Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-10, 10:57:

Wow, cool! I'm about 3 1/2 hours drive from there, one way... would you say is enough of a gold mine to be worth the drive? Or is it one of those deals where they look everything up on eBay and charge you basically what you'd pay for things online?

It's not a retail store and they know the value.

They sell on ebay as biff_howard_tannen. Back to the future, as it were.

Still, it was cool to visit and see all the stuff.

douglar wrote on 2023-02-10, 18:08:

It's not a retail store and they know the value. […]
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Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-10, 10:57:

Wow, cool! I'm about 3 1/2 hours drive from there, one way... would you say is enough of a gold mine to be worth the drive? Or is it one of those deals where they look everything up on eBay and charge you basically what you'd pay for things online?

It's not a retail store and they know the value.

They sell on ebay as biff_howard_tannen. Back to the future, as it were.

Still, it was cool to visit and see all the stuff.

Ah, I see. Well, good for them that they can support having an actual shop in this business. Very cool. 😀

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-02-09, 20:36:

Some motherboards apparently don't like SATA to IDE adapters which use the JMicron chip. You might have better luck with an adap […]
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RandomStranger wrote on 2023-02-09, 20:29:

Well, I thought I at least try and install W98SE, but it has been nothing but trouble so far. The BIOS detects the drive, but W98 installer says it has bad sectors. Reformatting using XFDISK, Partition Magic, or more modern versions of Windows were a failure. W2k can delete and create new partitions, but fails when it tries to format them.

Some motherboards apparently don't like SATA to IDE adapters which use the JMicron chip. You might have better luck with an adapter which uses the Marvell chip, but those tend to be more expensive.

Is there a specific BIOS setting that these adapters need, or my motherboard just happens to be allergic to something?

Sometimes, setting the "IDE HDD Block Mode" to "Disabled" in the BIOS can help. But if your motherboard doesn't like JMicron chips, it probably won't do that much.

At last I was able to make it work. It was really picky about how the drive is formatted. The setup wouldn't run properly if

1. the drive was formatted in a different PC.
2. the drive was formatted by a different software and OS other than the Windows 98 boot floppy

Yesterday I tried making partitions with XFDISK, Partition Magic, Windows 2000 install CD, Windows XP install CD, Ubuntu Server 12.04, with my XP PC, my daily driver on Mint 20. Everything except the boot floppy itself, because some people advised to partition the drive on a modern OS (though most of these are probably also too old). Either the partition wasn't recognized, the setup crashed, or it wouldn't even start becasue of some LBA error.

Today at first I made an 80GB partition in XFDISK and formatted it to FAT32. Then booted up the floppy and the partition was noticed, but not recognized. As a last effort before replacing the SSD with an 80GB IDE hard drive I had laying around, I just formatted from DOS then copied over the contents of the W98 CD and gave it a last shot and went through like a breeze. Then I created a new partition from the remaining 40GB unallocated space.

Now Windows is up, drivers are up and everything seems to be working at the moment.

douglar wrote on 2023-02-10, 18:08:

It's not a retail store and they know the value. […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-10, 10:57:

Wow, cool! I'm about 3 1/2 hours drive from there, one way... would you say is enough of a gold mine to be worth the drive? Or is it one of those deals where they look everything up on eBay and charge you basically what you'd pay for things online?

It's not a retail store and they know the value.

They sell on ebay as biff_howard_tannen. Back to the future, as it were.

Still, it was cool to visit and see all the stuff.

Interesting, thanks. ... Looking them up there, prices aren't "whack", seem reasonable, like if you wanna grind for months you'd get stuff cheaper, but you could buy theirs now and not feel ripped off. Damn that Mitsuba Ninja is tempting, got a soft spot for "clamshells" and who doesn't want a ninja computer (unless you're a pirate) After all that well known computer periodical "The Washington Post" seems to gush about it... https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/busine … a-e79c2c83518c/
Also was a Packard Bell model PB286LP it seems.

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-10, 19:41:

douglar wrote on 2023-02-10, 18:08:

It's not a retail store and they know the value. […]
Show full quote

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-10, 10:57:

Wow, cool! I'm about 3 1/2 hours drive from there, one way... would you say is enough of a gold mine to be worth the drive? Or is it one of those deals where they look everything up on eBay and charge you basically what you'd pay for things online?

It's not a retail store and they know the value.

They sell on ebay as biff_howard_tannen. Back to the future, as it were.

Still, it was cool to visit and see all the stuff.

Interesting, thanks. ... Looking them up there, prices aren't "whack", seem reasonable, like if you wanna grind for months you'd get stuff cheaper, but you could buy theirs now and not feel ripped off. Damn that Mitsuba Ninja is tempting, got a soft spot for "clamshells" and who doesn't want a ninja computer (unless you're a pirate) After all that well known computer periodical "The Washington Post" seems to gush about it... https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/busine … a-e79c2c83518c/
Also was a Packard Bell model PB286LP it seems.

Wow, you're right. The prices aren't bad at all, especially since most of them have free shipping. I see a 17" Gateway CRT for $150 with free shipping. Yeah, it's a 24 year old Gateway monitor... but the shipping alone will cost about half of that to a lot of places in the US.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2023-02-10, 20:31:

BitWrangler wrote on 2023-02-10, 19:41:

douglar wrote on 2023-02-10, 18:08:

It's not a retail store and they know the value.

They sell on ebay as biff_howard_tannen. Back to the future, as it were.

Still, it was cool to visit and see all the stuff.

Interesting, thanks. ... Looking them up there, prices aren't "whack", seem reasonable, like if you wanna grind for months you'd get stuff cheaper, but you could buy theirs now and not feel ripped off. Damn that Mitsuba Ninja is tempting, got a soft spot for "clamshells" and who doesn't want a ninja computer (unless you're a pirate) After all that well known computer periodical "The Washington Post" seems to gush about it... https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/busine … a-e79c2c83518c/
Also was a Packard Bell model PB286LP it seems.

Wow, you're right. The prices aren't bad at all, especially since most of them have free shipping. I see a 17" Gateway CRT for $150 with free shipping. Yeah, it's a 24 year old Gateway monitor... but the shipping alone will cost about half of that to a lot of places in the US.

biff_howard_tannen is a legendary eBay store. Really decent prices and they list cool stuff all the time

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2023-02-09, 20:36:

Some motherboards apparently don't like SATA to IDE adapters which use the JMicron chip. You might have better luck with an adapter which uses the Marvell chip, but those tend to be more expensive.

I can confirm strange issues with the cheap adapters from eBay with some motherboards. I also have a few Marvell adapters to use as needed.

I try to use CompactFlash cards when I can to avoid the interface translation altogether, when possible.

Finished part 2 of my Toshiba s1800 video:

https://youtu.be/2Xt8Ay2KcXg

Zeerex wrote on 2023-02-10, 23:03:

biff_howard_tannen is a legendary eBay store. Really decent prices and they list cool stuff all the time

They also do TV & Movie sets, like if you want to have a 193 office scene with period correct computers, they will set it up for you.

Replaced some capacitors on this SOYO SY-5EMA+ V1.0 motherboard.

In initial testing I couldn't get it to POST. One of the 1000 uF caps was budging so decided to de-solder and replace all the 1000uF caps.

After testing them it turns out only the one cap was bad. Oh well, no harm in replacing all them I suppose. At least they now match the other caps on the board. 😁

Not sure if this fixed the issue, but we'll see once I get around to testing the board again.

edited to add:

Didn't fix the problem. Still won't POST. It's getting power, fans spin and various components (including the CPU) get warm. But no POST, no beeps.

Back to the drawing board.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-12, 00:21:

Replaced some capacitors on this SOYO SY-5EMA+ V1.0 motherboard. […]
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Replaced some capacitors on this SOYO SY-5EMA+ V1.0 motherboard.

In initial testing I couldn't get it to POST. One of the 1000 uF caps was budging so decided to de-solder and replace all the 1000uF caps.

After testing them it turns out only the one cap was bad. Oh well, no harm in replacing all them I suppose. At least they now match the other caps on the board. 😁

Not sure if this fixed the issue, but we'll see once I get around to testing the board again.

edited to add:

Didn't fix the problem. Still won't POST. It's getting power, fans spin and various components (including the CPU) get warm. But no POST, no beeps.

Back to the drawing board.

If I need to have something steady I have to literally tape it to my table.
Guess I'm on the cheap amateur bench. 🤣

Nexxen wrote on 2023-02-12, 01:42:

If I need to have something steady I have to literally tape it to my table.
Guess I'm on the cheap amateur bench. 🤣

Honestly that board holder is one of the most useful pieces of equipment I have. Makes soldering and desoldering soooo much easier. 😁

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-02-12, 01:47:

Nexxen wrote on 2023-02-12, 01:42:

If I need to have something steady I have to literally tape it to my table.
Guess I'm on the cheap amateur bench. 🤣

Honestly that board holder is one of the most useful pieces of equipment I have. Makes soldering and desoldering soooo much easier. 😁

It is pretty neat. I want one now...

Ug, since I got the Sony Vaio laptops up and running I've been on a drive to get as many as possible up and running since I've now got a few too many. I'm running out of good hard drives.

Then I got a Toshiba 470CDT and found out the hard way that the caddy is there for a reason. I put in a hard drive just kind of eyeballing it into the port without the caddy thinking it would be okay - but the drive was shifted up a row and now that drive is stone-dead. The laptop's okay and the drive was worthless with bad sectors, but it reminded me that caddies are important.
Couldn't see a way to get the hard drive swapped to a CF card since the caddy is required to push the IDE pins into the connector. So today I've been designing up various CF to 2.5" form factor adapters using an IBM hard drive datasheet as a reference.

It fits in really well to the 470CDT, I'll probably share the design soon so anyone can print them as needed. It works a lot better than foam tape:

I wanted one that's 8mm so it can fit the Libretto as well since it's hard to use CF cards in those too, then went and made a few more types refining the design each time. The little half length one seems to fit well, a couple of little minor mistakes but good enough.
Now I want one that fits mSATA and the little SD to IDE adapter.

edit: oh yeah, and figured out how to restore a Toshiba Satellite 445CDT recovery CD onto the 470CDT bypassing the machine checks for the recovery CDs with passworded ZIP files 😀 Then figured out how to restore images from the later recovery CDs with filenames like: L110ENC1.W98
I found out I've got two unique recovery CDs for the Libretto 110CT that let you choose whether to install Windows 95 or Windows 98 (1st ed) on initial startup. I don't know how they're really supposed to work since they're missing the floppy disk and the libretto can't use a CD-ROM drive so easily in DOS? I made VHDX copies of the installs if anyone wants them.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-02-12, 01:58:

Ug, since I got the Sony Vaio laptops up and running I've been on a drive to get as many as possible up and running since I've n […]
Show full quote

Ug, since I got the Sony Vaio laptops up and running I've been on a drive to get as many as possible up and running since I've now got a few too many. I'm running out of good hard drives.

Then I got a Toshiba 470CDT and found out the hard way that the caddy is there for a reason. I put in a hard drive just kind of eyeballing it into the port without the caddy thinking it would be okay - but the drive was shifted up a row and now that drive is stone-dead. The laptop's okay and the drive was worthless with bad sectors, but it reminded me that caddies are important.
Couldn't see a way to get the hard drive swapped to a CF card since the caddy is required to push the IDE pins into the connector. So today I've been designing up various CF to 2.5" form factor adapters using an IBM hard drive datasheet as a reference.
djsa-220-dimensions.png

It fits in really well to the 470CDT, I'll probably share the design soon so anyone can print them as needed. It works a lot better than foam tape:
CF Adapter Adapters.JPG

I wanted one that's 8mm so it can fit the Libretto as well since it's hard to use CF cards in those too, then went and made a few more types refining the design each time. The little half length one seems to fit well, a couple of little minor mistakes but good enough.
Now I want one that fits mSATA and the little SD to IDE adapter.

edit: oh yeah, and figured out how to restore a Toshiba Satellite 445CDT recovery CD onto the 470CDT bypassing the machine checks for the recovery CDs with passworded ZIP files 😀 Then figured out how to restore images from the later recovery CDs with filenames like: L110ENC1.W98
I found out I've got two unique recovery CDs for the Libretto 110CT that let you choose whether to install Windows 95 or Windows 98 (1st ed) on initial startup. I don't know how they're really supposed to work since they're missing the floppy disk and the libretto can't use a CD-ROM drive so easily in DOS? I made VHDX copies of the installs if anyone wants them.

DIY top quality!

Man... 3d printers are so useful. I love mine.

My Prusa Mini never worked right and wasn't able to ever print parts at the correct dimensions. Or rather, the larger the print, the greater the percentage of error. I also had a serious belt failure in the original, as well as the replacement belt provided by Prusa. I've been very disappointed by it, and never got my money's worth.

Updated my MIDI setup today. Added bezels to my VFD spectrum analyzer. Updated MT32-pi firmware and added label over Motorola logo on my repurposed TV set-top box. Looks good enough for me to call it final.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-02-12, 01:58:

I don't know how they're really supposed to work since they're missing the floppy disk and the libretto can't use a CD-ROM drive so easily in DOS? I made VHDX copies of the installs if anyone wants them.

I was surprised to find my Satellite 440 could boot off CD. They must have been among first to do it.

edit: Oh should explain I saw Librettos coming with a backpack type CDROM in a couple of places, assuming that was original option.

In case anyone wa wondering, Backpack Bantum drives have DOS drivers, but are not bootable.