Hi guys,
I'm pretty happy today!
Why?
TLDR: my "dead" ASUS P2B-LS is working just fine!
The long story goes like this...
After I built my socket 7 system based on the Gigabyte GA-586HX running a K6@233, I realized that I need a bit faster daily retro machine.
The system is great, but some of the games I've tried to run on it, seemed to be a little sluggish.
So I decided to put together a Pentium II system. I have a few slot 1 PIII OEM systems from Compaq, Siemens, etc., but I wanted something built by myself.
Also I have a few slot 1 known to be working mainboards, such as the Abit BE6, an Intel SE440BX-2, a FIC VB-601-V, a Lucky Star 6ABX2V and a couple of more... and a few PII CPUs.
For me, the first choice was the BE6, because it was my very first good mainboard. Unfortunately it doesn't like the 100 MHz bus, after a while I'm getting artifacts or no video signal at all with any AGP graphics card. Even if I set in the BIOS the AGP speed to 2/3 of the FSB speed. So, the ABIT is a no go...
I don't really like the SE440BX-2 because of it's limited BIOS. The Lucky Star board is a piece of crap, it hangs like a minute or so after POST and before booting, the IDE 1 channel is not working. The FIC board it has a VIA chipset...
Apparently I was out of options, then I remembered I have a "dead" ASUS P2B-LS rev. 1.03. Back in June I spent almost a week trying to boot up this board, without any luck! I can swear I've tried everything, but the board just didn't wanted to show some sign of life, so I've put it to storage.
In the first place I've pulled out the 450 MHz PII CPU from the ASUS board to try it out on the Intel board, but it didn't POST-ed... After I cleaned the edge contacts of the CPU, it worked perfectly on the Intel board! Then I realized how big of an idiot I am! Back in June I didn't do this cleaning step, and I guess I didn't swap CPU's on the ASUS board, after all... Rookie mistake!

Anyway, I'm am really happy that this board is working now, because it's in a like new condition and is a solid mainboard with a lot of features. Also have the IO shield, SCSI ribbon cable, parallel and serial ports for the back of the case...
For testing I've put in an SL2TV s-Spec PII 333 MHz running without issues @500 MHz(100*5), 512 Mb RAM, an ASUS AGP-V3200/16 Voodoo Banshee, a Creative SB Live! 5.1 SB0100 and a random 10 Gb Seagate HDD. For now, I think it's a good system. I will put it in a nice and simple ATX case I have from 1998, when I know it's stable.

PS: also made a great deal on a Voodoo3 2000 AGP... waiting for the package to arrive...

Currently making a QuickBasic file of the codes from the booklet for Armour-Geddon (MS-DOS game) and it's coming along pretty well. Had to remove the $ after the letter for input and the if then statements since it complains about it, but it works. Got 1 page of the 8 done so far and it's a long list of codes (576 for 8 pages, 72 per page, 24 per block, 4 per column). Going to do the same thing with the Earl Weaver's Baseball II code wheel and Sid Meier's Pirates! manual so I can type in the team, year, and position to obtain the salary of that specific team, year, and position for Earl Weaver's Baseball II and for Sid Meier's Pirates, it'll be the adventure (name of adventure, year, city/town/country, and month (early or late)) answer.

Never done anything like this before and it's a good backup measurement in case I lose the booklet, manual, or code wheel, I can use the files on my laptop to run, enter the data, and get the exact code (number, answer, etc) to continue on.

I ordered (and received) a tiny little screw to attach the volume wheel to the potentiometer for my upcoming Snark Barker build.

I think I have everything in place now, just need to figure out how I'm going to create the required openings in the mount bracket... 🤔

pan069 wrote on 2020-10-27, 05:19:

I ordered (and received) a tiny little screw to attach the volume wheel to the potentiometer for my upcoming Snark Barker build.

I think I have everything in place now, just need to figure out how I'm going to create the required openings in the mount bracket... 🤔

IMG_20201027_160351.jpg

Use a dremel or other such rotary tools for the job would be my advice. Worked great for me.

I just found out that my old, 2008 HDV camcorder - Canon HV30 is perfectly suitable to be used as a soldering microscope 😀 its macro possibilities are absolutely amazing, you can focus at 0mm distance (literally touching the glass), you can mount it more than 10cm above the board leaving enough space to work, zoom in and have the components in focus. No noticeable latency when used with HDMI cable. Looks like it outputs 1080p50, even though it records 1080i50.

TF534 heatsink installed, ran a SysInfo bench, and figured out how to connect to the internet on my A2000. (Ariadne II NIC, using AmiTCP + iBrowse) This makes it 10x easier to transfer new programs and games since I can just use Aminet FTP and connect to my NAS share. No more Gotek/Floppies/CD-ROM transfers needed.

Wow you guys have done some awesome work !

Jed118 wrote on 2020-10-26, 17:45:

I got a bunch of stuff locally:

Nice !
All I did today was track down as much info on some old Full Yes (FYI) motherboards as could find from the 1997-1999 era, not all that successful but is work in progress (there are no Full Yes/FYI boards in TH99 or in Ultimate Hardware 2019 database yet) and hope to get enough info to help create a few archives for everyone. Yes found some docs/files at archive.org and elhvb.com but to match up descriptions, BIOS and other info from across multi websites is a bit of a chore....or at my age it is 😀

That Amiga on the net is awesome.

Today I threw some hardware at my Blue Lightning (CT1750) and put PC-DOS 6.1 as well as a PS/1 Windows 3.1 package (mostly pre-configured, video drivers had to be "unlocked") and filled the hard disk with games from an SD card. CDROM is dead, but I did find my G54 (wish it had a base, maybe I'll adapt one) and IBM keyboard and mouse (I do have a model M and the old cheeseblock mouse, but they don't really fit the aesthetic) and hooked those up.

The next few days ought to be fun!

appiah4 wrote on 2020-10-27, 10:38:

Use a dremel or other such rotary tools for the job would be my advice. Worked great for me.

Looking around my area if I can find a place that has a drill press (e.g. small(er) car repair workshops etc). I figured, if I can print the layout of the openings on sticky paper then use a drill press for the round holes (obviously) but it also would allow to do the corners of the DB15 connector (and large parts of the interior). I would then use a hand file to finish the job.

Nothing too exciting, but I typed up a paper today on my Win98SE rig and it wasn't a bad experience. Now I get why some people use old Mac SE/30s for writing papers because doing on an old computer helped me avoid getting distracted. and having the nusb driver made it easy to to transfer the document using an old flash drive.

Received a LumaFix 64 that I ordered and installed it into my Commodore 64 today. Immediately after installation and without any tweaks, the picture was already vastly improved. A couple of short tweaks later and it was practically as good as it's ever going to get. S-Video output now has correct colours with no checkerboard effect and the vertical lines are practically invisible in both Composite & S-Video modes. I just need to test it out on multiple TVs now, to see if any further tweaks are required.

I guess the powers that be/ether/ghosts/whatever really want me to have a Pentium 4 in my life......either that or those old Dell charcoal case boxes are really wanting a home with me baaaaaaad! Heck, I sold one to someone on here before I moved. Maybe it's a sign sometime in the future my wife wants to relive her SIms memories on a similar machine.... I dunno. I guess they are "retro" now.

So I'm now, yet again, a new owner of a "vintage" Dell Dimension 3000 from circa 2003-2004ish - same case as my wife's old 4600 was, just no SATA. Not sure what I'm going to do with it yet.....but we'll see. Guess maybe I should join y'all in the Pentium 4 rig setups.

Came with all the discs and stuff too - Office, Vista, XP, Adobe Print Shop.....

Thinking maybe I'll build this one out so my wife and I can relive The Sims on it.....maybe even put it on my Lab TV.

Nothing wrong with a p4 troll pc, and that case is awesome for it.

I pulled these out of my CPU boxes and readied them for some tests (eventually) - I'll be putting each one of these (also a real Intel DX2/66) into my Blue Lightning and seeing what comes up. Naturally, the DX2-80, 100, and 5X86 are going to go through a voltage reducer.

Man, straightening the pins SUCKS. The It's ST chip was badly bent, just noticed that today after I removed it from its package - always inspect your eBay goods right away!

Jed118 wrote on 2020-10-28, 21:26:

Man, straightening the pins SUCKS. The It's ST chip was badly bent, just noticed that today after I removed it from its package - always inspect your eBay goods right away!

What do you use to straighten pins? I use a sharp blade for most, and blunt tipped syringes if they are badly bent, plus snipe nosed pliers if the pins are bent half way down. It's a chore, but I sometimes like to do a few while I'm watching Star Trek on Netflix (on Voyager at the moment)

debs3759 wrote on 2020-10-28, 21:39:

What do you use to straighten pins? I use a sharp blade for most, and blunt tipped syringes if they are badly bent, plus snipe nosed pliers if the pins are bent half way down. It's a chore, but I sometimes like to do a few while I'm watching Star Trek on Netflix (on Voyager at the moment)

You can see some of the preferred tools in the background- a flat edged butter knife to get the rows aligned after I pick through them with a dentist's pick (I always ask my dentist for old ones, pre COVID anyways - useful for carburettors and getting small jumpers too!) and needle nose pliers to bend out crush curves. The DX2/66 in the background is in a PGA socket (something like this except fit for a 486 - it came off some Kingston riser or voltage regulator I think ) as I needed that to get some of the pins inserted - they needed force, I'd rather not exert that on a motherboard.

It'll probably stay in there for the duration of the tests, then I will lift it out and apply it one last time to a 486 motherboard that I will build a computer around.

PTherapist wrote on 2020-10-28, 18:25:

Received a LumaFix 64 that I ordered and installed it into my Commodore 64 today. Immediately after installation and without any tweaks, the picture was already vastly improved. A couple of short tweaks later and it was practically as good as it's ever going to get. S-Video output now has correct colours with no checkerboard effect and the vertical lines are practically invisible in both Composite & S-Video modes. I just need to test it out on multiple TVs now, to see if any further tweaks are required.

That's great to hear, I wasn't ever happy with mine and eventually took it out. I could definitely improve the stripes but it would vary from colour to colour, so I'd get the blue on blue command line looking good for example, but then Commando (very brown) not so much, so I'd tune it again for that game, and the blue on blue looked bad again. In the end I gave up and settled for a little bit stripey everywhere - this is with svideo BTW so a great image otherwise. I tried different VICIIs with it too and that made a difference, so it might be a case of working for some machines more than others.

Since I got my System 7 Mobo in yesterday, and got my Startech Copper heatsink, I decided to put it all together and start customizing stuff.

I managed to keep everything clean inside there, to my own surprise. The only sketchiness is the fan I am using, which was a necessity because the one that came with the heat-sink was louder than the case fans going full blast.

Plus, with it in this precarious position, the VRM heat-sink also gets air going across it.

That system looks fantastic excellent work my friend!

The second picture looks like an awesome wallpaper!!!