imi wrote on 2020-07-17, 20:47:

I guess that's a good one to follow up with this ^^

got another EPSON SD-800 and a Tandon 8" Floppy drive :3
hardware39_32.jpg

You don't see these very often! What kind of system do you have that supports 8" floppies?

On my 486 I didn't get the Diamond Stealth 64 Video Vram to work. Well, guess I've got some new testing on my hand. Received this CDROM today, and it's supposed to contain the correct drivers.

When I get to testing I'll put the contents on my Dropbox and post on the Vogonsdrivers thread.

MCGA wrote on 2020-07-18, 05:43:

If that SIIG Mini is from eBay, I had it bookmarked before it sold. 😀

I've been looking at one of those keyboard( Small and beige! ) for my Raspberry Pi. I have a USB to PS2 adapter which works from my testing.

It is. It was only up for sale for about 45min before I grabbed it.

MMaximus wrote on 2020-07-18, 06:52:

imi wrote on 2020-07-17, 20:47:

I guess that's a good one to follow up with this ^^

got another EPSON SD-800 and a Tandon 8" Floppy drive :3
hardware39_32.jpg

You don't see these very often! What kind of system do you have that supports 8" floppies?

I've been looking to get one for quite a while now, and it's the first time I saw one pop up for a reasonable price, still have an old 8" floppy here from my dad I'd like to know what, if anything, is still on there ^^
and I'm just interested in all kinds of drives in general.

been reading up on them for a bit now, and this Tandon TM848-1 seems to be a relatively "modern" 8" floppy drive if you can even call them that ^^ (the manual is dated '81)
it uses a shugart interface, so should be compatible with most floppy controllers anyways, just needs to be adapted and a 24V power source.
http://classiccmp.org/dunfield/img47321/cnct.htm

I don't know if it works yet, it needs a new drive belt in any case before I can try, but seems to be in very good condition visually otherwise.

but I also got another drive at the same time, a Mitsubishi M2896-63-02M from '86 which is direct drive, so no worries about drive belts and should be able to do double sided.
still waiting for that one to arrive.

I hope to get at least one of them if not both to work 😀
the Mitsubishi also includes a 50pin to 34pin adapter already that's hopefully going to make things easier.

I'd still want to get my hands on a full height drive some time though eventually.

Picked up a Leadtek Winfast A250 Ultra. Didn't have the Full cooler like the original. I also had a Passive Zalman Cooler BNIB so i proceeded to fit that.

Swiego wrote on 2020-07-17, 20:17:

I somewhat ironically received both of these today: […]
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I somewhat ironically received both of these today:

IMG_4393.jpeg

On the left is a Seagate 80MB ST-4096 drive. Haven't tested it fully yet, but I can say that it shakes the entire table when the head actuators move.

On the right is a Seagate Exos x16 16TB He-filled data center drive. Sustained transfer rate is up to three ST-4096s per second.

Amazing to think about the capacity difference! It's funny how comparatively small the transfer rate improvement is though.

You're probably looking at least 20 hours of solid maxed out writing on the 16TB drive... Likely much longer (days) with real world data and lots of little files.

Compare that to the 80MB drive. Docs anyone online estimate .625MB/sec transfer rate max. If that's even remotely close you're only looking at 2-3 minutes to fill the drive. Even if it gets over tenth of the advertised speed, 20-30 minutes to fill a top of the line drive versus 20+ hours is amazing. Also, I guess that drive was $750 back in 1988... that's like spending $1600 on a hard drive in 2020. Maybe it'd be better to compare it to some insane enterprise level SSD?

Thanks for sharing!

wiretap wrote on 2020-07-18, 03:00:

Brand new Siig Minitouch PS/2 arrived. I also have some custom blue arrow keys on the way for it. :) […]
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Brand new Siig Minitouch PS/2 arrived. I also have some custom blue arrow keys on the way for it. 😀

Nice ! Super clean looking. I found a Chicony KB-2961 beige PS/2- AT compatible at a SA store earlier this week for $3 so had to grab it, not a swtch type but rubber domed, still a good working KB.

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2020-07-18, 17:35:

Amazing to think about the capacity difference! It's funny how comparatively small the transfer rate improvement is though. […]
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Amazing to think about the capacity difference! It's funny how comparatively small the transfer rate improvement is though.

You're probably looking at least 20 hours of solid maxed out writing on the 16TB drive... Likely much longer (days) with real world data and lots of little files.

Compare that to the 80MB drive. Docs anyone online estimate .625MB/sec transfer rate max. If that's even remotely close you're only looking at 2-3 minutes to fill the drive. Even if it gets over tenth of the advertised speed, 20-30 minutes to fill a top of the line drive versus 20+ hours is amazing. Also, I guess that drive was $750 back in 1988... that's like spending $1600 on a hard drive in 2020. Maybe it'd be better to compare it to some insane enterprise level SSD?

Thanks for sharing!

Thanks! You are absolutely correct, it's striking how storage read/write performance has not kept up with capacity. When I play with these old MFM drives, it only takes a few minutes to fill them up. Even something as intensive as a level 5 Spinrite session takes a couple of hours at most. Fast forward to today, just doing one bulk physical read pass of the 16TB took just shy of 19 hours (good guess!). I have eight of these I'm burning in before building a new storage server, and I expect it'll take until next weekend before it's done.

I suppose the trend has corrected in the last couple of years. My main desktop has a 2TB PCIe 4.0 M.2 SSD which has a bulk transfer rate around 5GB/sec; ratio wise I suppose that's in line with the early days of desktop hard disk storage so perhaps we're back to where we began.

Got this S3 Trio64V+ for 5 EUR today.

Anyone know what the J4 and J7 jumpers are for?

Also, random observation: lower refresh rates (e.g. 640x480 @ 60 Hz) somehow feel less flickery on a CRT with this card than with more modern cards like a GeForce4 Ti4200.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-07-04, 19:52:

Horun wrote on 2020-07-04, 03:16:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-07-04, 03:01:

Bought this https://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=2684174937

Nice and super clean ! Is that one with those hybrid plastic+metal liner case tops ? Have seen those before on Unisys and some other older good OEM computers. Internally very good, only quirk is some occasional patina (yellowing) on the lid that does not match the front, but yours looks great.

Thanks. Yes very similar in design to my AcerAcross system but full AT. The yellowing will be easy enough to remove.

Got did of the yellowing by using suger soap, a mild cleaning abrasive called "Jif" and a mild nylon souring pad(scotch brite). Removed some of the scratches as well.

Won this motherboard on ebay the other day although I am having trouble finding its ID.

Only found 1 listing online which referenced a bowling machine.

Lucky it seems the jumper settings are all on the board.

Lets hope it didnt mind being on what looks like a throw or carpet.

Joseph_Joestar wrote on 2020-07-19, 10:02:

Got this S3 Trio64V+ for 5 EUR today. […]
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Got this S3 Trio64V+ for 5 EUR today.

S3.jpg

Anyone know what the J4 and J7 jumpers are for?
(...)

Those are always nice to have in stock 😀
My guess for the jumpers is to set pal/ntsc. Maybe also to set is the memory sockets are filled.

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-07-19, 11:29:

Won this motherboard on ebay the other day although I am having trouble finding its ID. […]
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Won this motherboard on ebay the other day although I am having trouble finding its ID.

Only found 1 listing online which referenced a bowling machine.

Lucky it seems the jumper settings are all on the board.

Lets hope it didnt mind being on what looks like a throw or carpet.

I think it's a PCChips m912

Bancho wrote on 2020-07-18, 14:33:

Picked up a Leadtek Winfast A250 Ultra. Didn't have the Full cooler like the original. I also had a Passive Zalman Cooler BNIB so i proceeded to fit that.

Now it looks just like mine!
The original cooler on mine was failing, so I sent it in for replacement and they sent me a cooler similar to yours, after which I also decided to get this Zalman cooler. That was several years ago.

Deksor wrote on 2020-07-19, 12:18:

LewisRaz wrote on 2020-07-19, 11:29:

Won this motherboard on ebay the other day although I am having trouble finding its ID. […]
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Won this motherboard on ebay the other day although I am having trouble finding its ID.

Only found 1 listing online which referenced a bowling machine.

Lucky it seems the jumper settings are all on the board.

Lets hope it didnt mind being on what looks like a throw or carpet.

I think it's a PCChips m912

Thanks, spot on that I think!

Looks like I have real cache and not the fake cache one.

So, as promised earlier, here are my recent purchases. Usually I don't care too much about stuff being new in box, but I wanted some optical drives that would actually work so I decided to get some NOS ones. For the Sidewinder I preferred a NOS one because I can be sure it's not worn out, and the sealed copy of FS2000 was a welcome addition to the Sidewinder.

I purchased a Compaq Armada 7792DMT laptop the other week. It was listed as spare/not working but the picture showed it powered on to Windows 95 and it was very reasonable priced. The laptop arrived today and overall its a really nice example, although its going to be a project as not everything is right with it.

Specs, its a Pentium 266MMX (Tillamook), 64mb Ram (16,16,32), S3 Aurora64+ Graphics, ESS Sound, 5 Gig Hard Disk, FDD Drive, Windows 95. The issues with it are, It doesn't include the CD-ROM drive, The battery is present but completely shot. The FDD Fails to read disks.

I would like to get the FDD Working again so will try and inspect it and see why it doesn't read disks. Its will seek at boot and will start to spin when the disk is inserted but just won't read. I need to find the CD-ROM module. I think this is going to take a while but my search begins. Are batteries still available for these units? It's the original battery that's installed. Is it possible to rebuild these with new cells?

Does anyone know if there is a repository or where i could get the SoftPaqs for this laptop? I'd like to try and get the install fresh but using the compaq image. Any help and advice on this would be greatly appreciated. I don't have much experience when it comes to Laptops of this era. I think it will certainly make a nice retro laptop for some dos gaming.

I was able to find the softpaq for my Presario 4402 off of archive.org they had quite the selection of them. For the floppy drive hopefully it's just dirty heads or a worn belt

I had happily bought a very cheap ASUS PVI-486SP3 PCI/VLB Socket 3 motherboard, but once I received it I noticed something that I hadn't when looking at the item's potato photos, a burnt pin on the CPU socket. So tell me Vogons, does this mean there is no hope for this board? Could it be just the plastc that's burnt? Would a socket change be in order? Or would it be a lost cause regardless?

It kinda looks like some one got bored with a soldering iron and jammed it into the hole. Is there any burnt traces or other damage to the rest of the board?