Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-13, 20:07:

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...

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.

If you're patient and order most of your stuff from Aliexpress, than I'd say $50 (Canadian). From that, 25% was for shipping on the Pi board! Ugh....

Linoleum wrote on 2024-07-13, 21:41:

If you're patient and order most of your stuff from Aliexpress, than I'd say $50 (Canadian). From that, 25% was for shipping on the Pi board! Ugh....

As a fellow Canadian, that piqued my interest. Where are you buying your Pi from?

EDIT: Actually, what I want to know more is where you're ordering PCBs in low enough volume to hit that price target. I've never had time to figure that out and I've got several things I'd like to try building where you can't just buy them in kit form.

Also, how is that supposed to fit without the heat sink intersecting the board it's installed onto (if it's meant to be installed one way) or the board intersecting the case (if it's meant to be installed the other way)? My intuition is that the connector for installing it as a daughterboard would have gone on the opposite side of the PCB.

ssokolow wrote on 2024-07-13, 22:39:

As a fellow Canadian, that piqued my interest. Where are you buying your Pi from? […]
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Linoleum wrote on 2024-07-13, 21:41:

If you're patient and order most of your stuff from Aliexpress, than I'd say $50 (Canadian). From that, 25% was for shipping on the Pi board! Ugh....

As a fellow Canadian, that piqued my interest. Where are you buying your Pi from?

EDIT: Actually, what I want to know more is where you're ordering PCBs in low enough volume to hit that price target. I've never had time to figure that out and I've got several things I'd like to try building where you can't just buy them in kit form.

Also, how is that supposed to fit without the heat sink intersecting the board it's installed onto (if it's meant to be installed one way) or the board intersecting the case (if it's meant to be installed the other way)? My intuition is that the connector for installing it as a daughterboard would have gone on the opposite side of the PCB.

In my case, it’s installed on a PicoGus v2. Sooo, plenty of space!! However, I was worried it would not fit on my Audician 32, but it does! Anyways, I think the heatsink is optional or just a copper shim could do the job.

If you were to reverse the connector, I am pretty sure you’d need to redesign the PCB to have the midi out properly routed.

Linoleum wrote on 2024-07-13, 23:05:

In my case, it’s installed on a PicoGus v2. Sooo, plenty of space!! However, I was worried it would not fit on my Audician 32, but it does! Anyways, I think the heatsink is optional or just a copper shim could do the job.

If you were to reverse the connector, I am pretty sure you’d need to redesign the PCB to have the midi out properly routed.

Makes sense. I have a bunch of Pi heat sink kits that my brother gave me after buying the lot to get some heat sinks for his Chinese HDMI capture device, so I actually have more of those copper heat spreaders that go on the chip on the bottom of a full-size Pi than I do the aluminum heat sinks.

...and my questions about sourcing the parts at that price point?

ssokolow wrote on 2024-07-13, 23:17:

Linoleum wrote on 2024-07-13, 23:05:

In my case, it’s installed on a PicoGus v2. Sooo, plenty of space!! However, I was worried it would not fit on my Audician 32, but it does! Anyways, I think the heatsink is optional or just a copper shim could do the job.

If you were to reverse the connector, I am pretty sure you’d need to redesign the PCB to have the midi out properly routed.

Makes sense. I have a bunch of Pi heat sink kits that my brother gave me after buying the lot to get some heat sinks for his Chinese HDMI capture device, so I actually have more of those copper heat spreaders that go on the chip on the bottom of a full-size Pi than I do the aluminum heat sinks.

...and my questions about sourcing the parts at that price point?

Oh sorry! I ordered from PCBway.

PS: check your DMs…

Linoleum wrote on 2024-07-14, 00:21:

PS: check your DMs…

*facepalm* I get so few of those or quoted replies that I assumed that e-mail meant "You've been quoted in a thread reply" like what some other forum software will send.

Sphere478 wrote on 2024-07-12, 15:54:

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

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

This is the card. It does see 8MB fully, and has an experimental 16MB option within the same card.

The system sees all of it, and most of it can be used as a RAM Disk... so technically he can boot a ProDOS from it, for example.

PcBytes wrote on 2024-07-12, 17:01:

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

I still have my NF7-s I bought new. It doesn't post anymore, I assume from bad caps. I'll get around to reviving it one day. Glad to see others around!

Got the cables I needed off ebay for this thing. Put a 4gb hdd I had and powered it up. Found it still had its MacOS 8.1 install disc in the cdrom drive. Install went fine once I set the jumper on the HDD to master. If its not set the mac won't boot off it.
It does have an additional 128mb ram upgrade in it too!

Veeb0rg wrote on 2024-07-14, 03:52:

Got the cables I needed off ebay for this thing. Put a 4gb hdd I had and powered it up. Found it still had its MacOS 8.1 install disc in the cdrom drive. Install went fine once I set the jumper on the HDD to master. If its not set the mac won't boot off it.
It does have an additional 128mb ram upgrade in it too!

Yeah, there’s all sorts of odd little things like that with the early iMac era Macs. I do know that the revised iMacs don’t have too many problems with SATA and SD card adapters, so you might be able to get it sped up a bit that way. You should also try to acquire MacOS 8.6 if you’re looking for a somewhat better experience. The os is mostly PPC at that point, but I also totally get keeping it on what it came to you with.

Been working on a DTK 286 board with barrel battery damage. At first I thought it wasn't too bad, but these traces are really thin, some had been completely eaten by the corrosion and others crumbled as I scraped and tried to tin them:

Since there were several broken traces both on the front and the back, I decided to use thin jumper wire to have a cleaner fix instead of a bodge mess. Took some time and patience to route the wires, and I had to remove several components to clean the corrosion underneath. Fortunately the PCB seems to be of good quality, it withstood the repeated heating without leaving burn marks:

After I double and triple checked that all the traces were repaired I applied some solder mask to keep them in place and reinstalled the components. I had to replace the keyboard connector with a new one since the original was completely corroded. All in all, I'm quite happy with how it turned out:

I've ran a few tests and everything seems to be working properly, tomorrow I'll do some more extensive checks.

BetaC wrote on 2024-07-14, 04:59:

Veeb0rg wrote on 2024-07-14, 03:52:

Got the cables I needed off ebay for this thing. Put a 4gb hdd I had and powered it up. Found it still had its MacOS 8.1 install disc in the cdrom drive. Install went fine once I set the jumper on the HDD to master. If its not set the mac won't boot off it.
It does have an additional 128mb ram upgrade in it too!

Yeah, there’s all sorts of odd little things like that with the early iMac era Macs. I do know that the revised iMacs don’t have too many problems with SATA and SD card adapters, so you might be able to get it sped up a bit that way. You should also try to acquire MacOS 8.6 if you’re looking for a somewhat better experience. The os is mostly PPC at that point, but I also totally get keeping it on what it came to you with.

I had already acquired a different OS for this as I didn't know there was the OEM disc still in the drive till after I got the cables. I went with it simply because it was there and I knew it would work. If I end up keeping it I'll probably upgrade to 8.6 as that seems to be the consensus of best version for this particular g3 model.

This seems like as good a place as any to put this. I have never seen this before, but this youtuber did an interesting video on the canceled Tejas and Jayhawk processors from the end of Intel's Netburst era. It also includes some comments from an engineer that worked on the project.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzZfkbHuB3U

It's funny how people at Intel back in 2004 were thinking that 150+ watt CPUs for the consumer market are probably not a good idea.

... and now look at them. 😮

Like all the complaints that P5 socket 4 Pentium was a "Furnace" and now the ultra low power x86 CPU are that wattage.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-14, 18:08:

Like all the complaints that P5 socket 4 Pentium was a "Furnace" and now the ultra low power x86 CPU are that wattage.

Yeah, things have really changed!

Also, I don't want to get into an Intel vs AMD thing, but after running an overclocked i5 2500K from 2011 to 2019 I went with a Ryzen 5 3600 for my last build because it was just such a well rounded processor. Now I have a 5800X3D tuned with PBO2 Tuner and it puts out so little heat in normal workloads that I can run my CPU cooler fans basically silently. I think I recorded something like 65 watts used by the CPU in certain games on a 240Hz display with an RTX 3080. It tops out around 100 watts under full load in multi-core benchmarks too.

When I see people getting expensive (and huge) AIO coolers to tame their 250W (or higher) processors, I am glad I switched back to AMD 5 years ago after using Intel for 13 years.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-14, 18:39:

Also, I don't want to get into an Intel vs AMD thing, but after running an overclocked i5 2500K from 2011 to 2019 I went with a Ryzen 5 3600 for my last build because it was just such a well rounded processor. Now I have a 5800X3D tuned with PBO2 Tuner and it puts out so little heat in normal workloads that I can run my CPU cooler fans basically silently. I think I recorded something like 65 watts used by the CPU in certain games on a 240Hz display with an RTX 3080. It tops out around 100 watts under full load in multi-core benchmarks too.

That's pretty much the same upgrade path I had (only difference is an i5 4690K from 2014 to 2019). I had my doubts about being an early adopter of the X570 platform but it turned out to be a great decision. The 3600 offered great performance for the price and being able to update to the 5800X3D will hopefully allow my aging motherboard to endure a few more years before an update.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2024-07-14, 18:39:

When I see people getting expensive (and huge) AIO coolers to tame their 250W (or higher) processors, I am glad I switched back to AMD 5 years ago after using Intel for 13 years.

I hadn't realized it was anything but "performance fiends gonna pick the beefiest processor, regardless of thermals" because, ever since 2007, my CPU replacement policy has been "What's the best thing I can afford at 65W TDP?" and, more recently, "Don't buy Intel unless you want your performance to trickle away to the constant stream of mitigations for new speculation exploits". (I'm currently on a Ryzen 5 7600 after being on an Athlon II X2 270 since the old motherboard had a RAM socket go bad in 2011).

momaka wrote on 2024-07-11, 13:03:

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

My 8KRA2+ seems to be rough on power supplies. I thought I had just the thing when I picked up a Thermaltake Silent Pure Power 480 which has 40 watts on the +5, but before long the +5 was dropping below 4.7 volts as measured by Motherboard Monitor. So I swapped in the Seasonic, and thought the Thermaltake was no good. But then I used it with my Soyo Dragon with a Thoroughbred B overclocked to almost 2.2 GHz (not as many fans and Ti 4600), and it works great with that system; the +5 never drops below 4.9 volts. I've had all of these power supplies open and inspected them and there is nothing obviously wrong.

I'm still working through issues with an old Epox SS7 board. I think I'm coming to the conclusion that it just doesn't like the AMD K6-2 series. Even POST is flaky with resets before or after IDE device detection, long pauses before video init, and long pauses before/after memory testing. These things pretty much stop if I install a Cyrix M-II instead.

I think I've given up on running a modern OS of any variety at the moment. Everything appears to require PAE and CMOV at a minimum, even if they're nominally i386. FreeDOS 1.3 installs and runs flawlessly, so I'm exploring it some even though I'd really have liked any BSD or Linux.

Try something around Wary Puppy 5.5 nonPae version. Had that running good on MMX class 64MB before.