Got Munt working perfectly on my RPi 2.
Re: Roland MT-32, CM-32L + General MIDI for $50" Building a MIDI box

nforce4max wrote:

Thinkpads are real computers compered to what most people are using these days, modern laptops are almost excrement and the build quality is really poor. You can swap the board out for a board from a T43P for a good boost but you will need to mod the R52 cooler for the dedicated gpu.

My Thinkpad W520 is my daily driver, 4tb worth of storage, 16gb or ram at 1866, i7 2920xm, and Quadro 2000m. 😎

Indeed Sir! I have a ThinkPad W520 that has run 100% for 5+ years. *Knock wood*. I also have a ThinkPad W500 and W150 in use. Plus another W510 at my parents. 100% up and running for years: 0 issues. 😁

So some of you may of seen I picked up that PCI Radeon 9100 a few days ago. I found out why it was so cheap.. the fan on the thing was seized and wouldn't spin and when trying 3D it overheats and locks up the computer.

So I got searching on ebay.. can't find proper replacement fans anywhere, even from china (Probably more why cheap).

So my only last alternative was: repairs.

Knowing an old trick I took the 4 screws out of it's fan holding it to the heatsink, took the fan out and in my bathroom flipped it over and carefully peeled back the sticker until I could see the center. Aaaaand.... to my joy: An exposed bearing!

I just got my bottle of mineral oil out, stuck a zip tie in it and let most of the excess drip off, put about half a drop on the bearing. Waited 30-40 seconds for it to set in, then rotated the fan both ways with my finger.. looser, looser.. then eventually, I could give it a flick with my finger and it spun freely. So I put the foil cover back on, put it back in the video card, put the screws back in, connected it, put it in the computer and a horrible whirring grinding noise at first, and it stopped. I was scared it wouldn't work. A few seconds later, it started up again (much faster) and this time kept spinning, the whirring quieted down and now it's spinning fast, producing air and quiet again.

SUCCESS! One video card repaired.

I'm posting this to remind other people working with old kit that this trick works, most of the time.

Funny story. I did this trick quite some time ago using petroleum jelly. On a Radeon 9100 (AGP).

I've fixed a few fans in the ways listed above. It only works for a while sometimes, but others have lasted many years - but when they eventually fail, they fail loudly and quickly.

Today, I tested running a server on MS-DOS, something I have done before but this is a different server. My Pentium 60 is doing it as the possible 386SX / 486DX-33 it would end up running on if the planned project happens this way doesn't exist yet and I would have to cobble it together with parts I have but can't be bothered to drag out for testing this, no point if I don't know it works and haven't yet finished the site that would be on it.

If you're quick you might catch it at http://DXZeff.com:8080 - you can even look it up on http://browserspy.dk/webserver.php (Including the port number) and it will report JNOS. Excuse the obnoxious music, that was just to make sure the server didn't have a problem pushing files that big down the wire, nothing that big would actually be on the site I would be hosting. If this idea comes to fruition, it will ideally get its own hostname behind my domain (i.e. msdos.dxzeff.com) but I need to finish the thing and also find out what the ISP is capable of versus if I can afford it. Electricity costs to run a 486 aren't much though, can probably get the whole system under 50 Watts if I plan it carefully.

Obviously you're only going to get one test page and the obnoxious theme of the Pentium 60 hosting it, and the system is probably getting shut off within the next hour.

HighTreason wrote:

I've fixed a few fans in the ways listed above. It only works for a while sometimes, but others have lasted many years - but whe […]
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I've fixed a few fans in the ways listed above. It only works for a while sometimes, but others have lasted many years - but when they eventually fail, they fail loudly and quickly.

Today, I tested running a server on MS-DOS, something I have done before but this is a different server. My Pentium 60 is doing it as the possible 386SX / 486DX-33 it would end up running on if the planned project happens this way doesn't exist yet and I would have to cobble it together with parts I have but can't be bothered to drag out for testing this, no point if I don't know it works and haven't yet finished the site that would be on it.

If you're quick you might catch it at http://DXZeff.com:8080 - you can even look it up on http://browserspy.dk/webserver.php (Including the port number) and it will report JNOS. Excuse the obnoxious music, that was just to make sure the server didn't have a problem pushing files that big down the wire, nothing that big would actually be on the site I would be hosting. If this idea comes to fruition, it will ideally get its own hostname behind my domain (i.e. msdos.dxzeff.com) but I need to finish the thing and also find out what the ISP is capable of versus if I can afford it. Electricity costs to run a 486 aren't much though, can probably get the whole system under 50 Watts if I plan it carefully.

Obviously you're only going to get one test page and the obnoxious theme of the Pentium 60 hosting it, and the system is probably getting shut off within the next hour.

Your poor pentium... 😁 😁 I'm downloading all of your duke 3d maps... at the same time.

Looks like they all completed without error.. so it can actually handle doing that. There's your performance test, if you wanted one.

Those are on the Windows box on Port 80, only that one teal/gray test page is on the Pentium at Port 8080. As soon as you stop talking to the domain on Port 8080 you're talking to the Windows machine.

That Duke site is out of date and mostly abandoned, so if you feel like overdosing on Duke stuff (Including some maps made by someone you probably heard of - I recommend Nitroglycerin but it requires the EDuke32 port) you can find more of it here; http://www.scent-88.com/mapbase/maplistings.php

As for my server, the eventual goal is to put an in-depth museum containing most of what I own - and I mean in-depth to the point that I want every part in a machine to have its own page, even some of the chips on cards/boards. This is, of course, a massive undertaking.

HighTreason wrote:

Those are on the Windows box on Port 80, only that one teal/gray test page is on the Pentium at Port 8080. As soon as you stop talking to the domain on Port 8080 you're talking to the Windows machine.

That Duke site is out of date, so if you feel like overdosing on Duke stuff (Including some maps made by someone you probably heard of - I recommend Nitroglycerin but it requires the EDuke32 port) you can find more of it here; http://www.scent-88.com/mapbase/maplistings.php

I'm more liking ms-dos duke with VESA myself, and old school midi on my AWE64, so I got some of your old maps there to play with later. Soon as I remember how to load em.

Duke3D -map mapname so far as I remember, like DUKE3D -MAP SOMEMAP.MAP would start the game with SOMEMAP.MAP. Otherwise, you can use SETUP.EXE and use the User Level Selection option.

My site was effectively meant to be a clone of this one; http://dnr.duke4.net/authors.php.html as it kept going offline. When Duke4 put up a static copy I slowed down work. I would like to finish cloning what is available at DNR eventually and complete my missing pages for the DNA site, but that's a long way away and it would never be updated again.

If you want some sick (and unfairly challenging) stuff, try some of Billy Boy's old levels. They were very impressive, but they were cryptic as all hell.

Captain's log, supplemental.

It is now Saturday night and I am home and completely sober. This can only mean that it is LaserDisc night. After some deep thought, I have come to the conclusion that a Back to the Future marathon would be the only logical way to end a long, gruelling week.

-The popcorn maker is locked and loaded.
-The espresso machine has been fully optimized to deliver quick bursts of caffeine throughout the night.
-Hailing frequencies between the laserdisc player and AV receiver are now open.

I have assembled an away team consisting of Commander Left Hand and Lieutenant Commander Right Hand to transport a highly sensitive optical disc containing BTTF Part 1 data to the USS Enterprise Panasonic LX-900, where its composite video data will be thoroughly analysed. A highly advanced video data processor aboard the freighter "Marantz" will digitize and upscale the analog video to current Federation standards. An audio DSP will recover two hidden audio channels that have been cleverly matrix-encoded into a dual channel source. The successful recovery of these data will result in audio from all four quadrants.

If the mission is successful, my crew and I will dance to the music of Huey Lewis and the News, an old Earth music group.

Im messing with my new Soyo SY-5BT(5) i430tx board.

The board works fine for a couple of reboots after that it's totally dead, clearing BIOS does nothing, the post diagnostic card show nothing. The only way to get the system going again is to change the memory config, just reseating the memory dosnt work. After changing memory modules the system always post at first try I can set aggressive memory timings and so on and the system will continue to work for some start up cycles. Warm or cold boots dosnt seem to matter and once the system is running its very stable but as soon as it fails to post after 3-4 power up cycles the only way to get it going again is to switch memory modules or slots.

So far I have only tried EDO memory, I will try some SDRAM but I guess the issue could be bad caps causing the failed posts and somehow the board gets stuck and only manages to come alive when the memory config is changed for what ever reason.

Labelled up my 3, 4-way SCART switch boxes so that I know which device is plugged in to each:

They're remote controlled, but I'm always putting the remotes down somewhere where I can't find them, so I labelled the front of the switch boxes, so I've got:

Switch 1 - Thor AVC100: MSX 2+, ZX Spectrum +3a, BBC Master
Switch 2 - Joytech JS965: PS2, Gamecube, Saturn
Switch 3 - Joytech JS965: Megadrive, SNES, PC-Engine, Jaguar

Also did the same with a desk-top RCA switch for my 'PC' and 'modern' stuff, as there's way too many sound options to keep swapping the speakers over. So that one is now labelled up as:

Dreamcast
New PC (my main desktop)
Old PC + Mixer (my current retro PC, MIDI devices and desktop mixer)
PS4 (I'm using a cheap TOSLINK to Stereo box to get analogue out)
XBox
XBox 360

I should really be putting a Mac IICi through it, but the sound caps are bad and it doesn't currently make any noise!

I picked up a cheap Dymo label printer from Aldi about a year ago - I think it was only about £10 or so, it's great for stickering up stuff like this so that you don't have to remember which wire is which, or which input goes to what system 😀

Installed the ST-01 in my 8086: boots up with an error: to be expected with no HDD attached. The HDD is already in FL @ a UPS facility. Waiting for it to be delivered.

The memory issues with my Soyo SY-5BT(5) seems solved, with only 2x8MB EDO the board works fine all the time and with 64MB SDRAM everything still seem to work without glitches. I have no idea why the board was acting up when I was using more than 16MB EDO.

There is a good chance it wasnt memory related at all but related to the AT power connectors making bad contect and everytime I switched memory I touched the cables enough for them to make somewhat better contact again.

Currently doing battle with an ABit BP6 and its HPT366 controller.

Added Aureal Vortex to my P166 machine and played some Doom2 to test hows it sound.

Setup my BH6 with 768MB of PC133 Cl2, and installed my tualatin 1.4GHz with Abit Slocket!!! . AGP is overclocked and so is PCI, but stable. Installed Win98SE and Windows XP on different drives. Messed up both boot partitions trying out PLOP...had to reinstall because couldn't fix them. Meh.

This is mostly a media station to have almost anything I need to read old media, but doubles as a very good Windows98SE gaming system and early WindowsXP games. My ultra-media station is:

-ABIT BH6 v1.0 SS bios
-Tualatin 1.4GHz 133MHz BUS w/socket adapter w/Abit SLOCKET!!!
-768MB PC133 CL2 RAM
-Voodoo3 AGP/Radeon 9700 Pro (depending upon the game/era)
-Maxtor SATA 150 PCI adapter (2-sata150 and 1 EIDE)
-64GB SSD Windows 98SE drive (aligned)
-64GB SSD WindowsXP drive (aligned)
-Front bay CF IDE adapter for DOS
-3.5" Floppy
-5.25" Floppy
-DVD-CDRW drive
-Travan4 Tape SCSI
-Jaz 1gb SCSI
-Jaz 2GB external scsi
-ZIP 100 ATAPI
-ZIP 250 USB
-Syquest SPARQ EIDE

External storage much? I think you're missing a Winchester and a reel to reel tape in this build!

Finally upgraded my Nokia 5800 (after it really died) to a Iphone 4, jailbroke it, and installed whatsapp web enabler. 🤣

Tried out a GF3 Ti500 I won on eBay before Christmas. Machine won't post with it in... back to the Ti200! Luckily I only paid £5 for it.

I have terrible luck upgrading the video on this machine, I've had 2x dead GF4s and now this dead GF3. I think people just stick them in a cupboard for years and assume they still work when they find them. Ti200 is fine for this PC (Thunderbird 1200) anyway.

Standard Def Steve wrote:

If the mission is successful, my crew and I will dance to the music of Huey Lewis and the News, an old Earth music group.

Sincerely hope you dictated that log entry out loud, standing in your lounge, using a salt shaker as your microphone 🤣