Browsing like it's 1999. Having to use something to strip out encryption though (in this case Frogfind, but that strips out images too)

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-09-29, 00:21:

That's a great looking setup! It should give you many hours of fun and enjoyment.

Thank you! I do have a backlog of late 80's games to start working through. 😁

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-09-29, 03:24:

Hah, note to self... don't turn on machines you haven't built yourself... Story starts years back... emachine with socket 754 board in, XP2600 or something the sempron of semprons socket 754 chip, 32bit only. Dirt cheap impulse pickup, thought actually from the badging it had a decent barton inside it, nope. Anyhoo, think I tried booting it a couple of times and it was flaky. Goes into a storage pile, pulled it out about 5 years back and get nothing out of it... can't be bothered with it. So today, I decide I want it's mATX case.. move it around and 2 screws appear in the bottom of the case... take the motherboard out and there's 3 more loose screws under there, wow! It's a wonder I didn't smoke the place out. IDK if I'll check that board out sometime sans shorts, it's 3rd choice 754 board at the moment and I only want one 754 system going.

Yikes! That's definitely not what you want to have rattling around in a machine on power up for sure.

Anytime I get anything electronic, I always give it a rattle test. If I hear anything moving around, I immediately take it apart.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-09-29, 16:20:

Anytime I get anything electronic, I always give it a rattle test. If I hear anything moving around, I immediately take it apart.

Yes, I heard the rattle moving it around this time, so resisted temptation to give it "one last try". Don't know why it didn't trigger my spidey senses previously.

Tinkered more with the Epson today.

I added in a 80827 math coprocessor and tested out using a SoundBlaster 1.5 in place of the Adlib.

The math copro probably isn't going to be that useful. From what I gather only Falcon 3.0 and SimCity might take advantage of it. But if for nothing else than completeness, I wanted to have one. 😀

As for the SoundBlaster, after testing it out, I found the noise level too high for my taste and ended up putting back the Adlib. The Adlib has much cleaner output. And since I'm going to be using Adlib or MT-32 sound about 95% of the time, I probably won't miss not having the SoundBlaster in there.

Been tinkering with a neat late XP/early Vista machine, an Acer Aspire 9300, model 9303WSMi

Specs aren't anything stellar - Turion TL-58 (upgraded from a TL-52), Geforce 7300Go 256MB, 120GB WD Scorpio (PATA, surprisingly), 2x1GB DDR2-667 (I bet this thing downclocks them at 533, but eh - I don't have any 533 sticks so... 667 sticks it is.), a DVD-RW drive, Atheros WLAN card (that's absurdly huge IMO... or maybe I'm just used to seeing mini PCI WLAN cards 🤣), 17 inch 1440x900 display, and of course, XP SP3.

This thing does support Vista (and as a result, 7 as well) as it highest and theoretically 2000 SP4 as its lowest, but I have no idea whether I'm better off keeping the actual XP SP3 install (which is a standard Pro install, as opposed to the MCE 2005 key that's stuck on the bottom of the laptop and dualbooting it with Vista or adding 2k into the equation as well (mainly BOOTMGR is a big concern, unless I can chainload Vista's BOOTMGR with XP's NTLDR to then be able to boot 2k as well.)

Oh, and for those wondering why is my XP looking slightly funky theme wise - that's the beta version of Luna (from XP/Whistler build 2428) I'm using.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-09-29, 12:18:

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-09-29, 03:24:

Hah, note to self... don't turn on machines you haven't built yourself... Story starts years back... emachine with socket 754 board in, XP2600 or something the sempron of semprons socket 754 chip, 32bit only. Dirt cheap impulse pickup, thought actually from the badging it had a decent barton inside it, nope. Anyhoo, think I tried booting it a couple of times and it was flaky. Goes into a storage pile, pulled it out about 5 years back and get nothing out of it... can't be bothered with it. So today, I decide I want it's mATX case.. move it around and 2 screws appear in the bottom of the case... take the motherboard out and there's 3 more loose screws under there, wow! It's a wonder I didn't smoke the place out. IDK if I'll check that board out sometime sans shorts, it's 3rd choice 754 board at the moment and I only want one 754 system going.

I need to build myself a decent vacuum cleaner, household ones are too big and clunky, "computer" vacuums are so pathetic they don't do anything. I hate using air duster much because it just fills up the air I'm tryna breathe with crap, plus you can go through $20 of air dusters in an afternoon if you're going through much. Anyway gotta look into something with like a 1/2" nozzle, handheld and enough suction to lift stuff up and bag it. I have the parts of one of those rechargeable vacuums with dead batts, so might use some of that. Just make it less klutzy for getting in the corners of cases.

I'm kinda doing a sleeper build M4A785-M into the eMach mATX, it's probably gonna be more modern. Though I just got bummed out because at first glance I took the IDC pin header sitting next to the PATA pin header to be a floppy header... but nah.. it's the parallel port header, derp, that's why it looks too short, why da crap is it over there. So since this case got a custom faceplate floppy, I'm wondering if I wanna have it sitting there useless mocking me, or whether I wanna try another mATX for the AM2/3 board and stick a duron mATX in this one. It's not a real nice case though, front panel got "Kyled" there's crack in it. Will see what else is around.

Get yourself a cheap electric leaf blower. Once a quarter I take all of our systems outside and give them a good blow out with the leaf blower and in about 10 minute all of our systems are cleaned. And doing it outside keeps all that dust and dirt from ending up all of your house and ultimately back inside your computers.

While expensive, worth the money investing this: We have two at our phone/tablet/game console/computer repair shop, used daily for 2 years, still going strong. Get youself one or two natural bristle 1" paint brushes, which costs little, and is ESD safe due to natural bristle. Rather noisy but nothing come close to volume and pressure.

https://canlessair.com/product/x3-hurricane-c … system-260-mph/

Brushing and blowing at same time while doing outside did their job very well and for clearing out dust and knock off stubborn dust with brush on the tablets before closing, especially ipads as we all do is replace the shattered glass.

Cheers,

stef80 wrote on 2022-09-24, 10:13:

Refurbished Abit KV7. Original NB cooler fan was stuck so I gave it a passive cooler from my "old heatsinks" box. Works nice for […]
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Refurbished Abit KV7. Original NB cooler fan was stuck so I gave it a passive cooler from my "old heatsinks" box. Works nice for the KT600 chipset.
Also coverd some exposed traces on the back of the motherboard with UV solder mask. Traces lead to AGP slot which seems to work, so I hope there's no real damage to it. Seems like a classic "screw behind the motherboard" situation. Flashed latest BIOS while I was at it.
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Nice. Got the board in auction just last week. KT600 chipset is not so likable in retro community, (they want eighter KT133A, KT333 or KT880), it's considered quite lowend, but it made me happy too. I have already 4 KT600 boards, so I probably switch Abit for Gigabyte K7 Triton one and Gigabyte will go to the world.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-09-29, 12:18:

Get yourself a cheap electric leaf blower. Once a quarter I take all of our systems outside and give them a good blow out with the leaf blower and in about 10 minute all of our systems are cleaned. And doing it outside keeps all that dust and dirt from ending up all of your house and ultimately back inside your computers.

Along these lines another option is an air compressor. Can serve double duty for cleaning out ducts as well.

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-09-30, 00:03:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-09-29, 12:18:

Get yourself a cheap electric leaf blower. Once a quarter I take all of our systems outside and give them a good blow out with the leaf blower and in about 10 minute all of our systems are cleaned. And doing it outside keeps all that dust and dirt from ending up all of your house and ultimately back inside your computers.

Along these lines another option is an air compressor. Can serve double duty for cleaning out ducts as well.

As long as you keep the regulator around 40psi or so that'll be just fine. I actually started with a compressor but switched to a leaf blower after accidentally killed a few fans with some over zealous pressure settings. I have used the leaf blower for doing dryer vents worked really well.

I've got all that heavy duty crap. It's loud, large and clumsy and can't be used outside half the year here, the nice half of the year I'm only messing with computers when it's raining mostly. Might grab a smaller quieter pancake compressor to use in the basement in winter. Those things sure heat a room up quick indoors though. I tried messing with a 5 gallon air tank, but remembering to fill it when the air is dry enough that you don't hydrolock the compressor or get a tank half full of water is a PITA, and then it wouldn't last more than a couple of maintenance blows, or one heavy duty, OMG how did they ever use it like this, blow. Got a bunch of health probs that mean I'm not exactly peak of my vitality and lugging a few cases out to the equipment or lugging out the equipment and a case or two has me about done for the day. So yah, want a small but powerful vacuum for reasons.

PcBytes wrote on 2022-09-29, 22:58:

Been tinkering with a neat late XP/early Vista machine, an Acer Aspire 9300, model 9303WSMi

Gorgeous Rei Ayanami wallpaper. 🤤

BitWrangler wrote on 2022-09-30, 00:46:

Those things sure heat a room up quick indoors though. I tried messing with a 5 gallon air tank, but remembering to fill it when the air is dry enough that you don't hydrolock the compressor or get a tank half full of water is a PITA, and then it wouldn't last more than a couple of maintenance blows, or one heavy duty, OMG how did they ever use it like this, blow. Got a bunch of health probs that mean I'm not exactly peak of my vitality and lugging a few cases out to the equipment or lugging out the equipment and a case or two has me about done for the day. So yah, want a small but powerful vacuum for reasons.

FWIW, I have a 6.3 gallon California Air Tools cylinder compressor. It's on wheels so it's relatively portable and small enough to not get in the way.

I've used it for everything from framing walls to airbrushing scale models. Probably one of my favorite pieces of shop equipment next to my miter saw and router.

The other day, I got a Toshiba T2130CT specifically for parts - the main NiMH battery leaked some years ago and destroyed the mainboard. It's destroyed the hard drive's PCB, the floppy drive's write protect / disk inserted switches, several screw mounts and the motherboard.

I was just going to rip out its screen and stuff it on my T2130CS, but the mainboards aren't hard to come by and the casing is in great condition apart from the corrosion, now I think it would be best to fix it.
So far I've fixed the floppy drive with a fresh belt and switches, that now reads disks.
The casing's blue corrosion mess is all cleaned off so that's ready for the new mainboard.

I tried the hard drive but that was just stone dead, it won't spin up the drive even after I cleaned the HD's PCB. I have the same MK1924FCV hard drive from my T2130CS but I don't use it because the drive heads got sticky.
On a whim, I swapped the drive PCBs between the two MK1924FCV drives and wow, that actually worked! Even better, the hard drive appears to be the Toshiba pre-load and still had the original disk images on the drive 😀
Guess what will be appearing on Archive.org soon:

I FINALLY found out why my retro build computer was being wonky. The second power supply I got for it was from 2006, and the capacitors may have been compromised. I will worry about that power supply later, and instead use the power supply that I originally got with the computer case for this build. It seems much more stable.

Heh, how come they only make convenient designs of things when it would be more convenient for your off the wall purpose if they did it wrong... Just reviewed all my USB floppy drives, all of them have the button placed conveniently at the top, whereas when I'm thinking of committing one to a desktop with it's own front panel floppy hole faceplate, I want it on the bottom... why couldn't I have a no fricks given cheapo version with a standard mech. Yah I thought about my LS-120 drive, don't wanna butcher it. No I don't wanna gut the Tandy parallel port 5.25 and use the bits out of that either. There's a faint chance there's an old PCI SCSI card somewhere with a floppy interface on it. I might pop open the LaCie drive though and see if it looks like it speaks normal floppy interface internally.

edit: I also have a laptop internal that was swappable for extra HDD, maybe I'll see if that was perchance IDE or just some extra bunch of signals on the connector.

T-Squared wrote on 2022-09-30, 03:13:

and instead use the power supply that I originally got with the computer case for this build. It seems much more stable.

That happened to me too back in the day, got a case for my new Athlon XP build and seemed to have a "weak" 300W unit in it, so ordered a "beefy" apparently midrange from their pricing options 350W... annnnd guess which one was actually crap? The 350... though I didn't really figure out the 300W was solid until a year or two later when I put it in a build for my wife, and loaded it it up well and it ran for 5 years... I ended up with a 430W truepower for the other one, but I prolly would have been okay going back to the 300. It was some not very promising sounding brand, Sunpower or something.

Had hoped to put together a last-minute "SepTandy" video covering a few Windows 3.1 tips and tweaks specific to the the Tandy 1000 RLX. Oh, well...

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-09-29, 22:25:

Tinkered more with the Epson today. […]
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Tinkered more with the Epson today.

I added in a 80827 math coprocessor and tested out using a SoundBlaster 1.5 in place of the Adlib.

The math copro probably isn't going to be that useful. From what I gather only Falcon 3.0 and SimCity might take advantage of it. But if for nothing else than completeness, I wanted to have one. 😀

As for the SoundBlaster, after testing it out, I found the noise level too high for my taste and ended up putting back the Adlib. The Adlib has much cleaner output. And since I'm going to be using Adlib or MT-32 sound about 95% of the time, I probably won't miss not having the SoundBlaster in there.

I so much love the look of that SoundBlaster. So "chunky" 😀

I picked up a Lian Li PC-A05N which arrived today which I rehoused my P4 ISA build in. I love the compact form factor of this case.

Cloudschatze wrote on 2022-09-30, 04:11:

Had hoped to put together a last-minute "SepTandy" video covering a few Windows 3.1 tips and tweaks specific to the the Tandy 10 […]
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Had hoped to put together a last-minute "SepTandy" video covering a few Windows 3.1 tips and tweaks specific to the the Tandy 1000 RLX. Oh, well...

Yae Miko in (what I suppose is) 8 bit depth looks like a funky mosaic. Gotta love some of the limitations older machines have.