debs3759 wrote on 2021-03-26, 21:10:

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-03-26, 20:40:

The VGA is 8MB PCI, permedia chip manufactured by 3DLabs.

Does the PowerColor card (3D labs only made the chip) have a model name and/or FCC ID on the rear? I'm guessing it's a Permedia 2, not an NT, 2V or 3? I'm adding it to the database that will soon be updated on gpuzoo.com

Today I turned on the PC. It starts up smoothly, the video card is detected as 3DLabs Permedia TI TVP4010 (chipset).
The detected RAM, however, is only 4MB SGRAM.
The clock instead is 50MHz.
I put a couple of images from HWInfo32, I hope they are useful.

Today I received an SD Card Reader & 64K RAM upgrade for my Acorn Electron. So I loaded up a spare SD Card with the BEEB.MMB containing all the games & magazine disks etc. All working great and I played a couple of games to test it all out.

Haven't really tried anything that requires or uses the extra RAM yet, I'll have to play around with it over the coming days.

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-03-29, 20:04:

Today I turned on the PC. It starts up smoothly, the video card is detected as 3DLabs Permedia TI TVP4010 (chipset). The detecte […]
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debs3759 wrote on 2021-03-26, 21:10:

PC@LIVE wrote on 2021-03-26, 20:40:

The VGA is 8MB PCI, permedia chip manufactured by 3DLabs.

Does the PowerColor card (3D labs only made the chip) have a model name and/or FCC ID on the rear? I'm guessing it's a Permedia 2, not an NT, 2V or 3? I'm adding it to the database that will soon be updated on gpuzoo.com

Today I turned on the PC. It starts up smoothly, the video card is detected as 3DLabs Permedia TI TVP4010 (chipset).
The detected RAM, however, is only 4MB SGRAM.
The clock instead is 50MHz.
I put a couple of images from HWInfo32, I hope they are useful.

Thanks. That is all useful.

megatron-uk wrote on 2021-03-29, 11:53:

Fixed my whining Sharp X68000 power supply: […]
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Fixed my whining Sharp X68000 power supply:

img20210329105003.jpg

img20210329105755.jpg

img20210329105800.jpg

Upping the filter caps from the newly replaced 5600uF rated parts (every cap had been replaced by the seller, to original specs) to 6800uF components, along with a new Noctua fan has made it absolutely silent. So, the 'scene' recommendation of increasing the capacitance of those two parts was spot on.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3c_ri0HJXPk

I am very, very happy.

So, my 386 that has an XT style power supply does something weird when you turn it on. Sometimes (more than half the time) when you flip the switch, nothing happens. When you turn it off again, a hissing with a kind of light rattle/arcing sound starts at a low pitch, slowly rises at first, then exponentially increases in tone (volume is the same) until it fizzles out. When you hit the switch again, the computer comes to life.

Are these symptoms of caps? I was considering ripping the guts out and putting in an ATX power supply (in a way you couldn't tell) in there instead, but would you recommend changing the caps?

stef80 wrote on 2021-03-29, 19:19:

@Nexxen Writing here, since I still can't send PMs. D815EEA2/D815EPEA2 latest BIOS is P21. (It originaly came with P15.) Got it […]
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@Nexxen
Writing here, since I still can't send PMs.
D815EEA2/D815EPEA2 latest BIOS is P21. (It originaly came with P15.)
Got it here: https://rebyte.me/en/intel/134615/
self-extracting archive is: EAAP21BI.exe

Same as mine.
I had it under the "no Tualatin support". Guess I made a mistake as I haven't used it with Tualatins like since I got it 😀

Good to know.
Thanks

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-03-30, 11:30:

Now finally one of the most influential graphics card of PC history I bought last Friday have arrived. And also an 8800GT. […]
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Now finally one of the most influential graphics card of PC history I bought last Friday have arrived. And also an 8800GT.

The 3DImage9750 will participate in my early 3D accelerator adventure. When I get home I'll check if it works. It supposed to post, but the seller haven't tested it with the drivers installed. It seems to be pretty high-end compared to what's shown in the video. Nothing helps on the bad game support and lacking feature list, but maybe I'm luckier with this one than I was with the Savage3D and it runs on decently high clocks. I think it also looks nicer than what the guys at the VGA Museum have.

And the 8800GT is to finally send the Ultra to retirement. It's a late version manufactured on the 65nm process. Probably not long before they got rebranded as 9800GT I should be much cooler and more silent than the Ultra. And since the Ultra pulled over 250fps in Team Fortress 2, even if the GT is slower (it should be by about 20%), it should still be plenty powerful for the mid- and some late-2000 games. Also, on the resolution I'm planning to use would mostly eliminate the bandwidth advantage of the Ultra. And it's still period correct and also something I wouldn't regret dying on me.

Well, I have my doubts whether Gainward knew what they were doing when they designed this cooler. Around 72-73C° idle and 78-86C° in games.
I wonder if the cooler they used on the 9800GTX or GTS250 or whatever on the same GPU is compatible with the 8800GT. I'd guess it is. It shouldn't be hard to find a faulty one.

Today I received a Pioneer DVR-108 DVD-RW, which is interesting (to me) because it is IDE. However the seller packed it poorly and the mail broke the open/close button. I had to desolder one from a broken LG unit and solder it into the Pioneer, but since this new button is shorter, I'll have to glue something to it so that the faceplate button can press it correctly.

Did more patching and tinkering with the internal header board I made for the Paradise Basic EGA card to use with my Compaq Portable 1 system by adding 3 ceramic capacitors adjacent to the diodes (in parallel) for the RGB lines.

The text in the DOS prompt is a lot better, but games are either too dark or shadowing, including DOS software, like edit.

Needs a bit more adjustments, such as wire replacement and a grounding strap wire installation, and it should be fixed after that.

Getting further with the EGA card.

If all else fails, I'll order a Compaq EGA card since it has an internal monitor header integrated.

I found a 600mhz Duron to test out this matx/flex atx whatever trash find Asus Socket A board in my CPU stash. I know it works because it came out of an old Compaq with a mobo with badcaps I recapped and died after working for about 1 week, and id swapped a 1ghz athlon thats kicking around into that board after the recap.

Today I reassembled the keyboard on my Atari ST after yesterday's retrobrighting job on the keys.

Still a work in progress, but the results are incredibly promising so far:

Before:

Now:

Still requires at least 1 more treatment, they've had about 10 hours of sunlight exposure so far over several days. Yesterday saw the best results, as it was also warm - heat definitely speeds this process up. I'm going to have to wait now until the next day of decent weather, since the forecast is currently predicting snow showers this weekend. 😩

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-03-30, 22:00:

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-03-30, 11:30:

Now finally one of the most influential graphics card of PC history I bought last Friday have arrived. And also an 8800GT. […]
Show full quote

Now finally one of the most influential graphics card of PC history I bought last Friday have arrived. And also an 8800GT.

The 3DImage9750 will participate in my early 3D accelerator adventure. When I get home I'll check if it works. It supposed to post, but the seller haven't tested it with the drivers installed. It seems to be pretty high-end compared to what's shown in the video. Nothing helps on the bad game support and lacking feature list, but maybe I'm luckier with this one than I was with the Savage3D and it runs on decently high clocks. I think it also looks nicer than what the guys at the VGA Museum have.

And the 8800GT is to finally send the Ultra to retirement. It's a late version manufactured on the 65nm process. Probably not long before they got rebranded as 9800GT I should be much cooler and more silent than the Ultra. And since the Ultra pulled over 250fps in Team Fortress 2, even if the GT is slower (it should be by about 20%), it should still be plenty powerful for the mid- and some late-2000 games. Also, on the resolution I'm planning to use would mostly eliminate the bandwidth advantage of the Ultra. And it's still period correct and also something I wouldn't regret dying on me.

Well, I have my doubts whether Gainward knew what they were doing when they designed this cooler. Around 72-73C° idle and 78-86C° in games.
I wonder if the cooler they used on the 9800GTX or GTS250 or whatever on the same GPU is compatible with the 8800GT. I'd guess it is. It shouldn't be hard to find a faulty one.

After I went to sleep yesterday I thought maybe I should replace the thermal paste. The card was very clean so I assumed it was serviced before selling.
Maybe with a compressor, because after I checked the screws on the back I noticed the warranty sticker. Yeah this 8800GT ran with the same thermal paste it rolled out of the factory with about 13 years ago.
It looked like as you would imagine. Like cement. I only had some Cooler Master E2 paste, but at this point even strawberry jam would do a better job.

After re-pasting idle temperature went down to 67-68C° idle with the same 30% fan speed.
Temperatures under load didn't improve much, only the fan was slower. 77-80C° with around 47% fan speed after about 30mins of Half-Life 2 and around 84C° with 54% fan speed instead of 90% in Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2005 (though the menu seems to be worse).

It's still about 10C° hotter than I'd like. With some more aggressive fan control I brought it down to about 73C° with 55% fan speed in Half-Life 2 and 77C° with 66% fan speed in Most Wanted. I'd be satisfied with the temperatures, but the fan is not inaudible.

Long time no post, i was lost in Amiga and Atari-Space 😉
Once again i bought some old games. And what i really, really find fascinating is the durabillity of 5,25" floppys. Until now i had one failing 5,25" failing. Don't ask about 3,5" floppys, especially amiga disks 😁.
Just got Larry 2 and 3 and these disks look like autumn leaves, but they are working:

Greetings

McBierle wrote on 2021-03-31, 23:16:

Long time no post, i was lost in Amiga and Atari-Space ;) Once again i bought some old games. And what i really, really find fas […]
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Long time no post, i was lost in Amiga and Atari-Space 😉
Once again i bought some old games. And what i really, really find fascinating is the durabillity of 5,25" floppys. Until now i had one failing 5,25" failing. Don't ask about 3,5" floppys, especially amiga disks 😁.
Just got Larry 2 and 3 and these disks look like autumn leaves, but they are working:

Greetings

I do a bit of vintage software archiving myself and know exactly what you mean. Luckily the sleeves can get warped without damaging the magnetic disk.

Spending some quality time with the Versa V/50. Currently loading it with games via CD-ROM because FTPSRV was corrupting Ultima VI when I'd copy it over. Going to put that ol' Quad Speed IDE to the test. Got it on the internet for the first time today and it did exceptionally well.

I also have 2 more power bricks and 3 more Cisco Aironet cards ordered so all 4 have WiFi and power adapters. Also pricing out a brand new or refurbished battery for the older two (V/50, 40EC) since I can find them pretty cheap right now.

PD2JK wrote on 2021-03-29, 14:43:

Filled a gap. Don't like gaps. Well not this one. ;) […]
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Filled a gap.
Don't like gaps.
Well not this one. 😉

I felt the same way 3-4 years ago when I plonked my 387SX-16 into mine 😁

over the last few days, I took apart and cleaned, retrobrited and reassembled this:

I didn't take any before pictures, but it was yellowed. Not as orange as this one, but probably halfway from how it is now to this:

All in all, it came out 9/10 (some mild marbling at the rear around the stands) - great addition to the (soon to be SCSI'd) V30.

I also retrobrited 8 original MS optical mice and an HP CDRW. Mice came out 10/10 except for two, 7/10, and the CDROM looks like it has a camo pattern. Considering it was a deep yellow/orange, it at least looks half decent. I might try again if I care, or it'll become a tester unit.

I'm running low on hair peroxide - not sure where I'll get more during this lockdown...

Nice Deskpro keyboard. Looks similar to my Portable 1 keyboard, except mine doesn't have the LEDs for the numeric lock and caps lock.

Did more work on the EGA card for the Compaq Portable 1 system and it's cleaner than before thanks to m-in on Reddit for the tips adding capacitors adjacent to the diodes in parallel for the video signal.

http://imgur.com/gallery/LjdckSY

Schematics:

Soldered some CPU pins, I found using a long and thin stainless steel tube as a good way to keep the pins centered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4JRmWd8bw4

adalbert wrote on 2021-04-01, 22:53:

Soldered some CPU pins, I found using a long and thin stainless steel tube as a good way to keep the pins centered

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4JRmWd8bw4

solder-pin.jpg

Nothing. but respect sir. Very nice!

Excellent!

I got april fooled by Futuremark running 3DMark99 😂

Real score is somewhere around 3200+. Tried to beat random 3DMark crash. Played a bit with Ali AGP config using "normal" setting this strange score occured.