wiretap wrote on 2020-05-27, 02:58:

If I recall, this cable can be used for SB-link.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078LM31J9/

Most likely it can. But where is the fun in that? Making it myself seemed cheaper, quicker, and more fun.
Unfortunately, I bear bad news: The YMF724 card is completely silent, no sound, no FM, no noise, nothing. It's detected and installed in XP (FLP, actually) just fine, but it doesn't actually output anything. I suspect the transistors are to blame. The jumpers are set correctly and I tried them both in Line-Out and SPK-Out and nothing happened. I also tried newer drivers. I even tried putting it in other PCI slots, just in case, but still nothing. I also have an Audigy 4 Pro with the same issue.

TechieDude wrote on 2020-05-27, 15:40:

wiretap wrote on 2020-05-27, 02:58:

If I recall, this cable can be used for SB-link.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078LM31J9/

Most likely it can. But where is the fun in that? Making it myself seemed cheaper, quicker, and more fun.
Unfortunately, I bear bad news: The YMF724 card is completely silent, no sound, no FM, no noise, nothing. It's detected and installed in XP (FLP, actually) just fine, but it doesn't actually output anything. I suspect the transistors are to blame. The jumpers are set correctly and I tried them both in Line-Out and SPK-Out and nothing happened. I also tried newer drivers. I even tried putting it in other PCI slots, just in case, but still nothing. I also have an Audigy 4 Pro with the same issue.

If your model has S/PDIF out , you may be lucky enough for it to still work .
EDIT: Oh, I see it does not . Sorry.

If you are lucky and it's not the main chip, it may be repairable . Not too many parts on that board .

The TEA2025B and L1084 are commodity parts, as is the AC97 codec

Things I did today: found some bad caps on my Pentium2 motherboard 🙁

Box was flickering on/off on boot, I vaguely remember it doing something similar ten years ago. Luckily I have a spare that someone else repaired so swapped them over.

Ordered some replacement Panasonic caps and going to have a crack at repairing this board, I have nothing to lose (and hopefully a spare board to gain if I can fix it).

philmac wrote on 2020-05-27, 15:58:

Things I did today: found some bad caps on my Pentium2 motherboard :( […]
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Things I did today: found some bad caps on my Pentium2 motherboard 🙁

IMG_3447.JPG
IMG_3444.JPG
IMG_3443.JPG

Box was flickering on/off on boot, I vaguely remember it doing something similar ten years ago. Luckily I have a spare that someone else repaired so going to swap them over.

Ordered some replacement Panasonic caps and going to have a crack at repairing this board, I have nothing to lose (and hopefully a spare board to gain if I can fix it).

Those are Chhsi capacitors, those are known to be bad.

Finished a little soldering project at last:

The card is hardly official, but at least the PCB credits Fagear's design (and cost so liitle it certainly isn't gouging). Love the red GUS-like look, so I complemented it with blue 1% resistors.

First SID I tried was dead as a doornail, second one arrived this afternoon and works perfectly. Listening to Ultima 6 as I type 😉

Attempting to fix a PB450 board that has power (voltage) issues. Replaced inductors, cleaned the pads off, and installed a battery holder + a wire to go from the positive terminal to the one trace that got damaged on top, but the wire is underneath. Going to check more traces for any damage, patch when necessary, and go from there.

I went back to troubleshooting a 386SX40 with cache motherboard I had failed to fix a year ago. I would certainly welcome help from anyone who has the time to check and chime in..

I stripped this 386 motherboard for spare parts.

No 386 boards were harmed for this photo, the battery leaked near the CPU and ruined the board.

Took my Ps3 for a spin. Playing these games:

- Ratchet and Clank Tools of destruction.
- Tekken 6
- Gran Turismo 6
- Dead Or Alive 5
- Burnout Paradise City

The reason being, I bought some of those games this week at my job on the recycling center that are a second hand shop or thrift shop as well. I can get any WII/Ps3/Xbox360 games for 2 euro a piece, and any Ps2 or Ps1 game for 1,34 euro a piece. No matter what game it is. So yeah.... I am thinking about doing a Ps3 games collection or something like that.

brostenen wrote on 2020-05-28, 10:46:

Took my Ps3 for a spin. Playing these games: […]
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Took my Ps3 for a spin. Playing these games:

- Ratchet and Clank Tools of destruction.
- Tekken 6
- Gran Turismo 6
- Dead Or Alive 5
- Burnout Paradise City

The reason being, I bought some of those games this week at my job on the recycling center that are a second hand shop or thrift shop as well. I can get any WII/Ps3/Xbox360 games for 2 euro a piece, and any Ps2 or Ps1 game for 1,34 euro a piece. No matter what game it is. So yeah.... I am thinking about doing a Ps3 games collection or something like that.

Can you get your hands on the following XBOX360 titles? Because I'd be happy to pay the price and cover the shipping for these:

The Legend of Spyro: Dawn of the Dragon
Zumba Fitness: Core
Just Dance 4
Dance Central 3
Crash of the Titans
Blue Dragon
Guitar Hero: Metallica
Raiden IV

Feel free to drop me a line if you cross them 😀

I added some Diamonds to my stock Aptiva MMX to let it shine some more :p
* Diamond Stealth 3D 2000 (might switch to Pro)
* Diamond Monster Sound MX200
* Diamond Voodoo2-1000

Ditched the passthrough cable used with my 3dfx Voodoo1 and instead now each video card has its own monitor.

It's dope.

Repaired a Asrock PE Pro-HT motherboard. Not particularly interesting, but I had to try to save it from the jaws of the recyclers .

No boot, no power, plus the psu was behaving as if there was a short. After visually inspecting all dc-dc converters, I found the likely culprit. A dual mosfet let the genie escape out of the bottle.
This dual mosfet was responsible to generate the DC voltage for the DDR memory banks, and was obviously shorted.

New mosfet in place:

Excellent job fixing that ASRock board!

So, doing something a bit weird here, but I'm curious how it will turn out.

Long story short, most of my childhood was Internet-free, so I never got to experience multiplayer gaming of the 90s and early 00s save for a few trips to local gaming clubs to play some CS1.6. So I figured it might be cool to find a way to host an internet multiplayer server for vanilla versions of games like Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Descent, Quake, Quake 3, Forsaken and UT99.

I've decided to use this Asus P2L97-DS dual Slot 1 motherboard with a couple of Pentium II-333:

It's a cool motherboard that I'll probably never likely use for regular gaming so I figured it would be nice here. Also I have a spare one in cause something goes wrong.

In order to host IPX game I'll need some kind of an IPX simulator like Kali and Kahn. The current plan is for the latter because there are readily available freeware versions of both client and server. I've decided to use Red Hat Linux 9 for several reasons:

- Kahn is not available for WinNT and I suppose Win9x is a weird choice for a server;
- Red Hat Linux 9 was my first Linux distro ever (well, actually ASP Linux 9, but that was just a localized and reskinned version of RH9 for Russia);
- RH definitely was the most popular distro then, and every developer who ported their software or game to Linux provided an RPM package. It was also very user-friendly for its time;
- having a "final" version kind of takes away the issue of picking a specific version.

Well, the first tricky part turned out to be finding a case large enough to host the Asus board. Had to dismantle my Pentium MMX build — the InWin A500 turned out to be large enough:

The board works:

I've eventually upgraded the system to 256MB RAM and 15GB hard drive. Not sure if I need any more for this project.

P2L97-DS would be top of the line for 1997, but it's about 6 years older than RH9. On the flip side, the system supports every piece of hardware, from Matrox G200 video card and 3COM NIC to Creative Sound Blaster 128 PCI sound card. It also detected SMP right away.

I remember ASP Linux allowing you to play Solitaire during the installation process, but sadly this feature is absent from the original Red Hat installation:

Now, the first obstacle was updates. When I was picking the distro, I've found Red Hat's archive FTP that had all the updates released for RH9. However I forgot that RH9 updated using a proprietary web service that required you to register. Obviously Red Hat Network is no longer up. I thought I could just configure the system to use that archive site as an alternative repository, but I was wrong — RH9 doesn't have repositories or yum, for that matter.

Then I've learned about Fedora Legacy community project that provided updates for RH9 after it was discontinued — in the form of a proper yum repository. However, Fedora Legacy itself died in 2006. Finally, I found a sketchy mirror, manually installed yum and updated the system. I suppose there should be a way to create updated installation CDs of RH9 using the official archives, but I couldn't find any info on that.

It just so happens that I have two separate networks in my home, using two different routers and using two different ISPs, so all my retro machines are kind of isolated from my "modern" PC and devices. Makes me a bit more comfortable about putting a 15 years old Linux server online 😀

So far I've installed a Quake 3 server and configured it using this guide. I've only tested it locally, but it works — although I'm yet to understand the process of creating my own configuration files. As such, I was unable to disable Punkbuster and CD key check. A serial key from my GOG version works, but I suppose it will be an issue when I'll try to find people to play with.

Next step is to set up a Kahn server, get a static IP and configure my router to make my server accessible to others. Oh, and find people who are as interested in playing using original hardware as I am 😀

That's a really great idea to make a server for the older games. And the system you built for it is great. I hope your able to get this fully configured and working!!

computerguy08 wrote on 2020-05-28, 07:51:

I stripped this 386 motherboard for spare parts.

20200528_104319 (Phone).jpg

No 386 boards were harmed for this photo, the battery leaked near the CPU and ruined the board.

I don't want to give you hard time, but those damaged traces looked fixible. A little vinegar and alcohol do wonders. Scratch down oxidation to expose traces, some repair wire and solder, and there is a good chance the board will post (considering there isn't an error somewhere else).

Even if you need all of the components; I would rather keep them on the board, and desolder them when needed. Just for the purpose of better orientation when replacing components on the board you are trying to fix...

Turbo -> wrote on 2020-05-28, 17:59:

I don't want to give you hard time, but those damaged traces looked fixible. A little vinegar and alcohol do wonders. Scratch down oxidation to expose traces, some repair wire and solder, and there is a good chance the board will post (considering there isn't an error somewhere else).

Even if you need all of the components; I would rather keep them on the board, and desolder them when needed. Just for the purpose of better orientation when replacing components on the board you are trying to fix...

That motherboard was not POSTing at all, even after a vinegar treatment. I also bypassed the damaged traces with some wires. It just did not show any signs of life at all.

It would have been a waste of time trying to fix it. I had an identical, working board, that was in need of spare parts.

If it were something rare and uncommon, I wouldn't have done that.

Made a small adapter for connecting the PC speaker output of the motherboard to the mono input of the sound card.

Spent the evening disassembling and cleaning my newest purchase, 1993 Macintosh Color Classic. Before-photos can be seen here Re: Bought these (retro) hardware today

Under the dirt was really nice looking machine. It was covered in some black dust and grime, so it really changed. For 27-year old machine it looks very good. Inside it was actually already very clean, only minimal dust. I bet this machine didn't see much use when it was new. I'm really happy with the result, considering I only paid 50€ for it 😀