VOGONS


Reply 23840 of 27170, by BitWrangler

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Anonymous Coward wrote on 2023-03-01, 05:58:

My good friend got a Patriot computer for Christmas '94. I can't remember the exact price paid, but definitely under $1000 for a setup that included a 14" "MegaImage" monitor.
It was a 50MHz Leopard/Opal LX board with Trident 9000i and winbond I/O. It was housed in a nice Enlight minitower case. Very good value for the money! I didn't know that Patriot had better equipped systems with the IBM BL chips, nor that they had anything to do with those crappy hotwheels PCs. Do you have any links to the story about their PSU supplier? I'm sure even if it hadn't been that, they would have folded anyway like everybody else.

Not really got specific details, https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/news-not-goo … tomers-1.266989

In 2000 they were knocking out the Hotwheels/Barbie box with large software bundle for $699 with cel 500/64MB win98, Gateways business basic had 400/32 for $779, but Tiger Direct had a noname K6-2/500 64, and MicroWarehouse a Presario K6-2/500 for just under $700 so while it was a sucktastic spec from a high end/gamer POV it was a competitively value priced system.

They were direct sales and had limited retail partnerships with Staples etc for some ranges and there's very little info around, that Hotwheels/Barbie thing being a search black hole which sucks up all more nuanced attempts.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 23841 of 27170, by Brawndo

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Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

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Reply 23842 of 27170, by Veeb0rg

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Brawndo wrote on 2023-03-02, 05:43:
Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment […]
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Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

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While the psu works, I'd check voltages at the pins and make note. You can always make an adapter if the PSU dies and having the pinout for the voltages will make it easier to do.

Reply 23843 of 27170, by Ozzuneoj

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Veeb0rg wrote on 2023-03-02, 06:04:
Brawndo wrote on 2023-03-02, 05:43:
Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment […]
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Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

20230301-221734.jpg

While the psu works, I'd check voltages at the pins and make note. You can always make an adapter if the PSU dies and having the pinout for the voltages will make it easier to do.

Wow, that's a fantastic idea. I never would have thought to do that on systems with proprietary power supplies, but it seems so obvious now that you mention it. Hopefully I remember to do this if the need ever arises.

Now for some blitting from the back buffer.

Reply 23844 of 27170, by Brawndo

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Veeb0rg wrote on 2023-03-02, 06:04:
Brawndo wrote on 2023-03-02, 05:43:
Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment […]
Show full quote

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

20230301-221734.jpg

While the psu works, I'd check voltages at the pins and make note. You can always make an adapter if the PSU dies and having the pinout for the voltages will make it easier to do.

Yeah that's a good idea. I was already thinking about that, since all PCs use the same voltages, it would be easy enough to adapt another PSU of needed, and I would probably just cut off the proprietary connector with the wires and splic them into another PSU.

Reply 23845 of 27170, by BitWrangler

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Can also maybe get the new PSU inside the old PSU shell if it bolts up weird, but any particularly tiny, thin stick or pretzel form factors may be hard for that. HP however generally had reliable PSUs but you never know where you are on the death clock countdown with old stuff.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 23846 of 27170, by Kahenraz

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I always do a visual inspection of old power supply capacitors. They tend to be old, abused, and stuck in hot about environments. It's usually a good idea to open them up anyways, just to get some compressed air into them for cleaning.

Reply 23847 of 27170, by Brawndo

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Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-02, 17:32:

I always do a visual inspection of old power supply capacitors. They tend to be old, abused, and stuck in hot about environments. It's usually a good idea to open them up anyways, just to get some compressed air into them for cleaning.

Yes, a thorough disassembly and cleaning of all components is next in the list, now that I've verified it's working. I always open up old power supplies and blow them out, or just replace them with a new unit.

Reply 23848 of 27170, by ODwilly

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Fiddled with the poor IBM Thinkpad 770. I dont want to completely go down the rabbit hole of upgrading it, but so far it has 288mb of ram (still has the 32 pc66 in the hidden slot with a 128mb 100 + 128mb 133mhz chugging at 66mhz). Def have a 256mb stick somewhere and a 512mb 16 chip stick handy that would be neat to get working in it, but no luck with the factory 32mb stick still installed.

Loose keyboard connector + trackpoint error, but after forcing it to boot, and a scrub it looks mighty regal.

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Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 23849 of 27170, by ODwilly

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Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-02, 17:32:

I always do a visual inspection of old power supply capacitors. They tend to be old, abused, and stuck in hot about environments. It's usually a good idea to open them up anyways, just to get some compressed air into them for cleaning.

To back this up while fiddling with the 770 I found a half decent Geforce 2 MX 200. It still posts, but the old bad series Teapos on that GPU are now burst. While 2 years ago before being put away it fully worked, and was my go test card for older AGP motherboards.

Main pc: Asus ROG 17. R9 5900HX, RTX 3070m, 16gb ddr4 3200, 1tb NVME.
Retro PC: Soyo P4S Dragon, 3gb ddr 266, 120gb Maxtor, Geforce Fx 5950 Ultra, SB Live! 5.1

Reply 23850 of 27170, by PD2JK

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I just installed a Matrox G450 in the dual themed rig.
It's more fitting than the Geforce256 which was overkill anyway... The G450 still is, but I wanted some good 2D quality and DualHead.

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i386 16 ⇒ i486 DX4 100 ⇒ Pentium MMX 200 ⇒ Athlon Orion 700 | TB 1000 ⇒ AthlonXP 1700+ ⇒ Opteron 165 ⇒ Dual Opteron 856

Reply 23851 of 27170, by Predator99

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IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

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Reply 23852 of 27170, by BitWrangler

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Doing battle with the Prince of Weird, that Patriot SL4100, got 08h code on the POST card thus far, think we're on the Phoenix code list because with no RAM I get the 1-3-1 beep code... https://www.rigacci.org/docs/biblio/online/fi … mware/beep3.htm ... not sure if I'm cleaning the socket well enough, damn thing seems delicate though, broke a clip on one of the others. Anyone in ontario got a deoxit tank i can boil the whole thing in? 🤣 Maybe gonna have to get a magnifying glass and a dental probe and clean it's teeth like I'm a dental hygienist.

Edit: So I drenched the think in straight IPA and scrubbed at it's teeth with a brush. Wanted to give it a while to dry, so grabbed a SFF Compaq Deskpro and fired it up..
After the HDD going clackaclack a few times while it was complaining options no set, no keyboard, etc and so forth I thought HDD was gonna be dead, but maybe that's the noise it made when it detects... because after connecting keyboard and reboot, say yah whatevs to setups and...
It boots into Win98... wooo
says no mouse, okay, have a *grab anything* mouse, old MS serial that's so yellow it's brown... detects..
poke around, nothing much on there apart from
Worms Armageddon, yisssssssssssssssss
Fire it up.
There's sound.
wat
There's sound
It's coming from the monitor.... NEC Multisync LED 17" it's got speakers, DVI and an audio jack, but I only have the VGA cable connected and
There's sound
This is a friggin' new one on me...
I am 90% sure it's coming from the monitor, but ima have to check now that the system unit hasn't got PC Speaker round back corner.

EditII: Okay false alarm, never attribute to the supernatural that which is easily explained by Compaq weirdness, apparently the Soundmax digital integrated audio is hooked up to the internal speaker also. Not FM/Midi, just digital playback. That speaker was pointed toward the monitor at the time, hence my confusion.

EditIII: Aww crap I broke it, or the HDD was iffy... Some crap proggy froze up on uninstall... waited ages... forced reboot, hung on the shutdown screen no disk activity... powered it off, next boot scandisk comes up, saying a FAT problem it can't fix, and now it can't get into winders... will try chkdisk on it after supper.

EditIV: BTW when that happened I was just planning on retiring the mouse I was using to keep the miles off it, turned it up and it said serial and mouse port mouse, and I thought wait a sec, I've got 4 ports for 1 other mouse, Ima see if there's an adapter for this one around. Got Logitech card and mouse, and MS card, ATI Graphics Ultra with mouse port and a AST 386 with a mouse port.

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Saw one of these a couple of weeks ago, didn't cross my mind at the time it was a mouse adapter, was thinking RS232 to Apple Serial port, derp.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 23853 of 27170, by HanJammer

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So yesterday I've been approached by my colleague at work who asked me if I can help her make some pretty old scientific program (FSSR-1D/2D spectrometer software) running on her modern notebook because she had some old laptop borrowed by somebody else but it wasn't possible to run it correctly (it was some old Toshiba with 32-bit XP and the software kind of work there but the graphics are glitchy).

So a 5 minute DOSbox deployment and voila - everything works beautifully 😁

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New items (October/November 2022) -> My Items for Sale
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Reply 23854 of 27170, by pentiumspeed

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Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-03, 21:24:
IBM 5170 board from scrap lot.. Bought these (retro) hardware today ...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs […]
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IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

IMG_1407r.jpg
20230303_221421.jpg
20230303_221444.jpg

Had one. Died when I tried to run at 10MHz. Leave it be. Or change CPU and clock generator when changing from 8MHz.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 23855 of 27170, by BitWrangler

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Houston, we have a solid confirm, Lighning is Blue, repeat, Lightning is Blue, over.

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Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 23856 of 27170, by RandomStranger

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Today was the first day of the local old junk market. This month it's extended to 2 days as part of a seasonal festival. It was very chilly and this first day wasn't all that good regarding vintage electronics and games. For PC hardware all I've seen was a generic networking card and a Creative AudioPCI. Though I found a guy selling some games. He said he only brought a sample to gauge interest and he said he'll bring the rest tomorrow. At other places I found AvP2 of which I already have 2 copies and Total Annihilation of which I already own one copy.

I also found a very tasteful bottle opener.

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And she was here too.

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I was criticized last time for not taking a photo.

This first day what I ended up buying was a The Planet of the Apes, hardcover and the Hair OST.

sreq.png retrogamer-s.png

Reply 23857 of 27170, by Predator99

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pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-03-04, 01:48:
Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-03, 21:24:
IBM 5170 board from scrap lot.. Bought these (retro) hardware today ...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs […]
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IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

IMG_1407r.jpg
20230303_221421.jpg
20230303_221444.jpg

Had one. Died when I tried to run at 10MHz. Leave it be. Or change CPU and clock generator when changing from 8MHz.

Cheers,

Why should one overclock a 286? If its too slow I take a faster PC. I didnt have a ceramic CPU in spare therefore I took this one.

Reply 23858 of 27170, by BitWrangler

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Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-04, 11:56:
pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-03-04, 01:48:
Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-03, 21:24:
IBM 5170 board from scrap lot.. Bought these (retro) hardware today ...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs […]
Show full quote

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

IMG_1407r.jpg
20230303_221421.jpg
20230303_221444.jpg

Had one. Died when I tried to run at 10MHz. Leave it be. Or change CPU and clock generator when changing from 8MHz.

Cheers,

Why should one overclock a 286? If its too slow I take a faster PC. I didnt have a ceramic CPU in spare therefore I took this one.

When it comes to 5170s I hate them being slower than TurboXTs so that would be my reason. Not sure what you got there though, 150ns RAM was for a 6Mhz I thought, but with a 16Mhz Xtal that's 8? Possibly you're getting lucky and the RAM runs at 8 until it gets too warm.

Unicorn herding operations are proceeding, but all the totes of hens teeth and barrels of rocking horse poop give them plenty of hiding spots.

Reply 23859 of 27170, by Shponglefan

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Started tearing down and repairing this 486 machine. The motherboard had one of those leaky barrel batteries.

Did a bit of cleanup and removal of the existing pins. Fortunately there doesn't appear to be too much damage beyond some surface corrosion directly under the battery.

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Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
486 DX4-100 with 6 sound cards
486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards