Recapped this Aztech Washington 16 sound card, also replaced the caps on the CL-GD5434 graphics card with smaller caps.

Recapped my recently acquired QDI Advance 10T. Green 1000nF ones were all wasted.
However bigger 1500nF are all looking good. Never seen this brand before.

1500uF is Nichicon HD. I would replace those as well, I've seen Nichicon HDs in that casing go bad.

Yeah I probably should check those Nichicon's out as well.

I have actually follow up story from yesterday. So I decided to test number of various Win demos and run 3DMark 2001SE with default clocks. It froze with grabbled screen just before Nature segment. To my surprise It did not boot up after hard reset. All fans started to spin, tester card showed all voltages in place and CPU clock was detected. No codes in ISA slot but it showed one seemingly random code in PCI slots. Taking out memory module at least indicated correct C1. Run all usual tests with Battery in/out, CMOS reset jumper - nothing. Put another Coppermine in same symptoms. It was very late so I went to bed as very sad retro fan...

Well next day I tested first rather valuable 1.4 Tualatin in another board and it worked. Then put it back to QDI board and post codes started to fly by...
It have been running stable now for couple of hours. Only strange part is that latest Beta bios does not have PC Health section in BIOS. Also none of Win98 software are able to provide sensors info. I need to dig deeper how sensor monitoring on P3 should be happening. Probably separate chip, but even standard P3 internal temp is missing.

Found the Packard Bell/NEC BIOSes for MSI MS-6156ZX while digging thru NEC America's archived FTP.

Thankfully found the latest BIOS (A6156P5 v3.3) and v2.4 - both have been tested working and even better, the 2.0i1 Master CD works with it.

vutt wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:50:

Yeah I probably should check those Nichicon's out as well. […]
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Yeah I probably should check those Nichicon's out as well.

I have actually follow up story from yesterday. So I decided to test number of various Win demos and run 3DMark 2001SE with default clocks. It froze with grabbled screen just before Nature segment. To my surprise It did not boot up after hard reset. All fans started to spin, tester card showed all voltages in place and CPU clock was detected. No codes in ISA slot but it showed one seemingly random code in PCI slots. Taking out memory module at least indicated correct C1. Run all usual tests with Battery in/out, CMOS reset jumper - nothing. Put another Coppermine in same symptoms. It was very late so I went to bed as very sad retro fan...

Well next day I tested first rather valuable 1.4 Tualatin in another board and it worked. Then put it back to QDI board and post codes started to fly by...
It have been running stable now for couple of hours. Only strange part is that latest Beta bios does not have PC Health section in BIOS. Also none of Win98 software are able to provide sensors info. I need to dig deeper how sensor monitoring on P3 should be happening. Probably separate chip, but even standard P3 internal temp is missing.

My guess is some of the caps may have been a little dry and it took a few power cycles to revive them. Have seen that before in a few of my older boards, I usually power them up and leave them be for 15 - 20 mins to get warm and let the old caps charge back up. Either they will come back at full health or they will fail and need replacing.

Should say this really only helps old electrolytic caps that haven't been powered up in a good while and still look to be in good physical condition, if they have bulged or leaked then this wont help them at all.

Got a Roland MT-100 untested but in very nice condition recently. I knew that it was effectively an MT-32 with editing features and a disk drive...

... what I didn't know was that the disk drive uses 2.8" QuickDisks. 😌

To be honest, I had absolutely no clue that anything was different until the moment I tried to insert a brand new 3.5" floppy disk filled with MT-32 midi tracks... and the disk was too big to fit the drive. I had to look it up to figure out what this format was called because I didn't even know that 2.8" QD existed. I have a pretty good collection of Japanese-made synths, but I don't collect (or know anything about) Japanese computers from the time period that this disk format was used so it has completely flown under my radar.

Soooo... I was able to hook the MT-100 up to a PC and test it that way with midi tracks, and it does work at least. I'm a bit bummed about the situation, because I really enjoyed using an MT-200 to play back general midi tracks from a floppy and I was looking forward to doing the same with MT-32 midi tracks.

Still, it is a really interesting piece, and if I ever manage to get my hands on a hand full of usable 2.8" disks I can probably hold the entire known catalog of MT-32 tracks on those... though I have no idea how I'd get the midi files onto them from a PC. I see that I can also get a GoTek to work as a QD drive with some tinkering as well, but... honestly the MT-100 looks so awesome with the floppy drive that a GoTek would completely ruin the high-quality-1980s-Japanese-electronics aesthetic of it for me.

We need a more authentic GoTek alternative. Imagine a drive with a similar spring + locking mechanism to a floppy drive so that it looks and feels the same, but when you "eject" the disk, it is actually just a carrier for a microSD card... kind of like how they fit into a full size SD adapter, except it'd be floppy disk size\shape. A couple buttons (and a tiny screen) could be fit under a small panel on the front of the drive if necessary.

If I had the means, I would make this. 😅

I've been looking for a "good" old school LCD TV I could use for testing a variety of old hardware, from computers to game consoles, and whatever else I happen to need.

A while back, I was given a Westinghouse SK-19H210S and was told it was "working great when it was put away". Well, I finally got around to testing it out today.

So far, so good. I was most curious how it would handle DOS, and while DOS text is not as sharp and clear as on my Dell LCD monitor, it works good. I may be able to clear up the DOS text a bit in settings. Either way I think this TV will fit what I need nicely. It's got all the inputs I wanted and seems to handle DOS. For a free TV, I'm happy.

I upgraded my Windows XP/Vista/7 bare-metal retro rocket last night from a i7-4790k on an H97 motherboard to a i7-9700k on an H310 motherboard. My new to me Asus Prime H310-Plus is admittedly not a great motherboard, but its three legacy PCI slots allow me to boot into vanilla Windows 2000 with fantastic sound (Audigy 2ZS), Gigabit networking, and USB 2.0 support. The machine can now multiboot Windows 2000 in MPS mode in addition to later OSs. With 8 full-fat threads running at 3.6 GHz, it’s by far the fastest Windows 2000 compatible computer that I own. I just need to swap out the GTX 980 Ti for a GTX 480 and plug in a bootable SSD whenever I want to run Windows 2000. I just wish I knew a way to force the CPU into turbo modes when running Windows 2000 (something like ThrottleStop, but compatible with older versions of Windows).

The motherboard’s poor VRMs, on the other hand, really keep the computer from pushing the CPU to max performance in later versions of Windows even with a negative voltage offset of 0.11 Volts on the CPU. The motherboard will turbo the CPU to 4.6 GHz on all core at nearly 120 W of power, but at a cost of overheating the VRMs (they will hit 114 C within about two minutes of stressing the CPU). I put some heatsinks on the VRM components and the case has a ton of airflow which does help to increase the time the CPU takes before overheating the VRMs. I think I’ll end up altering the power profile in the UEFI/BIOS to set the short duration turbo time to about 60 seconds and long-duration power limit to 80-85 W. That should give me a full-speed single-core turbo and an all-core turbo of about 4.0 GHz which still makes it the third fastest computer in my household.

I do want to note one other thing. With the negative voltage offset and minimum power profile, I was surprised that the CPU tends to idle around 3 – 5 Watts. You don’t see that mentioned in any of the i7-9700k reviews from back in its heyday. Coffee Lake really is quite power efficient at lower clocks even with 8 active cores. Power draw hovers around 55 W at the base clock (3.6 GHz) with all 8 cores at 100% utilization.

That is so cool! Which version of Win 2000 is that, with support for 8 threads? Wasn't that a thing for the advanced server versions (or what its name was) only?

I had an Amstrad CPC 6128 for which, after extensive troubleshooting, the conclusion was that it must have some non-visible damage somewhere on the board itself. At that time there was a replica PCB for the 464 available (covered by multiple YouTubers including Noel's Retro Lab -a popular place for CPC repairs) but not for the 6128, so it was stored for parts. Only recently I found out by accident while browsing the guy's store for something else that now there is, it seems it never got the same publicity.

With all the ICs on my board confirmed working, I just had to get it and this beauty arrived

I decided to install new passive components and everything else I could easily source, sockets for all ICs, and to improve areas were Amstrad cheaped out (like adding a connector for the floppy cable which is originally soldered to the board), ending up with this

It was a fan project, it took a lot of time but since there is no hurry with these things it's not necessarily bad. It meant multiple enjoyable evenings tinkering, listening to music, adding some beer to the mix... It was the first computer I used, so hopefully this one will outlive me without having to worry again about a working 6128.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-04-04, 04:15:

That is so cool! Which version of Win 2000 is that, with support for 8 threads? Wasn't that a thing for the advanced server versions (or what its name was) only?

It's Advanced Server. I don't need any of the server stuff, but DirectX works just fine on this version as well.

fosterwj03 wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:11:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-04-04, 04:15:

That is so cool! Which version of Win 2000 is that, with support for 8 threads? Wasn't that a thing for the advanced server versions (or what its name was) only?

It's Advanced Server. I don't need any of the server stuff, but DirectX works just fine on this version as well.

Good to know. I have an i7 9700K too (and a GTX480 on its way soon). But my Z390 motherboard doesn't have anything near PCI, let alone native PCI, so probably never gonna happen 🤣 (like 99.8% of the crazy dreams one can have with the retro stuff)

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:18:

Good to know. I have an i7 9700K too (and a GTX480 on its way soon). But my Z390 motherboard doesn't have anything near PCI, let alone native PCI, so probably never gonna happen 🤣 (like 99.8% of the crazy dreams one can have with the retro stuff)

Curious to know what’s special about the GTX480?

zuldan wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:21:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:18:

Good to know. I have an i7 9700K too (and a GTX480 on its way soon). But my Z390 motherboard doesn't have anything near PCI, let alone native PCI, so probably never gonna happen 🤣 (like 99.8% of the crazy dreams one can have with the retro stuff)

Curious to know what’s special about the GTX480?

AFAIK it's the newest generation GeForce with proper Windows XP (and older? support)

zuldan wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:21:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:18:

Good to know. I have an i7 9700K too (and a GTX480 on its way soon). But my Z390 motherboard doesn't have anything near PCI, let alone native PCI, so probably never gonna happen 🤣 (like 99.8% of the crazy dreams one can have with the retro stuff)

Curious to know what’s special about the GTX480?

Beyond the leaf blower astetic, it's the fastest/newest GPU compatible with vanilla Windows 2000.

Windows XP can go up to the GTX 900-series.

I got a vintage eBook reader from Sony - a PRS-505. It's so ancient, it doesn't even have touch controls yet - instead, you get a big block of aluminum with lots of keys that are very satisfying to press.

I replaced the internal battery, struggled for an hour when putting it back together and loaded it up with a custom software (PRS Plus), my favorite font (Uni Neue) and a myriad of books.

This thing is amazing. I just have to figure out how to make my own leather case now (or adapt one for a different reader), since the original one is unobtanium and mine is falling apart.

yourepicfailure wrote on 2025-03-27, 09:43:

I kind of don't know if this counts as "retro" (had to use my camera as a monitor since my other CRT is on the fritz) […]
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I kind of don't know if this counts as "retro"
(had to use my camera as a monitor since my other CRT is on the fritz)

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but I tried that "windows NT4 on Wii" drug
it performs just as good/bad as my T4400C cooking with a 25MHz UC'd PODP5V63 and 20Mb ram as you'd expect with NT4. Decent.
Just using some cheapo sd card is killing I/O.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-03-26, 23:27:

Installed Windows 2000 Pro on a Dell Latitude D630 w/ Core 2 Duo T7100 and GM965 graphics.

I'm actually surprised Dell has 2k support for it.

Please DONT remind me...
my NVS 110m D620 is beginning to die!

Haha, it took me a minute to parse what everything was in that picture. Looks like an interesting setup with the camera monitor.
How is NT4 on the Wii? Is there much you can do other than base install stuff?

Today I finally got a new clock generator for this mainboard:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-02-19, 02:02:

Ahh, I fixed the keyboard which was down to 3 of the traces on one of the keyboard sheets being discoloured from what I guess is […]
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Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-02-18, 03:18:

The last few days I've been going at my Toshiba T4400C collection trying to get them all working - I have at last got to enjoy o […]
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The last few days I've been going at my Toshiba T4400C collection trying to get them all working - I have at last got to enjoy one and it's a real speed demon...

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Well, it's an ISA system from like 1991 / 1992, it's fast for its time. This one is running an SX2-50 processor instead of the regular SX-25.

Last week I bought 2 more because I had spare caps leftover from my recapping of the other power supplies. I don't really intend to keep them all but it's been a learning experience.
See this post for the kind of problems I had: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
Two out of four had dead motherboards and I tracked it down on both of them, to the clock generator which is a little SPXO like a surface mount version of a clock can like the one wiretap made a replacement for.
One mainboard I was able to use the working 25mhz clock generator from another motherboard that was broken in other ways, which is now just for parts. That's three out of four working but getting a new 5 volt 25mhz (or 33mhz) clock generator that will fit in the limited space is not easy, it's not micro soldering but a can clock would be too big.
There are some 5v 25mhz clock generators I found but that means waiting for parts to come in and I wanted them all fixed today. And they need significant adapting to fit the weird footprint this clock generator used.

Going through my box of scrap boards I found a 25mhz crystal on an office pbx system board, but it seems to be 3.3v - which requires stepping down because the Toshiba T4400 is 5v all the way, 3.3v was not invented yet when this thing was made. Using a 3.3v LDO, a 1uF MLCC capacitor and some cut capacitor leads as traces, it's all bodged into place:

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And that works, hooray. Then I found out its keyboard is broken with the enter key not working, which makes it pretty useless. The keyboards on these, the T4500 / T4600 / T4700 / T4800 / T4900 / T1900 laptops are made by Alps and I can't see a way to fix this keyboard, there's a little 3-leg chip glued to the flex pcb and that connects to the enter-key-pad - I can't fix that like I can a regular membrane keyboard.

Ahh, I fixed the keyboard which was down to 3 of the traces on one of the keyboard sheets being discoloured from what I guess is water ingress since the aluminium backing plate was corroded there. Used the conductive paint with kapton tape masking and hotplate paint curing method again, got all 3 traces within 50 ohms and not shorting each other (which they were, but the excess paint scrapes off with a bit of effort). Tested the keyboard in parts and the Enter key now works, put it all back together and re-melted all the heat stakes that hold the keyboard plastic to the backing plate and that worked, hooray.
But now I think that this T4400C #4 has killed a processor since it's tripping the DC-DC board's 5v low voltage limit...
Of course I need to test this - I have this Taken PCI400 that I 'fixed' a few weeks ago!

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-01-31, 21:52:

What was the original TIM like? Was it still good enough for the cpu to cool properly or did it need replacing? […]
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AGP4LIfe? wrote on 2025-01-30, 07:00:

I decided to dive into the deep end and replace the thermal paste on a Slot A 600Mhz CPU. I really want to replace the factory […]
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I decided to dive into the deep end and replace the thermal paste on a Slot A 600Mhz CPU. I really want to replace the factory TIM on my 950Mhz Thunderbird, so I used this 600 to "learn" the opening process..

I gotta say it doesn't feel great, those pins are tough and you really have apply a lot of pressure. However seeing the garage factory TIM on the inside of the 600 makes me wonder how hot these things really get, and further entices me to now replace the 950's.

I also found out my 600, has a 700 core. Interesting 🤔.

Everything went well and the CPU still works with no damage to the exterior case.Feels good. I think I'll practice one more time on a 650.

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What was the original TIM like? Was it still good enough for the cpu to cool properly or did it need replacing?

I have been trying to use the motherboard I fixed here, my Taken PCI400-4 which was working after a socket replacement and some loose pins around the southbridge resoldered: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
I was trying to test an ISA soundcard on it but it wouldn't boot reliably, getting stuck on / flipping between "C0" and "C1" post codes. Initially I thought it was another loose pin on one of the chipsets so spent ages reflowing the solder on those but to no avail.
Shoulda checked the basics at this point specifically clockspeed, but after some time figured out that the board would boot normally if heated around the CPU / northbridge area which is why I thought it was the northbridge. It would work sometimes when started up but it seemed whenever I left it for a while and it got cold, it would go back to being broken.

Using the hot air with a nozzle I was able to narrow it down to the area around the clock generator, the ARK 915A which has a bash mark on it:

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Checking with the oscilloscope it was showing an unstable ~9mhz on the main cpu clock instead of the 33mhz it's supposed to be. Can't find a datasheet for the ARK 915A or Macronix MX8318 clock generators, but the MX8315 is pretty close. There was no clock on the 14.318mhz crystal so I thought perhaps it was the crystal that was bad, swapped that and no difference 😐

The conclusion seems to be that there's a broken bond wire inside the ARK 915A clock generator since borrowing the MX8318 from my Zida 4DPS has made the board reliable again.
When the ARK 915A clock generator is heated up then it will work with the crystal and do its job properly, but when cold the crystal oscillator is dead so I assume that the XO crystal output pin of the clock generator which drives the oscillator, only has a working connection when warm.
If I heat the ARK 915A then it works and it seems to keep working if it works when it starts up, so a heater atop the chip could work. Mechanical pressure also seems to work so I might try some kind of clip on top of the chip to keep pressure on it.
Or I could look at making some alternative clock generator work, I'd rather not do that and replacements for the ARK 915A or MX8318 both seem to be unavailable. Getting an alternative clock generator working would be a lot of work...

Anyways, now the board works again (albeit at the cost of the 4DPS which I'm not using right now) and it's set up for a Cyrix 5x86 processor I thought I'd try out my 5x86 chips - the IBM one works perfectly and seems to run very cool.
I have another one with the green heatsink and cyrix branding and that works just fine as well. Then there's the one I got on this M919 from a junk lot quite a while back: Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today
I've not tested that chip until now because pin R1 broke off when I was cleaning it, there was only the tiniest little dot of a connection poking through the ceramic. I tried soldering a pin directly to that and making it strong mechanically with superglue, but didn't want to test it because well... I don't think that's going to work.
I tried it this evening and the processor was dead, just "--" on the post card 🙁 As suspected, it did not work. Not possible to solder to something so tiny and have that stay connected to something as big as a cpu pin.
A couple of weeks ago though, while I was trying to go to sleep I was for some reason thinking about this and visualised a new way I could do that repair. I have some scrap PCBs that are 0.8mm thick with 2.54mm spaced through-holes, I used the mini grinder pen to clean off all the traces so now I've got some 6-pin segments of a PCB. Those slide over the pins at each corner of the CPU so that this modified CPU sits level in the socket.

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I've soldered a long single strand of copper wire to pin R1's little silver dot of a connection and checked it's functioning by checking the resistance to ground of this missing R1 pin for Address line 28 and the adjacent address pin, both measure 17mega ohms to ground so the wire is working 😀
To get the PCB with the wire to sit flush there's a channel carved into the backside and a pin from a very dead Pentium 200MMX is soldered into the front-side of the pin repair PCB, which is better for this than a regular CPU pin because there's a larger peg that sits inside the Pentium's organic PCB. That peg gives a bit more mechanical strength and makes alignment easier.

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The little PCB bits are held in place at the corners with superglue. The strand of wire is looped around from the outside of the CPU / pin repair PCB and is soldered to the pin at the front-side, so it now has no mechanical connection to the CPU pin but has an electrical connection.

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Now the CPU works! 😁

edit: ugh now the floppy controller is giving me trouble... not this CPU that's causing it though!!

The floppy controller on this Taken PCI400 board was not working, giving a floppy disk fail message in the BIOS and not even trying to move the heads. The board around the floppy controller area is immaculate, but these faults don't exist in a vacuum so I started comparing my Taken PCI400 against the Zida 4DPS - the floppy controller (super i/o) chip on the 4DPS has a 24mhz crystal by it, but there's no crystal on the Taken PCI400...
Spent a *while* trying to find where the floppy controller's clock input linked to but it seems to go to pin #5 of the clock generator chip, which I'd swapped out with the clock generator from the Zida 4DPS (this kills the 4DPS).

Checking pin #5 of the clkgen with the oscilloscope when it's on shows that with the MX8318 gives out 16.24mhz - there's yer prahblem. That should be 24mhz according to the W83787IF datasheet and the clock crystal on the Zida 4DPS by the super i/o chip.
So it seems that the Ark 915A incorporates a couple more clocks which the PCI400 makes full use of, not possible to swap the ARK 915A for the MX8318 and still have the board 100% working.

Put the ARK 915A clock generator back and it still does that thing where when it's cold it'll give out an unstable ~10mhz to the cpu which causes it to fail to boot up. It gets better and worse as it gets warmer/colder and it seems that pressing on the chip makes it work more reliably. Here I've tried a metal springy clip on top of the chip to apply pressure, it didn't really work...

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Trying another way instead I moved pins 2 (crystal output) and 3 (crystal input or frequency) input out of the socket so that the ARK 915A has no connection to the 14.318mhz crystal that the PLL bases all other frequencies off of. Hooked up the frequency generator to pin 3 and ground and fed it 14.318mhz and it now works every time. This bypasses the damaged connection that I think is on the crystal-output pin that would normally drive the crystal.
Gonna see if I can use some useless microcontroller to use / drive this crystal instead and save this board so it can work all the time instead of only sometimes / only when warmed up.

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Lately it seems all the problems I'm facing are clock frequency issues, I could put an SPXO frequency generator there instead but 5v input simple oscillators are hard to find. I actually broke apart one of the broken SMD SPXO oscillators from one of the Toshiba T4400C mainboards and it's got a little tube type crystal inside along with some silicon that drives it, guess the bond wires melt when it gets overvoltage.

edit: aww heck yeah. Went through my box of spare microcontrollers like atmels and pics and the attiny2313a was the best option to hand. Requires no extra circuitry to run the crystal (PICs do) and has a ckout pin, kind of a cruel fate but it's got no code and just has the fuse bits set to use an external crystal and provide the CKOUT pin - doing the same thing as the SPXO on my T4400C motherboards were doing. That feeds into the Clock Input pin of the ARK 915A, with the ATTINY 2313A piggy backing the VCC & GND of the 74LS244 beneath it, with all its other pins folded underneath.

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Now the board starts every time! 😁 (and the floppy controller works great)

I found looking on the retroweb that the UM9515 clock generator is also present on some of the Taken PCI400 boards pictured on there, which includes the 24mhz frequency for the floppy controller. Those are still quite available on Aliexpress somehow so I removed the hacky clock repair solution for the ARK 915 clock generator and put the UM9515 in its place - it works perfectly:

Now the board has no hacky stuff on it and perhaps that atmel microcontroller could do things that involve running code in future 😀
Making sure the floppy controller works is really quite important since I've decided this PC is going be the rebuild of the old family PC because it's currently got the same CPU (not the actual CPU, that lives in a display case on my wall). Right now I'm installing Windows 95 from floppy disks using the Gotek. It'd be quite the task with a real floppy drive.
I'm not totally sure it's as good as my hacky solution because the POST codes were hanging at BF / chipset initialisation where I was tuning it last time this board was out - did it work with tighter timings with the old clockgen? Oh well.

Of course, when trying to do anything some mistakes get made and this one really sucks. My most handy mouse that I use for testing is a Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse V2 since it's got good tracking without a mousemat and fully supports PS/2 mouse mode.
I made the mistake of following *just* this page when wiring up the PS/2 mouse header on this Taken PCI400: https://www.engineersgarage.com/how-to-interf … ino-part-35-49/
If you scroll down on there you should see the pinout picture and it shows VCC & GND swapped from where they actually are. Really wish I checked a second source! When I turned the PC on the mouse didn't light up but when I swapped the VCC & GND pins it did, but doesn't detect.

It doesn't detect as a USB mouse now either - it lights up but doesn't do anything. Makes sense, this mouse is so simple and cost reduced down to just the one chip, that reverse polarity did real damage. Why would MS need to account for something that couldn't really happen since PS/2 headers are part of the mainboard since the ATX standard?

Not all bad, I bought a few spare used MS Basic Optical Mouse a while back and took the board out of the junkiest, most worn, most hand cheese covered one. Now my mouse works again at least 😒

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2025-04-03, 12:55:

Got a Roland MT-100 untested but in very nice condition recently. I knew that it was effectively an MT-32 with editing features […]
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Got a Roland MT-100 untested but in very nice condition recently. I knew that it was effectively an MT-32 with editing features and a disk drive...

... what I didn't know was that the disk drive uses 2.8" QuickDisks. 😌

To be honest, I had absolutely no clue that anything was different until the moment I tried to insert a brand new 3.5" floppy disk filled with MT-32 midi tracks... and the disk was too big to fit the drive. I had to look it up to figure out what this format was called because I didn't even know that 2.8" QD existed. I have a pretty good collection of Japanese-made synths, but I don't collect (or know anything about) Japanese computers from the time period that this disk format was used so it has completely flown under my radar.

Soooo... I was able to hook the MT-100 up to a PC and test it that way with midi tracks, and it does work at least. I'm a bit bummed about the situation, because I really enjoyed using an MT-200 to play back general midi tracks from a floppy and I was looking forward to doing the same with MT-32 midi tracks.

Still, it is a really interesting piece, and if I ever manage to get my hands on a hand full of usable 2.8" disks I can probably hold the entire known catalog of MT-32 tracks on those... though I have no idea how I'd get the midi files onto them from a PC. I see that I can also get a GoTek to work as a QD drive with some tinkering as well, but... honestly the MT-100 looks so awesome with the floppy drive that a GoTek would completely ruin the high-quality-1980s-Japanese-electronics aesthetic of it for me.

We need a more authentic GoTek alternative. Imagine a drive with a similar spring + locking mechanism to a floppy drive so that it looks and feels the same, but when you "eject" the disk, it is actually just a carrier for a microSD card... kind of like how they fit into a full size SD adapter, except it'd be floppy disk size\shape. A couple buttons (and a tiny screen) could be fit under a small panel on the front of the drive if necessary.

If I had the means, I would make this. 😅

It's possible to get that going with the MT100 and a gotek: https://github.com/keirf/flashfloppy/wiki/Quick-Disk
And a replacement front bezel bit: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4541092
Personally though I just don't use the Quick Disk on the MT100, I agree that changing it would ruin the aesthetic of it. I also have an MT90S that I put a gotek in once but after a few months I put the original floppy drive back because that's what made it interesting for me.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:18:

fosterwj03 wrote on 2025-04-04, 11:11:

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-04-04, 04:15:

That is so cool! Which version of Win 2000 is that, with support for 8 threads? Wasn't that a thing for the advanced server versions (or what its name was) only?

It's Advanced Server. I don't need any of the server stuff, but DirectX works just fine on this version as well.

Good to know. I have an i7 9700K too (and a GTX480 on its way soon). But my Z390 motherboard doesn't have anything near PCI, let alone native PCI, so probably never gonna happen 🤣 (like 99.8% of the crazy dreams one can have with the retro stuff)

Your board probably could run Windows 2000 with a couple of caveats:

1. Your Z390's UEFI probably doesn't have compatible ACPI tables. Few newer UEFI have compatible MPS tables either (Asus boards do, though) so you likely can't use the multiprocessor HAL. You could use the "Standard PC" HAL that supports a single processor/core instead.

2. If your board doesn't have PS/2 ports, you'll need a USB 1.1/2.0 card for keyboard and mouse during and after installing. You can get these cards with a PCIE interface, but the card must support USB 1.1.

3. Your board's built-in audio might work with Windows 2000. I've used Realtek Windows XP drivers with Windows 2000 on my newer boards. If your board's audio has a Windows XP driver, it might work.

4. You can get a PCIE network adapter that works with Windows 2000. I have a Realtek RTL8111E card that works with Windows 2000.

5. You would need to slipstream SP4 and Fernando's AHCI drivers for Windows 2000 (I use version 7) onto the Windows 2000 installation disk.

vutt wrote on 2025-04-02, 20:50:

It have been running stable now for couple of hours. Only strange part is that latest Beta bios does not have PC Health section in BIOS. Also none of Win98 software are able to provide sensors info. I need to dig deeper how sensor monitoring on P3 should be happening. Probably separate chip, but even standard P3 internal temp is missing.

Quoting myself since I found "workaround". After downgrading from latest beta bios v1.18 to newest stable V1.6SLCP QDI Advance 10T bios PC Healt monitoring reappeared in BIOS and most importantly now windows monitoring software can read temps.

Another today I found out is that my version is with inferior overclock implementation in BIOS. Up to 136Mhz only.
Otherwise I'm very happy with board speed and stability in Windows 98.
However in dos even with 66Mhz FSB it did not like PicoGUS in some demos. This requires more testing. Is it just PicoGUS or QDI has inferior ISA implementation.
Edit: Run same demos today with SBPro - all good. So ISA issues in DOS are PicoGUS specific.
Edit2: Good news about OC. I have CY28316 PLL chip. So all frequencies are available. I wonder if it possible to mod bios...