BitWrangler wrote on 2024-10-15, 17:26:

the eternal question "Are Model Ms really XT compatible or not?" and got, no, yes and maybe in equal amounts. Hmmm, though I didn't see any from the 90s, especially after Lexmark spinoff, that anyone had confirmed to work. So out of what would take less than 10 hours to find, I grabbed the earliest one that I had handy, and that was a 1989 1391401. So this one, plugged into this particular late Turbo XT seems to work so far...

Dug out some further info pertaining to this age of Model M, this is specific to the UK version layout, but all the 139140x are going to be similar..
http://www.seasip.info/VintagePC/ibm_1391406.html
That range of part numbers has different x for various countries/layouts but same basis, and is the most common of Ms to see in the wild. What we see there is the Scancode set 1 support which is what is needed for XT class. So looks like it's supposed to work officially, as well as seeing that mine works unofficially. I guess the clue is to look for supported scancode sets when researching a keyboard, as latecomer clicky fans will just assume if it's got a PS/2 plug on it doesn't XT when compiling info.

However, there was some redesign and things happening in 92ish around the Lexmark spinoff, so I don't know if this info holds good through entire history of the part number. So I would advise ppl to prefer older Ms if getting one for an XT. They will most often come with PS/2 plug though so either need passive adapter or cord with DIN plug.

Just swapped a Joytech Cirrus Logic 5446 2MB card to my Tulip Pentium 166MX box. I had ATi MACH64 VT 2MB there before, because the built in Alliance AT24 has just awful DOS compatibility as well as only 1MB vram. ATi is not perfect for DOS either, but it was significantly better still and a quick dirty fix for the worst issues.

I also ran some benchmarks in DOS and gladly CL5446 is also clearly faster, which I did expect tbh. My main aim was to improve DOS compatibility, although I haven't had any problems with the games I've played on the system. This is not my main DOS system in any case and I use it mostly for later win95 era DOS games, but I also use it for some GUS stuff in general as I have Orpheus2 installed in it.

Okay so wrote out a 3.3 DOS disk again on different hardware, and have a clean boot now, no errors. So 3.5 drive seems fine. Can't seem to do anything useful to the HDD from it though. Chkdsk is like "I checkeded it real good no problems boss" yet Snooper still hangs on it's basic scan to determine clusters etc, and PCTools disk verify seems to hang up. Meanwhile I am loading files off it and running everything on it from earliest file dates and nothing seems corrupt. Probably some MBR thing but the DOS on there doesn't do MBR like 3.3 up does, think it's a 3.1 or earlier. Lots on the disk I would rather salvage though, might have to custom a LL5 booter and transfer the lot, then do a nuke and pave. Cool little "works" suite on there, First Choice, not overly featureful but got many basics covered. Having to remind myself tho "BitWrangler, I know you're having fun wrestling alligators in the mud, but the object of this exercise was to validate EGA monitor operation, so just get it in some state you can test an EGA card in there for mode 2 22khz and lets goooo." .. coz I'll just be playing with the XT part of the deal all week...

DarthSun wrote on 2024-10-17, 10:57:

Extra fast the HDD, 40GB Flat Maxtor :

The attachment 225621_llsqlrs2d7a5j10q_mfireball3.jpg is no longer available

I taped five of those together and used it as a doorstopper. But that was 10 years ago, so it doesn't count for this topic.

Some weeks ago I caught wind of having an "old PC" that was used to record phone calls. It's still in our inventory, but moved to a different section years ago to do what it supposed to do. Until it was decommissioned, so it was there collecting dust in danger of getting lost. And since it's our responsibility, I called that other section that it's very important for us to get it back. You know, it's in the books. So I secured it. I got a few minutes during lunch time to look into it.

It's a rack mounted single board PC. I'm both fascinated and mildly disappointed. I hoped to get a free 486, but I got the industrial version of the Am5x86 PC I already had, but with less RAM, and probably(?) downgraded graphics card. But it's still and odd, rare and old computer in decent condition at first sight. Even the Vartra battery didn't leak. It spent most of its life in 18-20 ˚C in various server and telephone switch rooms.

If anyone has any info about it, I'd be interested to hear.

RandomStranger wrote on 2024-10-17, 18:27:

Some weeks ago I caught wind of having an "old PC" that was used to record phone calls. It's still in our inventory, but moved t […]
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Some weeks ago I caught wind of having an "old PC" that was used to record phone calls. It's still in our inventory, but moved to a different section years ago to do what it supposed to do. Until it was decommissioned, so it was there collecting dust in danger of getting lost. And since it's our responsibility, I called that other section that it's very important for us to get it back. You know, it's in the books. So I secured it. I got a few minutes during lunch time to look into it.

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It's a rack mounted single board PC. I'm both fascinated and mildly disappointed. I hoped to get a free 486, but I got the industrial version of the Am5x86 PC I already had, but with less RAM, and probably(?) downgraded graphics card. But it's still and odd, rare and old computer in decent condition at first sight. Even the Vartra battery didn't leak. It spent most of its life in 18-20 ˚C in various server and telephone switch rooms.

If anyone has any info about it, I'd be interested to hear.

Well the Advantech PCA-6145 with a backplane is really quite a nice find IMO. IT's actually VLB connection to the graphics chip and doesn't expose any PCI bus since the chipset is VLB / ISA only from what I recall. The video chip on there is a pretty good one and it can drive an LCD as well just like a laptop 😀 It has L2 cache on the back too which is pretty rare for a 486 SBC of that size.
I haven't seen a version of the PCA-6145 that has a Varta rechargeable battery before, usually they have a flat circular non-rechargeable lithium cell soldered there. Probably some different circuitry there to accomodate that?
In terms of BIOS modernity it is much more like a PCI 486 system, even able to boot from LS-120 drives and handles LBA drives and EDO memory without issue.

While the Internet Archive is down I'm going through some files I downloaded from it to sort them out and have just discovered that the T4850CT hard drive image that someone uploaded to Archive.org has a full Toshiba installer for Windows 3.11 that makes it like factory - all the drivers and utilities as well as the Toshiba desktop wallpaper and the config.sys boot menu options. The best part of this is that this installer includes the full sound driver for the T4850CT / T4900CT for Windows 3.11 / DOS which couldn't be found for a long time. I've been testing it out on my T4850CT and the volume control in Windows finally works, of course it's still fighting me on the DOS soundblaster compatibility part...
But when Archive.org comes back I'm gonna make some restore packages for the T4700 / T4800 / T4850 / T4900 😀

Okay lets eyeball some actual graphics, still just CGA atm. Got this palette and that palette. Tried gorilla.bas, man that was dim is that a low res mode from BASIC? I don't wanna be messing with brightness and contrast until I see what EGA is like though.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-10-17, 19:58:

Okay lets eyeball some actual graphics, still just CGA atm. Got this palette and that palette. Tried gorilla.bas, man that was dim is that a low res mode from BASIC? I don't wanna be messing with brightness and contrast until I see what EGA is like though.

I was testing Scorched Earth with and without the 80287XL. The main menu loading time is the same regardless of having an FPU. Somehow I believed it was useful in this particular game. Will do some in-game nuke testing. Maybe it'll draw the explosion faster. Dumb question; Moraff's Entrap will actually use that FPU? Or mine:

I think it's just a playfield generation speedup, but not sure, might only be noticeable in the VGA high res modes. Possibly CPU over a certain mhz tend to drown out the FPU contribution also, ie it's great on an 8mhz AT but kinda superfluous on a 25Mhz harris.

Troubleshooted BM IDE issues on a VIA Apollo Pro 133T motherboard (QDI Advance 10T). Replaced the 4-in-1 drivers v4.43 with 4.35 with no DMA and that solved the massive disk access lag, mouse lag, crackly sound etc that I was experiencing previously. The computer with Win98SE went from feeling like a 486 DX33 to the P3S-1266 that it is. 😀

stamasd wrote on 2024-10-17, 21:11:

Troubleshooted BM IDE issues on a VIA Apollo Pro 133T motherboard (QDI Advance 10T). Replaced the 4-in-1 drivers v4.43 with 4.35 with no DMA and that solved the massive disk access lag, mouse lag, crackly sound etc that I was experiencing previously. The computer with Win98SE went from feeling like a 486 DX33 to the P3S-1266 that it is. 😀

Thanks for the heads up. I have a motherboard with the same chipset I was just about to install Win98SE on.

zuldan wrote on 2024-10-17, 21:33:

Thanks for the heads up. I have a motherboard with the same chipset I was just about to install Win98SE on.

I haven't had issues with the v4.43 on other VIA chipsets, but on this one in particular I got hit by the massive lag I described above. Boot time was 6-7 minutes to a usable desktop, that went down to under a minute now.
The other thing that you may need to use (I didn't but keep it in reserve just in case) is the PCI latency patch from this page: https://www.georgebreese.com/net/software/

Played some NFSU2 on my main (win11) rig lately. It's been quite an unstable experience with several problems and fixes but still having some issue's like crash to desktop from time to time and the fact that the game does not save the keybindings. However having the game in widescreen is really cool. Also i'd rather not download some old "l33t h4x" no cd patch aka executable so i'm using a usb dvd drive at the moment with the original disc.

It's fun to be able to play this again for the first time in more than a decade. Especially not having to screw around with a second computer and different monitor and not having it all at my desk...
I still need to cobble together a very fast winXP machine that can handle output to my main monitor and perhaps use a KVM switch of sorts.

Since 2 or so years i've been buying back the hardware that all started it for me (and 5-10 years after that) and try and relive the glory days but everytime i get it running the fun is alway's shortlived. The most "fun" part is searching,buying and putting it together ... but actually using it is kinda "meh". It's noisy , can't use my main desk/monitor, drivers are always an issue, nothing works out of the gate, etc etc. I know alot of people here really enjoy getting things to work on the software side and tinkering for hours but i'm not one of those guys. Sometimes i feel that it's kinda stupid to try and relive those days because times change and it's never as fun as you remember it to be (well because it's not 2004) and the fact that all that money would have gotten me a RTX4090. But anyway i'm on a rant here... anyone else feel the same after having been on a "retro" adventure?

Managed to get scandisk to run on the XT and it told me io.sys was on a bad sector, tried to recover it, but it still won't boot off HDD.. not sure if that was on the very system reserved bit or not. If so might not be useable as a boot drive... unless it's a soft error and goes away with an LLF. Just thought though, is it "stoned" or something that wrecks the 5th block on the drive tryna hide itself or something else? Maybe need to hit it with MSAV too.

Anywayyyy, ran a boulderdash clone called Felix, that is very bright in the red/green palette, odd the variation in brightness is so much between some of these modes, it's not like analog where it can't drive hard enough it's TTL ones and zeros. Well until the monitor deals with it. But anyway other than that, I am finding this monitor is not too tiring to look at, I am surprised, I think I've had a handful of worse VGA for eyeball melting. It is superior to everything I've ever seen CGA on so far, and I doubt I'll see too much comparison in future. In comparison to Felix, 1987s answer to Doom "Lumpgame" is kinda dim, hard to make out the control help though the viewport is alright. (it's sort of like a 3D roguelike with one box at a time 3D movement, a bit like 3dmonstermaze but color! Might have been a magazine type in. )

edit: ah that's the official name, and 1986... https://www.mobygames.com/game/60959/lumpies-of-lotis-iv/
editII: hmm it was originally in BASIC, I seem to have a compiled copy though, but gorilla was also dim... some BASIC thing dim graphics???

Hah, well I thought I solved my problem with the machine-with-a-load-of-stuff-on not being good with 720k disks, or at least worked around it or avoided it, but nope, turned out two more bad disks, I think the drive is going out of synch halfway up the disk or something. I saw on the box when I got the usb drive used, no 720k, and I checked it out on another machine, with 32 bit earlier windows, and it actually seemed to work fine then, reading and writing 720, but now on this 64bit machine it isn't, so yah, I was warned but still tried, derp.

Anyhow, some of the stuff I put to disk worked, read fine, Elite looked great, ship spins smooth, then I ran Outrun... now I was unimpressed with this port on DOSbox, but it surprised me here, looking a bit better, but also running smoother, I could sit down and play this on this machine. Combined with Elite being slick, and I can play that okay on DOSbox, but there's something different, a little off. IDK, I don't wanna be that real hardware snob guy, since I am fine with a lot of stuff on DOSbox but something a little off on some things. Maybe it's like a metronome lock of real hardware, ticktocktick, whereas DOSbox goes like freeform jazz and gets the same beats every minute but the rhythm is all off. Anyway, having sampled a bunch of stuff on DOSbox and thought, "ewww" I'm going to have to retry it on real hardware. RAC Rally for instance.

Upgrading my Scenic Pro Pentium 200 MMX with an Integral 8GB compact flash disk to replace the very noisy Fujitsu MPB3021AT 2.1GB HDD.

Made a tally of my working Voodoo cards. I still have a few more to attempt repairs on - another V3 3k and a PCI V3... let's just say I might have to use LOTS of Kynar wire. And a Skywell Banshee that I might try to revive...

Meanwhile, below is a photo and a list of the cards I have that are 100% working so far.

- 3D Blaster Banshee AGP CT6750
- Innovision Mighty Banshee
- ELSA Victory II A16
- V3 2000
- V3 3000

And yes, that funky fan contraption on the Innovision is my work 🤣

I know, y'all gonna say, "When are you done screwing around in CGA and actually gonna do some EGA on that thing???" because I'm still screwing around in CGA, anyway, some stuff is for comparison. Got LM 6.0 on it, and woooo, I'm nearly as fast as a 5170... 6mhz version.... got faster RAM too, 120ns, suck it! 🤣 Anyhoo, that's that. Had to defuckulate some of the 720k disks with a good old format /u /F:720 after windows thunk it couldn't handle them. After that I had some reliable transfers. Also had The Old Pc Bench run on it, no screenie, put me up among the V20 modded stuff. On both though, and Snooper the video score is a bit dire, I swear they had lineprinters that fast 🤣 Jill of the Jungle seems to run okay too. CGA mode atm natch. Continuing to confound me is the apparent lack of turbo switching Phoenix Bios 2.52, supposed to use ctrl alt backslash and ctrl alt +/- doesn't work either.... unless maybe I have to boot it at slow speed to switch back and forth (config switches).

Edit: Hmmmm just glancing at the Phoenix 2.51 and 2.52D BIOSes over at minus zero, not seeing much due to not having decent hex editor on this box, but am seeing the error string "Boot Disk Failure press any key to continue" is in both of them, whereas mine goes "Boot Disk Fail" so I don't know if they needed to save a couple of bytes for something else or whether my BIOS might have some corruption... explaining maybe HDD failure to boot and lack of turbo switching. There is somewhere between zip and diddly squat known about this machine on teh intertubes tho.

In other news, half reanimated the Zombie Z-Star, it would come alive, groan out that on the screen, die again, repeat... boot loop. I think the HDD might be fully wedged and unspinning and it's that that's pulling power low when it tries to spin it up. Anyhoo, bit of a mess that, the hinges are falling out, the plastics are cheese, both in color and strength, think I'm going to end up jury rigging it to be a mini desktop.... in which case I might see if its LCD fits the AST Powerexec, though I have color plans for that. Yah, don't spend money with an M on one of these, the rot seems inevitable. The power button seemed dead too, it came awake with a poke from a screwdriver to the backside of it. Possibly it's an FPU problem got it looping, there's a hatch for the FPU and I think I stole it to put in something else, when it first "took sick" and there's two 3 pin jumpers beside it which I don't know are set right.

PD2JK wrote on 2024-10-17, 20:52:

I was testing Scorched Earth with and without the 80287XL. The main menu loading time is the same regardless of having an FPU. Somehow I believed it was useful in this particular game. Will do some in-game nuke testing. Maybe it'll draw the explosion faster.

You are not wrong, it's even written in the manual that the games uses by default the coprocessor if present "making everything go faster". The only difference I've noticed with an FPU present on the same PC is firing becoming faster or rather instant, so I'm guessing it's used for trajectory calculations.

PD2JK wrote on 2024-10-17, 17:59:

DarthSun wrote on 2024-10-17, 10:57:

Extra fast the HDD, 40GB Flat Maxtor :

The attachment 225621_llsqlrs2d7a5j10q_mfireball3.jpg is no longer available

I taped five of those together and used it as a doorstopper. But that was 10 years ago, so it doesn't count for this topic.

Still have one of them in working condition, but yes, as say one member from HDDG: "Fireball 3 is complex and worst HDD ever manufactured by Maxtor".