Sorry to hear, Lukeno.

Have you opened the PSU to check the damage? It may be just a small cap or voltage regulator replacement. On the other hand, if there are large portions of scorched PCB and components, it may not be worth the repair. It would be worth knowing, nonetheless.

QBiN wrote:

Sorry to hear, Lukeno.

Have you opened the PSU to check the damage? It may be just a small cap or voltage regulator replacement. On the other hand, if there are large portions of scorched PCB and components, it may not be worth the repair. It would be worth knowing, nonetheless.

I'm pretty sure it was a cap; it was a fairly loud noise, but nothing beyond that. I intend to open it in a couple of days time, when everything's had a chance to fully discharge on the off chance that there is an issue.

The laptop itself was pictured working in the eBay advert, at least, so I'm hopeful. This T1200 has two 720k floppy drives I believe (well, I believe they're both 720ks), one of which will be removed for the 20MB HDD I showed on a previous page. She's in reasonable shape, although the screen hinge has seen better days to put it mildly, and it is in need of a nice clean. The carry handle is only supported by one side, so I may see if I can resolve that, but I probably can't. Both screen latches are still in good shape after all of these years, as is the rather oddly set out keyboard's keys.

It's been a long while since I've found anything remotely retro hardware at my usual flea markets, but today I grabbed all these for a bit less than a buck each:

I am severely lacking in VL Bus cards (my 486 build is stuck because of that) so the Cirrus Logic is really welcome. The AWE64 is just icing on the cake. 😀

And when I saw these beauties for dirt cheap I couldn't pass them up, they're so 90s! 🤣
My cousin had one back then and I always thought it was so cool. I don't even have wired telephone service anymore, but I think they'd look pretty nice next to a 90s PC setup. 😁

Even for a late 90s China Pride™ product they have real electromechanical bell ringers inside which is even cooler!

AFAIK the laptop uses a simple 12V 2.2A DC PSU. If you get a decent 12V bricks (maybe from some router or modem?) odds are you can just "mod" the cable with the one from the broken unit and get everything working.

If all you want to do is testing, get a spare ATX PSU, the cable from the exploded Toshiba PSU, put the cables inside a molex (or cut one of those molex Y-splitters, cut one connector and join the correct wires) and start the laptop up.

alexanrs wrote:

AFAIK the laptop uses a simple 12V 2.2A DC PSU. If you get a decent 12V bricks (maybe from some router or modem?) odds are you can just "mod" the cable with the one from the broken unit and get everything working.

If all you want to do is testing, get a spare ATX PSU, the cable from the exploded Toshiba PSU, put the cables inside a molex (or cut one of those molex Y-splitters, cut one connector and join the correct wires) and start the laptop up.

Yeah, that's the right PSU specs. It might also be that I can get a 12V universal charger of some kind to use with it; I really don't want to start hacking cables around, as soldering is not something I am either equipped to do, or have any experience of.

Lukeno94 wrote:

It's supposed to work, but the moment I plugged the power supply into the wall, there was a loud bang and now the power supply is dead

Over 14 years ago something similar happened to me with a desktop machine. Actually, it happened twice.
First with a Macintosh Performa 630CD I got from the local eBay back then. It was really cheap because the seller didn't know you could hold down Shift to bypass the system password 😜. Went to the seller's house, he demoed the machine for me, everything was fine. Got it home, plugged it in... Bang! No more Performa. Back in those days I was just getting into advanced electronics so I sent the PSU off for repair and they told me some hard-to-find semiconductor blew and they couldn't source it, so I cut off the Molex plug and hotwired an AT PSU which bulged out of the machine. I used it like that for a good number of years. 😁

The other time was when I bought a used 486 for my younger sister so that she could have her own computer (back when a 486 was still semi-useful online). It had been used in a typical office and it was working when I picked it up. When I got it home and pushed the clunky AT power switch... lights out. Master breaker tripped, but resetting it didn't do anything. It shorted so hard the whole apartment block lost power and we had to wait until the power company sent someone to reset the main fuse. That one I was actually able to repair by replacing the rectifier diodes. 😵

Yikes. I'm just really glad I plugged it into the wall BEFORE plugging it into the laptop... much less risk of damage as a result. (To the laptop, to the room, and to me)

133MHz - I've never seen "Graphics Blaster Eclipse" - what is it based on?

^ cirus logic

obobskivich wrote:

133MHz - I've never seen "Graphics Blaster Eclipse" - what is it based on?

According to over here: http://support.creative.com/kb/ShowArticle.aspx?sid=10877 It's a "GB Eclipse TV-Out (Non-Europe)"

Dude, loving the phone. 🤣 I'm going to have to grab a cool landline phone and answering machine one of these days.

I'm still using a phone from the 90's, because I needed one and I found it in the trash in a building I was clearing out. Mine is a bit boring looking though.

One feature I like is that the side of the phone has an RJ-11 for me to plug in a modem. So far as I know, this model is still in production. In reality though, I miss my clunky 1970's thing with a clicky dialing pad.

I bought a CT4390 on EBay, waiting for it to come in.
Spent time upgrading my main rig other wise.

133MHz wrote:

jwt27 wrote:

DUDE you hit the JACKPOT! That's a 0.39mm tube right there. http://pbclub.pwcsite.com/PBInfo/PB%20Info%20 … 537SOVW.asp.htm

It looks identical to my Hewlett Packard. And it's made in Korea too, so it might even be the same thing. In that case it's really a Samsung 😀

Is my Samsung CVL4955 a 0.39 tube too? I can't seem to find any information about it on the web. Could it be a sibling of yours and King_Corduroy's?

According to google, your CVL4955 has a 0.41mm pitch... 😳

Yours has a slot mask (PIL) tube like in TVs though, that's ... not very ideal. I have this theory that slot mask layout was designed for interlaced video, since the phosphor grid is staggered vertically but not horizontally. I think that would help to blur the alternating fields together. Downside is of course that it's not equally sharp in both directions (like aperture grille, but worse)

HighTreason wrote:

... In reality though, I miss my clunky 1970's thing with a clicky dialing pad.

Look familiar?....

Mine was a keypad. It had this beautiful analog circuitry beneath that I didn't dare touch (Me and analog are a bad mix, that stuff is basically sorcery as far as I know) which took the keypad signal and converted it to a pulse to drive a relay for pulse dialing (Tone dialing was not possible, there was no toggle) which was fun, because the neighbors phone used to blip every time I pressed a button because of a faulty line - we even used to faintly be able to hear each other if we used the lines at the same time.

Was a great piece of kit, I got if for 99p from the local taxi firm, but it was stolen with loads of other stuff years back.

"You can have any colour you want... "

jwt27 wrote:

According to google, your CVL4955 has a 0.41mm pitch... 😳

Wow! Where did you find that information? I believe Google is regionally skewing the results for me, even though I keep the settings as neutral as possible. I only get loads of ancient for-sale ads at Spanish-speaking auction sites, and my own posts about it here at Vogons. 😠

jwt27 wrote:

Yours has a slot mask (PIL) tube like in TVs though, that's ... not very ideal. I have this theory that slot mask layout was designed for interlaced video, since the phosphor grid is staggered vertically but not horizontally. I think that would help to blur the alternating fields together. Downside is of course that it's not equally sharp in both directions (like aperture grille, but worse)

I know exactly what you mean with the 'staggered PIL' layout TVs have, since I used to take a strong loupe up to TV screens and look at the phosphors, and I also think that such staggered layout has to do with interlacing, but Delta gun color TVs also exist.

Here's a picture of the CVL4955 displaying white up close through a 45X microscope:

I'm very happy with the way it makes 200~350 line games look. The horrid dot pitch and gun system is actually a plus. 😀

King_Corduroy wrote:

Also, does your power button get stuck some times? Mine is really hard to press in at times.

Not at all, but keep in mind this monitor is the product of the good parts of two broken ones mashed together so there's a bit of selection bias. Also I just keep it switched permanently on and use the female IEC plug on the back of the AT PSU to control it from the computer itself. 😀

I have got an Creative CT-2760 AWE 32 comming in. Bought 4 SCSI harddisk for my XT systems.
Also an New buslogic VLB SCSI card is comming in as well.

"New" stuff!

Got two AT systems for free! The one in the right is a MVP3-based (EPF Viking3, to be more precise) K6-2 366MHz system. It has got a Crystal PCI sound card, some Realtek-based NIC and a random modem (no video, tested with a FX5200). It was from my father's business, stored and forgotten, so I asked him if I could just take it. The rightmost one is a Intel 430VX system (PCChips M530) with a Pentium 133MHz inside, equipped with a crappy Trident video card, an ISA NIC and a ZIP drive. It was from my university, and I've been messing with it there in once in a while, but I couldn't take it home since it was still public property. Its reg. code got transfered to a new PC so suddenly it belonged to no one (and would just go to the trash), so I took it home, where it now belongs.

Sidewinder gamepad =) I have used cheap gamepads during all my "gameport" years back in the day, so this is a nice addition. It sits nicely besides my Xbox controller and my MS keyboard+mouse for a nice "MS-only Input Devices" place in my desk.

And the big purchase...

A CGA clone from Bulgaria. For some reason the shipping was cheap as peanuts, whereas shipping something from the same continent (coff.. coff.. US) is over ten times more expensive. Tested it on the K6-2 (I've got nothing older than S7, and it doesn't fit my P133 system due to a few components being a bit too tall. Since I've got no CGA monitor, I only tested composite output, and it worked. No colors, but that was to be expected (non 4.77MHz bus clock). I've got plans for an 8-bit XT computer, so this will be used well in due time.