dominusprog wrote on 2025-07-23, 16:48:

brostenen wrote on 2025-07-20, 22:45:

When I look at the reaction, the powder that are used, have a really large surface. And the thinner the super glue is, the faste […]
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dominusprog wrote on 2025-07-20, 19:05:

A few years ago, I bought this glue called "welding glue", which was a tube of super glue and a box of black powder. I don't know what it was, but it has a same effect as baking soda. Anyway, good job on the power supply, these DIY projects are gold 🙂.

When I look at the reaction, the powder that are used, have a really large surface. And the thinner the super glue is, the faster it dries and get hard.
Are cinnamon not more fine in grain size than baking powder by the way?

Anyway. I actually managed to produce smoke from the use of cotton. I have no idea if that is too dangerous.
Also, the fumes hurt the mucous membranes in the nose and makes the eyes burn.
So getting too close are not adviceable at all.

The dark or black powder in that kit you wrote about, might be powdered graphite. I might look for some of it and give it a test. Or perhaps toner from laserprinter.

And thanks regarding the PSU. I have no idea if it is safe enough, with my job on the 240v line. If insulation are good enough or something.
I just used my knowledge from electrician ground school about safety, and increased insulation and that stuff. Even modern PSU's with that switch, leaves the leads unshielded inside.
So I hope it is safer than generic factory made, CE labeled stuff.

I guess getting shock by live wire is part of the job 😅. Last year repairing a dryer, and it has a broken solder joint and piece of a plastic (for holding the heater in place), so I grab the heater thinking I was unplugged it and I got zapped 😁. And that was one of many incidents 😅.

The live wire looks the same as the others, it just has a different grip 😀

I mostly finished setting up a DOS sandbox for running a wide variety of games (just a couple of the mixer shortcuts left). Mostly to make it much easier to adjust the system configuration in LaunchBox for each game as needed.

was given an ancient box by wife's family. I was just curious what it was. I didn't want it, and I said so.

Anyway, it's an ancient VLB 3/486 mobo with TI 386 and FPU, and I think 8mb of ram.
Quick wash, and it looks surprisingly ok.
Battery was changed out decades ago to a couple of long wires and a CR2032.

Next... wash the PSU and monitor guts.

Then... does it explode?

myne wrote on 2025-07-24, 02:34:

Then... does it explode?

How many tantalum’s does it have 😉

LOTS!
iirc those yellowy-orange plastic things are tantrums, right?

myne wrote on 2025-07-24, 06:19:

LOTS!
iirc those yellowy-orange plastic things are tantrums, right?

May the force be with you….🤣🤣

Repaired my Saitek X35T flight throttle. Some plastic piece inside snapped, which caused the throttle to slip and lose all tension. I glued it back together, scanned the outline and measured it carefully with my calipers, and then 3D printed a replacement. It works great!

zuldan wrote on 2025-07-24, 08:21:

myne wrote on 2025-07-24, 06:19:

LOTS!
iirc those yellowy-orange plastic things are tantrums, right?

May the force be with you….🤣🤣

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/dataex … xp3406-1.1#docs

That's it, or near enough

Half wondering if there is a way to... Add voltage to them slowly

myne wrote on 2025-07-24, 08:28:

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/dataex … xp3406-1.1#docs […]
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zuldan wrote on 2025-07-24, 08:21:

myne wrote on 2025-07-24, 06:19:

LOTS!
iirc those yellowy-orange plastic things are tantrums, right?

May the force be with you….🤣🤣

https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/dataex … xp3406-1.1#docs

That's it, or near enough

Half wondering if there is a way to... Add voltage to them slowly

If there is a bad one then best case scenario is it shorting and the PSU catches it. Worst case is it blowing a chip like with what happened to me Smoke coming from PAS16 [FIXED]

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-07-24, 08:24:

Repaired my Saitek X35T flight throttle.

Very nice work! Amazing what can be accomplished when you care enough.

Fixed the last couple of hardware niggles in my K6-2+ machine

• Removed and bypassed a faulty fan speed thermistor in the power supply so now it doesn't randomly freeze due to the power supply overheating
• Modified the sound blaster live to accept two stereo line inputs on the back of the card so I can mix the other two soundcards (PicoGUS and ES1869) in DOS

Fixed this controller.... The B button where not working.
So I took it apart, cleaned with IPA, and now it is working again.

Cleaning and removing rust from the shielding for my newly acquired Apple IIGS Woz system. I also cleaned the motherboard and got most of the corrosion off, except for the slots, which I need advice on how to get rid of the corrosion on the slots themselves. I tried baking soda and lemon juice (I'm out of distilled white vinegar) to no avail and I'm not sure of other methods.

Prepped up a SS7 system for packing after I sold it.

- MSI MS5169 AL9
- K6-2 500MHz (standard)
- TNT2 Pro ASUS V3800
- 256MB RAM
- SB AWE32

Bought an unusual Apple Extended Keyboard II, that is finnish-swedish layout but also has cyrillic letters. The letters were filled with red paint, which I got rid of in ultrasonic cleaner in IPA bath, making the extra markings less noticeable. After the paint was removed, it caught my attention how nicely these cyrillic letters were made.

What kind of machine do you think they used for engraving these? Must have been pretty expensive operation back in 1990-1994 when this keyboard was sold. Those grooves are just 0,5 mm wide, so the CNC router bit must have been very small.

Wahoo Vogons is back 😀 I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perhaps it was a hosting problem?

Uh, I modified one of my Toshiba Libretto 50CT to have a way to hook up a PS/2 mouse directly without the port replicator - using a USB port for USB mice that are compatible with PS/2 signalling. Since I've done this using the port replicator previously this time I wanted it to be inside the case and using a CF card for storage and a custom caddy, the plan is to have a USB port mounted in the 3d printed HDD caddy with a hole in the also 3d printed HDD cover.
First thing was tracing the signals back from the port replicator connector:

Not sure if the ground I've selected is an analogue ground for the sound chip or a main one but it works.

The casing is so tight that wires can't fit from the topside of the board into the underside where the hard drive fits though, so I used this flat flex cable that I'd salvaged off something instead.

How the wiring works is the mouse data and clock go into the corners of the Toshiba 471HP chip which afaik is the combo mouse and keyboard controller. But the pull up resistors and inductors / ferrite bead that the signals need would normally be inside the port replicator, so it's necessary to put those in here as well.
There are 10k resistors soldered directly to the points for mouse clock and mouse data with a 30AWG wire-wrapping wire running from each to the 5v source. Then there's a separate wire with the 600 ohm ferrite bead (what I have available) connected in line to the flat flex connector and awkwardly these had to be flipped around to match the pinout for a PS/2 to USB adapter.

Careful application of kapton tape to stop it all shorting out. Should still be able to fit the memory expansion board.

Now to re-design the HDD caddy 3d model to accomodate a USB port mounting so it can all fit flush 😀
It worked first time and the libretto is way more fun to use with a real mouse.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-07-28, 13:53:

Wahoo Vogons is back :) I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perh […]
Show full quote

Wahoo Vogons is back 😀 I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perhaps it was a hosting problem?

Uh, I modified one of my Toshiba Libretto 50CT to have a way to hook up a PS/2 mouse directly without the port replicator - using a USB port for USB mice that are compatible with PS/2 signalling. Since I've done this using the port replicator previously this time I wanted it to be inside the case and using a CF card for storage and a custom caddy, the plan is to have a USB port mounted in the 3d printed HDD caddy with a hole in the also 3d printed HDD cover.
First thing was tracing the signals back from the port replicator connector:

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-1.jpg is no longer available

Not sure if the ground I've selected is an analogue ground for the sound chip or a main one but it works.

The casing is so tight that wires can't fit from the topside of the board into the underside where the hard drive fits though, so I used this flat flex cable that I'd salvaged off something instead.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-2.jpg is no longer available

How the wiring works is the mouse data and clock go into the corners of the Toshiba 471HP chip which afaik is the combo mouse and keyboard controller. But the pull up resistors and inductors / ferrite bead that the signals need would normally be inside the port replicator, so it's necessary to put those in here as well.
There are 10k resistors soldered directly to the points for mouse clock and mouse data with a 30AWG wire-wrapping wire running from each to the 5v source. Then there's a separate wire with the 600 ohm ferrite bead (what I have available) connected in line to the flat flex connector and awkwardly these had to be flipped around to match the pinout for a PS/2 to USB adapter.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-3.jpg is no longer available

Careful application of kapton tape to stop it all shorting out. Should still be able to fit the memory expansion board.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-4.jpg is no longer available

Now to re-design the HDD caddy 3d model to accomodate a USB port mounting so it can all fit flush 😀
It worked first time and the libretto is way more fun to use with a real mouse.

The Hosting company Linode had major Data Center issues after some really bad storms came through North Jersey and New York the other night.

Spent hours over the past couple of days trying to fix a Sega Mega CD Model 1.

It needed a replacement laser but no matter how much I calibrated the new laser, it wouldn't reliably read CD-R backup discs. Original discs were no problem, but CD-R was so hit and miss. Games would either not boot, or boot fine and develop glitches later. I got it to a point where it would read some backups temperamentally, then I decided to just give up and reassemble the console.

After putting everything back together I thought I'd just test it one more time - only to discover that it's now working perfectly fine and reading all discs. WTF!!!!

The only thing I can think of here is that the issue may have been RF interference between the Mega CD & the Mega Drive, which impacts the much noisier CD-R media more heavily. Though I've never seen anybody reference this as an issue before and the consensus always seemed to be that the shielding was irrelevant.

Either way, once the console is reassembled, the internal metal shielding and external shielding between the Mega CD & Mega Drive is now present. Prior to this, I was testing it out without both sets of shielding, with just the Mega Drive sitting awkwardly on top, directly above the disc drive.

Either that, or the console is just cursed. 🤣

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-07-28, 13:53:

Wahoo Vogons is back :) I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perh […]
Show full quote

Wahoo Vogons is back 😀 I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perhaps it was a hosting problem?

Uh, I modified one of my Toshiba Libretto 50CT to have a way to hook up a PS/2 mouse directly without the port replicator - using a USB port for USB mice that are compatible with PS/2 signalling. Since I've done this using the port replicator previously this time I wanted it to be inside the case and using a CF card for storage and a custom caddy, the plan is to have a USB port mounted in the 3d printed HDD caddy with a hole in the also 3d printed HDD cover.
First thing was tracing the signals back from the port replicator connector:

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-1.jpg is no longer available

Not sure if the ground I've selected is an analogue ground for the sound chip or a main one but it works.

The casing is so tight that wires can't fit from the topside of the board into the underside where the hard drive fits though, so I used this flat flex cable that I'd salvaged off something instead.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-2.jpg is no longer available

How the wiring works is the mouse data and clock go into the corners of the Toshiba 471HP chip which afaik is the combo mouse and keyboard controller. But the pull up resistors and inductors / ferrite bead that the signals need would normally be inside the port replicator, so it's necessary to put those in here as well.
There are 10k resistors soldered directly to the points for mouse clock and mouse data with a 30AWG wire-wrapping wire running from each to the 5v source. Then there's a separate wire with the 600 ohm ferrite bead (what I have available) connected in line to the flat flex connector and awkwardly these had to be flipped around to match the pinout for a PS/2 to USB adapter.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-3.jpg is no longer available

Careful application of kapton tape to stop it all shorting out. Should still be able to fit the memory expansion board.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-4.jpg is no longer available

Now to re-design the HDD caddy 3d model to accomodate a USB port mounting so it can all fit flush 😀
It worked first time and the libretto is way more fun to use with a real mouse.

I don't see the ferrite bead in the photo. Is it strictly necessary?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2025-07-28, 13:58:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-07-28, 13:53:

Wahoo Vogons is back :) I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perh […]
Show full quote

Wahoo Vogons is back 😀 I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perhaps it was a hosting problem?

Uh, I modified one of my Toshiba Libretto 50CT to have a way to hook up a PS/2 mouse directly without the port replicator - using a USB port for USB mice that are compatible with PS/2 signalling. Since I've done this using the port replicator previously this time I wanted it to be inside the case and using a CF card for storage and a custom caddy, the plan is to have a USB port mounted in the 3d printed HDD caddy with a hole in the also 3d printed HDD cover.
First thing was tracing the signals back from the port replicator connector:

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-1.jpg is no longer available

Not sure if the ground I've selected is an analogue ground for the sound chip or a main one but it works.

The casing is so tight that wires can't fit from the topside of the board into the underside where the hard drive fits though, so I used this flat flex cable that I'd salvaged off something instead.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-2.jpg is no longer available

How the wiring works is the mouse data and clock go into the corners of the Toshiba 471HP chip which afaik is the combo mouse and keyboard controller. But the pull up resistors and inductors / ferrite bead that the signals need would normally be inside the port replicator, so it's necessary to put those in here as well.
There are 10k resistors soldered directly to the points for mouse clock and mouse data with a 30AWG wire-wrapping wire running from each to the 5v source. Then there's a separate wire with the 600 ohm ferrite bead (what I have available) connected in line to the flat flex connector and awkwardly these had to be flipped around to match the pinout for a PS/2 to USB adapter.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-3.jpg is no longer available

Careful application of kapton tape to stop it all shorting out. Should still be able to fit the memory expansion board.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-4.jpg is no longer available

Now to re-design the HDD caddy 3d model to accomodate a USB port mounting so it can all fit flush 😀
It worked first time and the libretto is way more fun to use with a real mouse.

The Hosting company Linode had major Data Center issues after some really bad storms came through North Jersey and New York the other night.

Ah I had no idea, thank you for the info 😀

Kahenraz wrote on 2025-07-28, 17:31:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-07-28, 13:53:

Wahoo Vogons is back :) I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perh […]
Show full quote

Wahoo Vogons is back 😀 I was concerned that it might have been caused by the age verification stuff going on in the UK but perhaps it was a hosting problem?

Uh, I modified one of my Toshiba Libretto 50CT to have a way to hook up a PS/2 mouse directly without the port replicator - using a USB port for USB mice that are compatible with PS/2 signalling. Since I've done this using the port replicator previously this time I wanted it to be inside the case and using a CF card for storage and a custom caddy, the plan is to have a USB port mounted in the 3d printed HDD caddy with a hole in the also 3d printed HDD cover.
First thing was tracing the signals back from the port replicator connector:

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-1.jpg is no longer available

Not sure if the ground I've selected is an analogue ground for the sound chip or a main one but it works.

The casing is so tight that wires can't fit from the topside of the board into the underside where the hard drive fits though, so I used this flat flex cable that I'd salvaged off something instead.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-2.jpg is no longer available

How the wiring works is the mouse data and clock go into the corners of the Toshiba 471HP chip which afaik is the combo mouse and keyboard controller. But the pull up resistors and inductors / ferrite bead that the signals need would normally be inside the port replicator, so it's necessary to put those in here as well.
There are 10k resistors soldered directly to the points for mouse clock and mouse data with a 30AWG wire-wrapping wire running from each to the 5v source. Then there's a separate wire with the 600 ohm ferrite bead (what I have available) connected in line to the flat flex connector and awkwardly these had to be flipped around to match the pinout for a PS/2 to USB adapter.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-3.jpg is no longer available

Careful application of kapton tape to stop it all shorting out. Should still be able to fit the memory expansion board.

The attachment libretto-50ct-ps2-mod-4.jpg is no longer available

Now to re-design the HDD caddy 3d model to accomodate a USB port mounting so it can all fit flush 😀
It worked first time and the libretto is way more fun to use with a real mouse.

I don't see the ferrite bead in the photo. Is it strictly necessary?

They're the little SMD ferrite beads in line with the clock and data pins where it solders onto the flat flex cable. They're not strictly necessary since my previous build in the dock just used pull-up resistors and it's always worked well, but most ps/2 implementations I've seen do use them and although I can't find the pictures I took a few years back, I'm pretty sure the libretto's dock with the PS/2 ports used ferrite beads inline to filter interference.