Oh right, that meme was also in this 1999 song. I vaguely remember the first computer I used, had a 133 MHz Pentium, took its time loading Hover!, you could watch the progress bar.

So the system was always broken, just wasn't as noticeable in that area with all the novelty.

Just finished working on a PC Engine DUO that I got last week. It was quite an ordeal, I had to do a full recap since pretty much every SMD electrolytic on the board had leaked, a common problem with these consoles. Luckily I was able to clean all the leakage without losing any pads, I also replaced the through-hole electrolytics and the supercapacitor used for the internal backup RAM:

The problem with the CD-ROM drive spindle constantly running was due to one via that was completely eaten by the capacitor leakage, so I fixed it by sticking the thickest resistor leg I could fit through the hole and soldered it to both ends of the board, avoiding the need for a bodge wire. After that, I serviced the drive by cleaning the laser and applying fresh grease on the gears:

I tested HuCard games with a Turbo Everdrive that I filled up with the entire catalogue and after a few sessions of Street Fighter II and R-Type as a burn-in test everything went well. Also, the CD-ROM drive reads pressed CDs without any problems, so the only remaining thing is to burn a copy of Rondo of Blood to see how well it tolerates burned discs! In any case, I'm really glad with how the repairs turned out and the case also cleaned up quite well:

Loving the games on this console, I wish I was able to experience it back then!

HW purist please look away...

Asus GF4 4400ti "facelift". Sorry Leadtek...

I took a break from the struggle of trying to get an OS on my Powerbook 150 to swap out a CD drive that was living in my partner's XP machine that was having extreme difficulty reading disks (constant read errors, very slow data stream, ect) with another that I had previously serviced. Once I had that done I got into it and poked around for issues. Didn't find a smoking gun but the inside was filthy, especially the rails. Cleaned it out and scrubbed off the old rail grease, applied new and reinstalled it in a windows 98 computer that was living with one of those cheap awful sata > ide adapters. Seems to be working and resolved the issue that computer was having with games not seeing the slaved drives due to the adapter in one go. Plus, it's fast enough to play the cut-scenes in Star Wars: Racer, the Nec multichanger that computer also has only runs at 1x which can't play them smoothly. A win all around.

Some before and afters:

Had to unfortunately write-off a Geforce 256.

Considering the prices of those combined with the inability to run a Geforce 2 GTS/Pro as replacements on the MSI 6167, I'll probably have to entirely scrap the Dec.99 Area51 project.

For the record - the photo shows 65000 errors and counting.

If you have a display, then isn't this just a bad memory chip?

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-07-17, 22:50:

If you have a display, then isn't this just a bad memory chip?

It's more than one... VMTCE isn't really telling which ones it is but I'd be sure there's at least a bunch of them.

Either way I don't have any 5ns replacements - closest I have is 5.5ns off a dead V3 PCI and even those aren't guaranteed to be working in the first place.

I made a Borland C++ 3.1 (in C really) program that snifs midi encoded bytes on port 330h, so it looks for a MIDI controller being played, and routes the notes to the PC speaker. That was yesterday, the proof of concept works:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ulR5CTz6EPM?feature=share

The next day, I went ahead and devised a temporal polyphony by slicing up a short amount of time (I played around with the ms amount) according to how many notes are active. I played with the amount of notes allowed and 6 was what I think is working (I tried up to 10, but it sounded bad). I'm using a "hotel" for those simultaneous notes, which is just a fancy way of storing the midi note bytes into an array in a first come, first serve basis and shutting out more notes when all 6 are filled. Then, an interrupt switches the pc speaker around to whichever "hotel tenant" is.

https://youtube.com/shorts/MvbA7XDkHVI?feature=share

Mu0n wrote on 2025-07-18, 00:36:

I made a Borland C++ 3.1 (in C really) program that snifs midi encoded bytes on port 330h, so it looks for a MIDI controller bei […]
Show full quote

I made a Borland C++ 3.1 (in C really) program that snifs midi encoded bytes on port 330h, so it looks for a MIDI controller being played, and routes the notes to the PC speaker. That was yesterday, the proof of concept works:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ulR5CTz6EPM?feature=share

The next day, I went ahead and devised a temporal polyphony by slicing up a short amount of time (I played around with the ms amount) according to how many notes are active. I played with the amount of notes allowed and 6 was what I think is working (I tried up to 10, but it sounded bad). I'm using a "hotel" for those simultaneous notes, which is just a fancy way of storing the midi note bytes into an array in a first come, first serve basis and shutting out more notes when all 6 are filled. Then, an interrupt switches the pc speaker around to whichever "hotel tenant" is.

https://youtube.com/shorts/MvbA7XDkHVI?feature=share

This is amazing! I hope that you keep working and improving on it.

If you want to have your mind blown, check out Dungeon Master for DOS and choose the PC Speaker option. They played digital music at the beginning of the game through the PC Speaker that's surprisingly good.

Installed a Modxo in my OG Xbox today. Had to remove the old executor 1,1 first. But hey. I did my first ever modchip installation.

Scrap Computing made an excellent tutorial on how to fix a broken bezel using ABS and acetone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR624U3OX44

dominusprog wrote on Yesterday, 14:14:

Scrap Computing made an excellent tutorial on how to fix a broken bezel using ABS and acetone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UR624U3OX44

I know that procedure.... Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Mu0n wrote on 2025-07-18, 00:36:

I made a Borland C++ 3.1 (in C really) program that snifs midi encoded bytes on port 330h, so it looks for a MIDI controller bei […]
Show full quote

I made a Borland C++ 3.1 (in C really) program that snifs midi encoded bytes on port 330h, so it looks for a MIDI controller being played, and routes the notes to the PC speaker. That was yesterday, the proof of concept works:

https://youtube.com/shorts/ulR5CTz6EPM?feature=share

The next day, I went ahead and devised a temporal polyphony by slicing up a short amount of time (I played around with the ms amount) according to how many notes are active. I played with the amount of notes allowed and 6 was what I think is working (I tried up to 10, but it sounded bad). I'm using a "hotel" for those simultaneous notes, which is just a fancy way of storing the midi note bytes into an array in a first come, first serve basis and shutting out more notes when all 6 are filled. Then, an interrupt switches the pc speaker around to whichever "hotel tenant" is.

https://youtube.com/shorts/MvbA7XDkHVI?feature=share

Interesting concept & props for being able to play a cool tune!