Not a good day. A while back I decided to turn my ECS P6S5AT (aka fastest So370 board on the planet) build into a colour build. So out went the GF3Ti200, 3C905TX and Turtle Beach Montego II, and in came 3DLabs VP 760, RTL8139D black PCB and an Audigy 2. Also added an SI3114 SATA controller. And... no boot. Started to troubleshoot, but even with just CPU, RAM and VGA, no luck. Swapped for different CPU RAM and VGA, and PSU for good measure. Still no boot. Plus a nasty 'overstressed electronics' smell :'(

Not found what the problem is, but it seems very motherboard-related 😦

Attempted to install the 3.5" > 5.25" HDD hot swap adapter in my 386/486DLC and it worked for a while, but inserting it into the center bay is a big no-no as the adapter cannot get inserted at all unless it's in either the top or bottom bay and the CD-ROM drive on either the top or bottom bay. However, once inserted, the 3.5" floppy drive will not receive power as the connector is short.

Finished off rebuilding my XT/8088 PC into it's new case. Took the opportunity to shuffle the ISA cards about a bit and tidy things up:

Couldn't figure the front LCD display jumpers out, will have to come back to that another time. The only markings I can see on it say ST-5B. Maybe one of you guys have the jumper settings?
But luckily 1 digit was already configured to the number I required.

So it's now back together and displaying it's awesome CPU speed -

Just needs slightly more cleaning to areas of the case, plus I need to play around with the XTIDE ROM settings, but otherwise I'm happier with the build in it's current configuration.

dionb wrote on 2020-07-28, 21:37:

Not a good day. A while back I decided to turn my ECS P6S5AT[...] Not found what the problem is, but it seems very motherboard-related 😦

I'd be miffed as well if mine went tits up like that. Hopefully you'll be able to sort it out.

I've been testing AT and ATX mainboards, mostly 486 and P1 era, casting aside those who fail to boot for later inspection.

Whilst doing that, I also tested my 72pin EDO pairs on a trusty Intel i430HX based ATX board (with onboard Yamaha OPL!) . It's helpful, having your ram assorted according to their MB-capacity.

Finally booted up the old dual socket 5 Asus PCI-I-P54NP4 again to test my FPM ram. It should find a better home than it currently has, but still happy to see it working.

wiretap wrote on 2020-07-28, 17:32:

I haven't heard of a charge controller never being able to work again once it senses 0V (or probably lower than 3.5V per cell). If that's really the case, I would temporarily solder a power supply (like a wall wart) onto the charge controller where it senses voltage so you can work on the battery pack separately and just drop it into place.

This battery has bq8011dbt controller and I read some posts about really difficult process of reprogramming it, due to missing datasheet. So I wanted to be careful here, but I don't know if that was really necessary.

I discharged old cells to the same level as new cells (Samsung with pre-soldered tabs, bought that from reputable battery supplier, every cell was 3.5V so probably no fake or used stuff), first I soldered additional "bridge wires" to the old cells and charge controller, so they still were connected even after cutting them off. Unfortunately i broke one bridge wire (positive terminal) while cutting battery tabs, immediately resoldered it and "battery test" light was no longer working... anyway i proceeded with replacement of the cells, soldered new ones, used spare space to solder AWG18 wire to positive terminal and AWG20 to balancing circuit, in other places I managed to use nickel-plated metal strip (i didn't solder to the body of battery but to premade tabs, I don't have spot welder).

It is being charged now with full power, i unplugged AC for a while and it continued working, hope everything will be fine 😀 there is some kapton tape because I didn't want to damage the insulation by excessive heat made by soldering. I put some paper tape on the thermistor, i will glue it with acid-free silicone later. I think I will also use silicone to seal the case, latches are damaged now. There was also some black elastic glue applied before, I think that might have been silicone too.

Nice. 😀

Added a window panel to my new Lian Li case

PC Hoarder Patrol wrote on 2020-07-31, 02:23:

Added a window panel to my new Lian Li case

Lian Li PC-A55 Window Panel.JPG

Love it 😁

You know what I don't love though? Debugging bad ram.
Specifically with Transport Tycoon Deluxe. Seriously.

What is it with that game that makes it so sensitive to pissy ram. Iv been swapping sticks out like mad because apperently some of my sets of 16mb arnt handling low timings anymore (or maybe never fully did).

I can put benchmarks (or something like a doom timedemo) looping and itl sit fine. But the minute I boot up TTDX. Insta freeze, or freeze immanent a few minutes into gameplay.

And I know it's ram because the minute I turn the settings back down to snail timings or use different sticks with fast timings, the game is absolutely stable.

Whoa is me 🙁

Pretty much finished up the ISA Super VGA. I need to flash the ROM (not installed in the pic), and I'm waiting on my RAM to arrive.

Since I placed my 486 computer on the place where I can enjoy it looks, there was no room left for my secondary working PC. So I've removed the components and installed them in this mini cube PC case and placed it under the table. I had to sacrifice DVD ROM, but I haven't use it very much anyway. I can always use an external one.

I spent the entire day and then some enjoying one of the best pieces of (retro) software I have ever tripped over on the internet! 🤣 If anyone else out there is a fan of the game "Lode Runner", or like me more of a fanATIC 😉 this is definitely worth adding to your collection. These guys loved Lode Runner 'Mad Monks' Revenge' so much they say they have rewritten it from scratch - in c#! And it runs on various Linux flavors and MacOS as well as Windows. I'm not usually a fan of recreations which is why I love MAME so much but if you didn't know beforehand you could never tell it wasn't the original! At least I couldn't, and I played a ton of LR-TLR over the years.

So after I came across it and downloaded, I had to do some reading about it of course, and do some testing, and of course hours of being stuck on level 15 🤣 And also, of course I had to integrate it into my UI project - which started as just a frontend for MAME but now runs DOS games on the Pi using Dosbox, and Windows games locally like Lode Runner and some others. I am enjoying that project and adding this new LR to it really made my day! 😀

If anyone wants to check out the game, it's free but I don't think open source (not sure either way), the url is http://mmr.quarkrobot.com
And no I don't know them or have any connection, just sharing a great find! 😀

More on the A2000 motherboard -- fixed the battery (-) terminal trace with some copper foil tape, fixed a broken trace in the CPU socket area, and installed a new CPU socket. Putting on fresh UV solder mask tomorrow to cover up the exposed copper, as well as installing a new keyboard port. My ATX-->A2000 power supply adapter came in today, so I should be able to see if it powers on.. if not, I'll be ordering a new PCB.

I've been busy as heck with the M/75, my 40EC (screen casing fell apart), and then the 486 my wife could not find the power switch on (it's an XT case) and knocked it over trying to turn it off while I was at work.....CRT and all...well....that thing survived unscathed....apparently I build a solid retro-system. I'll go more in depth in my build logs. Oh, and I got that Words+ Augmented Speech synthesizer thing working finally......looks like it might make a fine tool for some comedy or for maybe making some new art on bandlab using auto-tune on the speech synth.

I really should buy some PATA SSDs for my laptops.....

As I always do on moonlit Friday nights, I packed a lantern, scrap paper & some sandwiches, then embarked on the hour-long walk from my house to the Moody Blues Woods near the river bottom. Obviously, that's not the forest's official name. When I took my first moonlit stroll through the forest around 20 years ago, I happened to be listening to an old Moody Blues tape "Days of Future Passed" and well, the name stuck! Somehow, the entire album just seemed to fit the vast, natural wonderland that I was taking in for the first time.

There's a weathered old bridge down there that crosses over a stream, around 40-50 minutes into the woods from where I always enter. It's been somewhat of a tradition of mine to take a break when I reach that bridge; scarf down a couple of sandwiches, bust out paper & pencil, and just sketch whatever the hell comes to mind. Most of the time it's just silly, cartoony stuff that I usually end up laughing about. And since I've never actually seen anyone down there--at least not during the late night hours when I visit--I can let loose a full bodied belly laugh if necessary and not feel the slightest bit embarrassed!

After finishing the sandwiches and sketching a few pictures, I made the two hour journey back. Got back home at around 2 am. Wasn't feeling tired, so I made some mac & cheese and cranked up the stereo. Played a couple games of pinball, then loaded up Earthworm Jim. Now here I am on Vogons typing this thing up and finally, finally getting sleepy. I'll probably be snoring till noon, but that's part of what makes weekends so dang awesome! I can dream about food... and actually have time to prepare the meal of my dreams when I finally do get up!

Installed a new keyboard port, new battery holder, applied solder mask, and test booted the A2000. It is back from the dead. YESSSSSSSSS

Don't mind the color on the monitor.. that needs repaired next since it is lacking the green output. Should be a simple solder connection or a transistor replacement.

Nicely done.

Amiga Forever ! <3

Finally setup my retro rig again. I didn't suspect that Glide and MS-DOS games would look this good on a modern OLED monitor with VGA input !

The monitor looks superb, except for the widescreen stretch.

Is it possible to force it to display 4:3 aspect ratio through the OSD?

BenQ makes OLED monitors?