Is Betrayal At Krondor one of those DOS games that simply doesn't work under Win9x DOS?

I keep getting "Not Enough Memory". Tried EMS and XMS.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2025-09-24, 18:58:

Is Betrayal At Krondor one of those DOS games that simply doesn't work under Win9x DOS?

I keep getting "Not Enough Memory". Tried EMS and XMS.

Loew limitmem for config.sys ?

Connect the line-out of the AWE64 (MB_PRO) to AUX input of the Diamond MX300. I've used tree jumper wires (L/R and one ground) and use a connector of CD-ROM audio cable for one end (the AUX input).

dominusprog wrote on 2025-09-25, 11:10:

Connect the line-out of the AWE64 (MB_PRO) to AUX input of the Diamond MX300. I've used tree jumper wires (L/R and one ground) and use a connector of CD-ROM audio cable for one end (the AUX input).

Love to see it, I wish more cards had headers for internal connections

NeoG_ wrote on 2025-09-25, 12:16:

dominusprog wrote on 2025-09-25, 11:10:

Connect the line-out of the AWE64 (MB_PRO) to AUX input of the Diamond MX300. I've used tree jumper wires (L/R and one ground) and use a connector of CD-ROM audio cable for one end (the AUX input).

Love to see it, I wish more cards had headers for internal connections

Yes, it's great. You can also can connect the header to an amplifier and an internal speaker.

Opened this non-used, brand new viking edo-ram package for my new 5x86 rig.

They seem to be 60ns and working at tightest timings at 40Mhz bus.

I recommend, if you find one of them, buy them, they are of highest quality.

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-24, 10:33:

It in fact does. I just collected some info and did some testing on it: […]
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zuldan wrote on 2025-09-23, 19:16:

tehsiggi wrote on 2025-09-23, 17:40:

Found a possible memory tester for R200 based cards. Will verify tomorrow and if successful, add the notes on the usage into the repair collection thread. I'll test a 9100, 9000 and 9200. We'll see..

This would be awesome. I think R6MEMID does older cards than the R300.

It in fact does. I just collected some info and did some testing on it:

Re: VGA Repair report collection

So if anyone needs to memory test R200/RV250/RV280 cards, there is a good way to do it.

Thanks for documenting it 😀 I do have a couple of Radeon 9200 type cards to test so a proper memory tester will help a great deal with that.
In regards to card repair, I've been trying to fix a Radeon HD 4650 AGP that had two resistors knocked off of the back. The pictures online are all not great but I found that the two transistors near the back of the AGP connector connect to the last pin, the VREFGC pin. I think that's for detecting the type of AGP slot its connected to and I have a Sapphire HD 1950 which uses the same AGP to PCI-E bridge. Then I worked out that the transistors and resistors are hooked up just the same on that and the HD4650 to work out that I was missing a resistor marked 17A (147 ohms) and a teeny tiny one at 200 ohms. Gotta test that card out soon, haven't got a good test setup right now for AGP cards.

I've been trying to get my Sony PRD-650 working better, I have awful luck with these. They're really cool tiny SCSI CD-ROM drives but it seems like the laser is always cooked on them, see my attempts to repair a PRD-250: Re: What retro activity did you get up to today?

Got frustrated with that and did some scanning / archiving of documents I've got that aren't online anywhere. I've done this before but was using LibreOffice Draw to make PDF files and didn't know how to optimise the images for PDF usage, so I've been learning how to process the images as 1-bit PNG files and automate the creation of PDF files from those images with OCR. A mix of img2pdf and ocrmypdf have done a fantastic job of putting together space efficient PDF files without manual intervention, once all the images are processed and in the right order. Going over my previous PDFs I was able to get the size of one that was 10MB down to less than 1MB with searchable text and with lossless compression.
Making these PDFs manually is something I've done before but when a document is over 200 pages long, that takes quite a while and has a lot of room for errors to occur.

So now I've shared two new documents I've got that I'm not aware of being online at all til now, those are:
Kapok 6200A (6200AT / 6200AD) user manual, which covers the MMX models and how to set all the voltage / CPU dip switch settings: https://archive.org/details/6200at-user-guide

Toshiba PORTABLE SERVICE BOOKLET - I got this a few years ago on the bay and it's a small handbook covering specs, disassembly and memory maps of Toshiba laptops up to around 1995. I had thought that the maintenance manuals covered all this information already so didn't bother scanning it, til I was fixing a Toshiba T1800 and found that the images showing the screw locations / lengths are all missing from the maintenance manuals.
240 pages covering all these models: T100X, T200 series, T1800, T1850 series, T1900 series, T1900S, T1910 series, T1950 series (same as T1960 series), T2100 series, T2150CD series, T2200SX, T2400 series, T2450CT
https://archive.org/details/toshiba-portable- … e-booklet-vol-1

This is just volume one, Volume Two is longer and covers all these ones: T3300SL, T3400CT, T4400 series, T4500 series, T4600 series, T4700CT, T4800CT, T4850CT, T4900CT, T6400 series and T6600C
I wish I knew how to add bookmark information into these PDF files.

EDIT: Ooh, I can *fix* the maintenance manuals and put those on the Internet Archive too 😁 Just done the Toshiba T1800 maintenance manual successfully which has all the original graphics.
The process is pretty arcane but it works - get the scans from toshiba ATLAS 95, use Irfanview batch convert to make them into PNG because they're crazy fax encoded TIF files. Then use ImageMagick to convert them to 1-bit PNG at the correct DPI, then use img2pdf and ocrmypdf to make a PDF of those. Now to figure out bookmarks!

Did some troubleshooting with my IBM PCjrs, one of which has trouble with the monitor display, and the other with the monitor speaker. The display shows about half its colors too dark, and the contrast knob doesn't work. Every so often, the display will suddenly start showing all the colors correctly, then stay that way for a few months before going dark again (for the colors in question). The trouble with the monitor speaker is it sometimes cuts out the PC beeper, so it comes through the CPU speaker, and not the monitor speaker like it should. Turning up the volume seems to fix it, at least temporarily. Not sure why. Got no solutions yet.

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-09-25, 15:15:

The pictures online are all not great but I found that the two transistors near the back of the AGP connector connect to the last pin, the VREFGC pin. I think that's for detecting the type of AGP slot its connected to and I have a Sapphire HD 1950 which uses the same AGP to PCI-E bridge.

The VREFGC and VREFCG pins are used for the reference voltages of the AGP I/O. In spec it's meant to help with offsets in ground voltages. Therefore the graphics card generates a reference voltage it sends to the mainboard (VREFGC) so the board knows the cards reference voltage. Vice-versa the Mainboard sends a reference voltage as well via the VREFCG to the graphics card.
Some mainboards use this, some don't.

The reference voltage should be VDDQ/2 if AGP is not version 3.0. If it is AGP 3.0, the voltage is supposed to be VDDQ*0.233.
Without it, the system basically doesn't know the threshold value between high and low and the data communication is not working.

Glad you got your card fixed!

Attached some reference schematic from one of my projects..

I'm just playing with an old Pentium II-300 before it hits the autumn garage sale scene. The hard drive has Windows XP on it of all things! Because the software allows me to do so, I've connected it to my network to play high res FLAC audio just to satisfy some raging curiosity.

~3200 kb/s, 24 bit, 96 KHz stereo audio uses roughly 10% of the CPU
~5600 kb/s, 24 bit, 192 KHz stereo audio uses roughly 18% of the CPU
~8400 kb/s, 24 bit, 96 KHz 5.1-ch audio uses roughly 44% of the CPU

Honestly, I thought it would do worse! The files all played thru fine, and I could even multitask whilst listening to the stereo tracks (the 5.1 jittered a little when I tried starting other programs).

But ugh...all those bits per second sounded rather ugly thanks to the grit and tizz injected by the Sound Blaster Live Value card. I had honestly forgotten just how noisy computers used to be, just how much crud our poor ears dealt with!

Of course, when this machine was in daily use, websites were still presenting us with choices of 28k, 56K, and "hi-speed" 128K listening options--all with relatively shite codecs to boot. I suppose the grit wouldn't have mattered as much back then; we had other problems!

I find my CT4830 SB Live! Value quite pleasant to listen to haha, as long as it's not a shoutcast radio stream

Hopefully I rescued a Slot 1 Celeron 300A SL32A.

Wouldn't boot - but reason was kinda obvious. So I started scraping solder resist of the traces, but found that the dent was deep. Looks like there is copper underneath too. Hopefully it's just a ground or power plane (would make sense from a general layout point of view).

So I had to route the new connections a little more out of harm's way. Hoping that it's not really critical impedance wise - and that the stub on one trace doesn't mess up too much. I'd like to run at at 450 😁

Originally I didn't think I could be bothered with fixing it, rather buying another one ... Then I saw the 'bay prices ...

GigAHerZ wrote on 2024-07-23, 11:09:

I was trying to figure out, what mechanism i could have to attach SLOT1 coolers to the CPUs. I think i figured it out. You'll ne […]
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I was trying to figure out, what mechanism i could have to attach SLOT1 coolers to the CPUs. I think i figured it out.
You'll need:
* M3 screws with length of about 25mm (16mm is very uncomfortable to work with)
* M3 nuts
* 4mm wide and 5mm long springs
* Nylong/plastic washers for M3 with outer diameter of 6mm.

I think this is very workable solution.
Depending on the cooler, you may or may not need a washer there. (on picture, the holes were too big for the springs)

So long, mf-ing plastic "plugs" or whatever!

So, some time has passed and i was able to use my (improved) technique on re-attaching SLOT 1 heatsinks to processors.

That looks good with those springs, there's no core crushing that way.

Diagnosed the IBM 5150 to see why it won't turn on. Capacitors are shot, so I ordered some off of Amazon so I can recap the motherboard, video card, and floppy controller.

My plan is to use the 1.44MB floppy drive in the system using the XT-FDC card from my dead Compaq Portable XT in the system and I need to get a dual 5.25" drive adapter to make it as a full one with the hard drive bracket that has the LED on it so I can connect it to my XT-CF card.

Once I get the motherboard recapped along with the video card and original floppy controller, I'll make a BIOS ROM that has the latest version so I can upgrade the RAM on my AST SixPakPlus SPK-384 to 576K RAM and have 640K entirely.

Repaired a Voodoo 3 that I got for cheap. 3000 AGP model.

And.. had to trash a few cooked-beyond-any-repair R350s.

GigAHerZ wrote on 2025-09-27, 08:40:

GigAHerZ wrote on 2024-07-23, 11:09:

I was trying to figure out, what mechanism i could have to attach SLOT1 coolers to the CPUs. I think i figured it out. You'll ne […]
Show full quote

I was trying to figure out, what mechanism i could have to attach SLOT1 coolers to the CPUs. I think i figured it out.
You'll need:
* M3 screws with length of about 25mm (16mm is very uncomfortable to work with)
* M3 nuts
* 4mm wide and 5mm long springs
* Nylong/plastic washers for M3 with outer diameter of 6mm.

I think this is very workable solution.
Depending on the cooler, you may or may not need a washer there. (on picture, the holes were too big for the springs)

So long, mf-ing plastic "plugs" or whatever!

So, some time has passed and i was able to use my (improved) technique on re-attaching SLOT 1 heatsinks to processors.

its a nice long term solution if you dont mess too much with it, otherwise i would preffer the nuts on the outside or zip ties

Was looking over a Game Gear a family member found to see if it worked so they could sell it. Powers on. LED works. Screen works. Backlight works. But... dead.

Seems the caps inside leaked, but did little to no damage. I'm 85% sure that's the problem, it's a known issue with these units. Inside of it's storage case was full of crystalized residue.

Could replace them all for about $9 and a couple hours of work to see....but they decided to just sell it off as-is for someone else to fix since it's not guaranteed to work after the recap.

Would have been a fun repair. 😀

Since the power supply I'm using (A-Open ATX-250GT) has one connector for a 3.5" floppy drive and I want to install two drivers, I've made this. I'll replace the jumper wires with a real connector later.

I bought this SB16 SCSI on ebay and am wondering if I was bidding against anyone on here haha