Started out with some good old Mega Man 4 on my NES from '87, and going to play some more Maui Mallard in Cold Shadow after this. The boss on the ship stage is insanely difficult though.

Fixed 386DX motherboard, fixed keyboard controller problem.
After various assumptions about broken tracks or shorted or broken components, I simply removed the keyboard controller chip and cleaned the PINs with very fine glass paper, they were visually like new when finished.
Starting the PC you hear several tac tocks and two beeps, a sign that the PC has woken up, on the screen I have the main BIOS screen.
Entering the BIOS the values ​​are the default ones, you have to set those to be stored and find those for the 128MB CF-IDE (which I use as HD).
From the bottom line of the BIOS splash screen, I should go back to the motherboard manufacturer and perhaps the model, this can be useful in the future to set the jumpers correctly (adding something).
As soon as I can find the numbers of cylinder heads and faces, I will be able to start the installation of the OS and Windows 3.X.
As soon as possible I order a 387 coprocessor, I should choose one between the ULSI and the IIT because both are available at 40MHz, unlike the Intel one which goes at 33MHz (asynchronous).

creepingnet wrote on 2021-06-10, 22:22:

Jed118 wrote on 2021-06-10, 20:17:

I had two cars that used the EEC-IV system - an 87 Escort (pretty decent car) and an 89 Topaz (pretty decent for a free car - on […]
Show full quote

creepingnet wrote on 2021-06-07, 15:41:

Fixed the truck yesterday - recap of the Engine Management Computer - all three Electrolytics leaked, ate up a trace or two, and went out. Put it all back together, about the only codes I get now are 111 and 10 plus a couple from the ECU relearning it's air/fuel settings - so were back to healthy. So yeah, truly a "vintage computer" activity recapping a very late 1992 Ford EEC-IV. Basically a "free" repair since I had the caps on hand in a nice quantity anyway. Next up is oil change from running in "Zombie Mode" for a few days (gas in oil from running to rich without the ECU).

I had two cars that used the EEC-IV system - an 87 Escort (pretty decent car) and an 89 Topaz (pretty decent for a free car - only two alternator fires!) - I remember the jokers at the local FLM dealership telling me that I need to replace the harness for $110 (or so - this was in the late 90s) because their code reader couldn't connect to the port. One connector corroded and broke off the back. I got some wire cutters, stripped the cable, put on another connector (I was always at the junkyard, the trunk was never in short supply of random shit) and slid out the corroded connector and put the new one in the harness. They refused to connect their equipment to it because it was "unsafe" - like, you watched me do it, there's nothing unsafe at all about this. They were being dicks.

I bought instead the repair Chilton's manual and in it it said you can hook up a multimeter and count the swipes and decode what the error is - so that's exactly what I did. I found and fixed the problem for a fraction of what a goddamn harness repair would cost, AND I now had a repair manual.

F**K the dealer.

That's kind of how my story started with how I started doing my own repairs. The Ford has been in my family since 93' when it was new and had 15 miles on it. We had a good shop nearby - Grady's - who did all the work on it, and they were trustable. But since living in Seattle and now the South-Central West I have had next to no luck finding an honest mechanic anywhere who can do what Grady Anderson and his team of pros could. Precision Tune REALLY f***ed this thing up - tore my intake gasket, lost the airbox screws, throttle cover, and put in the wrong parts including a chinese rip-off clutch kit that was more a fiasco than it would have been had I done it myself - had to get a friend of a friend to replace the brand new leaking slave with the proper Motorcraft part that lasts about 100-150k mi. Even F***ed up this thing is still a reliable daily driver somehow. But that was it, everything ever since - clutch included - has been my own work, and it seems when I do the work, it runs good as new, costs WAY less, and 1/10th the downtime.

This time I was forced to tow it to a shop because my apartment would have it towed as "disabled" or so they say. The shop gave me this crock-a-bull story about how it was throwing "lean codes" yet they "don't know OBD-1" and to have some local shop look at it. So I limped it home under it's own power, recapped the PCM - if they knew about lean codes - of which there were none, they would have known about the 513 code that meant the ECM had a voltage fault that lead to the recap. So $0.00 and 2 hours of a Sunday later, truck's back to life and happier than ever now that it breathes properly. I'm kind of giddy to check my mpg next, might be better now that I'm no longer sucking dirty air into my intake and I cleaned everything meticulously.

If you want something done right, you do it yourself. That applies 90% of the time 😀

So wait, why would your apartment force you to tow the car? When I lived in my first on-my-own place with my future ex-wife, I did engine swaps in the underground for extra cash. I think I did 3-4 down there. I left all the old blocks near the maintenance pump (someone started it what seemed decades before with a GM 4.3L chilling out without rocker covers) and eventually the landlord caught on that it was me and said, look this is a fire hazard, please remove them. So I did. I got $50 in scrap for them too.

At my condo I swapped entire front suspensions, carburettors, a few years ago I did the brake lines on my winter beater in February with my dad... I mean it's nice having a driveway now, and my own garage, but yeah apartments or condos never stopped me maintaining cars.

Anyways, how do they know the car is disabled?

Yeah the satisfaction of repairing your own stuff is quite rewarding indeed. The is DON'T PANIC!! when things go a bit oopsy. Generally for the majority of the problems there is a solution... Even if you just need someone to assist/give you ideas.

Messing around with my Windows 98 rig today, playing some games etc. Suddenly my my CDROM drive stops opening, stuck. Needle/pin opening doesn't work, like there is no mechanism behind it to push open the drive. Super frustrating, I have had this happening to so many drives before, not sure what causes this. I opened the drive (an AOpen 40x model CD-940E/AKU), an absolute bitch to open up specially since I couldn't open the drive tray before disassembling so I couldn't remove the front panel. Then after having it opened, it gives me access to the bottom side of the drive. After removing the PCB I was able to manually trigger the drive to open by shifting a latch from left to right which drops the inner drive assembly (the one with the lens) and ejects the tray. However, I wasn't able to figure out how to further disassemble the drive so I left it at that. After putting the drive back together and reinstalling it, no juice. Same problem.

When is there going to be some smart person putting together the GoTek of CDROM's? All this mechanical stuff seems to failing left and right... 🙁

Installed a new cooler, one that I always wanted as a kid on my celeron 366, the golden orb

And cleaned this old bad boy, its actually 2 years older than my fiance 😁

Not an old system, but I replaced the RAM and the drive in my ThinkPad T440. Toying with the idea of also swapping out the display, and maybe the trackpad and keyboard, but the latter two are low on the priority list.
Just trying to motivate myself into resurrecting my 486, after having no luck getting it to play ball with a CDROM drive and a drive controller card. Oh, the system could recognize the drives, but couldn't read anything, no matter the media, or the actual drive connected. Not like I really need a CD drive for it, but without a server that it can see, it's a bit of a pain to use even with a 2GB CF card in it.

Jed118 wrote on 2021-06-14, 02:23:

If you want something done right, you do it yourself. That applies 90% of the time :) […]
Show full quote

creepingnet wrote on 2021-06-10, 22:22:

Jed118 wrote on 2021-06-10, 20:17:

I had two cars that used the EEC-IV system - an 87 Escort (pretty decent car) and an 89 Topaz (pretty decent for a free car - only two alternator fires!) - I remember the jokers at the local FLM dealership telling me that I need to replace the harness for $110 (or so - this was in the late 90s) because their code reader couldn't connect to the port. One connector corroded and broke off the back. I got some wire cutters, stripped the cable, put on another connector (I was always at the junkyard, the trunk was never in short supply of random shit) and slid out the corroded connector and put the new one in the harness. They refused to connect their equipment to it because it was "unsafe" - like, you watched me do it, there's nothing unsafe at all about this. They were being dicks.

I bought instead the repair Chilton's manual and in it it said you can hook up a multimeter and count the swipes and decode what the error is - so that's exactly what I did. I found and fixed the problem for a fraction of what a goddamn harness repair would cost, AND I now had a repair manual.

F**K the dealer.

That's kind of how my story started with how I started doing my own repairs. The Ford has been in my family since 93' when it was new and had 15 miles on it. We had a good shop nearby - Grady's - who did all the work on it, and they were trustable. But since living in Seattle and now the South-Central West I have had next to no luck finding an honest mechanic anywhere who can do what Grady Anderson and his team of pros could. Precision Tune REALLY f***ed this thing up - tore my intake gasket, lost the airbox screws, throttle cover, and put in the wrong parts including a chinese rip-off clutch kit that was more a fiasco than it would have been had I done it myself - had to get a friend of a friend to replace the brand new leaking slave with the proper Motorcraft part that lasts about 100-150k mi. Even F***ed up this thing is still a reliable daily driver somehow. But that was it, everything ever since - clutch included - has been my own work, and it seems when I do the work, it runs good as new, costs WAY less, and 1/10th the downtime.

This time I was forced to tow it to a shop because my apartment would have it towed as "disabled" or so they say. The shop gave me this crock-a-bull story about how it was throwing "lean codes" yet they "don't know OBD-1" and to have some local shop look at it. So I limped it home under it's own power, recapped the PCM - if they knew about lean codes - of which there were none, they would have known about the 513 code that meant the ECM had a voltage fault that lead to the recap. So $0.00 and 2 hours of a Sunday later, truck's back to life and happier than ever now that it breathes properly. I'm kind of giddy to check my mpg next, might be better now that I'm no longer sucking dirty air into my intake and I cleaned everything meticulously.

If you want something done right, you do it yourself. That applies 90% of the time 😀

So wait, why would your apartment force you to tow the car? When I lived in my first on-my-own place with my future ex-wife, I did engine swaps in the underground for extra cash. I think I did 3-4 down there. I left all the old blocks near the maintenance pump (someone started it what seemed decades before with a GM 4.3L chilling out without rocker covers) and eventually the landlord caught on that it was me and said, look this is a fire hazard, please remove them. So I did. I got $50 in scrap for them too.

At my condo I swapped entire front suspensions, carburettors, a few years ago I did the brake lines on my winter beater in February with my dad... I mean it's nice having a driveway now, and my own garage, but yeah apartments or condos never stopped me maintaining cars.

Anyways, how do they know the car is disabled?

I agree, I find it true 100% of the time. That's part of how I got into everything I'm into is because paying people to fix things just is not enough anymore.

Basically put, I called the towing company and wanted the truck towed back to my house so I could fix it right off the bat. The dispatcher said "We can't do that, your apartment is known for towing lots of dirilict vehicles." So I had them tow it to the shop around the corner and had them look at it for free and of course they don't know anything.....so I limped it home and got the job done myself in 2 days - it would have taken one if I did not have the shop leading me to a dead end.

Now I could have argued that it was not a dirilict because the only reason I was having it towed was I'd rather not deal with heavy traffic in a stick shift vehicle that stalls when I take my foot off the gas. Just not worth the risk with how stupidly people drive. But I don't feel like arguing with idiots. My tolerance for people's idiocy lately has worn so thin I'm literally going from zero to one hundred like a drag racer with my anger lately...so I'd rather not open that can of bees. It's hard to tell if it was the management company or the apartment because the first place I called said they'd do it, but had a 2 hour wait. Also the first place directed me to another place that was closed for the day.

I generally distrust apartment complexes and their tenants with regards to everything. Too many bad experiences. My ultimate goal is to get a house outside of the city in an area without HOAs where I can do what I feel like without having to worry about b.s. property management politics and bad actor tenants spoiling the experience.

sirotkaslo wrote on 2021-06-14, 07:07:

And cleaned this old bad boy, its actually 2 years older than my fiance 😁

🤣 1994 is when Offspring released their greatest album. I was 12 at the time 😉

My the Shuttle XPC sorted and now booting to the operation system desktop. The old hdd was doing the trying to load then reboot thing the in XP installation. The seller mentioned an issue with the hdd so i wasn't surprised at all. Attached a USB keyboard and mouse then replaced the cmos battery. Fitted a SATA spinning rust hdd to it, set the bios to boot from the cd drive. Fired her up with the operating system installation cd in the cd dive. 10mins and one reboot I was presented with a fully functioning desktop:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-14, 20:44:

My the Shuttle XPC sorted and now booting to the operation system desktop. The old hdd was doing the trying to load then reboot thing the in XP installation. The seller mentioned an issue with the hdd so i wasn't surprised at all. Attached a USB keyboard and mouse then replaced the cmos battery. Fitted a SATA spinning rust hdd to it, set the bios to boot from the cd drive. Fired her up with the operating system installation cd in the cd dive. 10mins and one reboot I was presented with a fully functioning desktop:

Which CPU does it have? I have a P4 one. What GPU are you going to use? The classic Voodoo5 AGP?

P4. HT. I'll use what is in it for the time being. but I have around 8 APG cards iI can put in it. But in saying that speed of the system and OS from the same year are faaaarst.

Now that I the hardware is honcky dorry I'll give the system a good dust out and install a more current 32-bit Linux distro.

I seem to have come the sanctuary for wayward P4s. And I am certainly happy with Celerys based around them 😉 They both are very stable platforms.

Completed the recelling of my T4400C battery. Sadly didn't take photos of the job.
Used nimh cells to replace the ancient nicd cells, and the charge circuitry does "too good" of a job of charging them. If you fully charge the batteries, then don't drain them enough, it won't charge. Similar to modern laptop behavior.
Now I can use the laptop much much longer than 20 minutes.

Jed118 wrote on 2021-06-14, 17:12:

sirotkaslo wrote on 2021-06-14, 07:07:

And cleaned this old bad boy, its actually 2 years older than my fiance 😁

🤣 1994 is when Offspring released their greatest album. I was 12 at the time 😉

I was 8, when I was old enough to listen to Smash it was a few years old already.

Why Xandros? I prefer Puppy or AntiX myself just curious.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-06-15, 06:14:

Why Xandros? I prefer Puppy or AntiX myself just curious.

It's the best period correct LInux out there. Great hardware support for the time. The install size is around 500megs or smaller depending on your installation choice. It doesn't install gigs of shit you are not going to usre on a desktop system. Great period correct MS Windows network support and a ton of other reasons. I can use the Sarge achieved Repos to install more stuff. Has Nvidia video card support.......Oh and it is faaaaaast.........

Apart from my wife's laptop with MickySoft Windows 10 on it I'm using Linux Mint Debian edition 4. Loading that on the Shuttle XPC now. Modern 32-bit Linux with regular updates without having to reboot the system 98% of the time. An can still use the system while updates are being done. The installation is going to take because the Xpc only has 512megs of ram at the moment. The other stick was broken now it is broken in half 😀

Linux is better than Windows 10 in my opinion.

For retro activity, I modified my GameBoy Colors to have the Q5 IPS OSD displays in place of the lightless display and the TFT one I installed a long time ago. Gotta order some IPS ready shells and put the guts from the systems in the new shells.

Windows 10 + WSL 2 with WSLG : best of both worlds.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-15, 07:41:

Windows 10 + WSL 2 with WSLG : best of both worlds.

I'd prefer not to have MickySoft malware on my systems thanks.

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-06-15, 07:41:

Windows 10 + WSL 2 with WSLG : best of both worlds.

did You try that recently? i saw a short technical review - quite interesting imho, even tui apps like vim should work i believe

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-06-15, 08:12:

I'd prefer not to have MickySoft malware on my systems thanks.

there's little a trusted 3rd party firewall cannot filter