Jed118 wrote on 2021-05-07, 03:32:

Here's what I did yesterday - I recently picked up a beat up 486 off eBay for a good price. It more or less worked, some components were missing, but the ones left over were great. (Honestly someone took out a NIC and some other ISA crap and left a Mach32 2 Mb video card and 16 Mb RAM, as well as the original hard disk - CDROM too, I found drivers for it on the drive, but left the floppies in!)

Well, after a month of work on it, including retrobrite, respray of the case, corrosion removal, and a custom LED setup among others, several live streamed vids, and a completed 486 benchmark (20 or so CPUS, 486 SX-20 to the ODPR, through some odd ball 40 MHz Bus CPUs that didn't really get far), I'm ready to see it off:

looks as good as new!

Fixed an old and quite retro Delux K9832 keyboard.

You'd be quite surprised to hear this keyboard actually sound like a mechanical one, despite it being rubber dome.

brostenen wrote on 2021-05-06, 17:31:

And now for the progress on my ATX-64 machine. I am halfway through the solder work. Missing few components on the mainboard, an […]
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And now for the progress on my ATX-64 machine. I am halfway through the solder work. Missing few components on the mainboard, and then I need to solder the two stackable riser cards. Need to buy some componentes more.

It is actually an interresting machine. There are access to the system bus, through the expantion cards. It can run with old and new SID as well as NTSC or PAL VIC (two crystals onboard), it has build in Lumafix and there are solderpads for hooking up an internal PI-1541 drive. There are S-Video port, Composit port and the old standard Video port. It can run with two SID's and there are Phono plug's for sound output....

I hope that I succeed in making a working ATX-64 machine.

Note... The standoff's are only temporary there, because it help me get the components more straight. Once the board are done, I will remove them. Else this is the best I can do, in terms of placing components straight.

ATX64-01.jpg
ATX64-02.jpg
ATX64-03.jpg
ATX64-04.jpg
ATX64-05.jpg

That's looking really good. Have you decided what case your going to mount it in?

LewisRaz wrote on 2021-05-07, 07:31:

Seems very underwhelming in windows98 so far. For some reason the sims1 is my first benchmark and it was unplayable despite technically meeting/exceeding the requirements.
I will do some of the DOS tests from phils pack later. I have a graph to compare against all of my other systems pre P2.

If you're going to use Phil's 3dbench, please tell me if, after a single execution and a reboot, you get Packed File Corrupt. I had that each time I changed CPUs for my 20 or so 486 benchmarks. I ended up writing a batch file that would overwrite the target location upon every reboot.

My other thread seems to point that the AMD is also a viable contender. Maybe I'll give it a shot over the weekend, or put all three in and run my own benchmarks. Thanks for your input 😉

gerry wrote on 2021-05-07, 08:12:

looks as good as new!

I even painted the inside of the case in a few spots 😁 - It was a fun project which took up many hours 🤣.

Well, i installed an Athlon X2 5200+ CPU in my 2007 Dell Optiplex 740 today 😀
I am planning more upgrades for it though, especially a new GPU

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-07, 13:18:

brostenen wrote on 2021-05-06, 17:31:

And now for the progress on my ATX-64 machine. I am halfway through the solder work. Missing few components on the mainboard, an […]
Show full quote

And now for the progress on my ATX-64 machine. I am halfway through the solder work. Missing few components on the mainboard, and then I need to solder the two stackable riser cards. Need to buy some componentes more.

It is actually an interresting machine. There are access to the system bus, through the expantion cards. It can run with old and new SID as well as NTSC or PAL VIC (two crystals onboard), it has build in Lumafix and there are solderpads for hooking up an internal PI-1541 drive. There are S-Video port, Composit port and the old standard Video port. It can run with two SID's and there are Phono plug's for sound output....

I hope that I succeed in making a working ATX-64 machine.

Note... The standoff's are only temporary there, because it help me get the components more straight. Once the board are done, I will remove them. Else this is the best I can do, in terms of placing components straight.

ATX64-01.jpg
ATX64-02.jpg
ATX64-03.jpg
ATX64-04.jpg
ATX64-05.jpg

That's looking really good. Have you decided what case your going to mount it in?

Thanks. 😀

I have not yet decided what case that I will be using. Normally I hate cases with a window, yet this computer is one of those that need to be looked at. It is not one of them standard PC hardware builds that have been sold in large quanteties. If I succeed in the build, then it will be a really rare computer. Yes. I think it need to have a window, nice cable management and some non-coloured led light. It is in the future, as I need to source more parts from various sellers.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-05-07, 07:22:

Fixed the pain in the NEC Versa M/75 floppy drive (the one I got from eBay) and the one that was in there originally died on me when I attempted to fix it using machine oil to lubricate the head shafts since they were stuck (the original died after buttoning it back up and I wasn't missing a screw or anything).

Up next: finding a sound card for it so I can play some DOS games or find out if it's possible to put a P/75 board in the laptop.

Also did a CMOS battery upgrade using 2x ML2032 batteries and 2x CR2032 battery holders with the original CMOS battery connector from the NiLeakium battery. It keeps the date correct this time and not smoking either.

Unfortunately the ESS688 from the P/75 won't fit in the M/75. I know because I've tried (I have a P/75 and an M/75 - and a 40EC and a V/50). It looks like it will, but it won't.

Where the P/75 has it's soundcard is differently keyed and uses different connectors on the M/75 as it deals with the LCD screen used. The M/75 came in the following models - a few probably speculator y...

PC-470 & PC-480 - HI-TOP Graphics module between CPU Card connectors - only works with 640x480 4096 color screen (NL6448AC30-3/6/10) or the 800x600 256 color screen (NL8060AC24-01) - one or both of these were also availible with a 3M Touch digitizer w/ wired stylus.

PC-570 & 580 - Has a different LCD controlle rcard between CPU Card connectors for the NL6448AC30-09 LCD Panel, which is a slightly thicker industrial panel that facilitated making a newer, custom screen assembly for it. THis model is known as the M/75TC or M/100TC - for "True Color" - basically it's capable of 32-bit True Color at 640x480 resolution. Kind of wild for 1994. This is what the one I currently have was before I put the daughter card from a PC-470 with a Digitizer & pen in it, and hacked the screen circuit to make it 800x600.

With the card removed, the PC will boot, but only output from the VGA connector on the back.

That said, the M/75 DOES have a Crystal CS-4231-KQ audio chip in it, which is Windows Sound System Compatible. It works with games like The 7th Guest, Tyrian, Under a Killing Moon, some Sierra Stuff (Freddy Pharkas Talkie, Hoyle Classic Card games) and even Day of the Tentacle, and Theme Hospital. In Windows 95 NESTICLE gets sound through it through SoundBlaster Emulation. It's pretty much stuck to 44.1KHz 16-bit so the sound quality is really nice through headphones or proper speakers (and pretty nice through the M/75's speaker as well considering the setup). It just won't work with everything. I've been trying to use WSSXLAT from the Windows Sound System 2.0 driver disks to get SB Compatibility in DOS to no avail for the last year or so. Basically this is what's done....

[CONFIG.SYS]
DEVICE=EMM386.EXE 512 RAM

[AUTOEXEC.BAT]
C:\WSS\WSSXLAT.EXE sbio=220 irq=7 dma=1
SET BLASTER = a220 i5 d3

Supposedly what it does is EMM386 is used to trap the values for the SB Compatible mode for WSSXLAT, which then translates it over for the PC to pick it up. That said, seems EMM386 has helped some of my games with WSS support in DOS to run a lot better or run at all so there's an upside. The downside is things like Ultima VII won't run because they use their own proprietary memory manager - not much of a loss though considering most of the music and sound effects for Ultima 7 are adlib based anyhow.

I've been following the "New PCMCIA Card" thread to see what yyzkevin (IIRC) and so on have been doing both because I'm interested in their developments myself, and I've been half tempted to take a crack at a PCMCIA sound card myself in the same quasi-savant way I've been doing Guitar Pedals the last few years. If I can figure out a way to rig my breadboard into a PCMCIA slot on one of the Versas I thought about taking a crack at it myself by combining Sergio's Adlib schematics, and maybe figure out a way to get it working without having to load Card Services or a Driver, or using some kind of very tiny executable like those used for my Cisco Aironet cards.

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail.
I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's video, but for me it looks like this at the end:

https://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-07, 17:59:

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail. I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's […]
Show full quote

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail.
I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's video, but for me it looks like this at the end:
index.jpg

https://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

That seems to have succeeded?

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-07, 17:59:

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail. I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's […]
Show full quote

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail.
I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's video, but for me it looks like this at the end:
index.jpg

https://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

IIt installed ok by the looks of it.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-07, 18:25:

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-07, 17:59:

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail. I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's […]
Show full quote

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail.
I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's video, but for me it looks like this at the end:
index.jpg

https://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

That seems to have succeeded?

No, unfortunately not. To include the large CF card in the system, I need the modified Win98 command.com file and MSdos doesn´t work with it.
At least that's what I think...

Finally set up an area where my Amiga A600 can reside. Next to my Zenith 286 LP Plus and below my Acorn RiscPC project.

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-07, 18:34:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-07, 18:25:

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-07, 17:59:

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail. I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's […]
Show full quote

I try to bind a 8GB CF card in my 486 - and fail.
I can use the card but am too stupid to install MS-Dos on it. Followed Phil's video, but for me it looks like this at the end:
index.jpg

https://youtu.be/sI7U9LYbt28

That seems to have succeeded?

No, unfortunately not. To include the large CF card in the system, I need the modified Win98 command.com file and MSdos doesn´t work with it.
At least that's what I think...

So you didn't use a MS Dos 6.x setup routine which will only see 2gig of the drive?

What is the system you are trying to install MS Dos on? Full details please.

brostenen wrote on 2021-05-07, 16:58:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-07, 13:18:

brostenen wrote on 2021-05-06, 17:31:

And now for the progress on my ATX-64 machine. I am halfway through the solder work. Missing few components on the mainboard, an […]
Show full quote

And now for the progress on my ATX-64 machine. I am halfway through the solder work. Missing few components on the mainboard, and then I need to solder the two stackable riser cards. Need to buy some componentes more.

It is actually an interresting machine. There are access to the system bus, through the expantion cards. It can run with old and new SID as well as NTSC or PAL VIC (two crystals onboard), it has build in Lumafix and there are solderpads for hooking up an internal PI-1541 drive. There are S-Video port, Composit port and the old standard Video port. It can run with two SID's and there are Phono plug's for sound output....

I hope that I succeed in making a working ATX-64 machine.

Note... The standoff's are only temporary there, because it help me get the components more straight. Once the board are done, I will remove them. Else this is the best I can do, in terms of placing components straight.

ATX64-01.jpg
ATX64-02.jpg
ATX64-03.jpg
ATX64-04.jpg
ATX64-05.jpg

That's looking really good. Have you decided what case your going to mount it in?

Thanks. 😀

I have not yet decided what case that I will be using. Normally I hate cases with a window, yet this computer is one of those that need to be looked at. It is not one of them standard PC hardware builds that have been sold in large quanteties. If I succeed in the build, then it will be a really rare computer. Yes. I think it need to have a window, nice cable management and some non-coloured led light. It is in the future, as I need to source more parts from various sellers.

I like the idea of a windowed case to really showcase this build and a few well placed white lights to accent the build.

LP Plus 286, if it has 286 daugtherboard upgrade, it can be upgraded to 386SX with firmware chips replaced.

We did several back in the day.

Cheers,

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-07, 19:54:

....
What is the system you are trying to install MS Dos on? Full details please.

On this Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

I have only a original MS-Dos 6.22 diskset here and this can´t read a FAT32 HDD

pentiumspeed wrote on 2021-05-07, 19:59:

LP Plus 286, if it has 286 daugtherboard upgrade, it can be upgraded to 386SX with firmware chips replaced.

We did several back in the day.

Cheers,

386SXs are slower than 286s at the same clock rate for excicuting 16 bit coder so it will ber a downgrade.

Windows 3.1 is also farster in standard mode compared to 386enhanced mode.

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-07, 20:01:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-07, 19:54:

....
What is the system you are trying to install MS Dos on? Full details please.

On this Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread

I have only a original MS-Dos 6.22 diskset here and this can´t read a FAT32 HDD

Install Win95b/c or win98/98SE or FreeDos then.

There is also a variant of MSDos 7.1 that was made by the China Dos Union that doesn't have the gui portion. Just straight command line. It is available in CD for the full version or minimal vertsion 2 FDD images.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-07, 19:58:

brostenen wrote on 2021-05-07, 16:58:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-05-07, 13:18:

That's looking really good. Have you decided what case your going to mount it in?

Thanks. 😀

I have not yet decided what case that I will be using. Normally I hate cases with a window, yet this computer is one of those that need to be looked at. It is not one of them standard PC hardware builds that have been sold in large quanteties. If I succeed in the build, then it will be a really rare computer. Yes. I think it need to have a window, nice cable management and some non-coloured led light. It is in the future, as I need to source more parts from various sellers.

I like the idea of a windowed case to really showcase this build and a few well placed white lights to accent the build.

Yup. But first I have to sort out the riser-board connector issue, before I can continue. The riser pins, need to be soldered on the top of the board if I go for pins on the mainboard, and if I go for a socket on the mainboard, the pins need to be soldered on the bottom of the port-board and audio/video board. I really want to have pins on the mainboard it self, and then female socket on the bottom of each riser-cards.

Yup. Windowed case and then a couple of white light led's because the board are black. Red light, as an example, would really make the board look a different colour. If any multi colour, then I could go for one of them cases with a stripe of rainbow colore led on the front. I think that fall's beautifull in the spirit of the rainbow logo on breadbin cases, and are being done in a modern way. You know. A bit like how a C64 might look or come off, if it was created and sold today.