Not computer related, though still kind of retro in some way. Bought xmas presents for my children, my parents, my father and mother in law, my brother and my brothers two girls.

I just got my first 386 board up and running! I got a tiny little DTK PPM-3333P board in a lot of computer hardware recently. It has an integrated AM386SX 33Mhz and came with 16KB of cache installed (plus 8KB TAG... which I still don't fully understand).

The NiCd battery had leaked and actually damaged some traces. Thankfully no components were damaged. I used a window defogger repair kit to fix the traces. I painted it on with a tiny pointed tool, then used the same tool to scratch away the excess in between the traces. I used a DMM to check for broken circuits so that I'd know which ones to repair. Then I tested them again afterward and tested across all of them to be sure I hadn't created any shorts.

If it stays working while I tinker with it, I'll probably go over it with some of my wife's clear nail polish to seal in the repaired traces.

This is the ONLY system I've used that fits in between my IBM 5150 and Socket 7 Pentium systems, so this will definitely be a learning experience. Right now I've got 4MB of RAM installed (4x1MB of Samsung Fast Page memory... I think) have it equipped with a Trident TVGA8900D and a really nice SIIG multi-function IDE\Floppy\IO card I got in the same lot with the board.

I'm a little unsure of how this thing works at this point, but I'll figure it out. The BIOS setup is really interesting. It has this crazy zoom-in effect when you enter menus. It also mentions having built in applications, but I don't know how those work. I'll be honest, the BIOS setup on this reminds me more of modern UEFI based systems than the basic Award\Phoenix BIOS programs that looked the same from the mid-90s until like 2010.

One thing that confuses me is that the settings I change don't seem to reset when I power off the system. How is doing this if there's no battery? It is obviously an AT system with no residual power to keep the system alive like an ATX has... yet the first setting I changed has survived three power-downs. Will the settings be lost after several minutes? Or is the battery only for the clock?

Decided to give it a go with my Voodoo2 cards. At least to test them. Did a new install of Windows98SE on Abit BP6 with dual Celeron 500 (I know it doesn't matter in Win9X), 512MB SDRAM and 13GB IBM HDD. Used a basic S3 Trio64 2MB PCI card to avoid any 3D mix up. No sound card installed.

Tested ten Voodoo2's. I have most Creative 12MB and 8MB versions. 2x Diamond Monster 3D II 12MB and one unidentified at this moment. This is actually the first time I did a SLI setup ever 😊 Tried 2x 12MB and 2x 8MB combos. Only did a Quake3Arena demo benchmark - demo001.

Also tested with Need For Speed III. I wondered if steering wheel is present with 8MB SLI. And it's not. Wheel shows only with 12MB version(s).

I might upload some photos later...

Was trying to connect my PPC640 to a monitor so I could get CGA video, and I've now learnt was RGBI is and why basic converters won't work and I need more hardware 🙁
I swear I've spent more money on extra parts for this machine then the machine its self.

Reading the QXL2 documentation.
It is a 68040 25 Mhz QL, with 8 Mbytes of RAM (wow !) in an ISA board 😉
http://qlforum.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=2161 … ilit=qxl#p19646

I also have 2 Acorn A4000s and 3 A3010s to test, refurbish (cleaning battery area and installing a new one) and install DOM (with HD card for the A3010s), + add memory when needed.
Then, remove the sound filter to enjoy the 8 channel PCM capabilities of this great machine (output is 41 kHz when 8 channels are used, over 60 kHz when 4 are used).
Got them yesterday 😀

And thanks to this great forum, I'll probably install properly a second processor, AMD 486 133 Mhz in one of my RISC PCs, and see which great PC software I am able to find and use thanks to you.

Installing Win2k on my Cyrix MII gaming PC and organized my shelf of computers.

Yesterday I left my Pentium II on while we went to see Star Wars and when we came home, my desktop was hosed. Had to give the 3 finger salute to restart it and when it came back up, I got the Explorer.exe is corrupted, please reinstall Windows message. 🤣. I just took a Clonezilla system image a week ago, so I spent 40 minutes restoring it and was back up and running. Clonezilla does require some CPU horsepower to create and restore images due to compression/decompression, so it's pretty slow on a 400Mhz P2. 1 hour to create an image of about 20GB used, and 40 minutes to restore.

Also, I may be giving up on Privateer and RtCW. I'm stuck on missions near the end of each game that so far have been beyond my skill level and am getting progressively more frustrated with each attempt.

Lastly, I started trialing some RPGs. So far I've tried Legend of Grimrock II, Lords of Xulima, and Eschalon: Book I. I'm going to pass on Grimock for now, as it is real-time and I need a break from games that emphasize reflexes. Both Xulima and Eschalon are turn-based and I'm liking both a lot. Xulima is prettier, but I'm really digging character creation, music and ambient sounds in Eschalon. That may be the one I go with.

clueless1 wrote:

Yesterday I left my Pentium II on while we went to see Star Wars and when we came home, my desktop was hosed. Had to give the 3 finger salute to restart it and when it came back up, I got the Explorer.exe is corrupted, please reinstall Windows message. 🤣. I just took a Clonezilla system image a week ago, so I spent 40 minutes restoring it and was back up and running. Clonezilla does require some CPU horsepower to create and restore images due to compression/decompression, so it's pretty slow on a 400Mhz P2. 1 hour to create an image of about 20GB used, and 40 minutes to restore.

Also, I may be giving up on Privateer and RtCW. I'm stuck on missions near the end of each game that so far have been beyond my skill level and am getting progressively more frustrated with each attempt.

Lastly, I started trialing some RPGs. So far I've tried Legend of Grimrock II, Lords of Xulima, and Eschalon: Book I. I'm going to pass on Grimock for now, as it is real-time and I need a break from games that emphasize reflexes. Both Xulima and Eschalon are turn-based and I'm liking both a lot. Xulima is prettier, but I'm really digging character creation, music and ambient sounds in Eschalon. That may be the one I go with.

You've got guts my friend. I do not leave any of my retro gear on while I'm gone due to their age and I have had a few old PSUs go poof. Don't need a house fire to come home to, that's for sure. Without giving anything away, how was the latest Star Wars? Going to wait until the crowds die down.

liqmat wrote:

You've got guts my friend. I do not leave any of my retro gear on while I'm gone due to their age and I have had a few old PSUs go poof. Don't need a house fire to come home to, that's for sure. Without giving anything away, how was the latest Star Wars? Going to wait until the crowds die down.

I will take it as a lesson learned. I leave my P200MMX on all the time if I'm playing a game (usually just exit to the Pause screen when I'm doing chores around the house, then sit down to play a bit when I have a few moments). But yeah, leaving the house, I should turn them off.

Star Wars was pretty incredible (that spoiler-free enough? 🤣). Definitely scratched every itch I had from The Force Awakens.

Regarding leaving stuff on, I have all my retro gear (monitors, pcs' kvm switches, speakers, midi devices, etc) connected to master power switches, so whenever I'm done, even standby power is off.

I was planning to use my dual Pentium III 1.4GHz as useful PC, burning the occasional CD and with both 3.5" and 5.25" FDD's and a network connection to my NAS, but thae machine is unstable. I switched pretty much everything except for the board and CPU's, so my next guess is recapping the board. Some caps do look a bit suspicious....

In the mean time I will have to figure out what to build then for that role 😀 I don't need a lot of muscle, but some snappyness is nice when using the computer frequently. Maybe a Tualeron 1.4GHz on a BX board with Windows 98SE? Hmm...

I just started getting graphical issues on my daily rig. Suspect is the GTX780ti and I think it is dying. I tried sofar:
- When starting Furmark, system crashes within 5 seconds. GPU temp stayed under 38 degree Celsius..
- I did a cpu burnin test without issues on the 3930K
- Checked the voltages under load, everything was within spec: 3V (2,964V), 5V (5,05V) and 12V (12,08V)

Tomorrow I have to check with a spare tested GTX580 if it indeed is the card.
Shitty moment since I have 4 systems in repair now and without my daily I cannot reach the files and I have absolutely no free space to start dismantling this tower too far. 😠

I just wired up a 12 volt DC adapter to a 120mm Delta 12v fan I've had laying around for a while and I hope to use it to cobble together a small exhaust fan for sucking the noxious solder fumes (and smoke from exploding tantalums) out a small tube and out the window in my office. All the options I saw for constructing a soldering fume air filter looked really ineffective compared to just exhausting the air straight out the window. Its not worth having the crap floating around the house, so I like this idea.

For the fan I just took the small plastic piece off of a 3 pin fan adapter (the side that would have pins sticking out). I have a kit I bought on eBay that has crimp-on pins (along with the female ends and tons of plastic pin housings in different configurations... like the ones used for USB, power switch or LED headers), so I just snipped off the end of a 12v DC power brick (0.75A), slipped a couple pieces of heatshrink over the the wires, crimped on the end pins, added some solder for stability then used the iron for the heatshrink. Then I pushed the two pins through the old fan adapter end and voila, I now have a modular 12VCD fan power supply. The pins are a tad shorter than the ones a fan normally has, but it seems to work fine.

I didn't have to destroy the fan and I can use any fan I want if this one is too noisy (as long as it doesn't draw too much current... this one is as much as I dare use on this brick). Another bonus is that I can just stick an empty 3 pin fan plug on the pins when it isn't in use and it stays on fairly tightly. I will just plug this adapter into one of the "AUX" power plugs on the back of my desktop surge protector (the type you set a monitor on) so I can use that to switch it on and off. When no fan is connected I can just put the end on it for a little extra safety, just in case it doesn't get switched off. After I took this picture I snipped off one of the long pins from the original fan wire to put in the third pin location on the connector. This makes the connector fit much tighter. 😀

Once I finish cobbling together the vent, I'll post pictures of the whole conglomeration here. 🤣

Diagnosing the fixer upper Inspiron 600m's hard drive (hasXP Home) for errors and fixing the boot record (if corrupted) with the XP Pro SP3 CD I made for the other 600m (prompt for repair setup using the nLite program).

Since the first SLI cable I made a couple months ago mysteriously died and a new one on ebay costs 10x what a floppy cable costs for whatever reason I got me a few floppy ribbon cables and I'll try my hand at it again.

Not leaving my stuff plugged in eighter....

Not retro, but I upgraded my iPod Touch 6th Gen to iOS 11 since it needed it.

Edit (12-18-17 @ 22:11): put New thermal paste on my Pavilion N3350's CPU and reinstalled the rechargeable lithium battery. What do these DIP switches do?

I also got the drivers for the fixer-upper Inspiron 600m off the HDD that has failed by running a Live version of linux on the laptop and burning the Dell folder onto a CD and made a Windows XP boot CD with the drivers.

Prepared another socket 7 board for testing.

With a bit of effort I finally got CGA (TTL RGBI mode) output from my PPC640 to VGA and displayed on my TV

Its using a 128 Video DAC RGBI to RGBA
which goes into a GBS-8220
which then goes to my TV

https://imgur.com/a/Mhf3m

Equipped the Siemens D841/Pentium 60 board with a Dil8 socket and tried out both the 66 and 75 mhz crystals and... it works.
I have to cool the Northbridge with an active cooler and the processor got a Socket 7 cooler - both are well "lubed" with MX4 cooling paste.
Performance is ok, since it is an industrial board which has timid factory settings... overclocked it yields a nice performance boost and is an oddity. I will open a thread once I have a more fitting cooling solution available.
Doom, Quake and Blood seem to run stable and I will try to install Windows later... we'll see.