wiretap wrote on 2020-08-05, 12:17:

Powered up the SCSI hard drive (120MB - Maxtor 7120SR) on the GVP HC+8 in my Amiga 2000 -- it works and boots to workbench! I found some more SIMM memory in a box in the basement, installed it, and I now have 8MB of RAM. I also did the motherboard mod to enable 1MB of chip memory. This is going to be an awesome machine. I have a TF534 I'll be installing once my parts arrive to build it. But yea, there's a lot of cool stuff on the hard drive from the previous owner, including some games and lots of graphics art tools.

nice fixing the A2000!

during an xp install, i received a prompt about not being able to detect type of system.
the options were standard pc with c-step i486 or other.
i choose standard pc with c-step i486.
i choose poorly.

Went to swap the CPU in my Super Socket 7 build from the K6-2 450 to a K6-2 500 taken from another system. Removed the cooler from the 450 and found... a K6-2 500. CPU multiplier jumpers had simply been set incorrectly on the motherboard and I'd never noticed this whole time. 🤣 Now running correctly at 500MHz!

Nice now you have two k6-2 500s

Oetker wrote on 2020-08-04, 19:32:

Upgraded my Compaq Deskpro EN SFF with a Tualatin 1400 with built-in interposer from Korea. Of course the chip runs at 1050MHz, being that it's on a 100MHz FSB board. It started out with a Katmai 550 and as an intermediary upgrade I went for a Coppermine Celeron 1000. The Tualatin isn't always 2x as fast as the Katmai, even though the clock speed is basically twice as high - must be that 100MHz FSB. However in some benchmarks that use the cache just right it's extremely fast, as in 5x as fast.

All works fine with the board's VRM, MOSFETs already had heatsink and that doesn't get warm, and its BIOS doesn't complain (though it shows the wrong speed) either.

I thought the Deskpro EN SFF supported Tualatin CPUs out of the box... But maybe they used different mainboards with different chipsets (or chipset revisions). Which one does yours have?
I have the same machine on the way and have several Tualatins in stock so I thought I could throw one of them in there... but if not, I will go with a 1000 MHz P3 Coppermine.
Which graphics card do you use in yours?

Edit: I somehow missed the „550 Katmai“ part, so it must be Slot 1 and probably 440BX chipset? Didn‘t know there were Slot 1 variants as well... I‘ll have to see which model mine is...

gex85 wrote on 2020-08-06, 19:42:

I thought the Deskpro EN SFF supported Tualatin CPUs out of the box... But maybe they used different mainboards with different c […]
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Oetker wrote on 2020-08-04, 19:32:

Upgraded my Compaq Deskpro EN SFF with a Tualatin 1400 with built-in interposer from Korea. Of course the chip runs at 1050MHz, being that it's on a 100MHz FSB board. It started out with a Katmai 550 and as an intermediary upgrade I went for a Coppermine Celeron 1000. The Tualatin isn't always 2x as fast as the Katmai, even though the clock speed is basically twice as high - must be that 100MHz FSB. However in some benchmarks that use the cache just right it's extremely fast, as in 5x as fast.

All works fine with the board's VRM, MOSFETs already had heatsink and that doesn't get warm, and its BIOS doesn't complain (though it shows the wrong speed) either.

I thought the Deskpro EN SFF supported Tualatin CPUs out of the box... But maybe they used different mainboards with different chipsets (or chipset revisions). Which one does yours have?
I have the same machine on the way and have several Tualatins in stock so I thought I could throw one of them in there... but if not, I will go with a 1000 MHz P3 Coppermine.
Which graphics card do you use in yours?

Edit: I somehow missed the „550 Katmai“ part, so it must be Slot 1 and probably 440BX chipset? Didn‘t know there were Slot 1 variants as well... I‘ll have to see which model mine is...

Yes it's a slot 1 440BX model. It's got an on-board Ati Rage Pro with 4MB (+4 MB added) which is fine for what I'm doing. I've also got a Voodoo 3 but it's actually got worse compatibility with DOS games (glitches in Duke3D VESA modes and Quake).

I got a nice audio mixer today (following a fellow Vogoners advice) and hooked some thing up today. MT32, SC55, SB16 and the Wavetable output of the PCMIDI.

All works just great! Got distracted playing Doom and Monkey Island while testing, so did not clean up. It's is temporarily zip-tied to the desk right now, but I have to find a more clean solution.

Just, so many wires and power bricks etc.

The mixer is a "Behringer Eurorack Pro RX 1602"

Borrowed from my parts pile a 4GB IBM IDE in Deskpro 4/33i and boots and works as 527MB. Good enough!

Now installing DOS 6.22 and see how 486dx 33 does with doom2. Which all I have.
Never mind, trying out the Doom that I got from GOG.

The matter thing is find a way to transfer the games onto hard drive many years apart via USB drive adapter.

Had to add molex connector to the power harness for my external 3.5" it has IDE and SATA, works great. I was able to load doom and doom2 onto the hard drive and can launch them!

Now have to bench it.

Cheers,

Started testing a newly aquired Pantek PIO ISA controller and found I do not have the proper COM port add-on part. Will have to figure out the pinout of those COM headers and try to match it up to something... Work is back to full schedule so tinkering time in limited, and that sucks 😀

I spent the day looking on-line for a replacement clock battery for my Asus P/I P55T2T4 (Rev 2.1) motherboard so I can get it working again. I found a DS12887A+ sold by Mouser and made by what ever company that bought Dallas/Maxim.

Not looking forward to the de-soldering. 🙁

I broke my hard disk. 🙁

Yesterday I was fiddling with my 386 DX40. The system had a Conner cp30174 disk (170MB). It still is working great, but would not let me use any slave drive, so I put in a Seagate ST51080A. Only half of its size would be usable but that is ok with me.

Installed the disk, booted and set bios parameters. Put DOS 6.22 on it and shut down to put some programs onto the CF card to install. Turned it back on and before POST had completed, the disk began to rattle and produced a noise beyond happiness.

Turned it off again. And on again.
Spinup is very slow, bios won't detect it any more and disk spins down within as minute.

I think there might be a worn out bearing or something...

🙁

Now I've put in a Decathlon 850MB. Still got the 528MB barrier, but the controller can't keep up with its speed :p

Still... Got one disk less....

I spent the better part of two hours getting windows 2000 installed and finding a third party Voodoo 3 driver so that I could, of all things, get Jedi Outcast running on my 98 machine. Needless to say, with the drivers that have amiga in the name, I was able to get the game running. Now it’s time to never play it this way.

Tested a few more ISA IDE I/O cards, one has a particular bad design flaw but works just fine. Can you spot the flaw in the picture ?

@Horun, well, i think the problem is that you are connecting IDE cable to a FDD pins...

Horun wrote on 2020-08-08, 16:26:

Tested a few more ISA IDE I/O cards, one has a particular bad design flaw but works just fine. Can you spot the flaw in the picture ?

Spoiler

Bottom left side of the board. Am considering moving the Tant cap to back of the board as it is in the way of ISA slot when the IDE cable is attached due to lack of space...

Sounds like a good idea, that does look annoying.

Yes I meant floppy cable, and yes it is annoying. Even cables without a strain relief push the cap down which makes it hard to fully seat the back of card into the ISA slot.

Built (and I use that word loosely) my RetroBrighting rig!

Looks like Tron.

Yes it does. it's quite fun looking

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2020-08-10, 01:10:

Yes it does. it's quite fun looking

Hah! Easy on the eyes.... but actually NOT easy on the eyes with 12% peroxide in that tin. 😀