wiretap wrote on 2020-07-21, 20:30:

Seller said it powered on and started up for a minute, then downpowered and wouldn't turn back on. I'll take on the challenge. H […]
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Seller said it powered on and started up for a minute, then downpowered and wouldn't turn back on. I'll take on the challenge. Hopefully it is just the power supply.

Or the Varta Ni-Leakium battery. Those are notorious.

I traded today a few of my spare CPUs for these, also paid like 22 euros extra. Made the deal with a local scrapper, really nice guy. I hope he will become my "gold mine" of old stuff...

Unfortunately, the K6-2+ 550ACZ is not working, tested it on an ASUS P5A rev 1.04 with the latest beta BIOS 🙁
The P60 is an SX835, it should have the FDIV bug...

The CPU has the FDIV bug

Ironically, the Pentium OverDrives for the 486 machines had no bugs and the 386 CPUs all have the POPAD bugs, even the double-sigma ΣΣ CPUs.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-07-21, 21:33:

wiretap wrote on 2020-07-21, 20:30:

Seller said it powered on and started up for a minute, then downpowered and wouldn't turn back on. I'll take on the challenge. H […]
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Seller said it powered on and started up for a minute, then downpowered and wouldn't turn back on. I'll take on the challenge. Hopefully it is just the power supply.

Or the Varta Ni-Leakium battery. Those are notorious.

True, hopefully not. If that's the case, I'll just have JLCPCB print a new motherboard.

If it's the PSU, you're in luck. And if the battery was removed long ago, double luck.

waterbeesje wrote on 2020-07-20, 16:59:

Nice catch! I don't think you overpaid... It's not a bargain either. Just anok price. These machines are generally quite popular […]
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CrFr wrote on 2020-07-20, 14:40:

Bought this Compaq Prolinea 4/50S for 66€ including shipping. I don't know if I overpaid, but I have wanted a 486 or 386 desktop system with ISA slots for some time. It has integrated Tseng ET4000/W32i graphics, which I suppose is decent for DOS games. Hard drive is missing, hard drive mounting plate is missing, floppy drive doesn't work, but otherwise it seems to be ok. It is dirty, but after good cleaning, I'm sure it will look very nice 😀

compaq.jpg

Nice catch! I don't think you overpaid... It's not a bargain either. Just anok price. These machines are generally quite popular.

Floppy drive may just be dirt as well I guess. Clean it and you're probably all set.
For a hard drive a CF card would do perfectly, cost close to nothing and is reliable.

And do yourself a favour: see if you can set the base clock from 25 to 33MHz... The CPU will most probably just be a dx2-66 which is purposely clocked down by intel to fill a market gap 😀

Thanks for the tips!

I tried cleaning and lubricating the floppy drive with no results. When I grew a bit annoyed with this drive, I noticed that it reads floppies just fine if you slam them in angrily 😁 This needs more investigating.

Indeed the CPU overclocked nicely to 66MHz. The case had even nice diagram of jumper locations to make it easy. Runs at higher speed without problems. It is 486SX2-50 processor.

Hard drive on the other hand wasn't as smooth sailing. This machine seems to be very picky on what it accepts. First I tried 8GB CF card, but it didn't work. Always gave hard drive error on boot. Same result with several "modern" 60-120GB drives. Also 128GB SATA SSD with SATA-PATA adapter didn't work. Only drives that work were 1.6GB and 2.6GB ones I had. Both of them sound awful, so it won't be permanent solution. I ordered couple of different 1GB CF cards hoping I might have better luck with those.

I spotted this ELV PCT-7000 PC-card-tester on my local auction site. Not sure how useful it is for me, and I need to find the documentation (still seems to be available from ELV)... Still a cool thing to have and I did not pay too much.

https://at.elv.com/pc-karten-tester-pct-7000-teil-12-203295

Self-developed, newly built or defective PC plug-in cards should be subjected to an independent test in order not to endanger the computer. The PC card tester developed by ELV is used for this purpose. It works without an external computer and can be used to carry out essential functional tests on PC plug-in cards.

That tester is a very cool find. Please let us know how it works when you get it.

wiretap wrote on 2020-07-21, 20:30:

Seller said it powered on and started up for a minute, then downpowered and wouldn't turn back on. I'll take on the challenge. Hopefully it is just the power supply.

I'm 100% guaranteeing you its battery corrosion has eaten the board away in a large swathe. those old PSU are fairly rock solid.

BloodyCactus wrote on 2020-07-22, 15:49:

wiretap wrote on 2020-07-21, 20:30:

Seller said it powered on and started up for a minute, then downpowered and wouldn't turn back on. I'll take on the challenge. Hopefully it is just the power supply.

I'm 100% guaranteeing you its battery corrosion has eaten the board away in a large swathe. those old PSU are fairly rock solid.

Thank you for your opinion. We'll see when it arrives.

I can't have a decent retro computer without a bunch of colored 5.25 disks next to it!

Because I'm a masochist, and I wanted a 486DX4 laptop with a sound card, and like challenges like building up hinge mounts out of thick gumps of SteelStik and J.B. Weld original, and taking my chances on 1990's era touch screens......I bought this NEC Versa M75.....and I have no idea what the heck that "Commpac Words+" System 2000 thing is, but it looks like a piece of medical equipment involving sound.....hey, maybe I'll find a musical purpose for it...who knows. Quite excited to see what I can do with this one after all the greatness my Versa 40EC has risen to. Heck, maybe I can LAN Game with the wife over wifi with this. I've got a WaveLan Silver that's sitting around doing nothing right now.

creepingnet wrote on 2020-07-23, 03:06:

Because I'm a masochist, and I wanted a 486DX4 laptop with a sound card, and like challenges like building up hinge mounts out of thick gumps of SteelStik and J.B. Weld original, and taking my chances on 1990's era touch screens......I bought this NEC Versa M75.....and I have no idea what the heck that "Commpac Words+" System 2000 thing is, but it looks like a piece of medical equipment involving sound.....hey, maybe I'll find a musical purpose for it...who knows. Quite excited to see what I can do with this one after all the greatness my Versa 40EC has risen to. Heck, maybe I can LAN Game with the wife over wifi with this. I've got a WaveLan Silver that's sitting around doing nothing right now.

Apparently a system for augmentative communication (read: extra-loud voice-over). Later version PDF:

http://www.aactechconnect.com/products/pdf/106.pdf

Great for use at protests/people who won't keep their distances/parties* 😉

* circle your current fancy.

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

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

Your board looks similar to mine. Check Jumper settings for 486 motherbaord thread.

Turbo -> wrote on 2020-07-23, 08:02:

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

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

Your board looks similar to mine. Check Jumper settings for 486 motherbaord thread.

Thanks for that 😀

Picked up these two beauties at a flea market. The Zenith is a ZDH-1217-DE that is really clean, looks like its hardly been used but can't really test much since I don't have a monitor compatible with it 🙁 Also can't find much information on it, see others that are -A0 but not really anything on what the -DE is.

Other one is an IBM clone that came with a 386 board, most everything inside is in really good shape except for the battery leaking and making general chaos.

Got everything including 2 keyboards for $140 so felt pretty good about that.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-07-21, 22:40:

The CPU has the FDIV bug

Ironically, the Pentium OverDrives for the 486 machines had no bugs and the 386 CPUs all have the POPAD bugs, even the double-sigma ΣΣ CPUs.

Pentium overdrive were based in a later Pentium core (P54C iirc)

well I couldn't resist on this one...
got a scrap lot of a whole lot of mobile CPUs, mostly PII/PIII? some random boards... they were mostly broken...

but then there was a whole bunch of suspect PCBs mixed in there...

a bunch of mobile 486s one of which is definitely broken unfortunately ^^

two QFP 386DX40, one HIIT 3C87-40
MS6905 MASTER slot1/370 adapter, backplate ripped off, PCB looks fine

then for the more interesting ones 2nd row left to right:
Socket 5 to socket 7 adapter? components ripped off/snipped but PCB looks fine, should be fixable, need to find more info about this one ^^
two 486 VRM adapters, one of which had the VRM snipped off, should also be fixable
one 486 socket adapter with a Cyrix CX487S

and in the 3rd row a Powerleap PL-Pro/II socket 8 to socket 370 celeron adapter that looks to be in good shape :3

and the one big adapter on the top that I can't quite figure out yet... fits a 386DX CPU on... what exactly? 486 boards? x3
the part number yields no results unfortunately.

all of them have some bent pins, one of the 386s has two broken pins... but all in all a good bunch

imi wrote on 2020-07-24, 16:06:

and the one big adapter on the top that I can't quite figure out yet... fits a 386DX CPU on... what exactly? 486 boards? x3

It's not as absurd as it might sound. There actually are some chipsets that can work with either a 386DX or a 486 CPU, and there even are 386/486 combo boards like this one: http://www.uncreativelabs.de/th99/m/E-H/31611.htm.

It's possible that this adapter is meant for a 386/486 combo board that has a 486 socket only, but is able to redefine a couple of pins to use the 386DX front-side bus protocol instead.

Even Compaq got in with Deskpro i series, two models used either motherboard (both same) one 486 with 395 cache controller, 386 and 387 sockets unsoldered, and other you can choose either 386 or 486 via switches and few jumpers in etiher sockets.

I have purchased such this motherboard with 386 processor installed with 395 cache controller and 387 socket, I can switch to 486 mode by exchanging and plug 486 in other socket. My goal is to convert a Deskpro 4/33i into 3/33i.

Cheers,