seob wrote:

Did a quick and dirty dallas 1287 battery hack on my ibm model 30 286

That's the dirtiest work I've seen on here so far. Splendid work!

What????? No gaffatape? What gives 😳
Naa... Just joking. 😉

Did a new quick build for testing my YMF724 and SB-Link/PcPci.

Intel VC820 board, 256mb RD-Ram (PC-800)
P3-500
Matrox G400 32mb DualHead + Voodoo2 12mb
Yamaha YMF724 connecting SB-Link
Plextor CD-RW drive
Maxtor 40gb single platter HDD
Floppy

Nothing fancy. Going for multiboot MS-Dos 6.22 and Win98SE for best test results.

I got a shelving unit for the closet...to store all my retro goodies.

Cool. Shelves are excellent for storage.

On Friday evening I tested a MT-32, SC-55, SC-55ST, CM-32L and CM-500 on a friend's Pentium II in Windows XP with a game port MIDI cable. All worked 100%. We also plugged in a 8BIT ISA VGA PCB and it even worked fine in Windows XP: go figure.

Hacked my IBM 5150 mainboard to disable onboard memory and parity checking 😀

Kinda sorta hacking day here too. I had two power supplies sitting on the floor. One was newer, but dead and didn't work. One's an older (old faithful I call it) 300 watt one I use for testing older computers. Single 20-pin ATX plug, only ATX molex and floppy. So I got to thinking.. thinking.. and then I went and googled the ATX spec. And googled the SATA power connector spec. Turned out, yes, the orange wire for sata power is +3.3v, and the orange wire on the 20-pin atx plug is also +3.3v. So.. with a little hacking, now I can use SATA devices with my older power supply.

I haven't come across anything that uses the 3.3V line on the SATA power connectors (yet), normal Molex to SATA adapters have worked just fine with anything I've thrown at them. I suppose it's some sort of catch-22, since having the 3.3V isn't guaranteed, manufacturers are going to be reluctant to require it.

133MHz wrote:

I haven't come across anything that uses the 3.3V line on the SATA power connectors (yet), normal Molex to SATA adapters have worked just fine with anything I've thrown at them. I suppose it's some sort of catch-22, since having the 3.3V isn't guaranteed, manufacturers are going to be reluctant to require it.

Well, it's there as part of the sata specification. So if I can provide it, then I rather just do it, in case something wants it and doesn't have it. It's one of those sort of things where we don't know what sata devices need it and which ones don't need it. So.. rather just provide just in case anyway. Safer than possibly damaging some of my sata devices.

I would have just soldered the cable directly in the PSU (if it had pads/holes for it). I don't think I'd be able to use the PSU with a clear conscience with the main ATX power connector hacked like that, even though it is probably safe.

Clearly retro activity, just not the computer kind of activity.
Since it is a beautifull day with no rain, all sunny, no wind and high temperature.
I mowed the lawn, and trimmed the edges. Now it's a nice lawn and the garden looks good.

That is a lovely lawn 😀

alexanrs wrote:

I would have just soldered the cable directly in the PSU (if it had pads/holes for it). I don't think I'd be able to use the PSU with a clear conscience with the main ATX power connector hacked like that, even though it is probably safe.

They're industry-standard crimpable butt connectors, rated for any load for a wire that fits in them. They're just a bit of metal you crush together against the wires. I've already used it in multiple computers and older ones with sata-to-ide adapters and whole thing works fantastically.

Im trying to sort out an Ebay auction I won, the shipping cost wasnt specified and I think my hovercraft is full of eels 🤣

jwt27 wrote:

Hacked my IBM 5150 mainboard to disable onboard memory and parity checking 😀

Nice job. I'm guessing you did this to use an external 8 bit memory card instead?

Is anyone else wondering about the hovercraft and eels thing? 🤣

i tried to mash two different 80s songs together

i got inaudible chaos and some hurt ears. neil makes it look so easy

Skyscraper wrote:

Im trying to sort out an Ebay auction I won, the shipping cost wasnt specified and I think my hovercraft is full of eels 🤣

Success!

I got a somewhat grumpy message with the Ebay invoice in German.

I will not complain at all, the shipping cost was very reasonable and the seller will get a good rating as long as I get the stuff in whatever condition. I can undertand his pain as the auction ended at a very low price for some very nice gear. The seller has a perfect score and has the experience of thousands of auctions which makes it a bit hard for me to understand how he has been able to avoid learning some basic English 😀

If you read this, thanks for the deal! Sie werden perfekte Bewertung erhalten!

German sellers suck in my experience. Usually the item turns up broken, completely different from what was described or outright dangerous - even with sellers that have a 100% score. They also seem to know the loopholes to get out of letting you return items, even ones they accept returns on. I screwed the last one over, gaining a refund and not actually mailing the item back.

Yesterday, I finished and uploaded my MT32's last song; https://soundcloud.com/high_treason/gotham-ca … al-goodbye-mt32

It was not fun to put together and I am not happy with it, but that was all the module had left and it can't do it again, so it will have to stay like that. At least I've got a nice 7805 regulator spare now, I was looking for one last week. If I can get the port blocks out they should be handy too, so it isn't a total loss... Though a few sockets, a volt reg and a 9V transformer are still not worth what the module cost.

Still thinking of getting a Yamaha DX7 seeing how my DX100 died years ago and I now have another empty slot in the synth collection.

I had good experience with the german seller "Electromyne", wich is an online eBay-shop.
They are top rated seller, so I guess it depends on if they are shop's or private sellers.

I played around with bootmanagers yesterday. On my P133.
I think the machine is just too old for Extended Fdisk to be run off the UBCD compilation.
It reports back that there is not enough memory. Even with 512mb installed.
Removed them again, and installed the standard 32mb and ran a modded set of Warp4 install floppy's.
Succes with this set of install floppy's, that can handle up to 40gb drives.
As the machine is too old for UBCD, and the original floppy's from warp3 can't handle +8gb drives.
The only quirk I have, is that it can not handle primaery partitions higher than one to two gb's.
So I need to run gparted live in order to resize the partiion after a complete win98 installation.

Installed Win98se afterwards. The reason for this dual-boot, is that I need to test my newly aquired V1.
It is not going to be used with the MS-Dos-6.22 installation. It is only to play NFS2-SE in Win98.
After testing it out, I will put the Orchid back into storage, to be used in temorary builds in the future.