Today and this weekend for that matter, I've been working on some of my 8-bit micros.

Disassembled my Acorn Electron to clean and reseat the ULA, as I was getting random small dots appearing on the screen yet RAM tested fine. The reseat seems to have alleviated it somewhat. Everything is running fine, it's just a very minor nuisance.

Also played around with the USB stick on my DDI-5 for the Amstrad CPC 464. Reorganised the files on the stick, added the HXC Selector and then used DriveSort on my PC to sort the files & folders. Was all working well until after I removed the stick 1 time and suddenly it decided it didn't want to read any USB sticks and then when it did it wouldn't work properly. The FlashFloppy firmware could see the disk images and typing CAT to bring up the directory listing would work, but nothing would RUN, citing missing disc Drive A:.

Turns out it's the USB socket on the DDI-5 starting to get a bit temperamental. I sprayed some contact cleaner into the socket and inserted a USB stick with a bit of a wiggle and it seems to be working properly once again. I'll have to keep an eye on that and hopefully it doesn't get any worse, otherwise I'll either have to try and repair it or purchase a Gotek instead. Nobody seems to be making these DDI interfaces at the moment, probably due to the pandemic and/or lack of demand, so I'm very wary of attempting a repair. It's definitely not a good time for anybody to purchase a 464 without a disk interface, the parts are just not available!

I've fixed up an old Osborne 486 running NT 4.0

https://youtu.be/6wPN8oge7hE

Today I played the game... "Which CDROM Drive has my w95 CD" with a paperclip on a stack of drives while troubleshooting an IDE controller.
Now there's a PC game I hadn't played in a while 😁 😁 😁

ThisOldTech wrote on 2021-05-18, 00:33:

Today I played the game... "Which CDROM Drive has my w95 CD" with a paperclip on a stack of drives while troubleshooting an IDE controller.
Now there's a PC game I hadn't played in a while 😁 😁 😁

I played this game two or three nights ago. It was of course, in the last one I checked. (And it was Civ 2 - I was seeing which of my CDROMS messed with it the least)

I got my Blue Lightning working with some SCSI parts - Over the next few days I plan on running some video benchmarks on it, which means I can put my Siemens 486 back together and on my desk, and then publish the 486SX-20 to ODPR benchmark. Maybe start editing some video now that I have my upstairs PC NoMachined to my editing station downstairs 😁

Happens to me all the time with my missing Windows 98SE CD.

Got my small retro game console setup by my computer desk/home office/repair closet:

Kawasho Color TV/Radio/Alarm/Timer Model 3706 that I've had for 3 years and it needs a deoxidation for everything (potentiometers, slider controls, and RF plug, which is a 3.5mm jack) and my SNES that I've had for 5 years.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-05-18, 05:33:

Happens to me all the time with my missing Windows 98SE CD. […]
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Happens to me all the time with my missing Windows 98SE CD.

Got my small retro game console setup by my computer desk/home office/repair closet:

IMG_20210517_214109880~2.jpg

Kawasho Color TV/Radio/Alarm/Timer Model 3706 that I've had for 3 years and it needs a deoxidation for everything (potentiometers, slider controls, and RF plug, which is a 3.5mm jack) and my SNES that I've had for 5 years.

I have something similar - a black and white Citizen (also with radio) and the antenna is trashed. I have a similar external plug - can you tell me more about your antenna setup?

I use an ordinary RCA to 3.5mm cable and there are RCA to Coaxial (TV) adapters on Amazon that will work well with anything that uses a Coaxial connection, such as a VCR, converter box, etc.

Completed the Boiler Room Build.

66mhz 486DX2 machine with VLB trident video, 8mb ram, floppy drives and a 256mb SSD with a Colorado Jumbo250 for tape backup (and yes it works!)
Not an exceptional performer but a machine that is going to spend the rest of its life hidden in the back of a boiler room where it can be accessed via modem + Carbon Copy Plus and loaded down with a variety of compilers from Borland and Microsoft.
IF you want to work locally with it, it's buried behind a jungle of pipes and boilers with a dirty old VGA monitor and a keyboard. No sound, no mouse and no networking but you can be left alone to work for hours and nobody would ever find you back there.

CelGen wrote on 2021-05-19, 03:14:

Completed the Boiler Room Build. https://hosting.photobucket.com/images/a166/ballsandy/IMG_8487.JPG […]
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Completed the Boiler Room Build.

66mhz 486DX2 machine with VLB trident video, 8mb ram, floppy drives and a 256mb SSD with a Colorado Jumbo250 for tape backup (and yes it works!)
Not an exceptional performer but a machine that is going to spend the rest of its life hidden in the back of a boiler room where it can be accessed via modem + Carbon Copy Plus and loaded down with a variety of compilers from Borland and Microsoft.

Are you having it control a HVAC system? Cause that would be super cool.

No it's just down there where it can't be found. I rebuilt the power supply and made the case as secure as possible to prevent the dirty workspace and any animals that get onto the desk from bringing the system down. The modem uses a "secret" PBX extension so from anywhere inside the building and even from an outside line you can connect and then have access to a full suite of programming languages.

Very nice photo !

And nice case! Here's my 386 build from last year in the same one.

Built my own gonzo style fume extractor.

I ordered a replacement MXM graphics card for a 2011 iMac and got it working with some remote blind flashing and messing about but it's made the computer very usable again.

At work we have a really old system for which we don't have manager PC for years (even before I started there).
Now we want to replace that old system with a modern one, but we want to look into it to see if there is anything left that wasn't migrated to other systems.
In one of our storage rooms I found an old Siemens Nixdorf D6 PC. No RAM, dead hard drive, but otherwise seems to work. I fixed it up a little and started installing Windows 98 SE for the management software. Then in the middle of that the optical drive suddenly developed a mechanical issue and I ended up with a drive that can't stay shut and a corrupted Windows installation. I didn't have my retro-fix-up tools at hand so I guess I know what retro activity will I get up to tomorrow.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-05-20, 06:47:

At work we have a really old system for which we don't have manager PC for years (even before I started there).
Now we want to replace that old system with a modern one, but we want to look into it to see if there is anything left that wasn't migrated to other systems.
In one of our storage rooms I found an old Siemens Nixdorf D6 PC. No RAM, dead hard drive, but otherwise seems to work. I fixed it up a little and started installing Windows 98 SE for the management software. Then in the middle of that the optical drive suddenly developed a mechanical issue and I ended up with a drive that can't stay shut and a corrupted Windows installation. I didn't have my retro-fix-up tools at hand so I guess I know what retro activity will I get up to tomorrow.

There are quite a few different case and hardware types for that PC, I really love the Pentium/MMX hardware in the early desktop cases. Pentium II and onwards have a weird late 90s look to them, but are still likeable. Which one was yours?

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-20, 06:51:

There are quite a few different case and hardware types for that PC, I really love the Pentium/MMX hardware in the early desktop cases. Pentium II and onwards have a weird late 90s look to them, but are still likeable. Which one was yours?

It looks like this.
Only that it's the Pro version with 3 ISA slots, an open-case switch, 233MHz Pentium 2 and an S3 Trio64 graphics card.

RandomStranger wrote on 2021-05-20, 07:04:

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-20, 06:51:

There are quite a few different case and hardware types for that PC, I really love the Pentium/MMX hardware in the early desktop cases. Pentium II and onwards have a weird late 90s look to them, but are still likeable. Which one was yours?

It looks like this.
Only that it's the Pro version with 3 ISA slots, an open-case switch, 233MHz Pentium 2 and an S3 Trio64 graphics card.

Ah, this is the latter version that I don't like as much but it has character for sure 😀

In other news: TIFU by throwing away a VGA cable that was intermittently turning the image yellow (contact problem on one end) thinking I had droves of them anyway, only to find out I had absolutely zero VGA cables left. So the only retro PC I can tinker with currently is my LGA775 Win9x box with an FX5200 that has DVI-Out. And I was really looking forward to benchmarking MX862900 vs ARK1000 vs SiS 6326 on a Cx 5x86 for science and shit..

While ago I build K6-2+ @600 + Voodoo3 3000 rig to play Ultima IX Ascension after 20 years. I didn't remember how burdensome that game is. It's just about playable with 8-bit textures and 640x480. Everything higher is like a slide show and generally unplayable. In the past I remember completing the game on K6-2 400 + Voodoo3 2000 and have no bad memories about performance, strange.

Today I repaired Gainward Geforce4 Ti4200. It was giving colorful pattern-screens and crashes during 3DMark2k.
Then I found this https://web.archive.org/web/20031104011507/ht … 15&pagenumber=1
It is a (old) known capacitor issue. Replaced 3x 1500uF caps with (overkill) Nichicon 1000uF low-ESR polymers. Removal of large SMD capacitors may be hard with an iron, but one trick is to GENTLY jiggle the capacitor with pliers until legs snap or pops out. After that it's easy job.

Rebuilt an older machine I got for free from a friend a few years ago when I was in college.

Specs:
Epox EP-7KXA
Athlon 750MHz T-Bird - Slot A
384MB RAM
40GB WD Caviar
ATI Radeon 7500 64MB
Sound Blaster 16 CT5803
Realtek RTL8139C NIC
NEC ND-3540A
WinME 4.90.3000 w/KernelEX