vutt wrote on 2024-07-06, 12:16:

I had facepalm moment today. My mini-TOSLINK cable arrived and it's not working. Of course it's not working since card has standard COAX output. I just need to use 3.5mm to RCA adapter. Somehow I convinced myself that it's mini-TOSLINK. Should have looked inside jack to check if red light is visible.

That's hilarious 😂.

I think your PS2 mouse is actually usb c by the way... 😉

I finished assembling the Game blaster clone created by @davidmorom . Well finished is probably not the right word. As you can see by the picture this is a parts bin special with wrong sized caps, a 7805 instead of a 78L05, diy resistor array, aux-connector with wrong footprint and a ISA bracket crudely carved from an old slot cover. I already have some parts on order but for now it sounds amazing!

I finally had to swap the Seasonic SS-650KM power supply for my Enermax ELT500AWT in my Socket A system. The Seasonic is rated at 25A on the 5+, and between overclocking the mobile CPU, the fans, and the 6800 Ultra, it was giving out under the load. Even after backing off the overclock, it would sometimes just beep rather than boot up. The Enermax is rated at 30A on the 5+, and is doing well. It's also nice that it's slightly physically smaller - the Seasonic is so large that, combined with a non removable brace in the case I'm using, and the CPU socket being located at the very top of the motherboard I would have to remove the fan from the heatsink and the heatsink itself when swapping the power supply. Now only the fan will have to be removed if I need to swap it again (hopefully I won't need to).

Ydee wrote on 2024-07-05, 07:59:

dominusprog wrote on 2024-06-25, 16:52:

Recap this Vibra 16 sound card.

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are you seeing any real improvement?

The right channel didn’t work before recapping.

Today I set about replacing a dead laser on my Panasonic 3DO FZ-10 console. The console was previously working fine, then I left it sitting unusued for a couple of months and right before I wanted to use it again - dead laser.

So the replacement arrived from Aliexpress today. I removed the ESD solder blob and fitted the new laser etc, but upon first test the laser wasn't even lighting up! After a bit of head scratching, I got out the multimeter and checked for continuity on the pins of the ribbon cable, only to discover 2 of them shorted together by a tiny strand of excess solder. I fixed this and the laser then lit up, so thankfully no harm done.

I then spent the next 4 hours tinkering and tweaking the potentiometer with the assistance of my multimeter. It would just about read pressed discs, but wouldn't entertain any CD-R or even lightly scratched pressed discs. Then after hours of trying to no avail, by pure chance I discovered that the metal plate above the laser assembly needs to be in place, with the case screwed back together, or it won't read discs properly - very stupid design!!!

As soon as I rectified that, I finally had a fully working console again. Hopefully this new laser lasts me quite a while. I think if it fails again in the future though, I'll probably just go down the ODE route.

PTherapist wrote on 2024-07-08, 20:05:

Today I set about replacing a dead laser on my Panasonic 3DO FZ-10 console. The console was previously working fine, then I lef […]
Show full quote

Today I set about replacing a dead laser on my Panasonic 3DO FZ-10 console. The console was previously working fine, then I left it sitting unusued for a couple of months and right before I wanted to use it again - dead laser.

So the replacement arrived from Aliexpress today. I removed the ESD solder blob and fitted the new laser etc, but upon first test the laser wasn't even lighting up! After a bit of head scratching, I got out the multimeter and checked for continuity on the pins of the ribbon cable, only to discover 2 of them shorted together by a tiny strand of excess solder. I fixed this and the laser then lit up, so thankfully no harm done.

I then spent the next 4 hours tinkering and tweaking the potentiometer with the assistance of my multimeter. It would just about read pressed discs, but wouldn't entertain any CD-R or even lightly scratched pressed discs. Then after hours of trying to no avail, by pure chance I discovered that the metal plate above the laser assembly needs to be in place, with the case screwed back together, or it won't read discs properly - very stupid design!!!

As soon as I rectified that, I finally had a fully working console again. Hopefully this new laser lasts me quite a while. I think if it fails again in the future though, I'll probably just go down the ODE route.

That seems to be the thing with stuff from aliexpress, they skip the QA step. This little USB-C power meter is really great but it was DoA and I got a refund for it, then I took it apart and eventually found that the OLED screen cable had a short underneath it, resoldering that has meant it now works but it was quite some effort to get this working

USB-C is so much fun to use, I can run laptops off of powerbanks and now I can meter the power usage 😀
It's great that you were able to get the CD drive reading again and without recalibrating it all?

This was over the weekend but I got a T4400C laptop which has some bad capacitors in the power board, it initially worked but then there were some power issues and a burning smell came from the back of it. Taking it apart I found that the Toshiba MK2124FC hard drive's EEPROM / firmware chip had a burn on the plastic label and it doesn't work at all now.
I had a matching drive in my spares bin from the Viglen Dossier 486 that I'm going to do a system specs post on soon - its original hard drive would not work and would just go 'klunck-ka-klunck-ka-klunck', the capacitors had corroded some stuff on the PCB but I thought it was a head crash. I put many hours of work into getting the Viglen Dossier to work with a CF card because it was limited to just a few drive types. Eventually I got that working but it's such a hassle to take the laptop apart that the original hard drive isn't going back in.

With both drives in a non-functional state I swapped the PCB from the burned EEPROM drive with the one that had capacitor corrosion and was able to make one good board. Using my bridge PC since my win10 pc can't read CHS disks, I was able to read data from both drives! The T4400C's drive I didn't care about since it was already reformatted to Windows 95 with DriveSpace / DoubleSpace and seemed to have some bad sectors.

But the drive from the Viglen Dossier 486 was able to be read so I could recover all its original utilities and the original specification document from 1993! It even sounds great so it should be re-used in something in future hopefully 😀
Like I said though, the original drive isn't going back into the laptop it came from - because you have to fully disassemble the screen to be able to replace the hard drive or BIOS battery in the laptop, such an awful design

Cleaning an old case. Although the formfactor is desktop, the size is more like a tower. Unfortunately the back of the computer had some water damage. will probably need to polish that. Just cleaning was not enough.

Aui wrote on 2024-07-09, 07:55:

Cleaning an old case. Although the formfactor is desktop, the size is more like a tower. Unfortunately the back of the computer had some water damage. will probably need to polish that. Just cleaning was not enough.

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Does it have a panel for the front?

Yes! Front panel is also cleaned right now. Motherboard is currently drying (from washing with soap and dishwasher 😉 ). The main problem (not visible in the image) is the backside. Slot brackets, connectors and the whole backside are corroded and partly rusty, as if the case was standing upside down in a wet place. I aim to remove the rust and repolish. The process is slow, but I will post again after it is comming together a bit more.

Picked up this from a Facebook posting. It's a Apple G3 iMac - Bondi Blue Rev b. Someone took the hdd out of it and kept the ide and hdd power cable. I've found the ide cable set for it on ebay but can't find the power cable in stock or listed. Its the trayload cable so its a bit harder to track down then the slot load. Anyone know what the connector type is? Maybe I could order the end I need off mouser or someplace and make the power cable.

Today I spent just a little too much time setting up the network card in my XT. Purely so that I could do this.

I can now browse a small amount of the internet using 4.7MHz of pure power.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2024-07-10, 08:29:

Picked up this from a Facebook posting. It's a Apple G3 iMac - Bondi Blue Rev b. Someone took the hdd out of it and kept the ide and hdd power cable. I've found the ide cable set for it on ebay but can't find the power cable in stock or listed. Its the trayload cable so its a bit harder to track down then the slot load. Anyone know what the connector type is? Maybe I could order the end I need off mouser or someplace and make the power cable.

I would make a thread over on 68kmla, there might be someone on there who knows exactly what you're looking for.

BetaC wrote on 2024-07-11, 07:44:

Today I spent just a little too much time setting up the network card in my XT. Purely so that I could do this. […]
Show full quote

Today I spent just a little too much time setting up the network card in my XT. Purely so that I could do this.

The attachment IMG_3624.jpg is no longer available

I can now browse a small amount of the internet using 4.7MHz of pure power.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2024-07-10, 08:29:

Picked up this from a Facebook posting. It's a Apple G3 iMac - Bondi Blue Rev b. Someone took the hdd out of it and kept the ide and hdd power cable. I've found the ide cable set for it on ebay but can't find the power cable in stock or listed. Its the trayload cable so its a bit harder to track down then the slot load. Anyone know what the connector type is? Maybe I could order the end I need off mouser or someplace and make the power cable.

I would make a thread over on 68kmla, there might be someone on there who knows exactly what you're looking for.

Ironically a bit after posting this I found a listing on ebay that has all the internal cables for a g3 trayloader for $12 shipped. They'll be here friday.

Mowed the lawn with a real reaper.
Does that count as a retro activity?
It sure does fit under "general old hardware". 😁 😁

Repo Man11 wrote on 2024-07-07, 18:12:

I finally had to swap the Seasonic SS-650KM power supply for my Enermax ELT500AWT in my Socket A system. The Seasonic is rated at 25A on the 5+, and between overclocking the mobile CPU, the fans, and the 6800 Ultra, it was giving out under the load. Even after backing off the overclock, it would sometimes just beep rather than boot up. The Enermax is rated at 30A on the 5+, and is doing well.

The 6800 series cards draw power from 12V and 3.3V rails (12V for GPU and 3.3V for RAM), so that 25 Amp 5V rail should be plenty for just about any single-socket 462 platform.
How are the caps in the Seasonic PSU? Any obscure brands that might need replacing? I'm not too familiar with retail Seasonic PSUs. All I know is, the older Antec PSUs that were based on the S12II platform all needed a recap (typically the OST RLX on the 12V rail went bad.)
Enermax also didn't always use quality caps in their PSUs, so that one might be worth a check too.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-06-23, 16:49:

Because I picked up yet another Radeon 2600pro in a box of stuff last week, and got the 2400pro PCI earlier this year, I was doing some investigation of the performance envelope of these cards... ... ... they don't got one.

Indeed these are relatively low performing video cards. However, a lot of it also depends on how you configure your games.
Due to having 4 ROPs only, these cards are just not made to handle any large resolutions in gaming, even in older games. 1024x768 is about as good as you'll get while maintaining (roughly) somewhat OK FPS... well, namely the HD2600. The HD2400 is further limited by a 64-bit memory bus, so it will also struggle under certain memory-intensive 3D loads regardless of the resolution.

I don't have an HD2600, but I do have several 2400 XTs, all in PCI-E flavor (and one in AGP, though I haven't tested that one too much yet.) In my experience testing various games, the HD2400 (XT) PCI-E is more or less on par with the 8400 GS. In some cases, it's better due to having more shaders, and in others, it performs worse. The 8500 GT is much better than both of these due to having 8 ROPs and 128-bit mem bus. I imagine it should be much better than the HD2600 as well, except for cases that require heavy use of shaders and under low output resolutions.

All in all, though, the HD2400 is quite power-efficient, rated at only 19W TDP. The 8400GS is actually a little more power-hungry, but not by much. So between a 2400 and 8400 GS, I am more inclined to pick the former. These are great cards for extremely cooling-limited systems as they barely put out any heat. And IME, the 2400 XT's have been really tough so far. In contrast, the GeForce 8 series are rather fragile and tend to break easily if used with the stock coolers (due to running to hot in combination with the bumpgate issue.)

dr_st wrote on 2024-07-01, 05:58:

My refrigerator is 14 years old and has the freezer on top; I think that qualifies it as retro.

🤣
14 years ago is from 2010 or so. That's not even close to retro when it comes to appliances. I'd say anything from before 2000 is somewhat retro. 80's and older, for sure.
BTW, we had a 30 Y.O. Kenmore fridge in the house before moving out and renting it out. It was built like a tank. Used R12 refrigerant - i.e. not environmentally friendly... on paper. The fact that it hasn't needed a repair or refill since it was made in 1993 however, goes to show that some older stuff was actually more environmentally friendly, despite being built with eco-unfriendly chemicals.

I did a few tests on my Apple IIc and revisited a bit of BASIC.

Also designed some labels for my 5.25" floppies. Most of these floppies came to me dirty, so I had to thorougly clean them and saved half of them. I am happy with the result. Nothing beats playing Karateka in an Apple II with a floppy disk...

My next step will be doing a test with the joystick my dad built for his IIe Platinum in a few games.

Today he received his RAM2E II from Garret's Workshop and he increased the RAM in his Apple IIe from 128K to a whooping 8MB RAM. 🤣!

Bruninho wrote on 2024-07-12, 05:16:

I did a few tests on my Apple IIc and revisited a bit of BASIC. […]
Show full quote

I did a few tests on my Apple IIc and revisited a bit of BASIC.

Also designed some labels for my 5.25" floppies. Most of these floppies came to me dirty, so I had to thorougly clean them and saved half of them. I am happy with the result. Nothing beats playing Karateka in an Apple II with a floppy disk...

My next step will be doing a test with the joystick my dad built for his IIe Platinum in a few games.

Today he received his RAM2E II from Garret's Workshop and he increased the RAM in his Apple IIe from 128K to a whooping 8MB RAM. 🤣!

jeeze, is it possible to use 8 mb on a II e?

How long does a memory test take for 8mb in a IIe, 🤣?

Had a bit more time to fiddle with the XP-M equipped NF7-S I had fixed myself.

Got it running great @ 2200MHz (CPU itself is a XP-M 2400+) with a Geforce 6600 non GT. Might test the SATA/RAID chip (Sil3112) performance later 😀

Installed an aftermarket Spire cooler on a traded Leadtek Geforce3 Ti200, thanks dion_b 🙂

Got it stable just above Ti500 speeds, 250/250.

As you can see, not a perfect fit because of some obstructing components. But very happy with it, will do just fine in the CUBX-E with P!!!-S 1.4 😁

I properly tested my WavetablePi (by ScapComputing) that I finished yesterday. This is so awesome running Duke3D, Doom or Dark Forces with a General Midi device like this! I might build an extra for me and potentially sell few others...

Linoleum wrote on 2024-07-13, 02:48:

I properly tested my WavetablePi (by ScapComputing) that I finished yesterday. This is so awesome running Duke3D, Doom or Dark Forces with a General Midi device like this! I might build an extra for me and potentially sell few others...

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Very cool!

Just curious, but what was your total cost to build that? Looks pretty easy to put together since all the SMD stuff is on the Pi and DAC boards already.