Testing some questionable hardware that has been waiting for some time and love. So far it seems to be working 😀

Dual P2 450, 512mb ram, Diamond FireGL and an IBM scsi harddrive. Not to bad for a 1998 workstation so it will probably run NT4 if it works ok.

Finished English version of the first episode of my YouTube channel - more info here -> Re: The premiere of my new YouTube channel - the "Rusty Bits"

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-07-31, 07:06:

Well, I was looking forward to play some old DOS games on a genuine CRT.

Instead, I received a banged up CRT... Damn !

I don't know how to fix that. 🙁

Sucks... but kind of reminiscent of the bargain monitors I'd haul home back in the day from computer fairs. $30?! Sold! I'd tape them together and run them 🤣 offbrand new ones were still north of $300 at the time.

A lot.....

Used FTPSRV and FileZilla to push over 15000 files to my 486. Desktop. I decided the mSATA drive was not for me after a few too many CRC errors when unzippinf files I pushed to it. At least I have the problems worked out of FreeDOS 1.3, so back into the Dell I'm selling it goes. Kind of shocked that machine has not blown up since it's been running files over ethernet steady for almost 24 hours now.

Did some testing and diagnostics on the Versa V/50 and 40EC, the 40EC, and dug through my stash of motherboards that are "broken". Found out a few things......
1.) The 40EC's original motherboard works off battery, just not power supply (!!!) And gets video.....thinking of doing a comparison between the two to fix what's wrong with both if possible.
2.) The other 40EC motherboard had the same problem
3.) What apparently might have killed both boards was the ballast board for the LCD because the coil fried itself and that's why I had no picture
4.) After rebuilding the screen (pick-n-pull CFLs and inverter board from a Ultralite Versa 25C), it works on all the other Versa except the 40EC's current board....though some adjustment is in order (cfl voltage)

V/50 still won't power on though it charges the battery, however, I know this much - the CPU board is compatible (somewhat) with the Versa 40EC mainboard, as is the power supply - just like I suspected. I did locate a replacement board but it's going to be $71 - sheesh. But I might be willing to pay it since this one was my fault for not making sure the HDD I was testing was secure.

Also dug out my HDD Caddies for the 486 Desktop, I put Windows 95 OSR 2.5 on it again, on the 80GB I was going to sell with the Dell. I've got 2 more caddies....not sure what I'm going to be doing with those yet...one has a SATA to IDE adapter.....seems a bit sick to slap the 1TB drive I have in there though.....a bit tempted to thow the SATA adapter into the VersaDock with FreeDOS and the driver-set on it.

Robin4 wrote on 2021-07-29, 22:21:

Iam waiting on my replacement parts for my laser XT/3 8086 10Mhz machine. […]
Show full quote

Iam waiting on my replacement parts for my laser XT/3 8086 10Mhz machine.

Ordered two new SN74LS245N chips (i had the previous chips removed for diagnostic the machine) but i have a lot parts laying around.. And also move parts from heap to table, i have lost my eyes on finding the chips again.
Ordered 18 new Dram chips, to replace my old factory 512KB ones. Tried to install the full EMS option and the Parity chips.. Ending in a parity error some where. Iam currently testing the chips to find any culprit.. But still iam looking.
Maybe the base 512KB memory isnt that stable anymore and could end in a sort bitflip and causes the parity error. So iam going back to the basics.. Setting the board back to 512KB memory.. And upgrade it with newer chips. And hoping the parity error goes away.

And iam in a wait for the new DMA controller i ordered recently. (the old one got welded in the socket.) was hard to remove the IC (maybe it was already bad) *thought that DMA controller have a sort of memory inside*
When lifting it out.. Some pins where stuck, and wont wanted to got out. So 1 pin broke off. Now replace it with a new siemens part.

As far iam now.. 1 week ago cleaned the motherboard. Sprayed every where deoxit D5 to insure every contact made well.
Replaced the 40 PIN DMA ic socket

*consider to replace some electrolyc capacitors.
* Consider to desolder the other 74LS chips around the chips which are in contact with the DMA controller and solder in IC sockets. (then could swap out the 74LS logic)

Sounds like a lot of work and Wish you luck ! Those XT/3 's are really nice ! Did yours come with a Vtech 8bit VGA ? Or did you just get the motherboard ?
added: JP5 is for Parity or non-parity, have you tried it set to non-parity just as a test ? Not sure if that applies to the expansion ram but it does to the base 640k. Mine has 640k with parity, never tried adding the expansion ram.
edit: never mind about the video card, found your other topic....

My Saturday. Old and new.

Non-retro got my 39" monitor in place mostly properly, retro got hold of a 2000 or so NEC Multisync 1530V. I have a 700MHz PIII that has its own widescreen monitor (Sony Vaio), but this would be fine for another Win98 or similar build as well (or the OS/2 machine I keep promising myself). Needs a little more cleaning but works well enough.

Not done running cables so it's a mess. And yes, I have 55 tabs open, and no icons on my desktop.

I have a few of these tiny Dells, my XP build bluescreened on me while booting for this test so I had to use another one, now I'm worried I'll lose that drive, which contains the last version of Steam before XP support was dropped, and a bunch of games. 😒

I really need to spend a lot of this month reorganizing and separating the metaphorical wheat from the metaphorical chaff. I keep threatening to do this and not doing it, but we'll see if I'm consistent. It will be easier to take pictures (and eventually video) if it's less chaotic.

There's also a Sony CPD-L181 from about the same time period that I could never have afforded back in the day (I'm pretty sure I was still using CRTs until close to 2010, still miss those lightweight Dell 19" CRTs). Missing the plastic back cover for the stand and "probably doesn't work and the screen is damaged." I don't know what it is but I had to have luck somewhere! Seems like most of my broken junk works.

The scuffs on the screen and left side in the pic actually cleaned off without shining up the surface, looks nearly new! The Sony might end up on my desk as it has two VGA connectors you can switch between. It actually has a VESA mount.

I was thinking a early/late setup for the Sony, so maybe the PII on one input and a P4 or Athlon on the other? Maybe the Socket 423 P4, because quirky. (I have 2 socket 423 mobos now, and I repaired the broken cooler bracket on the first one.)

So that's 4 Sony and 4 Dell XPSes. I have these accidental collections that start for some reason. I seem to recall from old threads someone had one XPS from each generations, that would cover a lot of computing history, back to 1993 (or 1990 if you count systems with that order code but not sold under that name).

xcomcmdr wrote on 2021-07-31, 07:06:

I don't know how to fix that. 🙁

Is there a rattling noise? Some broken screw thread or so.

Nope.

Merovign wrote on 2021-08-01, 06:23:

And yes, I have 55 tabs open, ...

I had a good laugh at that. My wife does the same damn thing every day. I'll walk by her laptop in the morning and there will be a few tabs open. By the end of the day her browser looks like yours with a bazillion tabs open. I'll ask her what's in that tab and she'll be like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

liqmat wrote on 2021-08-01, 15:17:

Merovign wrote on 2021-08-01, 06:23:

And yes, I have 55 tabs open, ...

I had a good laugh at that. My wife does the same damn thing every day. I'll walk by her laptop in the morning and there will be a few tabs open. By the end of the day her browser looks like yours with a bazillion tabs open. I'll ask her what's in that tab and she'll be like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do the same. My usual rationale is "I'll come back to this interesting information later" however I rarely do. I set up a Firefox extension that deletes any tab that has not been used in more than a week. So far, it seems to work well.

aha2940 wrote on 2021-08-01, 18:20:

liqmat wrote on 2021-08-01, 15:17:

Merovign wrote on 2021-08-01, 06:23:

And yes, I have 55 tabs open, ...

I had a good laugh at that. My wife does the same damn thing every day. I'll walk by her laptop in the morning and there will be a few tabs open. By the end of the day her browser looks like yours with a bazillion tabs open. I'll ask her what's in that tab and she'll be like ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I do the same. My usual rationale is "I'll come back to this interesting information later" however I rarely do. I set up a Firefox extension that deletes any tab that has not been used in more than a week. So far, it seems to work well.

I almost said I come back to those tabs frequently, but it's more accurate to say I come back to them *occasionally*, which is kind of better and kind of worse.

I have an extension called "The Marvellous Suspender" which removes old tabs from memory but can reload them, so at least I'm not using All The RAM In The World. There used to be an extension called "The Great Suspender" which was purchased by a troll and turned into malware, and subsequently banned from extension stores.

My real problem is that I don't like any of the available "bookmarking" options, everybody basically uses the same 1990s bookmarks feature and it's basically fine if you have 10 bookmarks, but when you have hundreds in maybe 8 categories its a nightmare. I spent a lot of time trying to find some kind of non-flat non-raw-list method of handling bookmarks. Part of it is editing and rearranging bookmarks is so slow and clunky. Very 1990s.

I probably need to just give up and make a wiki or something like that for annotated bookmarks. I just want something not much harder to use than regular bookmarks but with more robust organization, and is independently searchable. And makes it easier to save a position on a page, if possible.

But in the meantime I leave 55 tabs open. Each one has a reason, they're not just "abandoned tabs," I do close tabs all the time. If they're open I intend to use them.

I do definitely always have too many irons in the fire. 😁

Prepped some hardware for the e-cycling (New York City is re-opening its home scale e-waste disposal sites). Had to clear out some old hardware that is no longer needed.

A whole bunch of old laptop hard drives (mostly small capacity 4200 rpm EIDE drives, because the period correct feeling of small slow rust spinners can go kiss my ass), small capacity SODIMMs and DIMMs pulled from hardware.

Probably need to do some serious pruning down the line…who needs multiple 440BX laptops, anyways?

Love the Lego Saturn V

Merovign wrote on 2021-08-01, 06:23:

And yes, I have 55 tabs open, and no icons on my desktop.

I had 60 or so tabs open until recently. About 45 in Firefox and 15 in Chrome. And, like you, no icons on the desktop. Having 60 open tabs slowed the system so much that a couple of weeks ago, I created a local web page that I use as my home page, and set it up so that links open a new tab. Including my home page, I never have more than 4 pages open at the same time now, and I only use Chrome (I chose Chrome as I have an extension that only works in Chrome, and earns me about £25 a month toward my cable bill).

I helped a elderly family friend out with her 3rd gen i5 Asus laptop. Turns out she had 45 instances of Microsoft Edge open at once and the HDD was pegged at 100% non stop, the desktop was somehow hidden and her taskbar was at the top of her screen blocking access to a bunch of stuff.

Trimmed some useless programs, cleaned it up and got it booting within 30 seconds and working like brand new again. $10 well earned 😀

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-08-01, 22:10:

Love the Lego Saturn V

Guess what is parked on the other side of the shelves…

I have been playing around with the VIC-II part of my ATX-64. I had these artifacts that one normally do on a C64. However I was not able to get rid of them. I tried to adjust the onboard luma/stripe-fix, however it did not change much. I took notice, that with a S-Video cable plugged into the dedicated S-Video port and a Dell 2001FP that was turned off, removed all stripes and artifact's like it should. However that is not durable in the long run, and not really handy to have it hooked up to a monitor that I am not using. (Using DIN-to-Svideo and Retrotink for display)

I tried to attach a dedicated Lumafix64 between the motherboard and the VIC-II and that removed nearly all stripes when dialed in. But it still left that red/green tint effect on the picture quality, so I headed over to the LOOP64 website and asked what else I could do. I was recommended to remove the Composite jumper to disable Composite output, and that actually fixed my issue. Of course there are still a few artifacts here and there, however it is now less than what is found on a classic Breadbin+CRT setup. Crisp and clear video with perfect contrast and no colouring artifacts. There are only a faint level of vertical stripes now. Kind of what you see on a CRT if you look close. However the contrast is extremely strong, and one of the absolute best that I have ever seen on a C64. It rivals that of an emulator.

Fully happy with the result so far. Awesomme to have build yet another C64 from the ground and up.

ragefury32 wrote on 2021-08-02, 05:53:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-08-01, 22:10:

Love the Lego Saturn V

Guess what is parked on the other side of the shelves…

16A3C7BD-8400-4053-8AA3-E1F1BADE1A01.jpeg

Sweet!! I'm a giant rocket and Space nerd and seeing those makes me happy.

brostenen wrote on 2021-08-02, 07:15:

I have been playing around with the VIC-II part of my ATX-64. I had these artifacts that one normally do on a C64. However I was not able to get rid of them. I tried to adjust the onboard luma/stripe-fix, however it did not change much. I took notice, that with a S-Video cable plugged into the dedicated S-Video port and a Dell 2001FP that was turned off, removed all stripes and artifact's like it should. However that is not durable in the long run, and not really handy to have it hooked up to a monitor that I am not using. (Using DIN-to-Svideo and Retrotink for display)

I tried to attach a dedicated Lumafix64 between the motherboard and the VIC-II and that removed nearly all stripes when dialed in. But it still left that red/green tint effect on the picture quality, so I headed over to the LOOP64 website and asked what else I could do. I was recommended to remove the Composite jumper to disable Composite output, and that actually fixed my issue. Of course there are still a few artifacts here and there, however it is now less than what is found on a classic Breadbin+CRT setup. Crisp and clear video with perfect contrast and no colouring artifacts. There are only a faint level of vertical stripes now. Kind of what you see on a CRT if you look close. However the contrast is extremely strong, and one of the absolute best that I have ever seen on a C64. It rivals that of an emulator.

Fully happy with the result so far. Awesomme to have build yet another C64 from the ground and up.

That's great to hear. Have you been able to try any games on it yet?

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-08-02, 09:53:

brostenen wrote on 2021-08-02, 07:15:

I have been playing around with the VIC-II part of my ATX-64. I had these artifacts that one normally do on a C64. However I was not able to get rid of them. I tried to adjust the onboard luma/stripe-fix, however it did not change much. I took notice, that with a S-Video cable plugged into the dedicated S-Video port and a Dell 2001FP that was turned off, removed all stripes and artifact's like it should. However that is not durable in the long run, and not really handy to have it hooked up to a monitor that I am not using. (Using DIN-to-Svideo and Retrotink for display)

I tried to attach a dedicated Lumafix64 between the motherboard and the VIC-II and that removed nearly all stripes when dialed in. But it still left that red/green tint effect on the picture quality, so I headed over to the LOOP64 website and asked what else I could do. I was recommended to remove the Composite jumper to disable Composite output, and that actually fixed my issue. Of course there are still a few artifacts here and there, however it is now less than what is found on a classic Breadbin+CRT setup. Crisp and clear video with perfect contrast and no colouring artifacts. There are only a faint level of vertical stripes now. Kind of what you see on a CRT if you look close. However the contrast is extremely strong, and one of the absolute best that I have ever seen on a C64. It rivals that of an emulator.

Fully happy with the result so far. Awesomme to have build yet another C64 from the ground and up.

That's great to hear. Have you been able to try any games on it yet?

Sadly not. There is no ROM chip in the machine as of now. In other words, no operating system. I have the eeprom chip, and I have the custom rom.bin file that I created (3 in 1 file and custom colours and boot-text). The only piece of software that I have had running, are the DeadTest cartridge. In regards to video signal quality, then it does not matter if it is C64-ROM or DeadTest cartridge. The signal is the same. 😀

I need to buy a TL866II-Plus programmer in order to write that eeprom. But I have to wait untill next month. I will buy this month though, if I can sell the AT-Case and/or the soundcards that I have put up for sale. But I doubt there are any buyers here in Denmark.

EDIT:
As the ATX-64 supports dual SID, in eighter seperate channels or combined into mono on both right and left. Then I am planning to have the ARMSID as the primary SID chip. I have an old-SID (the 9volt breadbin) that I will use as the secondary SID. The reason is that the ARMSID is as good or even better than original SID (can not hear difference + setup program for filthers), and my old version SID are a bit wonky. It is not dead nor defect in most games. However it sounds strange in a few games. So I deem it 95% working, and only 5% defect.