A little while ago I bought a much too expensive 486 interposer. Today I thought: let's give it a shot.

I've got a MSI MS-4134 that supports only 5v 486, but with both PCI and VLB it's got a lot of potential. It ran with an AMD AM486DX2-66. Would be cool to put on an AM5x86, wouldn't it?

Any way, it didn't work at all. -_-
Changed to an AM486DX4 and it works like a charm! 😁 instant 30% bonus performance!

Even better: the dx4 produces a lot less heat (by finger-thermometer).

Work on this PC: Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread
and test my GFD:

Decided just to cut the tops of any plates of peripherals on the customized HP 3216 build. This way they sit just nicly under the rear chassis and held in position by it. Works out very well and doesn't interfere with outside cover fitment at all.

Added a bit of car door sealing trin to the top of the plate to remove any gap under the back edge of the chassis. There is no way it is going to work it way out of the pci slot....😉

vad4r wrote on 2021-07-18, 20:30:

Work on this PC: Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread
and test my GFD:
2021_07 GFD.jpg

That's sweet a Golden Orb and a GFD!!

A prefinal assy test to see how the clearance is between all the components to be fitted to the modded HP slimline system. It's looking very good so far. Still need to mod the psu and front panel wiring and tidy up the back left side of the chassis.

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-18, 22:48:

A prefinal assy test to see how the clearance is between all the components to be fitted to the modded HP slimline system. It's looking very good so far. Still need to mod the psu and front panel wiring and tidy up the back left side of the chassis.

That's really coming along nicely. It's going to look great once you finish it.

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-07-18, 23:07:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-18, 22:48:

A prefinal assy test to see how the clearance is between all the components to be fitted to the modded HP slimline system. It's looking very good so far. Still need to mod the psu and front panel wiring and tidy up the back left side of the chassis.

That's really coming along nicely. It's going to look great once you finish it.

Thank you very much. My first time doing this sort of thing. . Just taking my time. Shows what on can do with basicly what is junk to the average person,. Keeps the old grey matter rocking along as well...😉

I finally got around to downgrading the BIOS on my Asus P8H67-M Pro motherboard to restore the “IDE Compatible” option in the BIOS menu for the SATA ports. Now I can use this board with some older operating systems that don’t have native SATA drivers.

I decided to start with Apple Rhapsody DR2. I created two bootable CDs with the Rhapsody boot floppies which booted the system into the Rhapsody installer. It worked. I now have a fully functional (for a beta OS) Rhapsody system running on a Sandy Bridge Core i3. Here are the specs:

- Asus P8H67-M Pro (BIOS Version 1106)
- Intel Core i3-2120 (3.3 GHz)
- 4GB DDR3-1333 RAM (artificially limited to 132MB using the Rhapsody Bootloader)
- Matrox Millennium (PCI, 4MB WRAM)
- Sound Blaster 64 PCI (Ensoniq ES1371)
- D-Link DFE500TX Network Adapter (PCI via a PCI-to-PCIe Bridge Adapter)
- 2X LG DVD-RW Drives (SATA; only one of drives seems to work with Rhapsody)
- Generic 24GB SSD (SATA, 8GB Rhapsody partition)

It’s totally overkill, but I love getting old OS’s working on newer, faster processors.

The very good news is that my Ryzen 3700x seems to have survived the disaster that took out my mobo, video card, and one of four hard drives. Booted the combo for the first time in more than a month. Thank goodness I have piles of computers around here.

ASUS was too much of a PITA on the motherboard RMA, so I got an MSI Tomahawk. XFX just said "Yuppers, it's dead" and immediately sent me a new top-of-the line upgrade version of my card (THICC III Ultra vs. Triple Dissipation 5700). The THICC card is so heavy I might make a bracket for it, for the first time ever. I bet it will droop. It's over 3 lbs / 1.4 kilos.

I'm most annoyed I never got around to painting the inside of the case white like I said I would. It is such a PITA building a system when literally everything inside the case is black, down to the case screws.

Anyway, I said I'd post a picture of the "card shelf," so:

The little blue brackety things at the top in a stack are the corner and center pieces for the shelves. I have enough for two more but I'm not sure my final "accessible" collection will need more than the 3 shelves. I'm thinking about a wider shelf for motherboards that don't have installed heatsinks, like early mobos (286, 386, 486 for example). I still need to double check but the A78 mobo is probably dead, didn't RMA it even though under warranty because the shipping cost at the time was about what it was worth.

Some of y'all will probably have fun squinting at the labels on the anti-static bags. 😀

A good friend repaired my PC-CHIPS M326 motherboard but now we need a Bios dump of V2.7
can anyone help us out please?

Playing around with CMS on my Snark Barker SB1.0 replica. Someone on another forum was having trouble with his SB2.0 with CMS in combination with the game and wanted to know if it was just him/his card. It wasn't: starting the game with DOH B resulted in a complete hang of the computer at the TAITO splash screen, requiring a hard reset. Seems like CMS-only games are a thing. My CMS chips are working fine otherwise, the Ultima VI intro sounds exactly as it should.

dionb wrote on 2021-07-19, 22:30:

Playing around with CMS on my Snark Barker SB1.0 replica. Someone on another forum was having trouble with his SB2.0 with CMS in combination with the game and wanted to know if it was just him/his card. It wasn't: starting the game with DOH B resulted in a complete hang of the computer at the TAITO splash screen, requiring a hard reset. Seems like CMS-only games are a thing. My CMS chips are working fine otherwise, the Ultima VI intro sounds exactly as it should.

DOH B just gets me FM synth, Im assuming you're talking about Revenge of DOH AKA Arkanoid 2. Maybe a different version or something...

Merovign wrote on 2021-07-19, 05:38:

The very good news is that my Ryzen 3700x seems to have survived the disaster that took out my mobo, video card, and one of four […]
Show full quote

The very good news is that my Ryzen 3700x seems to have survived the disaster that took out my mobo, video card, and one of four hard drives. Booted the combo for the first time in more than a month. Thank goodness I have piles of computers around here.

ASUS was too much of a PITA on the motherboard RMA, so I got an MSI Tomahawk. XFX just said "Yuppers, it's dead" and immediately sent me a new top-of-the line upgrade version of my card (THICC III Ultra vs. Triple Dissipation 5700). The THICC card is so heavy I might make a bracket for it, for the first time ever. I bet it will droop. It's over 3 lbs / 1.4 kilos.

I'm most annoyed I never got around to painting the inside of the case white like I said I would. It is such a PITA building a system when literally everything inside the case is black, down to the case screws.

Anyway, I said I'd post a picture of the "card shelf," so:

CardShelf.jpg

The little blue brackety things at the top in a stack are the corner and center pieces for the shelves. I have enough for two more but I'm not sure my final "accessible" collection will need more than the 3 shelves. I'm thinking about a wider shelf for motherboards that don't have installed heatsinks, like early mobos (286, 386, 486 for example). I still need to double check but the A78 mobo is probably dead, didn't RMA it even though under warranty because the shipping cost at the time was about what it was worth.

Some of y'all will probably have fun squinting at the labels on the anti-static bags. 😀

Me knowing the size of your collection, it's good to see you getting better organized. Hopefully you can start doing some videos of your place. Be cool to see all your treasures.

A bit more hacking of the modded HP chassis for the power , ON/OFF switch and have a bit more clearance to fit an remove the mobo.

Why an ON/OFF switch you ask? Its to prevent those pesky little electrons from falling off the mobo of course....😉

vad4r wrote on 2021-07-18, 20:30:

Work on this PC: Re: Retro Rig Photo Thread
and test my GFD:
2021_07 GFD.jpg

Precious that titan majesty IV. How does it work?

Vad4r, I love what it does, it is pure poetry.

Sorry for the translations, if there is anything that might sound strange.

liqmat wrote on 2021-07-19, 23:15:

Me knowing the size of your collection, it's good to see you getting better organized. Hopefully you can start doing some videos of your place. Be cool to see all your treasures.

I have yet to begin organizing! Sadly. But the shelf brackets help.

The cards from the last Liqmat Haul are still in the boxes I set up for them (huge plastic tubs). The only thing that didn't go back into them was the RAM, which I took out to test and sort (VERY USEFUL and I think only one stick was bad - but it was an oddball and might just be incompatible with what I tested it on).

Once I get the card shelf better organized I'll start with a video of that, and a quick run-though of the cards, some of which are interesting. And all of which are tested, except for the unopened Voodoo Rush (Hercules, in bag but no box) and the Video 7 VEGA (HP Edition), because I have no EGA monitor or converter.

Every time I clear my workbench I fill it again. 🙁

Now I got a brain itch and I have to look up extender cables for PCI and ISA, and maybe insanely how hard it would be to make one for VLB.

Shagittarius wrote on 2021-07-19, 22:54:

dionb wrote on 2021-07-19, 22:30:

Playing around with CMS on my Snark Barker SB1.0 replica. Someone on another forum was having trouble with his SB2.0 with CMS in combination with the game and wanted to know if it was just him/his card. It wasn't: starting the game with DOH B resulted in a complete hang of the computer at the TAITO splash screen, requiring a hard reset. Seems like CMS-only games are a thing. My CMS chips are working fine otherwise, the Ultima VI intro sounds exactly as it should.

DOH B just gets me FM synth, Im assuming you're talking about Revenge of DOH AKA Arkanoid 2. Maybe a different version or something...

The first release didn't support CMS, just AdLib, Tandy or "IBM" (=speaker). A second version added CMS support. In the original version the B switch is inactive and the game will default to whatever is in the .CFG file, usually AdLib. Sounds like that's the one you have.

Edit: yep, this was known already:
http://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2012/10/a … know-about.html

Arkanoid 2 is CMS only, won't work on SB.

Today I managed to get my PowerMac G3 B&W to run at 500MHz. It's stable enough, so I'm happy. With it running at that frequency, I can get 75 FPS in software-mode quake running at 320x200 with line doubling to get it looking (somewhat) close to the DOS version. At the same time, I managed to get quake up and running on my PowerMac 7100/80. That early as hell 1995 computer managed to get a nice 10 FPS at the same resolution. Honestly, I am all kinds of impressed that a processor that is effectively from 1994 can do that well.

GuillermoXT wrote on 2021-07-19, 21:52:

A good friend repaired my PC-CHIPS M326 motherboard but now we need a Bios dump of V2.7
can anyone help us out please?

No one?

Found that back portion of that horrible, huge multi-madia system I'd cut up for recycling. I'm ussing the cpu grill portion for the internal peripheral bay. Also added a bit of rubber beading to the modded slimline HP psu side grills figures wont be cut while handing it.