smtkr wrote on 2022-11-14, 02:38:

handsome.

Thank you! 😁

Kahenraz wrote on 2022-11-14, 02:40:

I really like the look of the synthesizers beneath the monitor.

Me too! 😁

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2022-11-14, 02:47:

Your stands look great. I want to do something similar to get my tower a bit off the floor

Thanks!

Coincidentally, I'm thinking my next project might be building a full tower stand / enclosure. I'd like to have something not only to hold up the PC tower, but with extra storage for odds 'n ends.

... Let there be drums, there was drums Let there be guitar, there was guitar Oh, let there be rock! (AC/DC) […]
Show full quote

... Let there be drums, there was drums
Let there be guitar, there was guitar
Oh, let there be rock!
(AC/DC)

Finally first piece soldered ready. It was plug-and-pray, amazing...

More or less finished my Pentium 133 mid-90s gaming setup.

Added an A/V switcher which switches between my four MIDI audio sources. Currently using an MT-32, CM-32L, Yamaha MU2000 and internal daughtercard (Yucatan FX) on the MPU-401AT. All MIDI is routed via a MIDI Solutions Quadra Thru (4 port MIDI splitter).

I think the last thing to complete things will be a dedicated game port card. Other than that, I'm quite pleased with this current setup.

Wah, that looks nice. Definitely prefer midi in the stack under the monitor 😀
The wooden keyboard ergo riser looks nice but how is it in use? Looks kinda hard if the angle's off. Personally I've never been big on the ergo keyboard stuff, my dad always used the MS Natural (original) keyboard until PS/2 went away on the home PC, but I've always preferred just regular keyboards.

---------------
We can rebuild it, we have the technology!

My Toshiba T2130CS which now has a 3d printed hard drive door and memory slot cover. The T2150CDT needs those parts more and this DSTN laptop is a great donor 😈
The hard drive door I'm pretty proud of, it's a 3d scan that was so high res I could just print it out with no modification and it fits and works as good as the original. The memory door is simple enough that I could design it in cad while a bit drunk.
This poor T2130CS has been the donor for the palm rest, HDD cover and memory cover at this point.

Past that, today I went on a really long trip from London down to Southampton to get an NEC Versa 6060 and lots of other parts. Quite a journey but the laptop works, both floppy drives are belted and broken (urghh) but the real gem in there was the HDD caddy that fits my Toshiba 500CDT, finally I have that completely unobtainable caddy and it gives structure to my Toshiba Tecra 500CDT that breaks if you look at funny - a few weeks back I was trying to turn it on and the power button broke into 2 pieces and fell inside. It took aaages to pull it apart and repair that. The HDD caddy should help the structural integrity quite a bit.

fool wrote on 2022-11-14, 15:20:

... Let there be drums, there was drums Let there be guitar, there was guitar Oh, let there be rock! (AC/DC) […]
Show full quote

... Let there be drums, there was drums
Let there be guitar, there was guitar
Oh, let there be rock!
(AC/DC)

Finally first piece soldered ready. It was plug-and-pray, amazing...

Oh wow, cool! Is there a project page for this?

fool wrote on 2022-11-14, 15:20:

... Let there be drums, there was drums Let there be guitar, there was guitar Oh, let there be rock! (AC/DC) […]
Show full quote

... Let there be drums, there was drums
Let there be guitar, there was guitar
Oh, let there be rock!
(AC/DC)

Finally first piece soldered ready. It was plug-and-pray, amazing...

What WT Board is that?

Upgraded my Dell Precision M4400 Laptop from a Core2Duo P8600 to a P8700, I happened to have laying around 🤣 Repasted both CPU and GPU in the process.

Still struggling with Win10 due to 2x2GiB RAM and 4 GiB modules are crazily expensive :'(

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-11-15, 00:59:

More or less finished my Pentium 133 mid-90s gaming setup.

Added an A/V switcher which switches between my four MIDI audio sources. Currently using an MT-32, CM-32L, Yamaha MU2000 and internal daughtercard (Yucatan FX) on the MPU-401AT. All MIDI is routed via a MIDI Solutions Quadra Thru (4 port MIDI splitter).

I think the last thing to complete things will be a dedicated game port card. Other than that, I'm quite pleased with this current setup.

The real star here though, must be the boxed Arena DELUXE edition on the top shelf there ! 😍🤩😎
(how, when, how much ?😲 )

I opened the dust flap of a 3.5" and saw some dust. I then tried to blow it out with my breath, and ended up spitting on it instead.

Yes, I consider this to be a genuine retro activity.

appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-15, 06:12:

Oh wow, cool! Is there a project page for this?

As well as for Bancho.

Sadly no, there is no project page. This is just a homebrew "spin-off" from Terratec SOWT-11 repair. I designed (rev. engineered) a clone from it with minor differences. I'm working on a new design with 32Mbit sample ROM and effects processor.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2022-11-15, 02:37:

The wooden keyboard ergo riser looks nice but how is it in use? Looks kinda hard if the angle's off.

It's quite comfortable. I find vintage keyboards otherwise too uncomfortable use to for extended periods without some sort of palm rest.

I had tried foam palm/wrist rests, but those didn't have good physical support and would get too warm over time. Then I found these wooden palm rests on Amazon and decided to try 'em. Turns out they work quite well! 😁

bestemor wrote on 2022-11-15, 09:57:

The real star here though, must be the boxed Arena DELUXE edition on the top shelf there ! 😍🤩😎
(how, when, how much ?😲 )

Heh, well spotted. 😉

That's my own original copy I bought decades ago. I don't remember what I paid but it would have been whatever the brand new price was back in the day.

It happens to be one of the few original boxed games I saved over the years (most of the other games shown are re-buys). In hindsight I really wish I'd kept more of my game boxes, but at least I kept my Bethesda games. Especially with the insane prices I've seen the Arena Deluxe Edition going for . 😳

Shponglefan wrote on 2022-11-15, 00:59:

More or less finished my Pentium 133 mid-90s gaming setup.

Added an A/V switcher which switches between my four MIDI audio sources. Currently using an MT-32, CM-32L, Yamaha MU2000 and internal daughtercard (Yucatan FX) on the MPU-401AT. All MIDI is routed via a MIDI Solutions Quadra Thru (4 port MIDI splitter).

I think the last thing to complete things will be a dedicated game port card. Other than that, I'm quite pleased with this current setup.

That's a sweet setup! I'm tempted everyday to build a 133mhz pentium system that I started out with back in the day.

What video card do you have installed?

I see you have a super nintendo lurking there, is it hooked up to that monitor somehow?

buckeye wrote on 2022-11-15, 14:35:

That's a sweet setup! I'm tempted everyday to build a 133mhz pentium system that I started out with back in the day.

What video card do you have installed?

I see you have a super nintendo lurking there, is it hooked up to that monitor somehow?

Thanks!

Video card is a Diamond Stealth64 2001 with an S3 Trio64V+ chip.

The SNES is hooked up to a Commodore 1702 monitor, along with an NES via a 2-port AV switch. It's part of my retro gaming/computing setup I've been working on over the past few months.

I was one of the lucky 500 people that got an invite code for Insignia (the Xbox Live revival project for the original Xbox) and played a bit of Midtown Madness 3 against random people from the internet.

This was so much fun. I hope they'll make the service public for everyone soon.

schmatzler wrote on 2022-11-16, 01:25:

I was one of the lucky 500 people that got an invite code for Insignia (the Xbox Live revival project for the original Xbox) and played a bit of Midtown Madness 3 against random people from the internet.

This was so much fun. I hope they'll make the service public for everyone soon.

seeing setups like these makes me want to open my sealed NOS Amiga 1080 monitor and break out the NES for some good old CRT gaming.

I was fooling around with my new MT32. Then I went to insert a CD and discovered my CD-ROM on my Pentium 1 box is waving the white flag and won't eject any more, so my retro activity became attempting to yank it out, only to discover I'll have to remove the FDD and HDD to be able to remove a screw someone put in an unreachable location. Ran out of time to mess with it. So, ultimately, my retro activity was banging my head on my desk repeatedly.

Replaced Sound Blaster Audigy 2 with a Sound Blaster Live! on my Win98SE rig during the weekend. I had some frustrating issues with the Audigy 2 from the start, most annoying being its tendency to reset all of its settings randomly. Got pretty tiring having to wonder am I going to have to set volume levels again at every boot/reboot, even though it only happened at every 10 boots or so. In addition it made turning off the PC extremely unstable, blue screens were not uncommon and therefore neither were disk checks during boot.

With Sound Blaster Live! SB0060 everything just works, no issues whatsoever (knocking on wood) Using the system got about ten times more pleasing by "downgrading" it. Though it seems it has the same issue as Audigy 2 did, which is very noisy analog CD audio but that you can eliminate by muting it and using SPDIF digital audio. As for line out noise level I was expecting it to have some noise but to my surprise after muting CD audio I cannot hear any hiss. I am using open headphones so I cannot say with 100% certainty there isn't any hiss but I sure can't hear any over the quite low noise PC and I have a good hearing.

Also got these odd faint beeps when playing specific DOS games that fade out after a minute or two I thought were caused by the motherboard which I bought as recapped or by Orpheus sound card, but that issue also disappeared after tossing the Audigy 2. I had both sound cards connected at the same time with a Y splitter cable, but it never occurred to me that Audigy 2 could cause something like that in DOS. I wonder was there some compatibility issue with the Audigy 2 and my motherboard or is there something wrong with the card, I better test it on another system beforehand if I decide to sell it.

Hardware testing done, Dallas RTC modded, so I started to build my Pentium Overdrive system in an absolutely huge tower case.

Been a while since I built anything of this era, I was quickly reminded how sharp the steel can be in these cases 😁

One plaster later and the motherboard and cards are installed. Knocked out the blanks for the serial ports and screwed them to the case.

DeathRabbit679 wrote on 2022-11-16, 06:21:

I was fooling around with my new MT32. Then I went to insert a CD and discovered my CD-ROM on my Pentium 1 box is waving the white flag and won't eject any more, so my retro activity became attempting to yank it out, only to discover I'll have to remove the FDD and HDD to be able to remove a screw someone put in an unreachable location. Ran out of time to mess with it. So, ultimately, my retro activity was banging my head on my desk repeatedly.

Ouch, yeah actually using retro stuff can end up that way pretty often. I always end up finding new faults on my laptops when I start using them properly. Hopefully it should be relatively easy to replace the drive eject belt on your CD drive or you've got a spare?

I've had a PC Chips M919 sitting on my 'this needs testing' pile and finally got around to it. The two NPN transistors that make up the motherboards voltage regulator circuitry had holes burnt out in them - this board came to me in a junk lot and I'm guessing the CPU got put in backwards. Testing them somehow one of them still worked? But the other one had a gain of 10 instead of 280 so it's no good anymore.

The heatsinks were gone too so I had to improvise. From the good M919 board I have, I can tell the M919 uses either Toshiba 2SC3420 or NEC 2SD1691 which are BJT NPN transistors. I've used NEC D1691-Y transistors from China and while testing I found one of them was literally backwards? Instead of being ECB with the writing on the front, it was BCE with the writing on the front. I'm wondering if they're fakes or re-marked parts but they were cheap enough and I only needed 2 so it's fine.

It worked and didn't catch fire, but on starting the motherboard just gave code E1 or E2 which for an AMI win bios is not a valid code. Better than "--" codes at least.
Initially I was running the 5x86 133 without a heatsink and it was pretty hot so I jammed this big old Zalman fan on there, which is working great, now it's running stone cold. It's so heavy that it's not going anywhere.

Something notable about these PC Chips boards is that they use 1.2mm pcb thickness instead of 1.6mm and this means they're kinda flexy - there was a visible bend in the top corner of the motherboard with the fake cache chips and the UM8881F chip. The cache chips had some clearly loose pins so I squished the UM8881F chip onto the board with my hand and powered it then it started up.
To fix that I resoldered the UM8881F's pins and now it's working pretty well, even working with the cache stick I've got for the M919: