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What retro activity did you get up to today?

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Reply 28540 of 29597, by Thermalwrong

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-10-17, 19:42:
Well the Advantech PCA-6145 with a backplane is really quite a nice find IMO. IT's actually VLB connection to the graphics chip […]
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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 😀

Since discovering that there's a Toshiba factory reinstall of Windows 3.11 in c:\windows\instdir on systems that never got wiped, I've now found that I've got the factory restore installs of Win 3.11 for:

  • Toshiba T1910CS (should work with T1910S and T1910 as well)
  • Toshiba T2130CT (compatible with T2130 and T2110 mono, CS and CT versions)
  • Toshiba T4700CT (compatible with T4700CS & T4800CT
  • Toshiba T4850CT (includes sound driver that will also work for T4900CT in Windows 3.11 - this seems to be the Windows Sound System 2.1 software that was sought in this thread: Sound driver for a Toshiba T4900CT, Win 3.11)

Really hope the Internet Archive comes back online soon 😀

Also I've been playing more with the T4850CT trying to get WSSXLAT to work and it seems that just putting the "SET BLASTER=A220 I7 D1 T4" variable then wssxlat.exe at the end of the autoexec.bat file works as well as the Windows Sound System is going to. There's sound in Wolf3d with digital audio and OPL3. No sound in Doom yet (gonna try to see if FastDoom is better) but a few other games like OMF2097 and Star Control 2 are working properly, which is good because those are digital audio only.

Reply 28541 of 29597, by BitWrangler

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Well I thought my EGA monitor fun had come to a sudden end... I inadvertently left the monitor power on overnight, then it was very dim at boot and went dimmer, unreadable... ohcrap, turned off real quick, let it sit off for 20 mins. What happen? Cooked the last of the goo out of ancient caps? Tube death? Hmmm. After pondering this for a while, I decided to risk adjusting the brightness trimmer (not external, access through hole) considering maybe it was just dirty and oxidised and maybe thermal expansion had lifted it's wiper just a touch too much... anyway.. Found a tool that fit... Swept it both ways while off, setting seemed to be about the middle, as it came. Powered it up, got back to "bright as it was" at about 66% of range... so thinking, yeah, that's not too bad.... but will be keeping an eye on it.

So after that was messed with, I tried my XTs slow speed switch setting (internal), and guess what? It ran slower, amazeballs! Yeah but it would also not then run faster with any alt/ctrl+ etc key combos I'd heard about, or with the software boost util or speedv20 or anything . Think it must be a true 8mhz clock, the guesses from benchmarks have been all over the place in the low to high 7.x range, which made me wonder if it was 14.318/2 but the ratio of the LM and snooper scores is the same as 4.77/8 so I figure it gotta be 8... unless it's extremely weird and does PCJr speed and 7.15ish.. Anyway, guess I don't need the tedium speed for anything, will leave it set to whelmium.

So that sesh didn't get the EGA card in it either, try again next time...

Edit: after lunch... Something is not EGAing, not sure if EGA Wonder or monitor... also XT has "opinions" I can't interpret at the moment... with the EGAW in, I get a higher pitches beieieiep bip at power up, but then it goes through POST, screen is scrambled all tae fook as our colourful scots friends say. This version of Phoenix bios should have a 1-2-3 type of beep code, and I cannot distinguish if that is a rapid beep or a long beep with a warble. Anyway, doesn't seem to fit any info. Also weird it does that then continues. So what i get on the screen seems out of synch, run stargoose and you can almost make it out but it's like the vertical hold has gone bananas. So not sure if monitor not switching to 22khz or what. Though with enhanced mode turned off EGAW should be doing CGA as mode 1 CGA scan rates not trying it's fancy enhanced double scan crap. So dunno if frequencies are adrift on the card or what. Tried about 8-10 different ways of configuring it, some do zero output, most do the sync wrong look.

Tried various things with the motherboard, should be one switch to disable onboard but tried saying it didn't have CGA and that it didn't have mono in case it made a difference. Might try it with mono enabled later. Tried a late cga/herc single cheap cheapie card but that has no output, has jumpers missing, so not sure it's set up right. Got another one to try and have the meter ready to bleep thru the EGAW to see if caps short or switches hanging. I should have waited until I had found alllll the 8 bit gfx, swear I should have a paradise EGA and more single chip cga/herc. This would also be easier if I didn't have onboard card to worry about screwing things up. Shoulda dood it on a bare board. Need to reduce possibilities of what is jerking me around, monitor, EGAW or motherboard....

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 28542 of 29597, by BitWrangler

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Well I got some EGA...

First off I tried the 2nd CGA card, which settings were correct and booted with no funny noises or complaints, and gave good clear CGA output, seemed brighter than onboard, again that seems weird, it's logic not analog. Anyway, that behaved perfect, so it seemed there was nothing with the XT stopping separate gfx working in principle. Good. Now go over the EGA wonder for the eleventieth time.... okay there's another alternate switch setting for IBM XT I missed, try that, same roll again, but it's a straight roll not scrambled... maybe pin 9 vsync is not connecting, jiggle plug, THERE we go... straight/stable picture... I am still getting the beieieieip bip beieieip bip at power on with shimmering keyboard lights, I do not know what the hell that is, the ATI BIOS message comes up immediately after, is it the card's error? Now, runs some crap... low intensity, dark colors very dark, high intensity alright, fiddle with contrast, not much effect, doesn't change relationship between dark and light much just seems like another bright control. Hmmm... low intensity really dark in CGA stuff too. Try outrun ega, crash and the same bleeps and keyboard flicker I get at power up, but it's locked up with it. Huh. Entrap in low res EGA has weird yellow lines across...

Yeah so the card really hates this motherboard or has problems... The monitor is .... aged I guess ... might need to do a recap sooner rather than later. Weird how different cards have different brightness on it though. So theres something in the EGAW manual about it doesn't work with PS/2 keyboards, because of IRQ2 contention, I am using a PS/2 keyboard in XT mode, scancode set 1, XT keyboard controller, no IRQ 2, but I am wondering if ATI card has some code for "preemptive strike" against PS/2 keyboard to try to kill it before it kills card or some stupid shit and is "going off" on the keyboard somehow. But it's got that weirdness like it's dropping a line on a RAM chip in some modes too... gah.

Gonna recheck if it's i/o address is fighting with the disk controller, I don't think it should be unless ST11 is way off default...

Edit: the after supper update....

That first alternate CGA card didn't work.... because it was an Mono/herc card only.... heh, swear I've had some look like that which were autoswitching, not that one, all mono, all the time. Running some stuff on the EGA Wonder... I don't like it... well, if I got the utils I might be able to force it into civilised behaviour, but enhanced switch is off dammit, why you still ruining CGA stuff with flickery interlace and making them too tall. Load Elite and it's like "Why am I flying into a giant kinder egg capsule..... oh it's the sun, jeeze that is stretched." ... so apparently the "behave exactly like IBM" part of the disable enhancement mode is "enable snow" rather than disable hinky non mode 1 screenmodes, coz I'm seeing that on some stuff. I think you are meant to ignore how crappy it is on actual EGA because of it's dancing bear tricks on other monitors.... A: "Look it's a dancing bear." B: "It's not dancing very well, is that supposed to be a waltz?? A:"But it's a BEAR and it's DANCING."... hmmyeah. So can't wait to find my PEGA if I'm gonna actually enjoy EGA on an XT... I had thunk this one was going into the PC Portable though for it's all the modes on mono dancing bear trick. XT wasn't really the target for the monitor though, that was the Packard Bell 286... so need a good card for that... might cheat and use VGA Wonder 16... but that might be more dancing bears.

Last edited by BitWrangler on 2024-10-20, 02:34. Edited 1 time in total.

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 28543 of 29597, by Shponglefan

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Worked on salvaging chips from this Matrox M3D that sadly got destroyed in shipping awhile ago.

The memory chips appear undamaged and likely worth saving as spares.

I also removed the main chip, but the damage to the pins resulted in a lot of them breaking off from where they had been previously bent. Not to mention the cracks in the casing. There is even a larger crack running the full length of the chip on the underside. If nothing else, it was good desoldering practice.

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

Reply 28544 of 29597, by H3nrik V!

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Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-20, 02:34:

Worked on salvaging chips from this Matrox M3D that sadly got destroyed in shipping awhile ago.

The memory chips appear undamaged and likely worth saving as spares.

I also removed the main chip, but the damage to the pins resulted in a lot of them breaking off from where they had been previously bent. Not to mention the cracks in the casing. There is even a larger crack running the full length of the chip on the underside. If nothing else, it was good desoldering practice.

Oh, the agony :'(

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 28545 of 29597, by SSTV2

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Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-20, 02:34:

Worked on salvaging chips from this Matrox M3D that sadly got destroyed in shipping awhile ago.

The memory chips appear undamaged and likely worth saving as spares.

I also removed the main chip, but the damage to the pins resulted in a lot of them breaking off from where they had been previously bent. Not to mention the cracks in the casing. There is even a larger crack running the full length of the chip on the underside. If nothing else, it was good desoldering practice.

Looks like it was run over by a forklift along with other parcels mixed in, rest in pieces 🙁

I also had one character send me a card in a bubble envelope once, and on top of that, it was a full-length MCA network card!

Not only did the sender not provide proper packaging, he also placed the card incorrectly, instead of the card being placed in the center of the envelope, it was somehow wedged between the paper wall of the envelope and the bubble wrap walls...

But it was a quick local delivery and the envelope traveled through the post machine, miraculously, that card arrived without a single scratch.

Reply 28546 of 29597, by GigAHerZ

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While restoring a Compaq Deskpro EN 6266, i replaced CR2450N socket with classic CR2450 socket. (It can still accept those weird CR2450N batteries, if you somehow have them)

And amongst other things, these upgrades were also successful:
CPU: Pentium II 266MHz -> Pentium III 550MHz
RAM: 32MB -> 256MB
GPU: ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP -> ATI Rage 128 Pro
HDD: 2GB spinning rust -> 32GB Industrial SATA SSD + IDE adapter
BIOS updated to the latest version i could find from year 1999.

I also have Compaq CRT and hope I'll have Compaq mouse and keyboard in cellar.
Perfect platform to add a Voodoo card. 😉

"640K ought to be enough for anybody." - And i intend to get every last bit out of it even after loading every damn driver!
A little about software engineering: https://byteaether.github.io/

Reply 28547 of 29597, by BitWrangler

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GigAHerZ wrote on 2024-10-20, 12:05:
While restoring a Compaq Deskpro EN 6266, i replaced CR2450N socket with classic CR2450 socket. (It can still accept those weird […]
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While restoring a Compaq Deskpro EN 6266, i replaced CR2450N socket with classic CR2450 socket. (It can still accept those weird CR2450N batteries, if you somehow have them)

And amongst other things, these upgrades were also successful:
CPU: Pentium II 266MHz -> Pentium III 550MHz
RAM: 32MB -> 256MB
GPU: ATI Rage Pro Turbo AGP -> ATI Rage 128 Pro
HDD: 2GB spinning rust -> 32GB Industrial SATA SSD + IDE adapter
BIOS updated to the latest version i could find from year 1999.

I also have Compaq CRT and hope I'll have Compaq mouse and keyboard in cellar.
Perfect platform to add a Voodoo card. 😉

Good move, I also prefer to make small mods to nudge things towards more standard or obtanium parts.

I have a SFF PIII Compaq Deskpro, also thinking of voodooing it. Not sure whether I will leave the S3 Virge DX in it and add V2, or put a V3 PCI in. Mine has the PIII 600
The other Deskpro here I think is a 2000 with a P233MMX

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 28548 of 29597, by BitWrangler

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Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-20, 02:34:

Worked on salvaging chips from this Matrox M3D that sadly got destroyed in shipping awhile ago.

The memory chips appear undamaged and likely worth saving as spares.

I also removed the main chip, but the damage to the pins resulted in a lot of them breaking off from where they had been previously bent. Not to mention the cracks in the casing. There is even a larger crack running the full length of the chip on the underside. If nothing else, it was good desoldering practice.

That's all very sad. Think it would have been hard to find anything to do with the PVR chip if it came off clean though. Glue it with gold glue Kintsugi style and frame it.

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 28549 of 29597, by BitWrangler

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Whither goest ye EGA adventure yonder from hither?

Good question... I thought though that there's maybe a ticking clock on the monitor before I need to do a recap, i.e. it works right now, might not work for long. So decided to validate it with the machine I intended it for ASAP, just in case I screw up when I am scrambling it's innards and kill the patient. So got out the PB-800 12Mhz 286 box... You remember I wondered if it was gonna be cheating to stick a VGA Wonder 16 into it, well look at the back!

Oh wait, that's not an ATI, I immediately recognise the lack of ATIness. It's an OTI... umm were they tryna scam the unwary with that or a coincidence? Oak Technology Inc.... hmmyeah I'll give them a free pass I guess.

Gonna suck to find swi... oh nice, stason/tularc comes through, where were you retroweb and minuszero? 😜

Just kidding folks. Now, it do be seeming I can get EGA out of this... yay... got some questions about the PSU though, as I last remember running it, the PSU had issues and wouldn't boot until warm.. now I look inside it and see a Teapo PSU that doesn't quite line up on internal bracket, my spidey senses say unoriginal.. did I change it after all? ... buuuut. I see the 12V on this is only 4A and there's a huge bastard of an old IDE drive that's like half 5.25 height, full 3.5 ish height, ah screw it, nearly 2". So I am wondering if it had the stones to spin that and whatever else, and THAT was the PSU that was struggling... hmmm... I gotta test a PSU somewhen so do I test this one firrrrst, or is it gonna worry me anyway and I'll end up testing 2 whatever??? hmmm.

Edit: alternate resources for cards of this ilk, pic enclosed is later model, a lot of the switch settings match up but there's more given for other situations, they may work on this one... which I wanna call a VG-3000 as that's what the FCC has in it. https://www.peel.dk/Archive/-%20PC%20cards,%2 … Oak%20OTI-037C/

Last edited by BitWrangler on 2024-10-20, 19:12. Edited 1 time in total.

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 28550 of 29597, by pentiumspeed

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Finally got around to replacing the internal battery in an Logitech wireless speaker. It is now vintage too. Soldered splices and heat-shrink tubings.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 28551 of 29597, by Thermalwrong

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Shponglefan wrote on 2024-10-20, 02:34:

Worked on salvaging chips from this Matrox M3D that sadly got destroyed in shipping awhile ago.

The memory chips appear undamaged and likely worth saving as spares.

I also removed the main chip, but the damage to the pins resulted in a lot of them breaking off from where they had been previously bent. Not to mention the cracks in the casing. There is even a larger crack running the full length of the chip on the underside. If nothing else, it was good desoldering practice.

Dang that is tragic, hopefully you got some kind of refund for that mess. I've seen the same thing attempting to remove and resolder an ET4000/w32p where the main PQFP lifted when the card was knocked somehow, before I got it. When I did remove it a whole bunch of the pins came away: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?
Hope you can make use of it, even if it's in a trophy case... (I have a bunch of dead CPU / GPU / interesting computer chips in a clear case on the wall)

Today following the advice of this old usenet post: https://groups.google.com/g/uk.comp.sys.lapto … /m/6K4Edf-N78QJ and some knowledge gained doing the same thing on a Dlink DE650 card, I've just put a permanently attached RJ45 lead onto a 3COM 3C562D. The end result was pretty nice, just trimmed away the plastic bit between the two dongle jacks and ran the cable through there. The 4 un-used wires are insulated and run on the back of the card for better mechanical stability, then the wires are carefully routed so the case can close.

The attachment re-dongle-3com-3c562d-1 (Custom).JPG is no longer available
The attachment re-dongle-3com-3c562d-2 (Custom).JPG is no longer available

It worked 1st try and got an IP with an old router as a DHCP server and can ping just fine 😀
Once that was confirmed then the cable was hot glued into place and the case re-closed with superglue.

Opening up these old PCMCIA cards, some of them were actually made for repair - if you can see a seam on the plastic at the corners then the case can be pried into two parts with alignment pegs etc so they can be re-glued later. The 3COM cards seem to be pretty good in that regard, I just opened up an even older 3C589C card and that's got essentially the top cover clipped onto the frame / lower cover piece, but there are places designed for jamming a pin into to pry open the metal clips without damaging anything. In fact this card appears to have been opened in the past and has some evidence of re-work on the PCMCIA connector.

Some of them are horrendous to repair though, the D-Link DE-650 PCMCIA card was welded shut and I had to grind all the welds off with the dremel. The dongle jack on that one was broken so it was completely removed and the cable runs through that spot now. Then it was spot-welded closed again as best as I could manage with my little powerbank spot-welder I got for rebuilding lithium packs.

Reply 28552 of 29597, by BloodyCactus

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worked on the DOS/adlibe/vga intro for DOSEmber2024 thats coming up. Similar to last years DOSember 2023 intro. feels good to get the bulk of it done and just need to wait for signups to mostly be done (aka end of november) so i can release it.

--/\-[ Stu : Bloody Cactus :: [ https://bloodycactus.com :: http://kråketær.com ]-/\--

Reply 28553 of 29597, by BitWrangler

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-10-20, 18:33:
Today following the advice of this old usenet post: https://groups.google.com/g/uk.comp.sys.lapto … /m/6K4Edf-N78QJ and some kno […]
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Today following the advice of this old usenet post: https://groups.google.com/g/uk.comp.sys.lapto … /m/6K4Edf-N78QJ and some knowledge gained doing the same thing on a Dlink DE650 card, I've just put a permanently attached RJ45 lead onto a 3COM 3C562D. The end result was pretty nice, just trimmed away the plastic bit between the two dongle jacks and ran the cable through there. The 4 un-used wires are insulated and run on the back of the card for better mechanical stability, then the wires are carefully routed so the case can close.

The attachment re-dongle-3com-3c562d-1 (Custom).JPG is no longer available
The attachment re-dongle-3com-3c562d-2 (Custom).JPG is no longer available

It worked 1st try and got an IP with an old router as a DHCP server and can ping just fine 😀
Once that was confirmed then the cable was hot glued into place and the case re-closed with superglue.

Opening up these old PCMCIA cards, some of them were actually made for repair - if you can see a seam on the plastic at the corners then the case can be pried into two parts with alignment pegs etc so they can be re-glued later. The 3COM cards seem to be pretty good in that regard, I just opened up an even older 3C589C card and that's got essentially the top cover clipped onto the frame / lower cover piece, but there are places designed for jamming a pin into to pry open the metal clips without damaging anything. In fact this card appears to have been opened in the past and has some evidence of re-work on the PCMCIA connector.

Some of them are horrendous to repair though, the D-Link DE-650 PCMCIA card was welded shut and I had to grind all the welds off with the dremel. The dongle jack on that one was broken so it was completely removed and the cable runs through that spot now. Then it was spot-welded closed again as best as I could manage with my little powerbank spot-welder I got for rebuilding lithium packs.

Oh that's brilliant, I've got 3 or 4 hanging round with no dongles. I didn't really imagine they could be got into without destruction or damage that made them not go back in a PCMCIA hole ever again. I guess they are super trivial compared to todays phone repair, but seemed like they were made by elves or something in the 90s 🤣 Thanks very much for posting about it.

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 28554 of 29597, by moog

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Not today, but for the past couple weeks I have been toying with my new FreeDOS setup. These are currently the games I've confirmed work more or less fine:
Quake (3dfx backport)
Quake 2 (3dfx backport)
Duke Nukem 3D
Redneck Rampage
Fallout 1
Blood (with expansions, 3dfx unfortunately is a bust)
Scorched Earth
Grand Theft Auto
Battle Chess (Enhanced CD edition)
MDK
Lotus 3
Archimedean Dynasty (3dfx is busted for now)
Descent 2 (3dfx is busted for now)
Battle Arena Toshinden (miraculously enough, statically linked exe works with Voodoo 5500 - or with the Voodoo 1 that has no right to work due to too high FSB, either way, freak miracle)
Carmageddon: Splat Pack
Wolf

Here are games that are still planned for testing:
Syndicate Wars
Earthworm Jim
Lost Vikings 2
Jazz Jackrabbit

Games that do not work, but worked in the past:
Pinball Illusions (I'm getting invalid opcode and it may seem I'm the only person that got it)

Audigy 2 ZS in FreeDOS
LinLin adapter documentation
+ various capacitor list threads

Reply 28555 of 29597, by H3nrik V!

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Edit: double post

Last edited by H3nrik V! on 2024-10-20, 20:58. Edited 1 time in total.

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 28556 of 29597, by H3nrik V!

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Been playing some good hours of Sid Meier's Civilization as well as Civilization II. I'm pretty surprised how much better Civ2 runs on the same rig, everything just feels more responsive somehow.

Pentium 200MMX on Abit PX5 with 64 megs of SD-RAM, Virge DX and AWE64 Value. (And a Voodoo 1 and a Matrox M3D, but it's not like they're getting any use in there)

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 28557 of 29597, by BitWrangler

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I am stymied, foiled, balked, blocked and probably cursed or something... PSU checked out on PB-800, motherboard however, has it's own ideas... it's giving me a memory parity fail beep I think, 1-4-2 which is pretty unambiguous for Phoenix 3.x.... "try a different SIMM" you say, ahah ahahaha ahahahahaaa, funny guy, it's soldered to the damn board... yah discrete RAM, 4x256.. or it's the parity chip... something will suffer for this... possibly a supernumerary trident card with a 4x256 on it.

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 28558 of 29597, by Thermalwrong

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BitWrangler wrote on 2024-10-20, 19:07:
Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-10-20, 18:33:
Today following the advice of this old usenet post: https://groups.google.com/g/uk.comp.sys.lapto … /m/6K4Edf-N78QJ and some kno […]
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Today following the advice of this old usenet post: https://groups.google.com/g/uk.comp.sys.lapto … /m/6K4Edf-N78QJ and some knowledge gained doing the same thing on a Dlink DE650 card, I've just put a permanently attached RJ45 lead onto a 3COM 3C562D. The end result was pretty nice, just trimmed away the plastic bit between the two dongle jacks and ran the cable through there. The 4 un-used wires are insulated and run on the back of the card for better mechanical stability, then the wires are carefully routed so the case can close.

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It worked 1st try and got an IP with an old router as a DHCP server and can ping just fine 😀
Once that was confirmed then the cable was hot glued into place and the case re-closed with superglue.

Opening up these old PCMCIA cards, some of them were actually made for repair - if you can see a seam on the plastic at the corners then the case can be pried into two parts with alignment pegs etc so they can be re-glued later. The 3COM cards seem to be pretty good in that regard, I just opened up an even older 3C589C card and that's got essentially the top cover clipped onto the frame / lower cover piece, but there are places designed for jamming a pin into to pry open the metal clips without damaging anything. In fact this card appears to have been opened in the past and has some evidence of re-work on the PCMCIA connector.

Some of them are horrendous to repair though, the D-Link DE-650 PCMCIA card was welded shut and I had to grind all the welds off with the dremel. The dongle jack on that one was broken so it was completely removed and the cable runs through that spot now. Then it was spot-welded closed again as best as I could manage with my little powerbank spot-welder I got for rebuilding lithium packs.

Oh that's brilliant, I've got 3 or 4 hanging round with no dongles. I didn't really imagine they could be got into without destruction or damage that made them not go back in a PCMCIA hole ever again. I guess they are super trivial compared to todays phone repair, but seemed like they were made by elves or something in the 90s 🤣 Thanks very much for posting about it.

I might make a thread on it, there are quite a few variations of 3com card that I think would benefit from documenting and possibly I could go into more detail on how to open these things up.
Those colour code positions on the LAN magnetic do seem to be correct for the 3C562, 3C589C & 3C589E and they actually look about the same inside with the same pinout / shape transformer.

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Using the un-used strands held in place with hot-glue on the reverse side to anchor the cable in place is working really well, unless the hot glue melts in use of course 😁

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Figuring out how to wire up the first one I did was tricky, I spent ages trying to reverse engineer the pinout of this D-Link DE650 card which has options for both RJ-45 and BNC and wasn't getting anywhere, tracing it all out in paint.net. Then I looked up the part code on the LAN magnetic / transformer and it listed the exact pinout to use. Once I hooked the RX+ / RX- / TX+ / TX- to the pins specified on the Pulse PE-68030 datasheet it just worked.
If not for that it would've been simple trial and error as demonstrated here: http://labs.cexx.org/dongle.htm
And to give credit where it's due, that page gave me most of the initial info on this such as opening the card up and that soldering to the magnetic is easier than soldering to the pins. The RJ-45 sockets themselves came from some aliexpress specials, which had 2x rj45 sockets going to one rj45 plug, kind of a stupid cable since that's not going to work with switched ethernet, but it was cheap and the wires are actual copper.
These cheapo rj-45 sockets have an unexpected 'feature' too in that when you push a cable in, it can't lock into place. But that's actually kind of a good thing since it's like a magsafe cable and won't rip the PCMCIA card to pieces if the cable gets pulled 😀

Reply 28559 of 29597, by PcBytes

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Swapped PCBs between two Maxtor Diamondmax 10 drives. Donor was a 300GB 6L300R0 that was failing, destination drive was 160GB 6L160R0.

Result - drive works, is detected accordingly by simply swapping PCBs. If you ever have to do this on DM9 and DM10 series Maxtor drives - pay attention on the family it belongs to, printed on the PCB. In my case it read "SABRE-P".

"Enter at your own peril, past the bolted door..."
Main PC: i5 3470, GB B75M-D3H, 16GB RAM, 2x1TB
98SE : P3 650, Soyo SY-6BA+IV, 384MB RAM, 80GB