Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-03-21, 04:25:

The part code of "03H4939" is a good clue that it's IBM, they almost always used 2 numbers, one letter then 4 numbers for things like FRUs and part numbers.

Yah just finding that 9314 is a well known Plant code, even if nobody is exactly sure what it means, Made in NY or VT maybe, though I wonder too with 93 being Canada, whether they were diffused in Eastern US then packaged in the Canadian Bromont facility. https://ardent-tool.com/misc/Plant_Codes.html … ated%20circuits.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-03-21, 04:25:

However looking at the pictures, the outcome looks wonderful. It'd be nice if there was some way to replace the original AG coating, but in a room without other significant light sources, that should look fantastic. Perhaps even better than it did originally 😀

I am looking at options for applying an anti-glare / tinted film to the screen. In the mean time, it does look quite nice and when used in a room without any major backlighting, looks much better than it did.

I wanted to try this Paradise Hi-Res graphic card but I couldn't even make one step.

Is there some sort of way to test a CGA card without a compatible monitor? I have an OSSC if it can help.

Found some resolve to look at the Voodoo2 I had for a year in my to-repair bin. Symptoms, the companion card's images passes through, but the OS doesn't pick it up as new device. I decided to take it to work, since we have better equipment there and checked out under a magnifying glass, since pin-1 on the frame buffer chip seemed to be bent and maybe shorted to pin-2. It turned out the card must have taken a hit on that corner, since from pin-1 to pin-9 with the exception of pin-8 had come loose from the PCB as well as the pins from pin-241 to pin-256 on the other edge of that corner.

I soldered them back and after came home and gave a quick check.

Now the OS picks it up as new hardware and the drivers install without issues.

I am so happy about this.

Today I opened up the Dell DL-1428 monitor that came with the boxed Dell Exclaim 486/50 PC I bought recently (from 1994). The monitor works beautifully but was having a very faint periodic blip where the screen would dim very briefly. It wasn't noticeable at max brightness and contrast (which looks phenomenal on this old screen), but with the contrast turned down even a little the dip in brightness every few seconds was noticeable.

Anyway, I opened up the monitor and was amazed not only at how clean everything was inside, but at how accessible and easy to work on it is.

After looking around for anything that looked off I actually spotted a single 25v 100uf cap that had a lot of dark soot under and near it on the PCB, like it had blown and vented out the bottom or something.

Nothing else on the board looked like this, so I pulled the cap, cleaned the soot from the PCB, and soldered in a brand new KEMET 25v 100uf cap. I am very pleased to say that I cannot get this thing to flicker now! Unless this is just a fluke... it seems like the only problem with this thing is now fixed. The computer itself runs flawlessly, and only needs a new battery at this point (it uses an external battery on a wire thankfully). I think the only quirk about the whole machine now is that the hard drive squeaks a bit while it's running, but that's only a minor annoyance and may actually go away with time. The thing likely sat unpowered for the past 26 years based on the latest dates of the files on the hard drive.

Last week I opened up the power supply and found a couple broken solder joints on the PCB, so I fixed those. Everything else in there looked great as well.

I am going to continue tinkering with this Dell and seeing what I can do with it but due to my limited space I will likely move this on to someone else once I'm done cleaning, refurbishing and playing with it. These seem ridiculously rare now and this one has been upgraded with a Media Vision PAS16 multimedia kit, complete with CD-ROM and Labtec speakers, and it came with the goofy multimedia demo software installed too.

mrfusion92 wrote on 2023-03-21, 12:16:

I wanted to try this Paradise Hi-Res graphic card but I couldn't even make one step.

Is there some sort of way to test a CGA card without a compatible monitor? I have an OSSC if it can help.

If you have a TV or video monitor with a lot of vertical hold adjustment, you might get monochrome output on it with hacks similar to this.. Re: HOMEDADE CGA but it's not so easy outside of NTSC using countries.

RandomStranger wrote on 2023-03-21, 15:42:

Found some resolve to look at the Voodoo2 I had for a year in my to-repair bin. Symptoms, the companion card's images passes thr […]
Show full quote

Found some resolve to look at the Voodoo2 I had for a year in my to-repair bin. Symptoms, the companion card's images passes through, but the OS doesn't pick it up as new device. I decided to take it to work, since we have better equipment there and checked out under a magnifying glass, since pin-1 on the frame buffer chip seemed to be bent and maybe shorted to pin-2. It turned out the card must have taken a hit on that corner, since from pin-1 to pin-9 with the exception of pin-8 had come loose from the PCB as well as the pins from pin-241 to pin-256 on the other edge of that corner.
IMG_20230321_071409.jpg
I soldered them back and after came home and gave a quick check.
IMG_20230321_161540.jpg
Now the OS picks it up as new hardware and the drivers install without issues.

that was a good spot and must be satisfying that a relatively straightforward fix has returned to card to use 😀

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-21, 01:01:

Spent the past couple evenings removing the anti-glare coating on this 17" Sony monitor. […]
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Spent the past couple evenings removing the anti-glare coating on this 17" Sony monitor.

The original coating was partially coming off and as a result the display looked really uneven and spotty when using. The before photo doesn't quite show how bad it was; it a fair bit worse in person.

It took several hours to remove the coating doing everything by hand.

IPA did most of the work, but there were some really stubborn areas left. I used some plastic scratch remover which I figured would be okay to use on glass, since I hoped it wouldn't scratch the glass itself.

The result is better than I expected. While it is super reflective now, it's a lot brighter and clearer than it was previously.

i must do EXACTLY THE SAME in the "close" to same model (mine can be made first), can you explain me how to do achieve this result? tnks a lot!

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-03-21, 21:03:

i must do EXACTLY THE SAME in the "close" to same model (mine can be made first), can you explain me how to do achieve this result? tnks a lot!

I used isopropyl alcohol with paper towels to remove most of the coating. Then I used Novus Plastic Polish (heavy scratch remover) to remove the remaining coating that wouldn't come off from just the alcohol.

I did everything by hand. It took several hours of careful polishing to remove all of it.

Been scraping the junkboxes for a spare switch, to quote the great Captain Mal Reynolds: "Mal: It’s a nothing part ’til you don’t got one. "

Yah those 4 AC push switches and 4 AC Rockers that came in yesterday are of course not the right type for what I need now. (latching small DC on/off for turbo)

Edit: Dang the more I look through things the more jobs I give myself, now I've gathered a herd of meece that need cleaning up and checking out. MS serial/bus mouse, MS wheelmouse optical USB/PS/2 and MS Intellimouse Explorer USB/PS/2 ...

Got hold of this brand new Force 3D joystick and tested some games in Windows 98 like Crimson Skies, Total Air War, Mechwarrior 4. Never used force feedback joystick before and its pretty damn fun!

Nothing too exciting today, just updated the BIOS on my Intel SE440BX-2 slot 1 system and upgraded the processor from a Pentium II 350 to a Pentium III 600, which I believe due to being an early revision board is the fastest processor it will support. I've also installed a Diamond Viper V770 video card, and once I decide which sound card to put in it (have several to choose from), it'll be complete and ready for fun time!

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-20, 22:15:

Here is an example of the info card I attach. The information is different depending on ISA/PCI/AGP and sound/video/etc. I try to include as much information as possible. All of my CPUs are sorted and labeled as well.

20230320_181411.jpg

Nice, but that's an AWE64 gold, not a Soundblaster 16 Gold? Or do you name it by its "class" and use the CTxxxx number to distinguish them?

You're right. That's actually a terrible example! I opened the first bin I could find and that was the card on top. It should read "Sound Blaster AWE64 Gold" instead. This is probably a copy/paste error.

My collection has outpaced my cataloging, but this is what it looks like for how I store my cards. Notice that each card has a custom fit anti-static bag with the rear bracket exposed. This allows a higher density of storage with less wasted space, as well as a greater ease of identification, to see what physical ports are available. However, it is very time consuming to customize each bag. Having the card labeled on the bag itself also helps me reunite them later, and also provides an indication in the storage bin of what cards I own that are in use elsewhere.

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-21, 22:22:

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-03-21, 21:03:

i must do EXACTLY THE SAME in the "close" to same model (mine can be made first), can you explain me how to do achieve this result? tnks a lot!

I used isopropyl alcohol with paper towels to remove most of the coating. Then I used Novus Plastic Polish (heavy scratch remover) to remove the remaining coating that wouldn't come off from just the alcohol.

I did everything by hand. It took several hours of careful polishing to remove all of it.

but the abrasive paste not scratch the monitor glass????

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-03-22, 13:18:

Shponglefan wrote on 2023-03-21, 22:22:

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-03-21, 21:03:

i must do EXACTLY THE SAME in the "close" to same model (mine can be made first), can you explain me how to do achieve this result? tnks a lot!

I used isopropyl alcohol with paper towels to remove most of the coating. Then I used Novus Plastic Polish (heavy scratch remover) to remove the remaining coating that wouldn't come off from just the alcohol.

I did everything by hand. It took several hours of careful polishing to remove all of it.

but the abrasive paste not scratch the monitor glass????

I doubt plastic polish would have any scratching effect on CRT glass, its not ordinary glass so it doesn't scratch that easily, it would destroy the coating though.

AlessandroB wrote on 2023-03-22, 13:18:

but the abrasive paste not scratch the monitor glass????

No, it doesn't. It's a polish designed for plastics which are much softer than glass.

The glass was fine.

Dry baking soda is probably soft enough not to damage the glass, unless you put it through a sandblaster and keep it pointed at one spot for a long time.

Somehow, in my random intertube peregrinations, I found myself reading a journal of the Buffalo Natural History Society from 1923 and from hints therein, discovered that multimedia presentations were happening 100 years ago, possibly in a format not all that different from modern TED and conference talks. In short, catalogs of photographic slides were available, which members could book out selections covering a subject, and along perhaps with relevant sounds recorded to gramophone platters, could give a talk/lecture to a group with projection of the slides. Take that powerpoint. So a fairly historic format for information presentation, even if we do it with different tech now.

That brought to mind a recent HAD article, where slides and computers collide! You might say the ultimate end of the road for slides as a presentation technology, taken to their limit, with the struggling assistance of early digital computers, short on speed and computational ability, thus a bit limited for real time graphics then. https://hackaday.com/2023/03/15/retrotechtacu … s-in-the-1960s/ You could say that is where the torch was passed, old school multimedia, in the transition to digital multimedia ... co-inkli-dinlkley as bugs would say, about halfway back to 1923, ~50 years ago.

Just think about where it all came from when you're tinkering with your "modern" MPC2 box 🤣

I got few ram sticks for my IBM PS/2 model 35sx project and decided to try them out. One 4MB wasn't apparently of correct type, it didn't pass the check correctly and with setup diskette it at one point thought it was 8MB, but one 8MB and one 4MB worked without a hitch so I now have 14MB, 2MB shy of the maximum. 14MB is completely overkill already, so no harm done.

But damn that memory check at the power on now takes time. It was slow with 4MB, but now it is ridicilously slow: it takes about 1 minute before that bad boy gets to even thinking about booting 🤣