bjwil1991 wrote:

Is there a 4GB SSD somewhere? I would like to install one in my Packard Bell 486 over the CF adapter I have as it's a bit sluggish at times.

I don't know if they go that low, the smallest I've seen is 16GB Gumstick drives used by Dell for their Optane technology (but they are basically just a regular SSD). Typically for that size I'd go with an IDE Drive-On-Module.

I use these insanely huge hard disks because I like seeing just how close to a "daily driver" I can push these old 486 systems. As of late it seems the booming interest in retro-computing on the PC archetecture is really boosting things beyond a point that I ever saw in the 2000's when I felt like I was maybe one of the five people on the planet pushing x86 IBM Compatibles this far. But putting a modern 6.0 GB/s SSD is the biggest hard disk device, let alone the newest device I've ever heard about let alone seen tethered to an 80486 based PC. Before then I thought 80GB 5400 RPM IDE was the ceiling. Right now I'm testing out Retro-Zilla on it (looks like Toasty Tech updated his site with Retrozilla and I'm quite digging it).

The speed increase is there with SSD though - what it improves is the latency when the disk reads/writes and improves multiplexed read operations to hard hit the edge of the bottleneck for a lack of better words - rather than waiting for head X to move to sector Y, it just spits out the data to the bridge and host adapter immediatley. This is really noticeable when installing software or running games that have to read large chunks of data from the disk.

PTherapist wrote:

Found some time to try installing the COAST module I bought, into my PC Chips Socket 7 motherboard. No luck however, it's not detected at all.

I'll look into it further tomorrow, might just be dirty contacts. I've also ordered a new EPROM chip so I can program a newer BIOS for this board, without touching the original chip.

Some motherboards also have a jumper that you have to set to enable COAST module. 😉 Good luck!

I've seen 4GB mSATA SSDs and mSATA to IDE adapters on eBay.

bjwil1991 wrote:

Is there a 4GB SSD somewhere? I would like to install one in my Packard Bell 486 over the CF adapter I have as it's a bit sluggish at times.

I have an 8 GB one, but that's for OEMs and made by Toshiba. Not sure if there ever were such small ones for the consumer market.

dionb wrote:

Result of three evenings soldering after putting the children to bed: https://tweakers.net/ext/f/xxug2z4Oaga6DgU1BDA7sSyg/full.j […]
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Result of three evenings soldering after putting the children to bed:

Works perfectly too 😀

Fantastic. I hope to get mine soon. Haven't soldered in decades but looking for forward to getting my hands dirty. I might actually order one of those Adlib kits first for a practise round, those seem a little bit simpler to put together...

pan069 wrote:

[...]

Fantastic. I hope to get mine soon. Haven't soldered in decades but looking for forward to getting my hands dirty. I might actually order one of those Adlib kits first for a practise round, those seem a little bit simpler to put together...

This one's not difficult, there's just a *lot* of work in it. That was one of the attractions for me - I wanted to improve my soldering skills, so I needed something pretty idiot-proof that would still give me lots of practice. This card was exactly that, and worked. If you look at my first soldering on the back - the resistors - it's a mess, with too much solder and stuff all over the place. By the time I was doing the last ICs, things are starting to look neat enough that you almost could believe it would work 😉

I spent a bit of money on a 512mb industrial CF card to install DOS 3.31 on. It arrived in the mail yesterday, and wouldn't you know it fdisk refused to partition the drive. So disappointing 🙁.

Not wanting to wait a week for a different CF card to arrive, I plugged in my transcend 133x 16gb in out of desperation. Fdisk created a partition for me, but then on a reboot DOS just refused to acknowledge that the drive even exist. Undeterred, I tried again and it worked! I then was pleasantly surprised when DOS let me create a huge extended partition which it then divided up into 14 logical drives of 512mb each! I now have drive letters C-Q allocated to disk space 🤣 .

Each partition takes about five minutes to format on my XT machine, so I have been spending the last several hours just prepping my drive. Not a bad way to spend an evening really 😎

Looking forward to playing with it later today. I have already noticed a few creature comforts missing compared to 6.22, so I might have to compile some assembly code later and other fun things.

GigAHerZ wrote:

PTherapist wrote:

Found some time to try installing the COAST module I bought, into my PC Chips Socket 7 motherboard. No luck however, it's not detected at all.

I'll look into it further tomorrow, might just be dirty contacts. I've also ordered a new EPROM chip so I can program a newer BIOS for this board, without touching the original chip.

Some motherboards also have a jumper that you have to set to enable COAST module. 😉 Good luck!

Unfortunately there isn't on this board, a PC Chips M507. The only setting is in the BIOS itself to enable or disable external cache.

I tried cleaning the chip & socket today, but they were both pretty clean and it didn't help, so I'm guessing it might be the BIOS to blame. The BIOS is hardcoded to pretend it always has L2 Cache, regardless of if the setting in the BIOS is on or off.

I'll wait until my EPROM chip arrives, hopefully at the weekend, then I'll try a later more standard version BIOS to see if that works.

Updated my post on my PIII-S machine. I had updated its Voodoo5 5500's VBIOS to the latest, unofficial version (1.18B03), which adds a setup menu that allows you to manually adjust clocks and memory timings on the card. You can find the BIOS here. Compared to the original VBIOS that was on the card, the newer VBIOS provided about a 4% performance uplift in 3DMark99 & -2000. I have also upgraded the 80GB hard drive that was in the machine with a brand-new 120GB SDD. Windows 98SE has never felt so snappy on the machine before. 🤣

Finally finished testing all traces on my battery damaged 286, and repaired the ones I found. Most issues were near microscoping, so reflowing them by splashing some generous amount of flux and retracing with solder worked, generally. One trace I could not repair by retracing with solder though, so I had to use a botch wire. It was a terrible experience, the solder would just not hold onto the PLCC's leg for some reason, just kept sticking to the iron. It was nothing like soldering THT stuff or botch wires to THT stuff. Eventually I got a bond, it wasn't great, so I fixed it down with hot glue. *shrug* Better than nothing but not ideal. What is the trick to this? What could I be doing wrong?

Anyway, I'll probably test this board tonight. Fingers crossed.

I finally had some time for myself, so I pulled out my DOS laptops (Siemens-Nixdorf PCD-4ND, NEC Versa 4050C, Panasonic CF-41) and run them head to head for a while to check how their screens compare etc. Didn't do much (some time, not a lot of time), but at least felt the pleasure of seeing them working again.

Any suggestions as to DOS titles with atypical resolution / screen modes to test more in depth?

appiah4 wrote:

Finally finished testing all traces on my battery damaged 286, and repaired the ones I found. Most issues were near microscoping, so reflowing them by splashing some generous amount of flux and retracing with solder worked, generally. One trace I could not repair by retracing with solder though, so I had to use a botch wire. It was a terrible experience, the solder would just not hold onto the PLCC's leg for some reason, just kept sticking to the iron. It was nothing like soldering THT stuff or botch wires to THT stuff. Eventually I got a bond, it wasn't great, so I fixed it down with hot glue. *shrug* Better than nothing but not ideal. What is the trick to this? What could I be doing wrong?

Unknown 286-16 HT12-A3A0050 Battery Repair 3.JPG

Anyway, I'll probably test this board tonight. Fingers crossed.

This sounds like a soldering iron that'd not hot enough or not transfering its heat fast enough to the leg to me.

OldCat wrote:

OmneTrinumPerfectum.jpg

I finally had some time for myself, so I pulled out my DOS laptops (Siemens-Nixdorf PCD-4ND, NEC Versa 4050C, Panasonic CF-41) and run them head to head for a while to check how their screens compare etc. Didn't do much (some time, not a lot of time), but at least felt the pleasure of seeing them working again.

Any suggestions as to DOS titles with atypical resolution / screen modes to test more in depth?

They look really cool. Are games like Doom playable on these or is there too much ghosting from the slow LCD response rate?

MMaximus wrote:

They look really cool.

Thank you! They indeed do. Even my wife who is not too fond of this particular hobby of mine said they look nice together.

MMaximus wrote:

Are games like Doom playable on these or is there too much ghosting from the slow LCD response rate?

No, all of them have active TFT screens - contrast and brightness vary a little, but the response time is very acceptable and games are playable.

Today I got my ASUS P5A-B with K6-2/450AFX up and running (AMD K6-2/450AFX voltage settings).

After I assembled all the parts on the living room table (to great disgust of my wife), I had some issues with the hard drive initially. I was using an 80GB 2.5" Seagate (got a bunch of them for $5 each a while ago) but it was not recognised. Luckily I had another 3.5" Seagate (500GB) lying around which was recognised. I might have to update the BIOS on this board, I believe there is a newer version available.

Anyhow, with all the parts assembled I installed Windows 2000 and formatted the hard drive:

This formatting took about two and a half hours! I didn't want to break it off half way through so I went shopping groceries and by the time I came back it was at 86% or so...

I've got my Ensoniq 3dfx Voodoo Banshee plugged in:

The hard drive:

My trusty Philips CD/DVD drive (I have two of these):

We're getting somewhere:

Banshee closeup:

We have "graphics":

Banshee from another angle:

The display is an Eizo Flexscan. I picked this up a while ago not knowing the quality/state it was in, probably paid to much for it in hindsight. It seems alright. It works best in its native resolution of 1280x1024. Text mode is horrific, so not really usable for anything DOS. I guess that what you get with 5:4 ratio displays. Oops, caught the wife in the background. Get out of the way, woman! 😀

Three hours later, we're in!

Let's play some Star Trek Away Team. Been wanting to revisit this game for a while now:

That was my Saturday... 😎

Changed the display, shell, and screen cover for my GameBoy Color with a translucent blue shell, glass screen cover, and a new backlit display with the touch brightness control. All of the parts were sourced from Handheld Legend (Spoiler alert: the displays are sold out now) and I'm very impressed with the display and looks stunning.

pan069 wrote:

I've got my Ensoniq 3dfx Voodoo Banshee plugged in: […]
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I've got my Ensoniq 3dfx Voodoo Banshee plugged in:

...

Banshee closeup:

...

Banshee from another angle:

Not sure how I didn't know an Ensoniq-branded Voodoo card existed. Cool!

Stiletto wrote:

Not sure how I didn't know an Ensoniq-branded Voodoo card existed. Cool!

A few of those turned up in the Pentium Pro haul as well.

liqmat wrote:

Stiletto wrote:

Not sure how I didn't know an Ensoniq-branded Voodoo card existed. Cool!

A few of those turned up in the Pentium Pro haul as well.

Come to think of it, I may recall seeing retail boxes with "Creative" logos all over them and disks and manuals, but the actual PCB branded Ensoniq. Within a few years of Ensoniq's purchase by Creative. That's probably it.

liqmat wrote:

Stiletto wrote:

Not sure how I didn't know an Ensoniq-branded Voodoo card existed. Cool!

A few of those turned up in the Pentium Pro haul as well.

ensoniq_banshee.jpg

What I find intriguing are the green stickers on the memory chips. Yours seems to have one, mine has two.

Any idea what the meaning of the green stickers might be?