yourepicfailure wrote on Yesterday, 07:36:

Shame the panel has yellowed though, this is a mighty fine 9x laptop.

I would be opening the screen and seeing if I can get a new CCFL tube for the display

NeoG_ wrote on Yesterday, 07:43:

yourepicfailure wrote on Yesterday, 07:36:

Shame the panel has yellowed though, this is a mighty fine 9x laptop.

I would be opening the screen and seeing if I can get a new CCFL tube for the display

In this case, I hate to be that kind of person but I'm going to leave it alone.
The laptop does have some history (original hard disk has some military documents on it, do not ask for them) and I would prefer to leave it yellowed to show it has history.

I mentioned the T21: The A21e's "really good" sibling. It is unmarred, and would offer a near-identical experience (minus the included floppy drive, slightly smaller screen and S3 Savage IX GPU) to the A21e. But its res is 1400x1050...

EDIT: I forgot... the display mode was set to 16bit color...

Last night I was all set to have a play with my retro rig and finally put the StarTech IDE-SATA adapter to use with an SSD and install Windows98... until I started the machine up and it just kept either restarting itself or just locking up - in both cases the symptoms were the same. After anything from 30s to a few minutes the VGA would go off, along with the power light on the case (but not the HDD light) and a sound like rapid HDD reads would be emitted from the speaker. It usually wouldn't respond to the power or reset buttons being pressed either. After two hours trying to diagnose the problem I gave up and went to bed thinking I'll be looking for a new mobo over the weekend.

This morning on a hunch I dug out an old (~2010 ish) barely used PSU and swapped it over. Rock solid for the time it took to do two passes of Memtest86+ (good half hour at least).

This is the old PSU.

And I'm guessing that brown gunk shouldn't be there and is probably the cause of the stability issues?

On the plus side the replacement PSU has a big slow fan which will improve air extraction in the case no end. The downside is its bigger and I could barely get 3 of the screws in to hold it - the fourth is a no go as it's just ever so slightly offset from the case slot.

I've currently got a Diamond Stealth S540 (Savage 4 Pro) in the machine and I also noticed the heatsink on that gets a bit hot - not uncomfortably so but I think I need to try and get some additional cooling on that too.

Although now the missus is expecting a parcel to arrive next week with "more computer crap"... I'd hate to disappoint her! 😁

that gunk is rotting glue, but not the problem right now. I would remove it safely later, after you figure out the stability problem.
check capacitor ratings, which would involve removing some of the glue anyways.

Reminds me, I do need to check on my Nipron Non-Stop PSU. Been going 24/7 for a very long time.

yourepicfailure wrote on Yesterday, 09:03:

I mentioned the T21: The A21e's "really good" sibling. It is unmarred, and would offer a near-identical experience (minus the included floppy drive, slightly smaller screen and S3 Savage IX GPU) to the A21e. But its res is 1400x1050...

These make quite nice Win9x/Me retrogaming systems, with the DOS-compatible audio card and all. I had an A21m for some time, but, alas, it died. 🙁

hornet1990 wrote on Yesterday, 09:34:

Last night I was all set to have a play with my retro rig and finally put the StarTech IDE-SATA adapter to use with an SSD and i […]
Show full quote

Last night I was all set to have a play with my retro rig and finally put the StarTech IDE-SATA adapter to use with an SSD and install Windows98... until I started the machine up and it just kept either restarting itself or just locking up - in both cases the symptoms were the same. After anything from 30s to a few minutes the VGA would go off, along with the power light on the case (but not the HDD light) and a sound like rapid HDD reads would be emitted from the speaker. It usually wouldn't respond to the power or reset buttons being pressed either. After two hours trying to diagnose the problem I gave up and went to bed thinking I'll be looking for a new mobo over the weekend.

This morning on a hunch I dug out an old (~2010 ish) barely used PSU and swapped it over. Rock solid for the time it took to do two passes of Memtest86+ (good half hour at least).

This is the old PSU.

The attachment psu.jpg is no longer available

And I'm guessing that brown gunk shouldn't be there and is probably the cause of the stability issues?

The attachment leak.jpg is no longer available

On the plus side the replacement PSU has a big slow fan which will improve air extraction in the case no end. The downside is its bigger and I could barely get 3 of the screws in to hold it - the fourth is a no go as it's just ever so slightly offset from the case slot.

I've currently got a Diamond Stealth S540 (Savage 4 Pro) in the machine and I also noticed the heatsink on that gets a bit hot - not uncomfortably so but I think I need to try and get some additional cooling on that too.

Although now the missus is expecting a parcel to arrive next week with "more computer crap"... I'd hate to disappoint her! 😁

Classic DEER crap. Discard it.

PcBytes wrote on Yesterday, 11:29:

Classic DEER crap. Discard it.

Thanks, yeah, I wasn’t minded to try fixing it. Possibly a bit outside my comfort zone working on a PSU anyway…

Living fairly close to a forest, I find myself discarding deer crap on a weekly basis! 😅

So anyway, as I was setting up a trio of Win98 machines for an upcoming LAN party, I had a bit of an epiphany: It's not a drum, it's a frickin HARD DRIVE!
Specifically, this thing:

For the longest time, I thought that little animation depicted something like a snare drum. But as I was sitting there drooling on the keyboard waiting for Win98 to do its thing, I realized that an animation of read/write heads gliding across what looks like a full-height stack of HDD platters makes a lot more sense!

Standard Def Steve wrote on Yesterday, 18:25:

Living fairly close to a forest, I find myself discarding deer crap on a weekly basis! :sweat_smile: […]
Show full quote

Living fairly close to a forest, I find myself discarding deer crap on a weekly basis! 😅

So anyway, as I was setting up a trio of Win98 machines for an upcoming LAN party, I had a bit of an epiphany: It's not a drum, it's a frickin HARD DRIVE!
Specifically, this thing:

The attachment Win98.png is no longer available

For the longest time, I thought that little animation depicted something like a snare drum. But as I was sitting there drooling on the keyboard waiting for Win98 to do its thing, I realized that an animation of read/write heads gliding across what looks like a full-height stack of HDD platters makes a lot more sense!

It's always been a drum in my mind and I can't unsee it at this point, but your idea does make sense.

Upgraded rgh aurora Xbox 360 to 500gb SSD and loaded complete xbox arcade and a dozen full games using fatxplorer, time consuming but worth it in the end I think 😒

Standard Def Steve wrote on Yesterday, 18:25:

It's not a drum, it's a frickin HARD DRIVE!
Specifically, this thing:

The attachment Win98.png is no longer available

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is a drum and it's supposed to be a visual representation of a drumroll

NeoG_ wrote on Today, 00:29:

Standard Def Steve wrote on Yesterday, 18:25:

It's not a drum, it's a frickin HARD DRIVE!
Specifically, this thing:

The attachment Win98.png is no longer available

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is a drum and it's supposed to be a visual representation of a drumroll

Agreed. It's a drum representing a drumroll trying to represent anticipation.

pan069 wrote on Today, 01:42:

NeoG_ wrote on Today, 00:29:

Standard Def Steve wrote on Yesterday, 18:25:

It's not a drum, it's a frickin HARD DRIVE!
Specifically, this thing:

The attachment Win98.png is no longer available

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is a drum and it's supposed to be a visual representation of a drumroll

Agreed. It's a drum representing a drumroll trying to represent anticipation.

This, definitely a drum... but it is funny to imagine it as a horribly drawn animation representing hard drive read heads and platters... 🤣

If someone wants to look at this to sanity check themselves, here is the animation:
https://oldwindowsicons.tumblr.com/post/66911 … 6839680/drumani

Also, as far as I know, no hard drives have two read heads on the same side of a platter coming from different angles.

pan069 wrote on Today, 01:42:

NeoG_ wrote on Today, 00:29:

I'm going to go out on a limb and say it is a drum and it's supposed to be a visual representation of a drumroll

Agreed. It's a drum representing a drumroll trying to represent anticipation.

Wow, that...actually makes more sense. I suppose Microsoft really were into the ta-da back then. Fine, it's a drum.
But you know, as Win98 installed that DirectX update this morning -- hard drive clattering away in the background -- a disk activity animation would've been just perfect.

Ozzuneoj wrote on Today, 04:44:

Also, as far as I know, no hard drives have two read heads on the same side of a platter coming from different angles.

Well, this is Microsoft we're talking about. 😉

Been futzing with my Epson ActionNote on and off. Arrived early in the year dead HDD, no CMOS battery life...

Anyway, after having it sitting partially open for months (interrupted project, story of my life) I got to looking at what could be done with the CMOS battery... it has a dallas module. Now I saw a webpage where dude said he just swapped it out, because it was socketted, and I first glanced at mine and was "Aw, must be nice." since mine was sitting right down flush on the board. First impression was it was soldered down... then I noticed little raised silvery rings... ahhhh...

Yeah it's got those "socket in pin" individual pin sockets that are like zero profile not just low profile. So eased out the dallas and stuck in a newish one. Yay, full functionality. I had had another HDD plugged in, thinking it was necessary, but it had a translation I could not get this 386 era BIOS to like very much. On a whim, I tried the old (Original?) HDD and found a translation that worked and booted. So that was not dead after all. Kinda boring stuff on there, DOS 6.0, Win 3.1, and some desqview network/terminal kind of setup that did office/admin off a server over modem, no files on it to indicate what really. Might have been legal or medical.

Next job, get the floppy working again... IDK if the connector needs cleaning or I got a micro-crack in the stupid ribbon from unplugging/manipulating. Hate those things.... but know enough to be super careful with them, but that's not always enough when they're old. Was working but crunchy sounding before disassembly, might need some lube, but it's failing to get anything right now.

So interesting lessons here, if you've let any boards sit and wait because Dallas needed desoldering, take a closer look, maybe used those socket pins. They will look "fat" from the back of the board... or you might spot the wider than regular riveted through-hole silver ring around the pins.