometer on the front of the case, and see if I can get the SB/CD audio input switch on the front of the case to switch between the soundblaster and GUS. If I can't find my VLB cards soon I have some DIP20 sockets on their way so I might switch to a Biostar PCI motherboard if it works.

Plugged in and tested my newly acquired Sony PSX DESR-5700 and the optical drive sounds horrible, however, she boots to the XMB after I press the home button, which I believe that means a factory restore is in order.

Other than that, it works and the hard drive is functioning.

I took delivery of M$ Powerstation FORTRAN 1.0. RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH

Ok not really an activity, but close enough.

chris2021 wrote on 2022-03-22, 01:14:

I took delivery of M$ Powerstation FORTRAN 1.0. RAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH

Ok not really an activity, but close enough.

Potential activity... 😀

Yooouuu better believe it! 😀

Finally going to benchmark some low-profile random cards from my collection across a long period of time (mostly OEM) to get a real feel for what works in SFF retro-ish systems.

Using the same socket 775 with an X3370 for the tests, running the IGPU now for reference on 3DMark05. Kinda slow. 😀 GMA X4500 (I've gamed on worse, believe it or not). 1927 3DMarks.

Up next, GeForce 6200 LE.

It's not to find a modern card, but to get a range of values for use with various years' games, basically to act as substitutes for cards I don't have or can't be used in low profile systems. Lowpros are popular for some retro stuff but the information on which cards to use is usually limited to "the very best of limited availability" rather than "some rando OEM card that is equivalent to an earlier top of the line card," or something to that effect.

After I run these tests, I'll test with some known-crotchety games for compatibility. Hopefully I'll have a list of $12-$30 eBay OEM low profile cards that are actually useful for something.

Edit: so far, the biggest problems are drivers being wrong/not having features needed for 3DMark, and the 6200 LE causes Sata 0 not to be recognized. (?)

I've continued setting up software for my DX4-100. I installed Proxy, a remote control app from the 90s by Funk Software. Its surprisingly fast - much faster than my experience with VNC. Probably not fast enough to play games over but its plenty usable for, eg, configuring/installing things while I'm sitting at my modern PC. Unlike TINY it also handles the transition from DOS to Windows almost perfectly - no crashes or anything, the 3.11 splash screen is just weirdly coloured. Sadly Proxy is both proprietary, doesn't really handle graphical DOS apps and its more memory hungry than TINY - needs about 12K of conventional memory including DPMI (which I've never needed for anything else) and won't load high.

I've also got windows 3.11 peer-to-peer networking working alongside the netware client though compatibility is limited to talking to other old systems as windows won't do file sharing using the Novell TCP/IP stack as far as I can tell. Not that that really matters too much as I'm not sure how long I'll keep it setup as it requires sacrificing even more conventional memory. I'm down to 597K free at this point though so far everything I want to run still seems to run so perhaps its fine.

Also found some proper video drivers for my temporary garbage OTI087 VGA card. In the end that only upgrades me from 16 to 256 colours at 640x480 in windows - I tried 800x600 at 256 colours but the bottom 1/4 of the display was garbage. Bad video RAM I suppose - even at 640x480 there is a little garbage on the screen and most DOS games are pretty much unplayable.

Lastly, seeing LGRs two videos on the GUS I decided to try out some stuff on my newly discovered GUS to see what its like. First challenge was turning the damn volume down. Seems ultramixer.exe does absolutely nothing - the card is just always at max volume. Even setting the volume in-game to the absolute minimum is still too loud. So I switched to head-phones with an in-line volume control and moved on to playing with some other software. Screamtracker 3 works nicely, Impulse Tracker however refuses to acknowledge the GUS. The GBU demo kind of works - sound is fine, video is not thanks to the garbage graphics card. So my priority for this weekend really is going to be finding the box of ISA video cards.

So this weekends goal really is to locate a better VLB or ISA video card. If I can't find one I'm moving to a PCI motherboard and I'll use an S3 Virge or something.

Speaking of low end video cardz (pci-e), whereas the MSI nx8400gs-td256e that I bought several of on ebay new are sold out, if you search Delaware Craigslist, US obviously, a guy is selling them for 14$ (I think it. Was 12 a week ago). The windows 7 drivers you can download seemingly mesh fine with windows 10.

Today I replaced the original power supply in my Sega Saturn console, with a modern 12V DC power supply kit.

The original PSU was causing issues, probably due to needing a recap, where it would cause ripples in the picture whilst reading data from discs. Also a couple of backup discs refused to boot with Pseudo Saturn Kai until the original PSU had been switched on for some time.

Installation of the new PSU was extremely quick and it's working well. I now have a clear interference-free picture and all game backups boot first time every time.

I'll keep the original PSU safe, might recap it 1 day if my solder skills improve. It may also come in handy if I ever decide to get a Japanese Saturn in the future, to combat the PAL land woes.

I am trying to remove the HSF from a PII-350 I own so that I can mount it on a PII-400 I recently purchased. However, there is a problem: I can't seem to figure out how to remove this bolts/screws that have it tied down. Are these small allen key screws? Are they torx screws? Anyone have experience with removing and remounting these?

The upper left could be an allen head. Or a torx. Try an appripriate sized bit in that order. Can't tell with the other 3. It's either the quality of the photo, or they're mangled. Or they're rivets, but that seems very unlikely.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-24, 10:24:

I am trying to remove the HSF from a PII-350 I own so that I can mount it on a PII-400 I recently purchased. However, there is a problem: I can't seem to figure out how to remove this bolts/screws that have it tied down. Are these small allen key screws? Are they torx screws? Anyone have experience with removing and remounting these?

They look like pre-hollowed out rivets to me. They won’t survive removal.

Assuming these are rivets, you can try breaking up the heads using a punch with carefully applied taps until the rivet head snaps off. The rivet heads look weak. I like this idea least given this is a CPU.

Another possibility is to crush the heads with pliers if you can apply enough pressure.

Otherwise, take a drill fitted with the smallest bit necessary to finish boring them out. Obviously, you’ll be careful to apply just enough pressure and definitely low speed.

If someone comes by and says these are XYZ screws, and you only a need a trusty ‘Gamers Nexus’ ZYX driver, then please ignore my post.

I am fearing that they may indeed be rivets but the hollows look too hexagonal to be just that, so I am still hoping someone will come up and say "Oh they are this and this kind of screw, I took one apart before.." But knowing Intel they may well be unremovable rivets.

Which doesn't explain why the PII 400 SECC1 I have in my hand has no HSF on it.. Maybe it's an OEM part that had an aftermarket HSF that was later removed? No idea.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-03-24, 10:24:

I am trying to remove the HSF from a PII-350 I own so that I can mount it on a PII-400 I recently purchased. However, there is a problem: I can't seem to figure out how to remove this bolts/screws that have it tied down. Are these small allen key screws? Are they torx screws? Anyone have experience with removing and remounting these?

It's a hex head for an allen key; a tapered one is best for corroded holes, so that it can grip firmly, even after deteriorating. Ideally you'll want to apply vinegar to dissolve the corrosion and then some oil to loosen the screw. Be liberal with the oil or you risk stripping the screw. If it becomes stripped then you will have to drill it out.

Re: I recently found this hardware, AKA the Dumpster find thread.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-09-06, 15:48:

I bought a slot 1 CPU with an Intel branded heatsink and cooler. I wondered why the fan wasn't spinning up so I opened it up to investigate. The entire fan assembly is destroyed by corrosion.

What's worse is that the screws that hold it to the processor housing were completely rusted and two of the four screws stripped immediately while trying to remove them.

Kahenraz wrote on 2021-09-07, 09:16:

I managed to get the heatsink off by pouring some oil around the screws and using a high quality steel torx bit that had a bit of a taper that allowed it to bite.

The next difficulty then was disassembling the processor housing as it needed a proper cleaning after having oil dripped into it. This is not an easy thing to do as the housing is pressure-fit and not designed to come apart. Later Pentium 3s are a lot better in that they are very easy to disassemble.

I had a p2-400 out of a gateway that had the heatsink riveted on. What I would do is just get a drill bit that's just bigger than the hole and on a slow speed drill untill the head pops off.

You can unscrew them with torx 8 jammed in. Did this many times.

Cheers,