Finished a third set of Windows 95 icons, but I gave up on trying to force Windows 95 to recognize user directories in My Computer/Explorer, since Win98 uses a specific DLL for it that doesn't exist in 95.

I got lucky on first try. Power good signal was connected correctly and I had first light with Deskpro M and boots to dos disk on floppy using Seasonic 650W through rewired adapter!

Yay!

For safety, I used 470 ohm resistor inline with power good wire till I'm sure I'm on correct pin then removed it once I'm sure that works.
Re-pinned a ATX adapter cable extension that is used for driving second PSU on to new pinout for compaq deskpro M. Using the free black and green wires as switch to turn PSU on instead.

I already have the Deskpro M pinout chart made up but it has unknown 2 pins I need to find which one of two is "Power Good" which is part of reset circuit to get computer running once signal asserted high.

Cheers,

So I just solved the issue of there not being enough power supplies floating around for the Microsoft Sidewinder Forcefeedback Pro joystick. It turns out the power cord to a DirecTV mini-genie (2nd gen) is a suitable source of power for one. These shouldn't be hard to find either.

I had given away an old crappy P4 computer 3 years ago to my grandma for some light office work, but she never quite tried to use it until her boyfriend tried to hook it up a few months ago and it randomly crashed. I ended up taking it back to figure out what's wrong with it, but didn't do anything because they ended up just using his much newer (and way better!) Ivy Bridge VAIO laptop.
Anyway, I checked it today just to satisfy my curiosity. It boots to XP fine, responds properly to input, until about a minute later, it freezes. RAM and HDD are just fine after testing them. The motherboard complains of incorrect CPU microcode, so I'm gonna try swapping CPUs tomorrow to see if it changes anything.

TechieDude wrote on 2020-07-15, 23:45:

I had given away an old crappy P4 computer 3 years ago to my grandma for some light office work, but she never quite tried to use it until her boyfriend tried to hook it up a few months ago and it randomly crashed. I ended up taking it back to figure out what's wrong with it, but didn't do anything because they ended up just using his much newer (and way better!) Ivy Bridge VAIO laptop.
Anyway, I checked it today just to satisfy my curiosity. It boots to XP fine, responds properly to input, until about a minute later, it freezes. RAM and HDD are just fine after testing them. The motherboard complains of incorrect CPU microcode, so I'm gonna try swapping CPUs tomorrow to see if it changes anything.

For sure sounds like a rare instance of (non-OC'd) CPU failure. I've actually only ever killed one CPU at all.

I had this Core2 E7000 series (can't remember the exact model) and I had that thing running in the high 3GHZ range at some unholy voltage and eventually it just outright shat itself. Burned a couple of contacts on the end of the CPU.

Painted my Chieftec Dragon that I moved my 98 rig into beige.

That dragon looks good in beige. Your paint job came out great very smooth and even looking.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-07-16, 03:18:

That dragon looks good in beige. Your paint job came out great very smooth and even looking.

Thanks 😀

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-07-10, 06:00:

Also got the AWE64 DOS utilities and drivers installed and got the card to work (missed one of the files in autoexec.bat to add C:\CTCM\CTCM) and the card does work, except the AWE32 music portion acts strange for some odd reason, so I need to get that all sorted out, but the card works regardless.

Apparently some of the AWE64 cards use a slightly different initialization than others, and this can sometimes cause issues with the synth… As a sanity check, it might be good to try initializing the card with UNISOUND instead of CTCM and see if it behaves differently.

I personally mostly use my AWE64G for games that can run in a DOS box in Windows 98, since that way I can use the Windows control panel to load sf2 format soundfonts and get really good GM music in games that support GM. My Simmconn arrived recently but I haven't had a chance to try it yet, need to dig up a 32MB simm from somewhere first…

I'll give UniSound a shot with the AWE64 Gold. The card sounds real nice, no doubt.

Out of curiosity, where can one buy a legitimate copy of DX-BALL 2 for Windows 98?

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-07-16, 12:26:

Out of curiosity, where can one buy a legitimate copy of DX-BALL 2 for Windows 98?

Do you need a physical copy? Either way, the author still seems to be running a website. May want to ask them. >> https://classic.blitwise.com/index.html

Today I fixed a driver issue with the PCMCIA ports of my thinkpad 560X under Windows 95, then installed "balls of steel" and DX-Ball2 with some add-on levels on it. Played a bit of each then.

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-07-16, 12:26:

Out of curiosity, where can one buy a legitimate copy of DX-BALL 2 for Windows 98?

Not very likely that you can buy the original installers when there is the new steam version, even the official longbow games site mentions that: https://store.steampowered.com/app/922400/DXB … ersary_Edition/

Actually, now that I have read up a little more, aha2940 is correct. I guess DX-Ball 2 is a different author than the original DX-Ball.

aha2940 wrote on 2020-07-16, 13:29:

Today I fixed a driver issue with the PCMCIA ports of my thinkpad 560X under Windows 95, then installed "balls of steel" and DX-Ball2 with some add-on levels on it. Played a bit of each then.

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-07-16, 12:26:

Out of curiosity, where can one buy a legitimate copy of DX-BALL 2 for Windows 98?

Not very likely that you can buy the original installers when there is the new steam version, even the official longbow games site mentions that: https://store.steampowered.com/app/922400/DXB … ersary_Edition/

The problem with the Steam version is that the game can't be transferred to a Windows 98 computer and played on there.

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-07-16, 15:33:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-07-16, 13:29:

Today I fixed a driver issue with the PCMCIA ports of my thinkpad 560X under Windows 95, then installed "balls of steel" and DX-Ball2 with some add-on levels on it. Played a bit of each then.

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-07-16, 12:26:

Out of curiosity, where can one buy a legitimate copy of DX-BALL 2 for Windows 98?

Not very likely that you can buy the original installers when there is the new steam version, even the official longbow games site mentions that: https://store.steampowered.com/app/922400/DXB … ersary_Edition/

The problem with the Steam version is that the game can't be transferred to a Windows 98 computer and played on there.

Yes, I saw that. I'm afraid there is no legal way to obtain those files anymore 🙁

aha2940 wrote on 2020-07-16, 22:59:

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-07-16, 15:33:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-07-16, 13:29:

Today I fixed a driver issue with the PCMCIA ports of my thinkpad 560X under Windows 95, then installed "balls of steel" and DX-Ball2 with some add-on levels on it. Played a bit of each then.

Not very likely that you can buy the original installers when there is the new steam version, even the official longbow games site mentions that: https://store.steampowered.com/app/922400/DXB … ersary_Edition/

The problem with the Steam version is that the game can't be transferred to a Windows 98 computer and played on there.

Yes, I saw that. I'm afraid there is no legal way to obtain those files anymore 🙁

That's just sad. 🙁

Welp, thats it! Iv had it with my DataExpert EXP4044 😠

First it had VLB issues, then it had turbo-button crashing, now it has cache issues with more then 8mbs.
Absolutely done pulling this thing apart. Out it goes and in will be a LuckyStar LS486 PCI.

Not necessarily the 94' era system board i hoped for 🙁 But at least its easy to work with.

The only problem: it likes to crash before booting into dos with LBA enabled on my 16gb CF card.
My hunch is that its struggling to deal with a whole 16gb card. its AMI Winbios.

Does anyone know the Cylinders/sectors/etc for a 1.9gb HDD? Me thinks punching those in so it sees no more then 2gigs will work,

Otherwise. I'l just get a 1994 PCI VGA and a SBPRO and toss them in. Get everything else as 94' ish as i can 😜

I decided to clean up my ADB keyboards today, mostly because I got bored after a while. The only downside was a few scratched had to be magic erased to the point of the plastic being a little too smooth. Still, you can't beat an old keyboard not looking like someone dropped it out on the road.

First one I did was my Apple Keyboard II, which is sadly one of the Mitsumi models. Still, I kind of love it even if I don't use it any more with my G3.

Second is my Power Computing Extended Keyboard. I can't find any apple branded ones locally, but this one does the job quite well. Maybe some day I will find one of the clones this originally shipped with.

TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2020-07-15, 23:54:

TechieDude wrote on 2020-07-15, 23:45:

I had given away an old crappy P4 computer 3 years ago to my grandma for some light office work, but she never quite tried to use it until her boyfriend tried to hook it up a few months ago and it randomly crashed. I ended up taking it back to figure out what's wrong with it, but didn't do anything because they ended up just using his much newer (and way better!) Ivy Bridge VAIO laptop.
Anyway, I checked it today just to satisfy my curiosity. It boots to XP fine, responds properly to input, until about a minute later, it freezes. RAM and HDD are just fine after testing them. The motherboard complains of incorrect CPU microcode, so I'm gonna try swapping CPUs tomorrow to see if it changes anything.

For sure sounds like a rare instance of (non-OC'd) CPU failure. I've actually only ever killed one CPU at all.

I had this Core2 E7000 series (can't remember the exact model) and I had that thing running in the high 3GHZ range at some unholy voltage and eventually it just outright shat itself. Burned a couple of contacts on the end of the CPU.

Turns out, it was the CPU after all. I swapped it with a 1.6 GHz and it worked just fine. I don't think the CPU itself is actually failed though. The PC originally had a 2.4 GHz Northwood and I thought it would be a good idea to upgrade it to 2.8 GHz back then, but didn't really pay attention to the BIOS complaining about the microcode. I'll update the BIOS later and install the 2.8 GHz CPU to check. For the record, the motherboard is an ASUS P4S533-X. Shouldn't be too hard to find a BIOS update.