Tested the Toshiba Satellite Pro T2150CDT laptop and it works (well, not 100% of the way since the HDD is clicking like mad, but boots up and the CMOS battery is flat). Surprisingly, the rubber thumb pointer that moves the mouse cursor is surprisingly in good shape and not sticking and the plastic is in good shape as well.

I'm working on several things right now:
- removed dead CMOS batteries from a Toshiba 310CDT laptop today, upgraded the RAM to 64MB while I was at it
- trying to make an IBM Ethernet II PCMCIA card work with DOS in the abovementioned Toshiba. Still have to find the drivers.
- I'm also in the process of restoring a Dolch PAC 386 machine. Not sure what the problem is but the LCD is all white when I turn it on. The computer is half-disassembled at the moment.
- restoring an old Technics SL-PS770D CD player that's skipping and stuttering during playback 😀
- trying to fix two 5.25" floppy drives

Found a hand scanner with interface card... not sure if I wanna get it set up or not when a reliable ISA system is "finished"... back in the day I really, really wanted a handheld scanner, but I think it was the parallel interfaced one I wanted most. The idea I think was to take it to the library with a laptop and scan pages out of the reference books. The library in question had full shelves of electronic repair manuals at the time, circuits for 30 years worth of TVs VCRs etc. .. but reference only, no loaners. So these days that exercise is a little pointless, since cellphone cams get better page copies, also you can chase down most of the info about current stuff online and the library doesn't seem to have "the good stuff" any more.

I musta grabbed this prior to about 2008 when it was becoming obvious the cams were the way to go, thinking I'd maybe reverse engineer the hookup and make it a parallel or USB interface. Trying to think if there is a niche use for handhelds that would do me any good. Scanning large plans comes to mind, but the distortion of a handheld kinda breaks the concept of having an accurate plan copy. Also I think the way that old software works, it would probably overflow the image buffer and crash it if you went more than a couple of feet on a strip. So it's weird, a hand scanner would have been part of my ideal 90s setup, but now seems pretty useless and just a chore to use it for anything there's better options for.

Going through my modest ram stash and labeling the bags...😉

Just gave me shivers thinking about hand scanners - you never got dead straight scans or ones that weren't stretched/squashed 😀

SteveC wrote on 2021-07-26, 16:59:

Just gave me shivers thinking about hand scanners - you never got dead straight scans or ones that weren't stretched/squashed 😀

and then the real horror reveals itself. pen scanners.

hell = hey there man! do you mind scanning in this 600 page manual with that pen scanner. thanks a bunch.

Actually I too had a severe craving for those pen scanners back in the day. But money was short... I think the hype was was because of som advertisement I saw in a magazine or rather we saw, me and my best friend who hyped everything except Macintosh things..

badmojo wrote on 2021-07-26, 06:34:

Intel486dx33 wrote on 2021-07-25, 22:01:

The Weekend is the best time to work on retro computers. ( Saturday and Sunday in America(s) ).

Thanks for the tip - we in the southern hemisphere celebrate weekend on those days too but of course we're back-to-front, so we do Sunday then Saturday.

I do Sunday to Saturday, with the occasional couple of hours sleep 😀

Been reorganising my collection - bought loads of metal, boltless shelving (hey - I'm proudly single, so nobody to complain that I bought so much that it blocks out most daylight and was never meant to be anything other than strong and practical!). Toow me a weekend to put it up in the sitting room. Still need more for the cupboard and bedroom 😀

"Before" shots of the sitting room are attached. I'll post "after" shots and before/after shots of the rest of the warehouse I live in as things progress. I stand a chance of putting a bunch of systems together when it's a little more organised 😀

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-26, 16:06:

Going through my modest ram stash and labeling the bags...😉

Mine are semi ordered... is there a prize for the largest collection of 256MB DDR sticks? I might have a chance... okay I probably can't even fill a lunch box, but I feel like they're breeding, it's like every random component buy comes with 3 more of them. Can you get DIMM stackers for DDR? 🤣

On the other hand, I might just have enough now to find one or two that that nForce board that hates me likes.

I have finally gotten the PiStorm up and running with everything that I see a need for. I renamed the hostname of the Linux subsystem to "1234usmc" (One, two, three, four, united states marine corp". Just for the laugh of it)

I have enabled SSH on it, so I can SSH into the PI with Midnight Commander and move HDD files or kickstart roms directly. There are also an A314 library in the system, that will allow me to transfer files to a folder that Workbench can see. Making file transfer easy. And it will give Linux command line in a window on Workbench. I will keep away from RTG setup, as I will still need 15khz for gaming. That is what the RGBtoHDMI adaptor is for. So far I am really happy with this setup, running with 128mb of FastRam.

Next step, is to test the compatibility with this solution. And that is what the ready made HDF file with WHD-Loader ready made that I downloaded is for. I plan on returning to my ATX64 machine in the next week or so.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-07-26, 21:10:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-26, 16:06:

Going through my modest ram stash and labeling the bags...😉

Mine are semi ordered... is there a prize for the largest collection of 256MB DDR sticks? I might have a chance... okay I probably can't even fill a lunch box, but I feel like they're breeding, it's like every random component buy comes with 3 more of them. Can you get DIMM stackers for DDR? 🤣

On the other hand, I might just have enough now to find one or two that that nForce board that hates me likes.

I do have few DDRs and other stuff....😀

Took my newly acquired SC-55 MkII apart, brought it to a local electronics shop to get a new capacitor soldered in (I have zero experience with that), put it back together, and it works flawlessly. Now the device has a new battery, new capacitor, and new power supply (the one it came with was 300mA, the device needs 600) - so now it should be good for a long time to enjoy those sweet, sweet General MIDI tunes.
Also got an Arananet Pi-MIDI in combination with a Raspberr Pi 3B a couple of weeks ago to cover MT32 and other sound fonts, so now I'm really happy with the MIDI options that I have. 😁

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-07-26, 14:10:

Found a hand scanner with interface card... not sure if I wanna get it set up or not when a reliable ISA system is "finished"... back in the day I really, really wanted a handheld scanner

They're truly horrible to use, software is dog slow (on period PCs) but they're a good thing to have to show how far we've come. I've some sort of Logitech hand scanner on my Mac (SCSI interface), it provides a few giggles when used.

Pulled out the 486 DX4 Desktop, put in the mSATA 128GB HDD, and started loading FreeDOS RC 1.3 on it.

Going through the collection and getting ready to let go of some things via e-bay. Part of it is financial stress related. Too much crap going on. Plus there's so many systems I hardly run anymore.

Yeah, I know how awful hand scanners are, I had an internship kinda thing where I had to "digitise" a load of paperwork with one. Then I knew a couple of ppl who had one that I would bug if I needed something really bad. At the time though, they seemed like the most accessible way to get certain things done. I knew about flatbeds of course, but they were less than optimally designed for scanning books then, and had a single hinged rigid lid that wouldn't close on a book. The book wouldn't lay flat at all and the scan would be distorted anyway. Photocopiers worked better for some reason, seemed like it was easier to get a photocopy and scan the photocopy. Think it was partly that sensors on the non-printshop quality scanners were kinda weak and you really needed to shroud them or something.

BitWrangler wrote on 2021-07-26, 21:10:

Caluser2000 wrote on 2021-07-26, 16:06:

Going through my modest ram stash and labeling the bags...😉

Mine are semi ordered... is there a prize for the largest collection of 256MB DDR sticks? I might have a chance... okay I probably can't even fill a lunch box, but I feel like they're breeding, it's like every random component buy comes with 3 more of them. Can you get DIMM stackers for DDR? 🤣

On the other hand, I might just have enough now to find one or two that that nForce board that hates me likes.

They do tend to pile up...

I also worked my backside off on reorganization and shelves, but I'm thinking I don't want to post "before" pics (it still feels like "before"). I'll definitely post after pics, though. Maybe some in progress pics like the mini-shelves I posted earlier.

Moved my 3D printer bench across the room to uncover a big set of shelves I'd blocked off.

Edit: I had a Mustek hand scanner back in the day, I found another one a while ago but I haven't even attempted to test it. I have a card but I'm not sure it's the right one.

Tested the T2150CDT and it works (for the most part).

Good news: the CD drive works and the settings, along with the time and date are saved.
Bad news: the floppy drive doesn't work and the HDD needs to be replaced (clicking every 5 seconds).

It runs and I'm happy.

Handheld scanners .. Some of the issues seems like history repeating: Panorama shots from smartphones 🤣

liqmat wrote on 2021-07-24, 15:04:

Some of you might remember that beautiful Microway black obelisk I picked up a few years back. Finally getting around to shootin […]
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Some of you might remember that beautiful Microway black obelisk I picked up a few years back. Finally getting around to shooting a video about it. Weighs in @ 52lbs and just over 2ft tall. It's a monster 486 workstation. Hopefully I will have the video edited in the next week or two. In the meantime, I am providing a link to the best high res photos I could muster of the very chip heavy motherboard. It's an early 486 EISA motherboard loaded up with 64MB RAM, a Weitek FPU and at its core, a Kingston TurboChip 133. You will notice I replaced the Dallas 1287 with a button cell RTC replacement produced by The Glitch Works.

High resolution photos >> https://mega.nz/file/m74jlCxL#yvUlTgWTT_03KFa … TDRuwDWw-e-7Hxs

Micronics 09-00090-64 Rev 1B - Top lowres.jpg
I was surprised to find out Microway is still very much in business >> https://www.microway.com/

That's a nice cpu upgrade - how fast is the board?