An old/not really retro activity today, but it's all I've done this week - recently bought myself a fat PlayStation 3 to add to the collection, so I've been jailbreaking it and installing Rebug etc.

All working nicely. I just need to wait for some proper security torx screwdrivers to arrive, so I can open it up clean it out and apply new thermal paste etc.

With webMAN MOD controlling the fan, I can keep the CPU at about 70 degrees whilst gaming and without too much irritating fan noise (it's a noisy room anyway). But after a clean & repaste I'm hoping to improve upon that a bit. Also using an old laptop cooler underneath the PS3, every little helps 🤣.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-11-25, 18:17:

Finished off the RiscPC replacement cmos battery project. Nipped the old battery off leaving about 3mm of the pos/neg posts sticking up from the mobo. Added some solder to them then tinned two pieces of 32 thou lockwire and soldered that to one positive and the negative posts. Bent the positive post in such a way I could placement battery packs on both easily and then fitted the connector and placed the battery holder in the convenient channel that runs along the front edge of the system. Pack is secured in place with velcro.

Tested the system and everything is working as it should.

Very cool machine. I would love to own an Acorn Archimedes.

And you photographed it with a vintage hardware too! 😁

HanJammer wrote on 2020-11-26, 15:43:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2020-11-25, 18:17:

Finished off the RiscPC replacement cmos battery project. Nipped the old battery off leaving about 3mm of the pos/neg posts sticking up from the mobo. Added some solder to them then tinned two pieces of 32 thou lockwire and soldered that to one positive and the negative posts. Bent the positive post in such a way I could placement battery packs on both easily and then fitted the connector and placed the battery holder in the convenient channel that runs along the front edge of the system. Pack is secured in place with velcro.

Tested the system and everything is working as it should.

Very cool machine. I would love to own an Acorn Archimedes.

And you photographed it with a vintage hardware too! 😁

A Genius G Shot P210 digital camera from around 2000 or so which my wife bought. Its function and I still have all the original docs for it 😀. I think I still have the driver cd around somewhere as well.

Finished cleaning and updating the BIOS on my Asus A7V880 Socket A motherboard, and I've run into a weird issue.

I get this error from a "slow boot" (i.e. not a Quick Boot) when I populate all 4 DIMM slots on the motherboard with 1GB sticks of DDR-400 (I've tried both G.skill and Corsair kits). According to the manual, the board supports 4GB of RAM, and the chipset technically supports 8GB, so I don't think I'm using too much. Each pair of DIMM slots works normally individually, but when all 4 are used I run into this error, with detected RAM maxing out at 2.5GB. I'm testing with a Sempron 2000+ that came with the board.

Any ideas?

debs3759 wrote on 2020-11-23, 22:07:

There was an SL5TF at https://www.cpu-world.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=34784 a few months back that might not have sold. You will need to register there to see For Sale listings.

I have one of those in my Inspiron 8000. Rebooting the machine with the PSU unplugged causes it to run at 700 MHz.

debs3759 wrote on 2020-11-25, 05:14:

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-11-25, 05:04:

The seller never wiped the contents of the machine - it has a few documents that points to the machine being used by an agent (more accurately, a regional manager) for Sony Life Insurance in Osaka. Sony (yes, of the Playstation/Vaio/Walkman fame) has a financial services division in Japan thats responsible for roughly 9% of the company's overall revenues, and Sony Life Insurance (formerly Sony Prudential Life) is a major part of it. No customer data, but the manager did have a self-introduction sheet, and a couple of guidelines for life planning. I do find it...interesting that Sony financials didn't give their own employees Vaio PCG-SR1/5/7k or N505s but went with IBM ThinkPads.

That's shocking, that a company as large as Sony don't enforce wiping drives when systems are decommissioned! Makes you wonder just how secure any customer data really is.

I picked up a Palm PDA on eBay some years ago which used to belong to a priest, and which was full of embarrassing stuff people had told him in confessional. I felt really sorry for them. Are priests even allowed to write stuff like this down?

Bondi wrote on 2020-11-25, 10:13:

Installed Windows 98 on my IBM Thinkpad A31p. It's a maxed out P4 machine with 1600x1200 LCD and ATI Mobility FireGL 7800 graphics onboard, and it officially supports W98. The interesting thing is that I read everywhere that W98 does not work properly with more than 512 Mb RAM. And this laptop has 1 gig onboard and works fine. Runs HL1, runs DOS games with SB emulation, performs any tasks.
What am I doing wrong?

Hooray, welcome to the A31p club! It took me four tries to finally get enough parts for an almost perfect machine. Especially the screens are so hard to come by in good condition, since they haven't been produced for a very long time.

I maxed out my machine with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Mobile M. Back in the day I had the 2.6GHz version. It ran hot as hell. Nowadays, these CPU's are almost unobtainium, though. Why did I sell mine back in the day? 😁
As for DOS and Win98, never tried it without Patchmem. Nice to know that it might work without it, though. Maybe IBM's drivers are just the right combination? Who knows.

By the way, I've uploaded my IBM Recovery CD's for this machine to archive.org. They're the German version, but they contain all the tools IBM preinstalled on these machines (with XP SP0). Might be useful:
https://archive.org/details/ibm-thinkpad-a31p-recovery-cds

schmatzler wrote on 2020-11-26, 19:36:

Hooray, welcome to the A31p club! It took me four tries to finally get enough parts for an almost perfect machine. Especially th […]
Show full quote

Hooray, welcome to the A31p club! It took me four tries to finally get enough parts for an almost perfect machine. Especially the screens are so hard to come by in good condition, since they haven't been produced for a very long time.

I maxed out my machine with a 2.4GHz Pentium 4 Mobile M. Back in the day I had the 2.6GHz version. It ran hot as hell. Nowadays, these CPU's are almost unobtainium, though. Why did I sell mine back in the day? 😁
As for DOS and Win98, never tried it without Patchmem. Nice to know that it might work without it, though. Maybe IBM's drivers are just the right combination? Who knows.

By the way, I've uploaded my IBM Recovery CD's for this machine to archive.org. They're the German version, but they contain all the tools IBM preinstalled on these machines (with XP SP0). Might be useful:
https://archive.org/details/ibm-thinkpad-a31p-recovery-cds

Thanks for the welcome!
I got mine for very cheap in excellent cosmetic condition. The only thing I changed was the german keyboard, sorry 😀. Can't really get used to that Z in the wrong place. It's not that I do a lot of typing on this machine, though. The only downside was that it had an admin password on it. I removed it by shorting the pins on the eeprom. But looks like I screwed something on the way, and it issues an error 0189 while booting, but boots further after pressing escape. The other small issue is that the Quick Boot option does not work, and I have to wait paifully long while it counts 1 gig of memory after each reboot. I think these errors will be solved after BIOS update. But I cannot do it as I have no working battery. Otherwise the laptop is working fine. Screen is a bit tired, it has red tint upon startup, but later it goes away. I've found a replacement screen, but not sure if it's better than mine.
It came with a 2 GHz CPU, I was also trying to find a 2,6 one. The price was very disappointin, so I went with a 2,5 GHz one.
And yes, it runs W98 without any patches. Not sure if it's drivers or anything else.
Overall I'm extremely happy with this machine. Apart from the stunning screen, it outshines any other laptop with it's sound quality.
Thank you for the Recovery CDs! I know German as well, so I'll probably make another install with XP on a separate HDD.
Did you try running HL2 on yours? Is it playable?
Also do you know if A31p suffers from GPU faliure like A21p does? The latter one has rather poor cooling and GPUs often fail because of this.

Bondi wrote on 2020-11-26, 20:21:

Also do you know if A31p suffers from GPU faliure like A21p does? The latter one has rather poor cooling and GPUs often fail because of this.

Yes, unfortunately the A31p GPU is also very poorly cooled down.
The chip doesn't even have a heatsink and just sits below the fan that also handles the CPU cooling.

The first models were failing left and right because of this, so in later BIOS revisions IBM made the fan constantly spin.
It's a good idea to get the latest BIOS onto this thing.

I can't remember exactly how I did it, but it is possible to extract the BIOS image from a BIOS Update Diskette and put it onto a CDROM/USB stick with FreeDOS.
Then you can flash the BIOS without a battery. I did that a few months ago so it is possible.

Nice that you got a 2.5GHz CPU! Now I'm jealous. I want that, too! 😁
Regarding the screen: I think the screens from the T42p/T43p series might also work. Never tested it, though.

But I successfully put an A31p screen into my A22p. Pentium 3 with UXGA IPS, that's something you don't see that often. 😀

schmatzler wrote on 2020-11-26, 20:30:

Yes, unfortunately the A31p GPU is also very poorly cooled down. The chip doesn't even have a heatsink and just sits below the f […]
Show full quote

Bondi wrote on 2020-11-26, 20:21:

Also do you know if A31p suffers from GPU faliure like A21p does? The latter one has rather poor cooling and GPUs often fail because of this.

Yes, unfortunately the A31p GPU is also very poorly cooled down.
The chip doesn't even have a heatsink and just sits below the fan that also handles the CPU cooling.

The first models were failing left and right because of this, so in later BIOS revisions IBM made the fan constantly spin.
It's a good idea to get the latest BIOS onto this thing.

I can't remember exactly how I did it, but it is possible to extract the BIOS image from a BIOS Update Diskette and put it onto a CDROM/USB stick with FreeDOS.
Then you can flash the BIOS without a battery. I did that a few months ago so it is possible.

Nice that you got a 2.5GHz CPU! Now I'm jealous. I want that, too! 😁
Regarding the screen: I think the screens from the T42p/T43p series might also work. Never tested it, though.

But I successfully put an A31p screen into my A22p. Pentium 3 with UXGA IPS, that's something you don't see that often. 😀

You also replaced the ADP3421 on the A22p (the blink-of-death component), right? How difficult was that to pull off with your equipment?

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-11-26, 22:37:

You also replaced the ADP3421 on the A22p (the blink-of-death component), right? How difficult was that to pull off with your equipment?

That was actually super-easy. The most annoying part was completely disassembling the device and removing the motherboard, which takes a while.

I have an SMD rework station (AOYUE Int968A+) and with a bit of hotair that chip is gone in seconds. Soldering in a new one is not hard either.
I think the replacement parts from China took almost 8 weeks to arrive, though. And they were clearly just components removed off junk boards.

Let's see how long it will last.

schmatzler wrote on 2020-11-26, 22:50:

That was actually super-easy. The most annoying part was completely disassembling the device and removing the motherboard, which […]
Show full quote

ragefury32 wrote on 2020-11-26, 22:37:

You also replaced the ADP3421 on the A22p (the blink-of-death component), right? How difficult was that to pull off with your equipment?

That was actually super-easy. The most annoying part was completely disassembling the device and removing the motherboard, which takes a while.

I have an SMD rework station (AOYUE Int968A+) and with a bit of hotair that chip is gone in seconds. Soldering in a new one is not hard either.
I think the replacement parts from China took almost 8 weeks to arrive, though. And they were clearly just components removed off junk boards.

Let's see how long it will last.

Yeah, I hear you. Disassembling my T21 (with its 20 year old embrittled plastic) takes nearly an hour, and I’ll need to do 2 of them and also figure out how to add that resistor.

Hmmm...that’s an RU28 TSSOP with 0.65mm pitch - did you use solder paste, and if so, which brand did you use? Did you follow any Pre-heating procedures? I was aiming for 5 ADP3421s off a reel from a reputable dealer instead of junk pulls...

Nothing yet here.. You know that iam was a way for a long time..

Now iam waiting for a new table to place here on the upper floor. Then make more space here to work on the older hardware i purchased over the years. Have to relocate some hardware that laying in the way on the new table..
Have to relocate computer and other things from table to table.

If iam going further on building / testing / repairing stuff:

This is what iam going to do.

1. First i going to do the easy work: Building an Pentium II 333 / 350 Mhz machine (i dont know yet if the 333Mhz option is fast enough for my) (most stuff i already have or purchased it recently)

2. Second going to repair my Laser 8088 XT3 turbo 10 Mhz machine. There are some things i need to address.

- Have to desolder the DMA controller IC socket (that went bad due age) and replace it with a new one * the computer have a floppy drive related error (i think is because of erosion)
- Upgrading the 20MB NEC 5.25 MFM drive for a Seagate ST-277R Rll 60MB harddisk
- Need to check the ram on the motherboard. The last time i worked on the machine it gave me an memory parity error *going to test all of the ram chips*
- Low-format / format the new drive and install DoS 4.01 dutch on it.. (because it was commenly sold in the netherlands)

3. Start building my 80386 AMD DX 40 Machine.

4. Then iam starting to build a Pentium Classic machine 133 / 150 / 166 one (have to test what the sweet spot will be.

Between the system builds iam trying to clean / replace / upgrade / repair the hardware which i bought over the years..

De-yellowing / retro brite i will do in a later stage.. For me its more important to getting the machine running.

Next month i have enough to do.

the_ultra_code wrote on 2020-11-26, 18:38:

Finished cleaning and updating the BIOS on my Asus A7V880 Socket A motherboard, and I've run into a weird issue. https://i.imgur […]
Show full quote

Finished cleaning and updating the BIOS on my Asus A7V880 Socket A motherboard, and I've run into a weird issue.

I get this error from a "slow boot" (i.e. not a Quick Boot) when I populate all 4 DIMM slots on the motherboard with 1GB sticks of DDR-400 (I've tried both G.skill and Corsair kits). According to the manual, the board supports 4GB of RAM, and the chipset technically supports 8GB, so I don't think I'm using too much. Each pair of DIMM slots works normally individually, but when all 4 are used I run into this error, with detected RAM maxing out at 2.5GB. I'm testing with a Sempron 2000+ that came with the board.

Any ideas?

Before updating your bios, you didnt had any problem?? Try to flash the older bios back and hope on the best.
And if you trying the use a BETA bios, be aware that not al BETA bioses are working flawless. Best is the keep on the original releases if you can, because those where getting tested by the manufacturers

Robin4 wrote on 2020-11-27, 00:10:

Before updating your bios, you didnt had any problem?? Try to flash the older bios back and hope on the best.
And if you trying the use a BETA bios, be aware that not al BETA bioses are working flawless. Best is the keep on the original releases if you can, because those where getting tested by the manufacturers

I mean, I didn't test before hand. I usually never do...

Also, doesn't quite make sense that supported features get removed with newer BIOS releases, so I doubt it's the newer BIOSes at fault.

Just to make sure, I regressed to the latest official BIOS, nothing, and then tried a different CPU on the beta BIOS, just in case somehow the CPU was at fault, and again, nothing.

I think the chipset on this board is nearly at it's end. That, or perhaps the caps on the board are causing issues... but none of them are bulging... yeah, no, I doubt that's the issue either.

the_ultra_code wrote on 2020-11-27, 00:56:

I mean, I didn't test before hand. I usually never do... […]
Show full quote

Robin4 wrote on 2020-11-27, 00:10:

Before updating your bios, you didnt had any problem?? Try to flash the older bios back and hope on the best.
And if you trying the use a BETA bios, be aware that not al BETA bioses are working flawless. Best is the keep on the original releases if you can, because those where getting tested by the manufacturers

I mean, I didn't test before hand. I usually never do...

Also, doesn't quite make sense that supported features get removed with newer BIOS releases, so I doubt it's the newer BIOSes at fault.

Just to make sure, I regressed to the latest official BIOS, nothing, and then tried a different CPU on the beta BIOS, just in case somehow the CPU was at fault, and again, nothing.

I think the chipset on this board is nearly at it's end. That, or perhaps the caps on the board are causing issues... but none of them are bulging... yeah, no, I doubt that's the issue either.

Capacitors dont have to be bulging to be bad, over time they also can dry out.. This is just because of the old age.
Capacitors arent expensive, so its always a good idea to replace them.

Spent some quality time with my PowerBook G4/1.52GHz - ah, good old X2 and Wipeout 2097. Hard to believe that this is a 16/17 year old machine and 2 Apple architecture migrations ago.

Refurbed the the rechargeable battery pack on my NEC PC-8201A today. Pretty straight forward. Use bits and pieces I had laying about the house. Worked out well using only my cheap soldering iron.. The ol dear was predstine inside.

Does anybody know if this is a good 486 board?

RetroLizard wrote on 2020-11-27, 16:41:

Does anybody know if this is a good 486 board? https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/G5QAAOSwRBpehgo4/s-l1600.jpg […]
Show full quote

Does anybody know if this is a good 486 board?

It looks like an early board with a Weitek socket. Not sure whether the jumpers near the CPU are for different CPUs, but with only 30-pin SIMMs and ISA slots it certainly isn't high end. If you are looking for Weitek support, it may be OK, but if you want to run a range of 486 CPUs it probably won't be so good.

the_ultra_code wrote on 2020-11-26, 18:38:

Finished cleaning and updating the BIOS on my Asus A7V880 Socket A motherboard, and I've run into a weird issue. https://i.imgur […]
Show full quote

Finished cleaning and updating the BIOS on my Asus A7V880 Socket A motherboard, and I've run into a weird issue.

I get this error from a "slow boot" (i.e. not a Quick Boot) when I populate all 4 DIMM slots on the motherboard with 1GB sticks of DDR-400 (I've tried both G.skill and Corsair kits). According to the manual, the board supports 4GB of RAM, and the chipset technically supports 8GB, so I don't think I'm using too much. Each pair of DIMM slots works normally individually, but when all 4 are used I run into this error, with detected RAM maxing out at 2.5GB. I'm testing with a Sempron 2000+ that came with the board.

Any ideas?

The user manual says to use only 2 DIMMs when using DDR400, or else you can get unstable performance. Try 4 DIMMs of slower RAM and see if it works.