Got the Kawasho Color TV/Radio/Clock/Alarm/Auto-outlet set working (mostly) by spraying DeoxIt D5 in the RF port (3.5mm jack) and the F5 FaderLube in the potentiometers and the slider controls since they were a bit crusty and made the picture jumpy when adjusting the brightness.

Next on the list is removing the scratches from the plastic. Paid $8 for it back in 2018 and it's a perfect set to test some A/V equipment: VCRs, DTA boxes, consoles that are RF only, and so on.

Finally managed to capture some S-Video MS-DOS footage from my Cx5x86 PC, and to be honest it turned out to be a lot worse than I thought it would be. I'm not sure what I was expecting..

https://youtu.be/G2BfyX8ujvE

adalbert wrote on 2021-05-23, 19:06:

Replaced thermal paste in some video cards, I really don't like plastic clip mounting mechanism, so I bought bunch of small springs, M2.5 screws, metal washers, nylon washers and locking nuts. First I tried that with an old Geforce MX, and this is how the - i suppose - original thermal paste looked like... not even touching the heatsink (which is far from being flat). Anyway, putting screws with springs in place of original clips seems to work fine. Nylon washer insulates the PCB.

Can you describe how you got those plastic clips out? I wanted to do the same on an MX 440SE but couldn't figure out how to remove those dumb clips.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-24, 11:13:

Finally managed to capture some S-Video MS-DOS footage from my Cx5x86 PC, and to be honest it turned out to be a lot worse than I thought it would be. I'm not sure what I was expecting..

https://youtu.be/G2BfyX8ujvE

That's not that bad for TV capture, some will look muddier, blurrier and like they were upscaled from QVGA

Probed the Compaq Deskpro 386e's Kingston KTC-x000 32 bit expansion memory board to get map of wirings so I know what are they set up, to wire up to a spare 4MB 72 pin SIMM instead of defective 1MB section, which is made up of 8 x 256k x 4 bit and 4 x 256k x 1.

Cheers,

I've been posting a some DOS/Vintage Windows stuff on my YouTube Channel - https://www.Youtube.com/creepingnet - as of late. Gearing up to do some other DOS games. Mostly using the NEC's but I'm thinking in the summer I'll break out the Tandy 1000 again and keep the Versas in portable mode and do some videos on the Tandy since I cleaned up my games and sorted them out on that. My videos are a bit slow to come out, I usually record them, forget I have them, then release them months later. Also doing some NES let's plays, and planning to do some really-old-school style Atari 2600 Let's Plays using my phone and a vintage Minolta camera stand. I'm still working out some problems though.....

- Audio - Sound like I'm yelling through a megaphone and a Delay Pedal during the Postal Raw & Uncut and Theme Hospital videos. I think this is likely because of hardware monitoring being on without headphones so I'm changing my configuration for that.

- Video - Going to dig up an S-Video cable at some point and hope that improves the VGA output a little bit. Right now I'm using VGA to Composite into a NV06 VHS capture device so things like Postal and Theme Hospital are a little fuzzy. It's AMAZING for 256 color VGA 320x200, EGA, CGA, and NES stuff though.

All the DOS/Windows stuff I'm doing is recorded using a 2014 Dell Inspiron 15 with 8GB of RAM, 128GB SSD, and OBS Studio.

I broke out the P/75 with the intent to record some Monkey Island Let's Plays at some point since I can still beat both of those 100% from Memory somehow after 30 years, including speed through the insult swordfighting part. However, my Versa P/75 is being a bit of a cantankerous mess.....sometimes SoundBlaster outputs through the internal speaker, sometimes it does'nt. Might need to find the ESS688 drivers for DOS so I can turn the Mic off because when it works I get nasty high pitched microphonic feedback from the internal mic. Also I don't think that Dell battery is up to the task of keeping the CMOS refreshed so I'll probably be returning to a CR2430 holder.

Not in much of a rush on the computer stuff though, probably going to make some more guitar videos first since that's what my primary audience likes.

Got some of the hard drive situation under control on my Wyse WY-2108 system, however, it doesn't like any DOS version past 6.22 on a hard drive, let alone a Windows 95 boot diskette.

The BIOS ROM on the Promise EIDEPro doesn't like the system for some reason due to being the version 1.03, which worked on my 386 before I upgraded the board and I/O cards to VLB, including the video card.

On the plus side, the XT-IDE Universal BIOS works with the Promise care after I disabled the on-board BIOS and put the XT-IDE BIOS on my 3C509 NIC.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-05-24, 23:14:

Got some of the hard drive situation under control on my Wyse WY-2108 system, however, it doesn't like any DOS version past 6.22 on a hard drive, let alone a Windows 95 boot diskette.

The BIOS ROM on the Promise EIDEPro doesn't like the system for some reason due to being the version 1.03, which worked on my 386 before I upgraded the board and I/O cards to VLB, including the video card.

On the plus side, the XT-IDE Universal BIOS works with the Promise care after I disabled the on-board BIOS and put the XT-IDE BIOS on my 3C509 NIC.

A 286 wont work with DOS beyond 6.22 as far as I know.

A 286 will run IBM PC Dos 7.0 just fine and dandy....

Got @HanJammer 's 3.5" CF-IDE drive bay printed for my Cx5x86 PC last week, got it installed yesterday. Unfortunately, it didn't go flush as I had hoped. I could shave a bit off the sides and push it in a bit further, unfortunately if I do that then the screw hole won't align. I can drill a new one with the Dremel, of course, but I'm a bit tpp lazy to do that today. Maybe on the weekend.

Added a SB Live! to my pretty loaded Via C3 build!

Re: My VIA C3 Nehemiah all-rounder build

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-25, 00:09:

A 286 will run IBM PC Dos 7.0 just fine and dandy....

I'll give the IBM DOS 7.0 a whirl. Just need to order 1.44MB diskettes so I'll write the XDF images to the diskettes and switched the drives over and go from there.

I wonder, would the PC-DOS 2000 work on a 286 as well or not really?

bjwil1991 wrote on 2021-05-25, 18:12:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-25, 00:09:

A 286 will run IBM PC Dos 7.0 just fine and dandy....

I'll give the IBM DOS 7.0 a whirl. Just need to order 1.44MB diskettes so I'll write the XDF images to the diskettes and switched the drives over and go from there.

I wonder, would the PC-DOS 2000 work on a 286 as well or not really?

Theres only one way to fing out I guess. Some years ago I posted a comparisom a member vcged , wvwestlife iirc ,made of the comparison the various Dos version free conventional memory left without any other software being loaded. IBM PC Dos 7.x had almost as much free conventional memory as MS Dos 3.3.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-25, 00:09:

A 286 will run IBM PC Dos 7.0 just fine and dandy....

Just for the record.
IBM DOS 7 isn't the same thing as MS DOS 7. IBM DOS 7 is more akin to MSDOS 6 than to MSDOS 7.

hyoenmadan wrote on 2021-05-25, 19:07:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-05-25, 00:09:

A 286 will run IBM PC Dos 7.0 just fine and dandy....

Just for the record.
IBM DOS 7 isn't the same thing as MS DOS 7. IBM DOS 7 is more akin to MSDOS 6 than to MSDOS 7.

There is no official MS Dos 7 stand alone version. MS Dos 7 doesn't support FAT 32 either. MS DOs 7.1 does as does the last version of IBM DOs 7.x.

I use MS DOS 8. 😜

Dragged out the Sharp PC-4641 the HDD version of the PC-4600 series, where the PC-4602 is the dual floppy version. 10Mhz V20, 40MB HDD, 4 greyscale mono CGA LCD, nice keyboard, 720MB floppy, par, ser, extfloppy ports... Now I never had the original PSU for it, says it takes 2.4A, 9 volts, center NEGATIVE (Emphasis because center positive seems to be batting for defacto standard nowadays.) ... so last time, all I could find was megawart lump that only put out 1.5A... and I thought that was worth trying for life signs, due to a) not having to charge the battery and b) none of the options like modem, external display, EMS or ROM pack are installed, so peak draw shouldn't be so peaky. I ran it a number of times on that, 7 years ago maybe... Now I thought the HDD would not boot, had bad boot sector beyond what fdisk /mbr would sort out, but was accessible if you booted from floppy... so I plug this adapter in this time, hit power and get one green wink and nothing... damn... IDK if the PSU or the internal PC supplies are weak... hmmm... OH, yeah I had rigged a 9V PSU with more than 2A for testing a radio out with, center neg, w00t... let's just try that before I crack her open... BEEP.. crunch.. grind... the normal ones... it only freaking boots... off the hard drive now.. . damn, guess it was pulling that other wart kinda low. Yayyy... then it was supper time.. more later maybe.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-05-25, 09:30:

Got @HanJammer 's 3.5" CF-IDE drive bay printed for my Cx5x86 PC last week, got it installed yesterday. Unfortunately, it didn't go flush as I had hoped. I could shave a bit off the sides and push it in a bit further, unfortunately if I do that then the screw hole won't align. I can drill a new one with the Dremel, of course, but I'm a bit tpp lazy to do that today. Maybe on the weekend.

That's why the 3D Printing rule of thumb is "measure twice, print... at least twice."

I mean, I occasionally get things on the first try, but I print a fair number of partial tests to make sure things fit.

The socket 423 mount worked great, though, but I discovered that backplates are nowhere near as standardized as I thought - nowhere near as bad as AT motherboard mounts.

I made "bench standoffs" for AT, but obviously they can be used with ATX or Mac or whatever.

I basically just printed posts and rings and then used a tap and die set to give them threads (I even worked out a way to use a portable drill for them to speed things up).

I tried to make a universal AT backplane, but there are too many variations just in the motherboards I have to make anything that doesn't depend on variable position mounts - why the AT backplanes have slots in addition to holes on them.

If I 3D print a custom case I can build in mounting holes for that particular motherboard, but the longer the distance between printed points, the more likely plastic shrinkage or warping, even if not visible, will make things a hard fit. Maybe I need to snag a few trays from damaged minitowers.

I've been spending a good chunk of my time on the Versas in the last week turning them into temporary technical Hackintoshes with Executor 2.0 for DOS. Still getting a handle on things though. Looks like my Mac SE FDHD will finally have a job - ie - copy Stuffit Expander over to the Versas, 🤣.

So if anyone is planning on using Executor 2.0 on their retro box....here's a rundown since I dont' see a lot posted about it....

- Runs pretty swift on a 486 DX2-40, as that's the lowest thing I've run it on, not sure minimum RAM
- runs at 640x480 8bit (256 color), have not figured out how to force or coerce it into a800x600 on the M & P laptops
- Comes with a crippled Stuffit that I've only been able to use with BIN files...have not tried HQX yet
- Creating HFV volumes over 120MB in my experience causes the emulator to crash on load
- Comes with a demo of Oh No More Lemmings, Super solitaire, and other stuff
- COuld not get SIm City working....may have issues loading files, did run Stuffit Disk Image extractor though....go figure
- Not sure about WSS Support yet.....I did hear my Versa M/75 beep like an old Mac at one point when registering so maybe it does...odd
- No control panels for anything, not even the most basic stuff
- Does read Mac Floppies perfectly....this is pretty nice, actually means my Mac SE is no longer a loner in the group at least, but only 1.4M

Hmmm...I'm thinking what I might do is setup a session on my modern PC using BasiliskII and figure out a way to copy the extensions over to disk images to write on the Mac SE for this.

So at this point in FreeDOS, I'm close to having some of every major executable for a mainstream personal computer from the 1990's (maybe later) runnable from FreeDOS...

- FreeDOS is glaringly obvious
- Win32 (and supposedly Win16) stuff should run under HX
- Games/software requiring CD's use ISO files on Drive F:\ and SHSUCDX
- Executor for running old Macintosh Applications - on the M/75 this will be to work around audio shortcomings due to WSS for the time being

About the only thing I've not played with yet is running DOSBOX in FreeDOS (go google that ..kinda neat)....which might be a good "throttle" for older DOS titles on a 486 - ie XT class.

Guess I'll keep experimenting off/on as I feel like.

I got the Wyse PC WY-2108 system all complete with the mint Quantum Fireball SE 2.1GB IDE HDD installed, XT-IDE Universal BIOS on the 3Com 3C509-TP NIC, IBM PC-DOS 7.0 installed, and got everything copied over from the 64MB CF card and the games directory from the 4.3GB Western Digital drive to the HDD.

Also backed up the BIOS ROMs onto my laptop so in case the BIOS ROMs fail, at least I have the files and I can program them onto new ROMs and I'm set.