Decided to replace the power supply for my Atari 65XE computer. The old 1980s heavy power brick was working fine, but I didn't want to risk it long-term as some of these apparently also suffer the over-voltage issue when they start to die, similar to Commodore power supplies, killing numerous chips inside the computer.

So I replaced it with something much safer & cheaper - a USB cable & a 5V/2A phone charger. I ordered a pre-built USB cable, couldn't be bothered making my own. Works great. I'll put the original power supply safely away in storage.

Tested and benchmarked a few AGP cards on a K8N Neo2 Platinum + Athlon64 3500 system.

Did some stuff this weekend, mostly light stuff...

My Windows 98 Setup was a bit of a PITA for the effort involved so I just figured "f*** it" and installed FreeDOS - made a dedicated setup for my M/75. Did not help that the wife was talking about the Bill/Melinda split while I Was trying to install an unofficial service pack for all the update rollups. TBH, I'm completely happy with FreeDOS. It's finishing copying files today, and then I plan to maybe use this configuration. Somehow I'm having better stability out of FreeDOS now than I am MS-DOS 7.x. Also, I keep getting closer to getting things working in HX, so maybe I'll keep experimenting with that. Also, I get better battery life when using FreeDOS.

Replaced the CD-ROM drive in the VersaDock with the DVD-RW again. It's just faster, and I plan to add more games that use CD-ROMs, so it's nice to be able to rip up to 800 MB of data in 15 minutes on the vintage system. Also, it seems like that old drive was holding the IDE bus back because my r/w speeds seem to have gone up slightly.

What's also nice is I'm backing up my custom resource files since the way I setup FreeDOS on my laptops is so there are seven boot options - the standard 2 RAM configs setup for Docked config, the same 2 for Undocked with WiFi Packet driver enabled, an E-Z Menu version that allows me to launch programs and packet drivers dynamically, and of course the Safe and Emergency boot options I keep stock. I use a custom FDNET.BAT (basically gutted the original) that loads specific packet drivers.

I also found the best way to use FTPSRV is just to upload large ZIP files. I"m sure it's no big news to anyone but I've spent hours putting individual piles of files on there with many transfers to fail. Probably need to look at my MTU and Packet settings for FTPSRV, but not in much of a hurry when I can slap some ZIP files over really easily.

The next part is unzipping/unraring everything, and maybe looking at what resources I need to copy to fdos\bin for HX to try out a few other games in HX....ie....

- Postal Raw & Uncut
- Diablo
- Lighthouse

Basically stuff without a DOS port. People don't experiment enough with it.

I didn't really finish this today but just got around to taking photos of it. A plipbox nano for my accelerated A500. My first attempt ad SMD soldering so be gentle with me.

Wow you did a fantastic job with the soldering. I'm lucky if I can solder a few wires together without them coming apart afterwards.

I've been recreating Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest in OHRRPGCE in my free moments - the old NES version basically. I've got all the background sprites done, and the maps done,and have been linking "doors" but need to start with the character art. Figured it'd be a fun way since I have very intimate knowledge of the first four Dragon Quest/Warrior NES games, especially the first one. Maybe I'll actually finish this one.

My goal is to make a 100% working DOS port of Dragon Warrior - with maybe, a few perks here and there the original NES version did not have. If I like it enough, maybe I'll start building out some of my own ideas - and maybe even recreate the sequels. It's only been 2 weeks and already I have something run-able.

pan069 wrote on 2021-05-09, 20:48:

I get the DIY ethos, but if you'd ask me, just get a PSU that DOES fit instead of drilling holes in a case that you might regret later...

Yes, I agree pan069. I decided not to drill any holes. Will try to find fitting PSU.

Connected an Ink branded (Wyse) keyboard to my Wyse WY-2108 PC and it works, but the floppy drive won't boot since the configuration is erased and thinks the 1.2MB drive is a 1.44MB drive.

Transferred all the components I needed from the huge overweight ugly gaming case to the tower case and everything worked of the bat.

A whole box of components I didn't need to use or want in the new tower case.

Today I installed the CMS upgrade in my CT1350B. And it didn't seem to go smoothly. So I did a bunch of digging and reading in order to bring the best info I could to Vogons for help... before realising I was an idiot and everything worked fine.

My particular card is the 049151 which you can see in the third pic here: https://nerdlypleasures.blogspot.com/2013/06/ … ms-upgrade.html

The kit I bought was ebay item number 333742638765. The first thing I noticed after installation was that FM had stopped working. This was a reported problem way back in 2012, before the different board revisions were fully understood (and 7 years before suntac came up with the solution). So I figured I needed - but had not bought - a GAL with this upated code.

The second problem was that there were missing notes when playing CMS music. Initially I suspected the system I was testing on, which is a P166 with caches disabled for this task. What I hadn't done was RTFM, or in this case, actually pay attention to the jumpers on the card. Because when you install the CMS upgrade, you also need to change the jumper to enable it, you goose. This fixed the missing CMS notes, and to my surprise and happiness, also restored FM to the card. Success!

In Germany we celebrate "Father's Day" tomorrow, a day when all men enjoy and celebrate the day off. Many go for a bike ride and get drunk 😁
But with Corona we don't celebrate so much. My best friend will visit me and we will rock the old hardware, make BBQ and drink too much 😁

For that I have to clean up my cave today.

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-12, 10:38:

In Germany we celebrate "Father's Day" tomorrow, a day when all men enjoy and celebrate the day off. Many go for a bike ride and get drunk 😁
But with Corona we don't celebrate so much. My best friend will visit me and we will rock the old hardware, make BBQ and drink too much 😁

For that I have to clean up my cave today.

Sounds fun 😁

vad4r wrote on 2021-05-12, 10:38:

In Germany we celebrate "Father's Day" tomorrow, a day when all men enjoy and celebrate the day off. Many go for a bike ride and get drunk 😁
But with Corona we don't celebrate so much. My best friend will visit me and we will rock the old hardware, make BBQ and drink too much 😁

For that I have to clean up my cave today.

That sounds like a fun day to me. Happy Father's day my friend.

Yesterday I put my 486 CPUs away after the massive 20 CPU showdown benchmark and re-assembled my Siemens-Nixdorf 486 - I discovered something odd about it. When I put in a DX 33 or DX 2/66, benchmark performance lines up with others from its class. When I put a DX/4 in there (through a VRM) - best I can get is performance on par with a 75-80 MHz 486 CPU. I thought the VRM was somehow causing the issue, so I put in an ODPR - Despite being a Pentium, it was bottlenecked at the same area (75-80 MHz).

Weird. Good thing it's not really 1994 and I didn't pay those dollars for a 20-25% CPU cut on performance! It works well enough for the odd times I do use it, and it is faster than the 66 MHz it came with, so there's that.

I also benchmarked that computer's integrated S3 video card vs the ATI Mach32 (2Mb NVRAM) and Genoa Phantom 32i (2Mb DRAM) VLB cards.

These two are going into my PS/1000 tonight to test against its own built in CL chip to see if it's going to be worth me buying another TSENG (or repairing the other one I have)

Testbed - Siemens Nixdorf PCD-4H 486 DX4/100, bare boot into DOS.

Results:

Genoa 2Mb TSENGET4000 2Mb

3DBench - 62.5
Chris B 's - 43.0 (fps)
PCPbench - 7.0 (640x400)
PCPbench - 16.9 (VGA)
Doom - 1299 Realtics

Computer's built in video card (S3 86C805-P) 1 Mb

3DBench - 66.6
Chris B's - 36.5 (fps)
(can't PCPbench in 640x400)
PCPbench - 16 (VGA)
Doom - 1294 Realtics

ATI Mach32 w 2Mb VRAM

3DBench - 62.5
Chris B 's - 43.0 (fps)
PCPbench - 7.0 (640x400)
PCPbench - 16.9 (VGA)
Doom - 1343 Realtics

Looks like in this computer, the bottleneck cuts the performance of the ATI and the TSENG at around the same spot.

I'm curious to see how these will stack up in the PS/1000.

Yesterday was supposed to be simple, but was a bit of mess...

- Finished the FreeDOS Setup on the M/75
- Downloaded Tetris Queen, Tyrian 2000, several instances of SHSUCD
- Had to dig for awhile to find the full SHSUCD suite with OMI so I Could rip ISO files to the 80GB Drive much to household annoyance
- Once I started ripping ISO Files, the xfers started to fail and the DVD-RW started getting flaky
- DVD-RW drive I just replaced the original Versadock 2X with decided it would no longer read disks, so I threw my retro-brited 52x CD-RW in there.
- Finished Ripping Castles2, 7th Guest, Lighthouse, and all 4 discs of Under a Killing Moon to the F partition
- Found a new trick with 7th guest, I can forego virtual CD's almost entirely by copying all of the movie files to the HDD
- I'm starting to memorize my virtual CD-ROM methods to a point I am writing Start.bat files for all these titles purely from memory

Next, I plan to start experimenting with HX a lot. Want to see what stuff I can fiddle with to get working.

Today I was bored, so decided I needed a case for my Pi1541 sitting all bare on top of my C64. I don't have access to a 3D printer and didn't want to spend any money, so I did the cheapest and crudest thing I possibly could and did a small DIY transformation of a plastic container I had -

Its a work in progress, the graphic design was just a quick & dirty thing I threw together in Photoshop to make sure everything lined up correctly. The proper design will match the look of the C64 C it is attached to with better looking graphics. Also I'm going to tweak the container a bit more, adding some more vent holes in the bottom and maybe some small feet to allow for better airflow.

Try not to laugh too hard at my bodge job. 🤣

It's not silly if it works, and importantly protects the goods!

I'll see that and raise you my GBS-Control, which got the premium treatment of a kingly installation within one of the cardboard boxes my Ryzen processor came in. Mmmmm, pre-cut cooling hole!! 🤣

What a fit, though.

Reside in comfort, little buddy!

I like it, simple functional design. Glad to see it's not just me with the crazy DIY.

Shreddoc wrote on 2021-05-12, 22:31:

I'll see that and raise you my GBS-Control, which got the premium treatment of a kingly installation within one of the cardboard […]
Show full quote

I'll see that and raise you my GBS-Control, which got the premium treatment of a kingly installation within one of the cardboard boxes my Ryzen processor came in. Mmmmm, pre-cut cooling hole!! 🤣

What a fit, though.

acme.jpg

Reside in comfort, little buddy!

Looks like you could load that up with tissues too.