I've ordered replacement BIOS chips for my Toshiba T1850C notebook, PLCC 32 pin sockets and have put an offer in on a fairly decent hot air soldering rework station. This is phase 1 of the project to resurrect it with a new hard drive. I want to make the soldered BIOS chip socketed and modify the BIOS to support more than just the whitelisted ones. This will be easier if I can use my programmer rather than utilities in DOS with a (potentially) unreliable floppy drive.

Just cleaned a Commodore64 keyboard that I have in spare.... Never mind the yellowing, still clean enough to "use as a dinner plate".

I am working on my Tandy 1000 TL case (the bay cover was fixated with tape so I try to glue it since it doesn't stay put).

I fired up my latest buy: IBM 5162. Swapped the MDA (which I found weird to find that inside) with a Hedaka OTIVGA card.
The MFM HD is so loud and doesn't sound healthy 😀
Will add a 3,5" floppy in the future and probably a working MFM drive.

Such nice weather outside so enough for today.

brostenen wrote:

Going 8-Bit my self today.

Testing a new SD2IEC drive and a new Epyx FastLoader Redloaded. Load times are reduced dramatically. One cracktro loaded in 11 seconds with the Fastloader, and 53 seconds without the Fastloader.

SD2IEC-Fastloader-Reloaded.jpg

That's what I'm hopefully aiming to do also later this year. I never did find my old Commodore 64 in storage so I'm gonna have to buy another one and then get the SD2IEC etc for it.

Imperious wrote:

I just received a DDI5 From Zaxon at "Sell my Retro" 2 weeks ago, has 512k ram, USB and floppy interface, and an OLED display, and 3D Printed case.
Overall very happy with it. It's the only way You can get the most from these machines.
Only problem He includes no documentation whatsoever, but a bit of research or asking for help on cpcwiki will get You running quickly.

Yeah that's exactly what I'm going to order today. I was originally looking at just the DDI3 without the 3D printed case, but I thought I may as well pay the slight extra for the DDI5 & it's case.

I've seen a YouTube video review of the device so already have some idea of the headaches I'm going to face re- the lack of documentation. But it'll certainly be worth it, as you say, to get the most out of these machines.

PTherapist wrote:

brostenen wrote:

Going 8-Bit my self today.

Testing a new SD2IEC drive and a new Epyx FastLoader Redloaded. Load times are reduced dramatically. One cracktro loaded in 11 seconds with the Fastloader, and 53 seconds without the Fastloader.

SD2IEC-Fastloader-Reloaded.jpg

That's what I'm hopefully aiming to do also later this year. I never did find my old Commodore 64 in storage so I'm gonna have to buy another one and then get the SD2IEC etc for it.

Make sure it is a PAL version. 😉 Right now I am reading up on how to extract PRG files from D64 files, and how to save them on real tape. It is easy if you have Windows or OsX. Yet I am on Linux exclusively, so the options in tools/programs are extremely limited, yet I have found a way that are called "DROID64". It is a Java application, that looks like a crossover between Norton Commander (Dos version) and Directory Opus (Amiga version). Then I have found a guide that explains on how to transfer to tape, using a real C64.

McBierle wrote:

So after soldering new caps and reassembling the 5,25 Floppydrive i mentioned earlier, it is living again, which was the last mi […]
Show full quote

So after soldering new caps and reassembling the 5,25 Floppydrive i mentioned earlier, it is living again, which was the last missing part in my DX2-80 system:

- Soyo Sy-025J2 with 16MB Simm-30
- (Octek) Machspeed VGA Gui 2300 (VIO 2300) CL GD5424
- SB16 CT2890 with a Dreamblaster Module
- Aska SST-2946 (UMC Enhanced) VLB-Controller
- 2GB Hdd, CDROM, 3,5" and the mentioned 5,25" Floppydrive

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Greetings!

That's one nice generic beige box 😊 You've got to remove the Pentium sticker though 😉

Went to play a few games on my retro PC and....
Say goobye to a fallen hero 🙁

What causes that, heat?

Most likely age. Thermal compound was not old and it was of good quality.
Never took the Geforce 6 series longevity seriously, they seem to fail a lot with age. This one actually lasted a good while.
I don't think this is a bga soldering issue but most likely it's the bondwire from the chip to it's pcb that fails with thermal expansion over time. i read a while ago that the Geforce 6/7 series suffer a lot from this kind of fail.

Easter long weekend, time to get stuff done! I felt like working on a little bit of everything over the last couple of days, some of which was retro PC related.

One of the things I did was write some simple software to download magazine scans off of Google Books since I wasn't happy with the ones available online in terms of flexibility, options and performance. I enjoy reading magazines, and reading old computer related magazines on old computers & OSes is great fun since printing physical copies isn't viable. So I made a copy of PC Mag from 1995 - 1997 as a test and it worked a treat.

I also tidied up some design on the Pentium III replacement backplate for a 20th Anniversary build I'll be doing later this year. Using a dead 450MHz Pentium III as my dummy, and the SECC Mechanical Guide document from Intel as my reference.

Still have two whole days left so I hope to get more things done. 🤣

Id try to fix it with a heat gun before giving up on it.

rick6 wrote:

Went to play a few games on my retro PC and.... Say goobye to a fallen hero :( […]
Show full quote

Went to play a few games on my retro PC and....
Say goobye to a fallen hero 🙁

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x0zm_ wrote:

One of the things I did was write some simple software to download magazine scans off of Google Books since I wasn't happy with the ones available online in terms of flexibility, options and performance. I enjoy reading magazines, and reading old computer related magazines on old computers & OSes is great fun since printing physical copies isn't viable. So I made a copy of PC Mag from 1995 - 1997 as a test and it worked a treat.

I've found that Google Books downloads often are missing pages -- usually you can download from different regions and combine them sans the dupe pages in order to get the full copy. How did you get around that? Another alternative is using "Archive Downloader" Chrome plug-in on something like Archive.org where there are magazine scans uploaded.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/arc … enmngphliikoace

Changed the HD in my Presario 5130 for the original type hence being 4GB instead of the original 6GB (Quantum Bigfoot).
Fresh install of W98 SE and only thing left is installing the vga driver and find out what the unidentified device is.

Again a sunny day so no more retro.

got in trouble for connecting to a windows support channel through mIRC In windows 95

oeuvre wrote:

got in trouble for connecting to a windows support channel through mIRC In windows 95

How come? Is that not legit or are they taking things too close?

Played ZeroPaige's C64 port of Super Mario Bros. It's an amazing port and the SID music is excellent. The only problem is the slowdowns. But I think I remember the NES Mario Bros slowed down at times. I know Zelda slowed down a lot.

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p … 2bf0e1a2#867127

Now I have to find out how to rig an NES gamepad to the C64.

I decided to reassemble the K5 PC from HERE and I remembered why did I hate it so much. The case was probably made for some OEM PC for a specific motherboard. The boards I have are too low and too far from the back so whatever I do, the cards stay loose. Could be the cause of the stability issues.

I guess I'll use a different case and sell this one since I have no use for it.

FuzzyLogic wrote:

Played ZeroPaige's C64 port of Super Mario Bros. It's an amazing port and the SID music is excellent. The only problem is the slowdowns. But I think I remember the NES Mario Bros slowed down at times. I know Zelda slowed down a lot.

https://www.lemon64.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p … 2bf0e1a2#867127

Now I have to find out how to rig an NES gamepad to the C64.

Yeah, I've been following that thread as well. Amazing work for sure.

Spent the last 3 nights putting together 3 systems.
K6/2-475 running at 6 x 75, in an old at case as a sort of sleeper.

Ppro 200/256 in one of the Aopen HX45s I picked up.

An without picture a 200mmx just because.

And today I made another shelf for my closet.

I think I need some more room. Got several more system that don't fit 🤣