appiah4 wrote on 2020-08-12, 11:35:

I tried to unsuccessfully restore an IBM Netvista Pentium 4 for a friend. […]
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I tried to unsuccessfully restore an IBM Netvista Pentium 4 for a friend.

After manging to juryrig mounting an HDD and adding the missing floppy drive, replacing the DVD-ROM, cleaning it thoroughly, adding new feet to it, replacing the dead memory and the coin cell battery it actually booted.

I got as far as partitioning the HDD when it locked up hard, and refused to turn on again.

Now it just gives me a 3-1-4-3 beep code at POST, signalling a dead component on the motherboard.

Click F to pay respects. Will be shipped back to my friend as I don't have time to troubleshoot a Pentium 4 motherboard and its likely dead shitty capacitors..

I have a full original Net Vista 8307 - L5U (P4- 2.4Ghz on a 845G mobo with board #FPU-491599 r1.3), have not booted it up in a year (is in storage) but checked my notes and it has a POV module and will not boot proper without error if the cmos battery is weak or dead. Not sure if that helps or not since you already replaced the battery. It has a decent little P4 board but is limited in what P4 cpu it can run. Added: that POV module cause me a lot of headaches as it talks to the bios in some strange way and board would not boot without for some reason (just re-read my notes on it)

SodaSuccubus wrote on 2020-08-12, 17:50:

A Sound Blaster 2.0 ended up on my doorstep today. Got it mostly on an impulse as it was cheap and..well it's a 91' era soundcar […]
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A Sound Blaster 2.0 ended up on my doorstep today.
Got it mostly on an impulse as it was cheap and..well it's a 91' era soundcard 😀
IMG_20200812_114624.jpg
Don't fully know for sure if it's working, as all it wants to do is output static and really abnoxious glitchy sounds.

Not surprised though. Unfortunately I dont have any AT PSUs lying around and my ATX adapter doesn't makeup for the -5V rail this card apperently needs.

Soo...I'm just gonna assume it works should I find something to power it.

Nice !!!

Swapped the I/O card in my 386DX/486DLC system to the Promise EIDE Pro Super I/O card and it's almost successful, except the OS won't boot due to the BIOS and controller card changeover. Going to copy all of the files from the HDD to my laptop, format the HDD, and copy everything back over. Learnt the hard way with the EIDE Pro card requires the HDD parameters to be set to Type 1 to get the LBA to work right, but I got everything all set, except for the HDD not working with it because of the card and BIOS changeover. Getting closer here.

Tried to compile Dune Dynasty for WASM, so I can play Dune II in Chrome/Firefox with all the QoL improvements of OpenDUNE / Dune Dynasty.

Sadly, Allegro 5 doesn't seem to have an emscripten port...

A friend gave me yesterday a dual external cd/dvd scsi case. The power switch was missing so i had to short it in order to make a quick test, but aside from that it seems that everything is working ok.

I dont have a scsi card to test this monstruosity on a machine right now, maybe this is a good opportunity to get one.

These last days I've been playing (yet again) through Quake 4 on my WinXP machine. Since Q4 is from 2005 (15 years ago!) is that retro enough? 😀

I've played through Quake 4 many times it's one of my favorite games. I remember waiting in line at midnight when it was released at my local EB games.

Received an Hitachi 82GB SATA HDD that I ordered and tested it out in my K6-2 build. I got it because it matched the capacity of the Hitachi 82GB IDE HDD in my K6-2 build and it was cheap too. Works fine and is detected correctly etc.

I'm going to clone the 82GB IDE drive to the SATA drive (using a SATA-IDE adapter) and attempt to place the drive into another K6-2 build, with a different chipset.

The hope is that so long as I do some prep work first, ie. removing the chipset, AGP, sound & graphics drivers etc, Win 98 should happily detect the change of hardware and I should end up with 2 similar-spec systems all ready for some LAN gaming!

That is of course all assuming that the other system supports the 82GB drive, I haven't looked at that yet.

I made a volume control doohickie for the PC speaker in my Presario 460 - its just 1kOhm linear potentiometer mounted to the CF card adapter bracket.
I mean, Dune 2 sounds nice with SB and all, but nothing beats the nostalgic ear-bleeding screech of in-game credit count coming from the PC speaker. Now a little bit less ear-bleeding.

I managed to lubricate and internally clean my Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro. Disassembling it also seems to have brought the spring back in to the spring, since it seems to gladly center its self instead of moving back to center, if that makes sense.

If you were quick on the look, you might have seen a thread I made for two minutes or so. As it turns out, a single plastic piece was missing for a few minutes and, well, that was the entire problem.

BetaC wrote on 2020-08-14, 22:17:

I managed to lubricate and internally clean my Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro. Disassembling it also seems to have brought the spring back in to the spring, since it seems to gladly center its self instead of moving back to center, if that makes sense.
image0.jpg
If you were quick on the look, you might have seen a thread I made for two minutes or so. As it turns out, a single plastic piece was missing for a few minutes and, well, that was the entire problem.

Did the left hand slider need lubing? I have TWO of these sticks and that slider is sticking on both.

kolderman wrote on 2020-08-14, 22:42:

BetaC wrote on 2020-08-14, 22:17:

I managed to lubricate and internally clean my Microsoft Sidewinder 3D Pro. Disassembling it also seems to have brought the spring back in to the spring, since it seems to gladly center its self instead of moving back to center, if that makes sense.
image0.jpg
If you were quick on the look, you might have seen a thread I made for two minutes or so. As it turns out, a single plastic piece was missing for a few minutes and, well, that was the entire problem.

Did the left hand slider need lubing? I have TWO of these sticks and that slider is sticking on both.

I lubed it, and it's working well, albeit with it needing effort to actually hit the absolute end of the rail. it's smooth up until that though.

Just went trough my video cards and found this beast. Elsa Gloria XL. It's from 1997 according to vgamuseum.info. Not sure what to do with it if anything since it's mainly for CAD

I went to my recently deceased Grandad's house to help my Dad sort through his stuff. Sadly he stopped being into tech in the 60 so there were no PCs but he did have this Word Processor (Sharp Font Writer FW-760) thing.

It's pretty terrible, I can type faster than it can display text and the keyboard and controls are very different from period MS Office and Windows 95 standard keys. I can't see why anyone in 1996 would buy a new one of these over, say, an Amiga 500 or 386PC. It saves to floppy disk in wordperfect format.

He also had a cookbook from 1913 and his Aeronautical modelling membership card, which sadly expired in 1958. I would put this non PC stuff in spoilers if I knew how...

Today was PC transplant surgery -

Took an AMD K6-2 500MHz CPU out of 1 Socket 7 PC (where it was underclocked due to lack of support) and moved it into another PC which had an AMD K6-2 400MHz CPU. In the process I cleaned the heatsink & fan, which was pretty disgusting, as well as removed the weird thermal tape/paste that was applied to the K6-2 400. Removing that stuff from the heatsink & CPU took a fair bit of scrubbing with Isopropyl Alcohol.

Also removed a 6GB HDD from the new 500MHz PC and replaced it with an 82GB HDD cloned from another Socket 7 PC. Had to update to the latest BIOS dated 2000 to support the larger HDD, which is good because the BIOS I had was a cut-down limited Compaq-branded BIOS (the PC is a Compaq Presario 5420) and now I have a more fully featured vanilla BIOS. Also had to enable a few features in the new BIOS to allow it to function with my PCI Voodoo 3 2000, rather than just the onboard SIS 530.

All was going well until I tried to install the SIS IDE driver and it all went to hell. If I can't fix this, I'll have to re-clone the original HDD again. Always hated SIS 🤣.

The old K6-2 400 went into older Socket 7 PC that had the previous underclocked CPU. I haven't gotten around to configuring the jumpers on that properly yet, the CPU was detected incorrectly at 448MHz and caused odd behaviour with the AT keyboard not working after a min or so - this behaviour I've encountered in the past, hence the need for underclocking the CPU on that finnicky old board. I'll sort that out tomorrow.

Today is going to be all about cleaning and working on my comuting/guitar/electronics/indoor wood-working workspace - basically my "lab" of sorts. Then at some point FedEx "Santa" is going to bring over a new docking station for the 486 Versa laptops which I plan to outfit with some sound and networking hardware so that when they are docked at home I don't need to use WiFi all the time (just when I'm not in the workshop) - Plus I'm thinking of doing some sick experiments with printer drivers so I Can print from the modern Cannon Laser Printer (have some schematics in Circuitmaker 2000 to print out).

The cleaning job is because our inlaws are buying us new furniture (crazy lady has been evicted). So I moved the TV into the livingroom so we have a proper "livingroom" again and then my "lab" will be getting something Retro/Vintage and CRT as soon as I can find it. I have a line on 2 TVs north of here and a PVM at the game shop (if they still have it). Might need to go to the game shop anyway to buy a Zapper - I miss Duck Hunt.

Cleaned a Micron labeled MS Intellimouse v1.1A PS/2 mouse picked up a while ago, was having button issues and was very dirty. Now works well and looks barely used.

Had some time last night to strip down the now not a mystery box and see what was what.
This system was definitely a 286 originally the turbo display was set to 6/12mhz. I now have it set to show HI/LO as its only 2 digit.

Sony 4x CD Drive.

Mitsumi floppy drive

Gigabyte GA486IM + AMD DX4 100 + 16mb(4x4mb) of ram. Of which 2 sticks appear faulty so I have it running with 8mb as it doesnt like the other spare ram I have right now. Mobo and CPU look new as does the cpu fan.

Cirrus Logic CL-GD542X 1MB. Looks brand new.

LONGSHINE MICROSYSTEM, INC. LCS-6624 IDE/FLoppy controller. Looks older and used so likely from the original spec?

D-LINK DE-220CT. Another new looking card and also I think the only ISA NIC I own so may prove useful one day.

Generic soundcard with AZT2320 chipset. This card also looks unused. Will likely stay that way after I test it out for a bit.

Seagate ST3660A 545mb HDD. I did test it quickly and was able to read and write to it without any terrible noises but I cant see any obvious ways to mount it properly so removed it in favour of CF.

The finished product:

Swapped the ODIN RTC for a new DALLAS chip that I had. Just need something else for the other bay now. I also swapped out the VLB VGA for a PCI one and it is night and day difference.

I plan to do some benches vs my other dx4 and then may say goodbye to the weaker one.

Nice system, love that case too!

Today's retro activity for me: battling a cantankerous Super Socket 7 PC. Was getting random crashes, BSODs & file read errors to the point where it would no longer boot any OS. When I took it apart to check all the connections and subsequently put it back together, my suspicions were suddenly confirmed when the RAM jumped up from 96MB to 160MB. Yep, this board didn't like the installed RAM chips at all and would flake out once the system had been switched on for a while.

I initially thought I had 3x 32MB RAM SIMMS installed, but it turns out 2 of them were single-sided 256MB sticks that were being recognised as 32MB initially before suddenly springing to life as 64MB chips. I have no idea where the hell I got those stick from in my collection, but the majority of my systems do not support them properly.

So I replaced all the RAM chips with 2 regular PC100 64MB SIMMS and finally the system had stability. I ran 3DMark several times just to confirm - this plain wouldn't work with the dodgy RAM installed.

As for those 256MB sticks, I put them into another PC where they are recognised as 64MB sticks. They seem to work fine at that capacity in their new home, so they'll suffice until I find another system in my collection that will support them properly.

I had to steal some RAM from my Power Macintosh G3 Beige Desktop, replacing one of it's 64MB sticks with the spare 32MB. Good job I did really, as when I tested the G3 it wouldn't boot to Mac OS due to a dead PRAM battery (tested with my multimeter), so I'll have to order a replacement.

Also played around with the jumpers on another Socket 7 board, to try and maximise the clock of the installed AMD K6-2 400 CPU. Managed to get it to 210MHz at 60MHz bus. The highest it would go is 300MHz at 50MHz bus, but the system wasn't stable.

Artex wrote on 2020-08-10, 02:13:

Horun wrote on 2020-08-10, 01:56:

Artex wrote on 2020-08-10, 00:28:

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

At first it looked like it was small but then realized that is a full case front soaking. Good job ! Please post some pic's when done.

Will do! It turned out great - I will attach a picture tomorrow.

Turned out well!