VOGONS


What retro activity did you get up to today?

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Reply 16440 of 29605, by hwh

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Got a Packard Bell mouse in the whitening bath. Responded well at first, now seems to not want to improve. So it probably won't. And although there's not much downside to "ruining" this mouse, it may get "ruined" before it gets good.

It's poorly made anyhow. The buttons are part of the main top shell - connected on either side with little plastic tabs. Not making this up. The actual flexing piece is below that, for some reason. So the tabs for the left button are cracked. How long can such a mouse last? Well, if I don't actually ever use it...

Reply 16441 of 29605, by dionb

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Started building a 4-ISA slot Tualatin system during a particularly boring conf call. For once everthing just worked once I hooked it up, so it POSTs. This evening rest of system will get added, things like SATA controller+SSD for Win98 and a 512MB CF for DOS. If that all works, there will be Voodoo2s, Gb NICs and several sound cards 😉

Reply 16442 of 29605, by appiah4

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dionb wrote on 2020-08-20, 14:59:

Started building a 4-ISA slot Tualatin system during a particularly boring conf call. For once everthing just worked once I hooked it up, so it POSTs. This evening rest of system will get added, things like SATA controller+SSD for Win98 and a 512MB CF for DOS. If that all works, there will be Voodoo2s, Gb NICs and several sound cards 😉

4 ISA slots on a Tualatin motherboard? What kind of a motherboard is that? AGP Card, 2 Voodoo 2s, SATA Controller - aren't you out of PCI slots already?

Reply 16443 of 29605, by Duouk2000

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Picked up a Dell E771P monitor in great condition for £10 via a Facebook selling group. I've been a member of various groups for several years now and never found anything worth picking up at a reasonable price before. It'll make a nice replacement for my 21"Dell Trinitron which is just a little bit too big.

Reply 16444 of 29605, by darry

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appiah4 wrote on 2020-08-20, 20:36:
dionb wrote on 2020-08-20, 14:59:

Started building a 4-ISA slot Tualatin system during a particularly boring conf call. For once everthing just worked once I hooked it up, so it POSTs. This evening rest of system will get added, things like SATA controller+SSD for Win98 and a 512MB CF for DOS. If that all works, there will be Voodoo2s, Gb NICs and several sound cards 😉

4 ISA slots on a Tualatin motherboard? What kind of a motherboard is that? AGP Card, 2 Voodoo 2s, SATA Controller - aren't you out of PCI slots already?

My guess is slot 1 with Tualatin adapter or maybe industrial

Reply 16445 of 29605, by LHN91

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Pardon the definitely not-retro visual on screen (most of my retro things are packed, and was testing with the laptop I had available), but I just received an HP P910 19" monitor from a family member. Needs a clean up, but seems to work fairly well.

Not sure what tube is in it - it's a flat-style screen, and supports some pretty solid resolution options:
640 x 480 / 150 Hz
800 x 600 / 150 Hz
1024 x 768 / 130 Hz
1280 x 1024 / 99 Hz
1600 x 1200 / 85 Hz

Photo below is the screen running at 1600x1200 / 85hz. It's maybe a little bit soft, but certainly not bad, I think:

The attachment IMG_20200820_202646.jpg is no longer available

Reply 16446 of 29605, by imi

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HP P910 should be a Trinitron tube 😀 enjoy
1600x1200 is probably pushing it a bit considering the 0,25mm pitch on 18" visible area, hence the softness, you'd probably be better off going for a lower resolution and higher refresh rate.

Reply 16447 of 29605, by Horun

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LHN91 wrote on 2020-08-21, 01:11:

Pardon the definitely not-retro visual on screen (most of my retro things are packed, and was testing with the laptop I had available), but I just received an HP P910 19" monitor from a family member. Needs a clean up, but seems to work fairly well.

Not sure what tube is in it - it's a flat-style screen, and supports some pretty solid resolution options:

Nice ! Yes, The manual says it is a Trinitron tube.

Hate posting a reply and then have to edit it because it made no sense 😁 First computer was an IBM 3270 workstation with CGA monitor. Stuff: https://archive.org/details/@horun

Reply 16448 of 29605, by steevf

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LHN91 wrote on 2020-08-21, 01:11:
Pardon the definitely not-retro visual on screen (most of my retro things are packed, and was testing with the laptop I had avai […]
Show full quote

Pardon the definitely not-retro visual on screen (most of my retro things are packed, and was testing with the laptop I had available), but I just received an HP P910 19" monitor from a family member. Needs a clean up, but seems to work fairly well.

Not sure what tube is in it - it's a flat-style screen, and supports some pretty solid resolution options:
640 x 480 / 150 Hz
800 x 600 / 150 Hz
1024 x 768 / 130 Hz
1280 x 1024 / 99 Hz
1600 x 1200 / 85 Hz

Photo below is the screen running at 1600x1200 / 85hz. It's maybe a little bit soft, but certainly not bad, I think:
IMG_20200820_202646.jpg

That's really nice.
I used to have a Sony 21" Flat FD Trinitron CRT Monitor that I ran at 1600x1200/75Hz . I really liked it. When the caps popped I chose to switch to a wider 1920x1200 LCD rather than fix the Sony. As nice as the color accuracy was on that Sony, I did get tired of lugging the heavy behemoth around when I moved.

Reply 16449 of 29605, by LHN91

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Well that's good to hear, probably the first decent CRT I've had in a long time - the thing is an absolute beast size-wise, and my retro things are packed because we're finally moving to a house where I should have space to maybe set this thing up and make decent use of it.

Reply 16450 of 29605, by deleted_nk

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I finally managed to get a hold of the generic beige box case my original childhood PC had back in the day, kitted out with my 'el cheapo' ECS build and GF2
x1NjlPFl.jpg
Nothing that spectacularly special, but it holds a bit of nostalgia for me personally

Reply 16451 of 29605, by steevf

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Today, I finally got the Dallas clock chip replaced. It was a pain in the butt getting the old one out. Literally, I was sitting on a metal chair in my 90 degree garage for over two hours de-soldering it. I don't have the best soldering iron and I only have de-solder wick. But I got it out, put in a socket and put the new chip in. Everything just works now! Note the date on those chips. The old one: week 7 of 1995. The new one week 10 of 2020. If the new one lasts as long as the old one(it died in 2018), it will probably out live me.

The attachment 2020-08-20 20.35.32 1920x1440.jpg is no longer available

Reply 16452 of 29605, by bjwil1991

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Swapped the 66MHz clock crystal with the new 80MHz clock crystal for my LB386DX board so that I can install the 40MHz Cyrix Cx486DLC-40GP CPU and Cyrix FasMath 8D387-40GP FPU on it since the M326 V5.2 board is having a bit of issues at the moment.

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Systems from the Compaq Portable 1 to Ryzen 9 5950X
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Reply 16453 of 29605, by H3nrik V!

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LHN91 wrote on 2020-08-21, 01:11:
Pardon the definitely not-retro visual on screen (most of my retro things are packed, and was testing with the laptop I had avai […]
Show full quote

Pardon the definitely not-retro visual on screen (most of my retro things are packed, and was testing with the laptop I had available), but I just received an HP P910 19" monitor from a family member. Needs a clean up, but seems to work fairly well.

Not sure what tube is in it - it's a flat-style screen, and supports some pretty solid resolution options:
640 x 480 / 150 Hz
800 x 600 / 150 Hz
1024 x 768 / 130 Hz
1280 x 1024 / 99 Hz
1600 x 1200 / 85 Hz

Photo below is the screen running at 1600x1200 / 85hz. It's maybe a little bit soft, but certainly not bad, I think:
IMG_20200820_202646.jpg

You should be able to see the "Trinitron lines" when the manual says Trinitron. Wow, I remember my first 17" Trinitron monitor .. THAT was awesome!

Regarding image being "soft" - hook it up to a Millenium II or G400, then you'll have super crisp image! 😀

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 16454 of 29605, by dionb

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darry wrote on 2020-08-20, 22:28:
appiah4 wrote on 2020-08-20, 20:36:

[...]

4 ISA slots on a Tualatin motherboard? What kind of a motherboard is that? AGP Card, 2 Voodoo 2s, SATA Controller - aren't you out of PCI slots already?

My guess is slot 1 with Tualatin adapter or maybe industrial

Industrial. PICMG board with Via PLE133 chipset. No AGP unfortunately, just a Trident Cyberblade, so that Voodoo is actually the main 3D unit. My backplane has 4x ISA and 4x PCI 😀

Reply 16455 of 29605, by appiah4

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dionb wrote on 2020-08-21, 20:15:
darry wrote on 2020-08-20, 22:28:
appiah4 wrote on 2020-08-20, 20:36:

[...]

4 ISA slots on a Tualatin motherboard? What kind of a motherboard is that? AGP Card, 2 Voodoo 2s, SATA Controller - aren't you out of PCI slots already?

My guess is slot 1 with Tualatin adapter or maybe industrial

Industrial. PICMG board with Via PLE133 chipset. No AGP unfortunately, just a Trident Cyberblade, so that Voodoo is actually the main 3D unit. My backplane has 4x ISA and 4x PCI 😀

Interesting build, would certainly like to see..

Reply 16456 of 29605, by pentiumspeed

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Received compaq deskpro 386s partial computer. This has the goodies reason I bought it whole. One wrong floppy drive for deskpro M so transferred drive into M which becomes dual 3.5" floppy drive. 😀
Another reason wanting that partial computer was: 2x 4MB 80ns daughter boards which will go with Deskpro 386/25e motherboard which will go in place of the 386sx-16 motherboard.

Will ask in other topic about the configuration compaq did to kit out the Deskpro 386s with 3.5" floppy drive.

Very happy.

Cheers,

Great Northern aka Canada.

Reply 16457 of 29605, by SodaSuccubus

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While not technicaly computer related, I bought one of those 8bitdo wireless MegaDrive controllers and have seriously been digging it.Minimal input lag, great pad, has optional side buttons. Cord free. Totally has rejuvenated my interest in MD gaming.

Makes me really wish there was something like it for the PC gameport. Nothing better then sitting back, cable free with a comfortable pad. (Unlike you, Gravis Gamepad!)

It's the little things 😀

Reply 16458 of 29605, by creepingnet

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I've mostly been messing around with that Docking Station for the last week. Will probably put more details into my build thread, but basically I got both NEC Versa (40EC and M/75) running off of it with SoundBlaster and Ethernet.....still got a lot of work to do. Put in a SoundBlaster Pro 2.0 and a SMC 8416 EtherCard EZ. Trouble free in DOS but Windows is making me want to drop back to FreeDOS on those again....after all, they did make a P/75 version of the same exact laptop (Pentium 75, it was the last version ot use the cases the 486s used)....and the dock connector matches the 4000 series so that may be an option as well (I have a couple I have my eyes on ATM). I also upgraded to Links 2.21 and downloaded a 375MB file using the M/75 - took it about an hour it looks like over wired ethernet. Kind of insane a 486 can do that when you think about it....then there was WinRar unzipping that thing (!!!)..... this is like an old IDI Diesel F-250 pickup of laptop computers......you just hammer on it and hammer on it and it still gets you through - it might not be fast, it might not be "sensible"....but it will get you there.

May have found a few suitable touch panels to try on the M/75 on E-bay, one is only $33, but I have two that are over $100 that I'm handling like I did the M/75 and the docking station - just putting a watch on it on e-bay, and then waiting for the price to drop (or for it to dissappear). Also going to bump up the RAM (40MB), and get it a proper Floppy Drive....speaking of, having a real struggle with the Dock CD-ROM in Windows 98 SE and Windows For Workgroups.....works great under DOS but hangs/locks up in Windows for some reason. It's an early NEC CR-560 IDE drive.....go figure. I'm guessing a conflict with the IDE controller on the Laptop possibly.

Also made the wife laugh mocking the Guardian while playing Ultima VII on the M75. "Avatar....know that this here monkey man in the sky will tell you to go fight an evil corrupt politician disguised as Batlin in the local church whose carrying out ritualistic killings befitting of a Ghost Concert"....or somesuch....it was in the moment....

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Reply 16459 of 29605, by perhenden

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Going through yesterday's haul!

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Some interesting ISA and PCI cards, Amstrad PC1640 with a dead motherboard and a working monitor.
A Quickshot 8-bit ISA Deluxe Joystick Adapter, a full-length Everex systems memory card, 8-bit ISA.
A CL-GD5422 ISA, a Hercules Dynamite 128 Tseng ET6000 PCI-card.
Also, an AT tower with an AMD k6-300 and a 5.25" floppy drive that needs some serious cleaning.
An IDE ZIP 100 drive, with the click of death.
Tested the power supplies, all ATX with -5v line, and one of them popped with a bang and blew a fuse, leaving me in the dark! 😀