Tinkered with my BBS setup some more. Think I have the dialup part working but finding someone to test with is difficult. Got the notification that my Mouser order finally shipped and my new Desolder pump *not really retro but used to fix em* arrives tomorrow!

I finished the second youtube video on my new channel that will hopefully feature many different soundcards, playing tracker modules to showcase their sound quality. Not by running scientific benchmarks but just listening to music.
You know, like these crackles, frequency instability, pops when changing instrument channels and stuff like that.
I'd be happy about your opinions and some feedback 😀
https://youtu.be/ck03yUz0-Ac

tinkering with custom resolutions in windows xp with the goal of setting high refresh rate @ 1600x1200. got it to 120hz via displayport, so success?

VIA MVP4 based motherboard setup/recovery/cleaning.
Nice office-board in my 1999/2000 history - Rollcage, Quake, Starcraft!

Commodore 386SX-16 took a vinegar bath. It had some nasty battery goo. Yes, it got revived! Two long beeps + three short beeps. I think it needs a battery.

I will make some good pictures and BIOS dumps in the near future for Ultimate Retro / The Retro Web.

Last week I attempted to replace the battery in the Timekeeper chip on my Philips CD-I 210/25. It wasn't really bothering me, but thought I'd give it a go. I was being very careful, chiseling away at the chip whilst still soldered into the board and the inevitable happened - I slipped and hit the motherboard! Ended up severing 4 traces on the motherboard, my Philips CD-I was dead!!! Not easy traces to repair either as they are quite small and close together.

Fast forward to today, I suddenly felt confident and decided to have a go at running some jumper wires to bypass the 4 damaged traces. Bare in mind I've NEVER tried this before in my life and had only watched hours of YouTube videos on the subject, never attempting it myself.

I spent hours following the damaged traces either side, to find out where they all went and scratched off some of the solder mask either side of the breaks for continuity testing with my multimeter. 1 of the traces went directly to 1 of the chips. I fed the jumper wires through and then on the underside of the motherboard I scratched away a bit of the solder mask, applied some flux and then soldered the cables into place. For the 1 wire going to the chip, I decided to simply solder it onto the leg of the chip and add some hot glue to stop it flexing.

I also added some clear nail varnish to seal the damaged and exposed traces.

First power on and it lives again!

And a picture of my handy work, not the neatest job in the world, but it works. I'm quite pleased with myself for the first ever attempt at this kind of work!

I think I'll leave the timekeeper chip in it's present state, not going to tempt fate. 🤣

I always like these stories with a happy ending, good job!

Bought this old floppy drive for less than $1. They are pretty rare and expensive in Ukraine now - can cost $30 and $40 being in same state, no guarantee to work.

I cleaned it, greased the motor spindle, removed the rust from the top cover (mostly damaged) and painted, retrobrighted the front panel. I tried a car wax on plastic parts, interesting, if it helps to protect from repeating yellowing.

Not the perfect restoration, that required full disassembly - that's elaborate and risky process. But much better than it was.

I cannot imagine retro system without floppy drive, hard drive and CRT display - they create that special feeling and mood. And 5.25 floppies are the most 'real' ones. I almost missed them, I had a pack of such floppies in childhood to store some games but my first PC already had a 3.5 inch drive.

What else... Washed boards for my next build, painted the case. Will finish my 386 build this weekend I hope.

PD2JK wrote on 2022-09-15, 16:53:

Commodore 386SX-16 took a vinegar bath. It had some nasty battery goo. Yes, it got revived! Two long beeps + three short beeps. I think it needs a battery.

Commodore 386 sounds like a Heresy.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-09-15, 21:36:

I cleaned it, greased the motor spindle, removed the rust from the top cover (mostly damaged) and painted, retrobrighted the front panel. I tried a car wax on plastic parts, interesting, if it helps to protect from repeating yellowing.

Nice work! From the perspective of the faceplate, it looks almost brand new.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-09-15, 22:10:

Nice work! From the perspective of the faceplate, it looks almost brand new.

Thanks. Just found the same model, in much better shape - something like $55. Still requires brightening of the front panel (that adds very much to overall look as it's the only part we see tbh) and nobody knows if it works 😀

Need to take a box of floppies while they are available 😀

Great job fixing that up. It looks great

I've been tinkering with a pair of Toshiba Libretto 70CTs. One needed a new CMOS battery which is a harrowing adventure. The plastic clips are brittle enough that they break with little pressure. You have to use a small spudger and pray, then be very careful with reassembly to not crack parts of the frame around the other clips. But success! I shouldn't have to worry about losing time for another 20 years...

But there are sufficient restore materials online to bring back to original. It's surprisingly capable and plays OPL3 sound in DOS and Windows. It just doesn't have a volume switch, so it has to be done in Windows or by TSR in DOS.

Got the Aztech Sound Galaxy NX Pro non-16 installed in my 386 PCS machine that has a couple of mods: "stereo" out for a single PC speaker and soldering a broken PC speaker cable to the card (red wire) and connecting the header to the motherboard.

I tested the card and I get all of the sound from the single speaker and the PC speaker portion works as well.

rkurbatov wrote on 2022-09-15, 22:03:

PD2JK wrote on 2022-09-15, 16:53:

Commodore 386SX-16 took a vinegar bath. It had some nasty battery goo. Yes, it got revived! Two long beeps + three short beeps. I think it needs a battery.

Commodore 386 sounds like a Heresy.

Agreed. Like the folks at Commodore didn't know what to do after the 64 / 128 😉

While building this Core2 XP x64 machine, the Socket 775 compatible cooler did not fit; peg holes didn't align, and the plastic mounting mechanism was too wide thanks to the surrounding heatsinks. A few minutes with a Dremel solved the problems.

Next, this GX300 was not booting. Long story short, I pulled the motherboard out of the case, and it booted fine; there must have been a short or something. The BIOS update to A10 now makes it possible to add 256Mb-chip capacity RIMM modules. In keeping with its workstation roots, I upgraded:

CPU: PIII 733/133 x2 --> 1GHz/133 x2
RAM: 512MB --> 1024MB ECC
GPU: Nvidia TNT M64 16MB --> ELSA GLoria III (NVidia Quadro 2 Pro 64MB)

Transplanted my Windows 98 build into its new case, a Fractal Designs Focus G.

Next on the list is adding an Audigy 2 ZS alongside the current Diamond Monster MX300.

Focus G is always a nice choice for retro builds if you want more airflow haha. Now they've also released Pop Air with 2x 5.25" bays but these cases feel big in terms of footprint.

PD2JK wrote on 2022-09-15, 16:53:

Commodore 386SX-16 took a vinegar bath. It had some nasty battery goo. Yes, it got revived! Two long beeps + three short beeps. I think it needs a battery.

I will make some good pictures and BIOS dumps in the near future for Ultimate Retro / The Retro Web.

Oh yeah, love it !
Yes please send us more pics 😁

svfn wrote on 2022-09-17, 17:39:

Focus G is always a nice choice for retro builds if you want more airflow haha. Now they've also released Pop Air with 2x 5.25" bays but these cases feel big in terms of footprint.

I got myself Pop Mini Silent and my only complaints are that the door for the 5.25" bay is just a magnetic cover that comes off completely instead of being an actual door with hinges, can be kinda annoying to mess with the cover if you need access to the 5.25" drives frequently enough.

That and the paint is a fingerprint magnet. Otherwise I'm very happy with it. Wouldn't use it for high power system though, it won't be able to cool some modern 500W+ TDP monster but it's great for my ~220W Haswell rig.