While it wasn’t today explicitly, it was within the past two days, so sue me. I decided that me having a soft, blurry G3 on the side of my PowerMac G3 wasn’t good, so I disassembled it down to the metal, and wiped twenty years of dust off of it. I also straight up used a hose on the plastic exterior, and a bunch of compressed air to the decades old dead spiders hidden under the motherboard. I didn’t think to take pictures of it while I was doing it, so instead you will just have to see the much nicer to even touch have result.

Yesterday, I also picked up a 2005 version of the A1048 for relatively cheap. It was dirty as hell, but I had time to kill at work.

So, using just some Lysol wipes that were drained enough to not be dripping, I gave myself a much nicer looking keyboard.

And before anyone asks, I just blacked out work related stuff on the sides. It’s not classified or anything, just not what I want to show.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-06-28, 16:12:

These days I've been playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. I have had this game since a long time ago (like since 99) but had never made it past the first sith you face (Level 7). Now I've made it past him, I'm up to level 12 (from 21) now. It's a very good game with some unique mechanics (the lightsaber) and very varied weapons.

You will enjoy it even more the next time you go through it thanks to familiarity. Also, force speed is useful, but saber middle click is your best friend.

Currently working on the 386 system I acquired on Thursday and it works!

The biggest con is the hard drive is a bit too tall and when I attempt to install the CD-ROM drive, there's a gap between the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive up front, which isn't good. The system only boots from the hard drive once I press reset and I think it's because of the battery not being installed (still need to look for the circuit diode to solder the other end of the wire from the diode to the board or I could solder the wire to the other diode that's for the external battery header) or just a slight hiccup. The other issue was the 3.5" floppy drive wouldn't accept the diskettes I formatted and wrote files to from another system. I finally got that sorted out by putting in the spare floppy drive I had in another build that is not functioning at all, sadly.

Another interesting thing is the BIOS detects my 4.3GB HDD with full capacity, but DOS begs to differ (shows 504MB because LBA wasn't introduced until 1993-1994 for the 486 machines and some of the earlier 486 machines had a limit to 504MB) so the two fixes I have are to add the boot ROM chip to my NIC or obtain the BIOS info and combine the XT-IDE Universal BIOS and the AMI BIOS together as one piece, but I doubt that'll work. On the positive side of things, the Maxtor HDD that's installed does indeed work. And I'll be archiving the HDD in case it stops working one day.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-06-29, 08:46:

Currently working on the 386 system I acquired on Thursday and it works! […]
Show full quote

Currently working on the 386 system I acquired on Thursday and it works!

The biggest con is the hard drive is a bit too tall and when I attempt to install the CD-ROM drive, there's a gap between the floppy drive and CD-ROM drive up front, which isn't good. The system only boots from the hard drive once I press reset and I think it's because of the battery not being installed (still need to look for the circuit diode to solder the other end of the wire from the diode to the board or I could solder the wire to the other diode that's for the external battery header) or just a slight hiccup. The other issue was the 3.5" floppy drive wouldn't accept the diskettes I formatted and wrote files to from another system. I finally got that sorted out by putting in the spare floppy drive I had in another build that is not functioning at all, sadly.

Another interesting thing is the BIOS detects my 4.3GB HDD with full capacity, but DOS begs to differ (shows 504MB because LBA wasn't introduced until 1993-1994 for the 486 machines and some of the earlier 486 machines had a limit to 504MB) so the two fixes I have are to add the boot ROM chip to my NIC or obtain the BIOS info and combine the XT-IDE Universal BIOS and the AMI BIOS together as one piece, but I doubt that'll work. On the positive side of things, the Maxtor HDD that's installed does indeed work. And I'll be archiving the HDD in case it stops working one day.

IMG_20200628_181052745.jpg

What DOS version are you running?

Making a DIY AV cable for a Model 2 Sega Genesis console by cannibalizing an old portable DVD player TRRS cable that I had lying around. Didn't place an order for the DIN 5 and mini-DIN 9 stuff yet, however. (I also plan to make some MIDI cables.)

I also own a Model 1 Sega Genesis console that I am socketing existing components on its PCB, which is going well so far.

Took apart an old Tamagotchi Angel unit because the buttons were not responding reliably. Buttons and its PCB area just needed to be cleaned with some isopropyl alcohol and a cotton swab.

The more I play with this Aopen Cobra YMF. The more I realize dual sound cards ARE in my future.

Finding even more games like Dune2 that crash or act abnormal when played on Windows. Most likely due to the lack of a A link cable (which I currently don't have the tools or skills to make the connector for my card).

TechieDude wrote on 2020-06-29, 12:00:

What DOS version are you running?

Currently running 5.00 on the 203MB Maxtor drive.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-06-29, 23:33:

Currently running 5.00 on the 203MB Maxtor drive.

Try 6.22 on the bigger HDD.

Added the 4.3GB HDD and the file system got wiped somehow. The only issue I'm facing is the HDD limit up to 528MB (504MB in DOS language) and to make things not work right, the XT-IDE Universal BIOS I had installed in my 3Com network card was having issues as the drive wasn't detected properly. Currently using DDO at the moment, however, it takes a chunk of the conventional RAM (takes 20KB or more of the 640KB).

Also moved the HDD to the center of the system so that the Creative Labs CR-563-B could be installed without any gaps in between the drives or making it impossible to install the bottom 5.25" drive bay cover. Also made an XT-IDE BIOS (latest revision r602) using DOSBox so that I can fix up the boot ROM and make sure it's working properly as the current BIOS has 32-bit IDE set and not 16-bit.

Bought and received a DB9/Atari Joystick adapter for my BBC Micro and set about testing a few of my joysticks on it. It's very picky with old/worn joystick connectors and it didn't like 2 out of the 8 sticks I tested, whilst a couple of others needed the plug or cable jiggling to work correctly. Not the adapter's fault, these joysticks are all well abused.

The 2 joysticks it didn't like were 1 of my Cheetah Annihilators, probably a bad plug but it's crap anyway 🤣 & an original Atari 2600 joystick - which was super stiff and impossible to use. Both of these do work ok on other systems, but I'm not complaining as all my best joysticks all work great on it.

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things:

The plastics are EXTREMELY brittle. The area around the fan has already broken off and the screen fascia is crack on both sides.
Also, it somehow holds 1.5 hours charge on its 25 year old battery.

What is it with Pentium II era laptops have functioning batteries, but Pentium 4 era ones never do? Different battery tech I'm guessing?

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-30, 14:38:

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things: […]
Show full quote

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things:

The plastics are EXTREMELY brittle. The area around the fan has already broken off and the screen fascia is crack on both sides.
Also, it somehow holds 1.5 hours charge on its 25 year old battery.

What is it with Pentium II era laptops have functioning batteries, but Pentium 4 era ones never do? Different battery tech I'm guessing?

Could also be due to P4 era stuff stressing the battery more compared to a P2 era system with the 2 technologies being a mere couple years apart compared to their age right now? I mean both are kinda old by today's standards right? 😜

Tetrium wrote on 2020-06-30, 18:48:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-30, 14:38:

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things: […]
Show full quote

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things:

The plastics are EXTREMELY brittle. The area around the fan has already broken off and the screen fascia is crack on both sides.
Also, it somehow holds 1.5 hours charge on its 25 year old battery.

What is it with Pentium II era laptops have functioning batteries, but Pentium 4 era ones never do? Different battery tech I'm guessing?

Could also be due to P4 era stuff stressing the battery more compared to a P2 era system with the 2 technologies being a mere couple years apart compared to their age right now? I mean both are kinda old by today's standards right? 😜

Some P2's and other 90's laptops were powered by Ni-Cd or Ni-Ch batteries rather than Li-Ion. It's possible they fail differently as well. I don't really know how.

TechieDude wrote on 2020-06-30, 20:23:

Tetrium wrote on 2020-06-30, 18:48:

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-30, 14:38:

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things: […]
Show full quote

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things:

The plastics are EXTREMELY brittle. The area around the fan has already broken off and the screen fascia is crack on both sides.
Also, it somehow holds 1.5 hours charge on its 25 year old battery.

What is it with Pentium II era laptops have functioning batteries, but Pentium 4 era ones never do? Different battery tech I'm guessing?

Could also be due to P4 era stuff stressing the battery more compared to a P2 era system with the 2 technologies being a mere couple years apart compared to their age right now? I mean both are kinda old by today's standards right? 😜

Some P2's and other 90's laptops were powered by Ni-Cd or Ni-Ch batteries rather than Li-Ion. It's possible they fail differently as well. I don't really know how.

I was never very savvy when it comes to laptops, but your explanation may be the correct one. Of course it could even be a mix of both or even more factors. For all we know the build quality has gotten worse during that era, totally unrelated to the battery tech used at the time.

Did more progress on the 386/486DLC machine. Soldered the wire from the positive terminal (underside of the board) to D2 for the external battery and that worked out well. Tested it to make sure the RTC chip was getting the appropriate voltage and to make sure the settings are saved and everything checks out. Also made an XT-IDE Universal BIOS chip for the system, but I need to add the 3c5x9cfg and help files to my boot diskette and setup the card again. Might as well get MSD installed to make sure no conflicts exist for the SAAYM card. Wish I could find the jumper settings for the AB-757 GV2 Super I/O ISA card, but no such luck for that so that I can disable the parallel port in case I need to change the IRQ from 3 to 7 on the SAAYM card.

Here's a video about the computer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcSOtW54z-8

Crammed a Coppermine Celeron 1000 into my Deskpro EN SFF by means of a slocket. To do that I needed to 3D print a smaller drive bay that only holds an SSD, normally the floppy and hard disk drive bays would prevent a socket 370 cooler from being installed. I also ran into the issue that the motherboard's CPU fan header doesn't work (previous CPU was passively cooled).

The Celeron is about 1.5x as fast as the Katmai 550 that was in there first. I also tried a P3-1000 @ 750 (100Mhz fsb), and it was generally slower, though in one benchmark it won, probably thanks to its larger cache.

Only issue now is that the cooler sits at a slight angle, like the retaining clip doens't want to keep it straight on the core.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-06-30, 14:38:

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things: […]
Show full quote

I tested out the Dell Lattitude CPI and got it setup with Windows 98 SE and learned two things:

The plastics are EXTREMELY brittle. The area around the fan has already broken off and the screen fascia is crack on both sides.
Also, it somehow holds 1.5 hours charge on its 25 year old battery.

What is it with Pentium II era laptops have functioning batteries, but Pentium 4 era ones never do? Different battery tech I'm guessing?

CPiD or CPi A?
CPiD is a EDO RAM based (MMC1) machine, while the CPiA is a PC66/100 (MMC2). I had a few of each models back in the days - those were decent machine for back-in-the-days, but yeah, their plastics didn't age well (much like similar machines like the Wallstreet/Mainstreet Powerbooks).

Both machines are past the time period when they could be NiCad. The entire series are Lithium Ion based - however, your experience does depend on whether they are from the earlier C series runs (dating back to '97 with the black label) or the very last C series batteries from 2002 (the ones built for the C640/840s with the grey labels) - the early ones tend to have lower mAH ratings. AFAIK the battery aging behavior depend upon how it was used while it was still active. If it's constantly being "topped up" they tend to wear worse than units that went through a low number of full discharge cycles.

https://youtu.be/nE1xQYu1DaA

This week I started connecting PCs I have to my KVM and network switch. Today I ended up with connected all the builds I wanted.
The KVM is Adder Smartview 4xPro. I can connect up to 16 sets of VGA + PS/2 mouse + PS/2 keyboard. On the other end, I can connect up to 4 outputs: 4 displays, 4 keyboards, 4 mouses. Then, I can choose combination I want just from menu. I used a set of 3-meters IBM KVM cables which I bought for cheap. Image quality is same as with direct connection. There are no latency using keyboard or mouse. There's one thing: for builds that doesn't have PS/2 for mouse, I needed to connect a serial mouse directly to PC. I don't have a compatible adapters. Anyway, AT (DIN) keyboards works well.

Network is distributed with 16-port D-Link 10/100 switch. All those builds around my desk are connected to my home network (and internet!).

The nice thing is I can select the PC just from the keyboard, using hotkey and OSD menu built-in KVM. I set the name to every connected PC so it's easy to find one on the list. It's so freakin' comfortable... Not only I can use just one set of keyboard, mouse and display on my desk, but I have finally got rid of cable management every time I need to switch the build. Also I can choose proper display for things I would like to use (for example, smaller CRT display for old games and LCD for >2000 ones).

I can highly recommend KVM solution. It saves a lot of time, allows me to just play any build I want without dealing with cables every time. Also it's very helpful for non-technical people -- I can finally do nothing when my fiancee want to play old games 😁 She just need to check the game's release year and compare with the builds list and it's easy to just choose proper computer from the menu.

That sounds like a great setup you have. Where did you find that awesome kvm ?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-07-01, 22:40:

That sounds like a great setup you have. Where did you find that awesome kvm ?

From the local auction site. It was sold as untested. Probably from some recycling company. The price was around 20 dollars.

Tried to use a specific set of textures in the Windows 95 3D Maze screen saver, but it's not accepting any bitmaps of any bit depth, of any resolution I try. No errors, just any files selected don't take, and the defaults remain in place. Not trying to make A8 sprites or anything yet. Very odd, though. I've looked through foone's topic on it, but he was focusing on sorting the A8 format out.