Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige! it actually turned out pretty good I think, Video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAB6aQyasr0

RetroBus wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:46:

Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige! it actually turned out pretty good I think, Video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAB6aQyasr0

Nice job! That turned out great!

ChrisK wrote on 2025-10-22, 17:07:

You're welcome 🙂.
Sometimes we don't see the obvious. I'm surprised the card worked despite that missing diode.

Yeah, it does seem a bit odd, but I've seen cards work with missing components before. I try very hard not to run them with broken components, just in case it causes damage to something that can't be replaced, but sometimes they slip past me!

I have stocked up on all sorts of components for repairs over the past year, but a big pack of diodes is not something I have on hand. This seems like a bargain, so I'm grabbing one of these kits right now.

https://www.amazon.com/SMA-Rectifier-Diode-Ki … g/dp/B0F5WGDBXJ

I have an Nvidia reference FX 5200 Ultra and it seems to have the exact same PCB layout. On that card D505 is an "SK24" diode, which seems to be the same as an "SS24", so that kit should suffice. 😀

RetroBus wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:46:

Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige!

That's like, the ULTIMATE retro activity. 😁 Turned out great indeed.

RetroBus wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:46:

Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige! it actually turned out pretty good I think, Video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAB6aQyasr0

Loving the aussie retro content. Case turned out very well. Subbed. Thank You!

octopus wrote on 2025-10-22, 06:25:

bjwil1991 wrote on 2025-10-22, 06:07:

Doing more troubleshooting on the IBM 5150 by using a modern oscilloscope (touchscreen one) to probe the 8253 that I know might be the issue, but I'm waiting to minuszerodegrees to determine where else I should look before I jump to conclusions.

What sort of trouble are you shooting for? Just curious since I'm working on a machine from the same era atm

Well, I was able to get the continuous beep to stop and I'm using Rudd's Diagnostics ROM to determine other issues, and it says the channel 0 and channel 1 on the 8253 failed.

The PIT chip has failed, and I ordered some parts to fix it.

dr_st wrote on 2025-10-23, 03:53:

RetroBus wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:46:

Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige!

That's like, the ULTIMATE retro activity. 😁 Turned out great indeed.

Thankyou! it was great fun, thinking about doing another now!

zuldan wrote on 2025-10-23, 04:00:

RetroBus wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:46:

Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige! it actually turned out pretty good I think, Video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAB6aQyasr0

Loving the aussie retro content. Case turned out very well. Subbed. Thank You!

Awesome, thanks mate! appreciate it!!

It took almost a year to find 'TAMARAC' chipset.
It has arrived and I've finally resurrected JUKO BABY XT BXM10 😀

It seems heretical to dual blaster but I had to put in my SB16 into the 386 temporarily for the IDE interface so that I can install Windows 3.0 Multimedia.

Long time reader, first time poster:
I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit in an old case for which the front panel plastic has long since been lost. Had a quick play with installing the two operating systems and drivers. Very difficult to believe that as a teenager I could build & repair these things in my sleep, and now, some 30 years later, I can't solve the simplest problems.
It also seems to occur to me that a motherboard "Technically" running Windows 98, doesn't mean, it will run it in the real world, without a lot of real world problems. It does run well in XP though,so at least I'm 50% of the way there.

The A-Bit AV8 motherboard, which I bought, following a lot of research on the most modern system that could run both 98SE & XP, it seems to have a LOT of bugs on any 9X version of Windows, despite being shipped with drivers for 98/Me/XP.

Issues that have appeared after just 24 hours, that I am currently working my way through:
1 . Windows 98 works when it wants to, last night I was happily playing some games, today I don't have a mouse, nor a resolution above 800x600 16 colours.
2. Changing to booting off the Win98 drive as opposed to the XP Drive, currently mean removing half the RAM from the system before changing boot drive, and trying various Legacy settings in the BIOS, to see if it's a mouse & keyboard day today or not.
3. Every time I find the correct Legacy USB settings to have a mouse in Windows 98, it decides to run scandisk, and I can't select to skip it, because I don't have Mouse/Keyboard in DOS.
4. My VGA Capture card won't capture anything in MS-DOS mode, ruling out playing anything that isn't native to Windows, at least for streaming/recording purposes.

But I am getting there slowly, by the 40th anniversary of Windows 9X, I should at least be able to open Solitaire 😁

RetroBus wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:46:

Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige! it actually turned out pretty good I think, Video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAB6aQyasr0

What an idea, and that turned out so much better then I expected honestly.
The color you picked looks spot on to me. I've tried repainting a damaged case before, but that came out to white. Maybe a redo with the color you're using would work out better.
Another project for the list.

MutedFFS wrote on 2025-10-23, 20:41:

Long time reader, first time poster: I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit […]
Show full quote

Long time reader, first time poster:
I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit in an old case for which the front panel plastic has long since been lost. Had a quick play with installing the two operating systems and drivers. Very difficult to believe that as a teenager I could build & repair these things in my sleep, and now, some 30 years later, I can't solve the simplest problems.
It also seems to occur to me that a motherboard "Technically" running Windows 98, doesn't mean, it will run it in the real world, without a lot of real world problems. It does run well in XP though,so at least I'm 50% of the way there.

The A-Bit AV8 motherboard, which I bought, following a lot of research on the most modern system that could run both 98SE & XP, it seems to have a LOT of bugs on any 9X version of Windows, despite being shipped with drivers for 98/Me/XP.

Issues that have appeared after just 24 hours, that I am currently working my way through:
1 . Windows 98 works when it wants to, last night I was happily playing some games, today I don't have a mouse, nor a resolution above 800x600 16 colours.
2. Changing to booting off the Win98 drive as opposed to the XP Drive, currently mean removing half the RAM from the system before changing boot drive, and trying various Legacy settings in the BIOS, to see if it's a mouse & keyboard day today or not.
3. Every time I find the correct Legacy USB settings to have a mouse in Windows 98, it decides to run scandisk, and I can't select to skip it, because I don't have Mouse/Keyboard in DOS.
4. My VGA Capture card won't capture anything in MS-DOS mode, ruling out playing anything that isn't native to Windows, at least for streaming/recording purposes.

But I am getting there slowly, by the 40th anniversary of Windows 9X, I should at least be able to open Solitaire 😁

Welcome!
Interesting problems there. Would be happy to think along if you like.
If so:
1. can you tell us what bios version you are running?
2. Also, you're mentioning Legacy USB settings. Are those legacy settings in the bios, or are you referring to legacy drivers?
3. I see from the AV-8 manual that it has a VIA usb chipset, not sure how well Windows 98 handles those. The few times I've played with USB cards and Windows 98, VIA wouldn't really work. Do you have an alternative, a PCI USB card with a non VIA chipset for example?
4. Last question for now: are you running Windows 98 SE? Just to be sure.

Locutus wrote on 2025-10-23, 13:33:

It took almost a year to find 'TAMARAC' chipset.
It has arrived and I've finally resurrected JUKO BABY XT BXM10 😀

The attachment IMG_2532.jpg is no longer available

The unobtainium obtained, nice!. Congratulations on the repair, that desoldering looks so clean.

RetroBus wrote on 2025-10-23, 00:46:

Im finding it very hard to get hold of Beige boxes, everything these days is either Silver or Black, so I modded a black case back to beige! it actually turned out pretty good I think, Video below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAB6aQyasr0

Good choice of case and great result, great video! Subscribed since I've watched one of your previous videos and they're quite good so far 😀

I've been playing about with some CD drives lately - cleaning the lens and reseating the ribbon connectors brought a drive back from being unable to read CD-Rs. I've had this HP 7500 parallel port CD-writer that has been waiting to be tested for ages. Finally installed the drivers using the shuttle EPAT drivers on vogonsdrivers and hooked it up to my current 440bx slot1 test PC - shuttle EPAT and parallel port CD drives are in general pretty funky but after some reboots it was working pretty well.
Then found that the actual drive wouldn't read stuff well, an audio CD was okay and a pressed CD was marginally okay but CD-Rs were a no-go, which isn't much good as it's a 'multiread' CD-writer. Took it apart and cleaned the laser, blew air into the laser bit to hopefully clean any dust out of the optics, cleaned and re-seated all the ribbon connectors and the drive is now working very reliably.

sunkindly wrote on 2025-10-23, 20:00:

It seems heretical to dual blaster but I had to put in my SB16 into the 386 temporarily for the IDE interface so that I can install Windows 3.0 Multimedia.

The attachment IMG_7598.jpg is no longer available

The attachment dualblaster.jpg is no longer available

Dual wielding 😁
Ehh, an SB16 in a 386 is fine but especially since you're using it for IDE. What are you using for a CD drive now that Windows 3.0 Multimedia is installed?
I tried out that Panasonic Matsushita CR-501B - SCSI Caddy CD drive and there's still something wrong with it 😒 It detects 8 times with any SCSI controller and drive ID# I try and obviously that doesn't work, so I guess there's something wrong with the SCSI sub-board on the drive. That's a shame and I'm ignoring the drive for a while.

MutedFFS wrote on 2025-10-23, 20:41:

Long time reader, first time poster: I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit […]
Show full quote

Long time reader, first time poster:
I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit in an old case for which the front panel plastic has long since been lost. Had a quick play with installing the two operating systems and drivers. Very difficult to believe that as a teenager I could build & repair these things in my sleep, and now, some 30 years later, I can't solve the simplest problems.
It also seems to occur to me that a motherboard "Technically" running Windows 98, doesn't mean, it will run it in the real world, without a lot of real world problems. It does run well in XP though,so at least I'm 50% of the way there.

The A-Bit AV8 motherboard, which I bought, following a lot of research on the most modern system that could run both 98SE & XP, it seems to have a LOT of bugs on any 9X version of Windows, despite being shipped with drivers for 98/Me/XP.

Issues that have appeared after just 24 hours, that I am currently working my way through:
1 . Windows 98 works when it wants to, last night I was happily playing some games, today I don't have a mouse, nor a resolution above 800x600 16 colours.
2. Changing to booting off the Win98 drive as opposed to the XP Drive, currently mean removing half the RAM from the system before changing boot drive, and trying various Legacy settings in the BIOS, to see if it's a mouse & keyboard day today or not.
3. Every time I find the correct Legacy USB settings to have a mouse in Windows 98, it decides to run scandisk, and I can't select to skip it, because I don't have Mouse/Keyboard in DOS.
4. My VGA Capture card won't capture anything in MS-DOS mode, ruling out playing anything that isn't native to Windows, at least for streaming/recording purposes.

But I am getting there slowly, by the 40th anniversary of Windows 9X, I should at least be able to open Solitaire 😁

Hey welcome to the forum 😀 That's a pretty late build to run Windows 98 on so maybe that's causing some of the problems, do you have the Via 4in1 chipset driver installed?

I know your pain with the capture card, I got this very interesting 640x480 VGA LCD recently which I thought would be amazing for old games but it's a TV and will *only* do 640x480 and higher, it won't display 320x200 or 720x400 text mode so that's kind of ruined it. No display at all when trying to run DOS games. There are lots of good VGA games though, I was having a lot of fun with Diablo 1 on my laptop that scales VGA perfectly the other week.
I wonder if there's some kind of decent low latency scaler that would do VGA in > VGA out, probably the GBS-Control would do it

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-10-25, 00:17:

Dual wielding 😁
Ehh, an SB16 in a 386 is fine but especially since you're using it for IDE. What are you using for a CD drive now that Windows 3.0 Multimedia is installed?
I tried out that Panasonic Matsushita CR-501B - SCSI Caddy CD drive and there's still something wrong with it 😒 It detects 8 times with any SCSI controller and drive ID# I try and obviously that doesn't work, so I guess there's something wrong with the SCSI sub-board on the drive. That's a shame and I'm ignoring the drive for a while.

I have that NEC CDR-80 somewhat working. It either detects the controller on boot or it doesn't, seems random as I tried different slots, different addresses, different device IDs, pretty much everything and it does the same thing. But when it detects, it works for the rest of the session. I'm hoping it's just a matter of termination because the cable that came with it is just a standard 50 pin SCSI ribbon cable and as far as I can see there's no way to set termination on the drive via a jumper or dip switch. So I've ordered an internal SCSI cable with a termination block at the end of the chain. I'm totally new to SCSI so...yeah haha. If that doesn't work I guess I'll try an Adaptec controller rather than the Trantor T100. Either way, the CD drive at least can read data but it seems really picky about what it can read (Myst was fine, a burned CD-R at 1x speed was a no go).

I actually already exorcised Windows 3.0 MME (and the SB16) from the system already, it turns out my Sound Blaster CT1320C is a Sound Blaster 1.0 (the DSP version is 1.05) and apparently drivers for Windows 3.0 only come for the 1.5? Additionally, I'm running only a 170MB hard drive in there so it's not like I can really be pulling much off of CDs anyways. At that time, was it customary to read / play things directly off the CD?

Oh, and for the purposes of installing MME I was just connecting an ole ATAPI CD drive to the SB16 but it's not staying with or in the 386 either.

MutedFFS wrote on 2025-10-23, 20:41:

Long time reader, first time poster: I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit […]
Show full quote

Long time reader, first time poster:
I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit in an old case for which the front panel plastic has long since been lost. Had a quick play with installing the two operating systems and drivers. Very difficult to believe that as a teenager I could build & repair these things in my sleep, and now, some 30 years later, I can't solve the simplest problems.
It also seems to occur to me that a motherboard "Technically" running Windows 98, doesn't mean, it will run it in the real world, without a lot of real world problems. It does run well in XP though,so at least I'm 50% of the way there.

The A-Bit AV8 motherboard, which I bought, following a lot of research on the most modern system that could run both 98SE & XP, it seems to have a LOT of bugs on any 9X version of Windows, despite being shipped with drivers for 98/Me/XP.

Issues that have appeared after just 24 hours, that I am currently working my way through:
1 . Windows 98 works when it wants to, last night I was happily playing some games, today I don't have a mouse, nor a resolution above 800x600 16 colours.
2. Changing to booting off the Win98 drive as opposed to the XP Drive, currently mean removing half the RAM from the system before changing boot drive, and trying various Legacy settings in the BIOS, to see if it's a mouse & keyboard day today or not.
3. Every time I find the correct Legacy USB settings to have a mouse in Windows 98, it decides to run scandisk, and I can't select to skip it, because I don't have Mouse/Keyboard in DOS.
4. My VGA Capture card won't capture anything in MS-DOS mode, ruling out playing anything that isn't native to Windows, at least for streaming/recording purposes.

But I am getting there slowly, by the 40th anniversary of Windows 9X, I should at least be able to open Solitaire 😁

DOS/Win98
Memory: if larger than 512MB, then you need the Loew memdriver
Mouse: get a PS2 mouse, keyboard, USB should work under DOS, under Win98 the USB keyboard works, the mouse may jump - the solution is to install the Win3.11 mouse driver.
These worked with the Asus A8V board, which is similar to the Abit AV8.
It is stable even when complicated, here 2 video cards/2 displays, 2 sound cards in the A8V :

It also works with many other more modern boards with the modernized Win98, e.g. RyZen.

For example, Omores' video also guides you through the modifications :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCaJML-M808

Full reinstall of Windows 98SE on the Socket 7 machine.

Opening 'My Computer' was causing a full on freeze; at first suspected the CD-ROM as the issue went away when it was removed. But drive didn't cause issues in other machines.

Full reinstall solved it.

But thinking about it, I'm suspicious that the culprit may have been Daemon Tools. I had only recently installed it when the issue began. Possibly caused a driver conflict with real optical drive?

Dan386DX wrote on 2025-10-25, 00:51:

Full reinstall of Windows 98SE on the Socket 7 machine. […]
Show full quote

Full reinstall of Windows 98SE on the Socket 7 machine.

Opening 'My Computer' was causing a full on freeze; at first suspected the CD-ROM as the issue went away when it was removed. But drive didn't cause issues in other machines.

Full reinstall solved it.

But thinking about it, I'm suspicious that the culprit may have been Daemon Tools. I had only recently installed it when the issue began. Possibly caused a driver conflict with real optical drive?

Yes, DaemonTools sometimes caused problems for me too.

More optical drive adventures, this time with one of those Creative Multimedia drives: a Matsushita CR-523-B from 1992 that I got for my Cyrix build.

I picked up an unknown sound card for the plethora of CD interfaces on it, and it was identified in What is this card? as a Boca Research Sound Expression. It looks so ridiculous in the case, it barely fits!

And...everything works! Both the card and the drive itself. Once again Myst was my test subject.

octopus wrote on 2025-10-24, 14:38:

Welcome! Interesting problems there. Would be happy to think along if you like. If so: 1. can you tell us what bios version yo […]
Show full quote

Welcome!
Interesting problems there. Would be happy to think along if you like.
If so:
1. can you tell us what bios version you are running?
2. Also, you're mentioning Legacy USB settings. Are those legacy settings in the bios, or are you referring to legacy drivers?
3. I see from the AV-8 manual that it has a VIA usb chipset, not sure how well Windows 98 handles those. The few times I've played with USB cards and Windows 98, VIA wouldn't really work. Do you have an alternative, a PCI USB card with a non VIA chipset for example?
4. Last question for now: are you running Windows 98 SE? Just to be sure.

Thank you for your reply, having someone else to bounce ideas off of is always appreciated. I wrote out a full long reply to you last night, which somehow doesnt seem to have posted. But a summary of it is:
1. Version 2.4 - Didnt update it, because its already a little new for Win98 & i didnt want to remove functionality until I'd read up on it.
2. Legacy USB in the Bios has 3 settings, ON, OFF & KB/MS. Selecting off, doesnt give me keyboard & mouse in DOS/Scandisk/Safe Mode Menu, and usually reults in me being stuck in safe mode. Selecting On, give me no mousekeyboard in windows. If i select KB/MS, the keyboard works for about 30 seconds, then it goes off & the mouse kicks in.
3. I have 3 different versions of the VIA chipset drivers. The oldest doesn't freeze the system, the newer ones do.
4. Yes Win98SE, although have also tested 95C & Me, same problems persist.

I notice in the meantime, other have posted some possible solutions, so will have a work through those this weekend & see if i make any more progress.

As an aside, i bought a PS/2 mouse & keyboard, so i can at least work through the issues with USB, without ending up with no working mouse/keyboard. Previously had been using those little purple/green USB-PS2 converters, which are apparently totally faulty.

Thanks again
-MutedFFS

Thermalwrong wrote on 2025-10-25, 00:17:

Dual wielding :D Ehh, an SB16 in a 386 is fine but especially since you're using it for IDE. What are you using for a CD drive […]
Show full quote

sunkindly wrote on 2025-10-23, 20:00:

It seems heretical to dual blaster but I had to put in my SB16 into the 386 temporarily for the IDE interface so that I can install Windows 3.0 Multimedia.

The attachment IMG_7598.jpg is no longer available

The attachment dualblaster.jpg is no longer available

Dual wielding 😁
Ehh, an SB16 in a 386 is fine but especially since you're using it for IDE. What are you using for a CD drive now that Windows 3.0 Multimedia is installed?
I tried out that Panasonic Matsushita CR-501B - SCSI Caddy CD drive and there's still something wrong with it 😒 It detects 8 times with any SCSI controller and drive ID# I try and obviously that doesn't work, so I guess there's something wrong with the SCSI sub-board on the drive. That's a shame and I'm ignoring the drive for a while.

MutedFFS wrote on 2025-10-23, 20:41:

Long time reader, first time poster: I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit […]
Show full quote

Long time reader, first time poster:
I have finally finished the building part of my Dual Boot Win98/XP Box last night, albeit in an old case for which the front panel plastic has long since been lost. Had a quick play with installing the two operating systems and drivers. Very difficult to believe that as a teenager I could build & repair these things in my sleep, and now, some 30 years later, I can't solve the simplest problems.
It also seems to occur to me that a motherboard "Technically" running Windows 98, doesn't mean, it will run it in the real world, without a lot of real world problems. It does run well in XP though,so at least I'm 50% of the way there.

The A-Bit AV8 motherboard, which I bought, following a lot of research on the most modern system that could run both 98SE & XP, it seems to have a LOT of bugs on any 9X version of Windows, despite being shipped with drivers for 98/Me/XP.

Issues that have appeared after just 24 hours, that I am currently working my way through:
1 . Windows 98 works when it wants to, last night I was happily playing some games, today I don't have a mouse, nor a resolution above 800x600 16 colours.
2. Changing to booting off the Win98 drive as opposed to the XP Drive, currently mean removing half the RAM from the system before changing boot drive, and trying various Legacy settings in the BIOS, to see if it's a mouse & keyboard day today or not.
3. Every time I find the correct Legacy USB settings to have a mouse in Windows 98, it decides to run scandisk, and I can't select to skip it, because I don't have Mouse/Keyboard in DOS.
4. My VGA Capture card won't capture anything in MS-DOS mode, ruling out playing anything that isn't native to Windows, at least for streaming/recording purposes.

But I am getting there slowly, by the 40th anniversary of Windows 9X, I should at least be able to open Solitaire 😁

Hey welcome to the forum 😀 That's a pretty late build to run Windows 98 on so maybe that's causing some of the problems, do you have the Via 4in1 chipset driver installed?

I know your pain with the capture card, I got this very interesting 640x480 VGA LCD recently which I thought would be amazing for old games but it's a TV and will *only* do 640x480 and higher, it won't display 320x200 or 720x400 text mode so that's kind of ruined it. No display at all when trying to run DOS games. There are lots of good VGA games though, I was having a lot of fun with Diablo 1 on my laptop that scales VGA perfectly the other week.
I wonder if there's some kind of decent low latency scaler that would do VGA in > VGA out, probably the GBS-Control would do it

Yeah, I hope i can get something sorted out. One of the main aims of this build was to be able to play the original "Theme Park" in real period (ish) correct hardware. It seems a shame that I can't do it on stream, because DOS games just don't seem capturable by this card. I'll keep researching and get there eventually!