After seeing Sunsetting support for Windows 7 / 8.1 in early 2023 for Chrome I started testing all my old rigs to see if they can be upgraded to Win10 if necessary, with laptops and SFF in particular.

Turned out that while AMD offered no official Win10 driver for Mobility Radeon HD 4330, the two systems (one laptop and one SFF) displayed Win10 desktop correctly with driver provided by Microsoft. OTOH three low-end MB with GeForce 7 IGP could not display Win10 desktop at the correct resolution with "Microsoft Basic Display Adapter." The two mATX MB could be fixed with a low-end graphics card but the SFF required a half-height graphics card with very limited length and heatsink size. Guess I'll just leave it with Win7 SP1.

For the record, even the weakest netbook with Atom could run and display Win10 correctly -- at an impractically slow speed.

AFAIK, didn't HD4000 have official Win 8 drivers? I clearly remember those being very close in arhitecture to 10's drivers, though I could be slightly wrong.

Tried to make my 128GB SSD (M2 in IDE44 converter) run in a Toshiba Satellite 4000CDT (Pentium 2 with BX chipset), but was only half-successfull.

The notebook seems to have a 64GB capacity limit. Using Seatools I was able limit the disk to 64GB and create a readable paritition. So far so good.
But then I tried to read the disk in my main PC using a M2 to Sata converter. It is recognized as a 64GB drive but the partition is not readable.
I assume the capacity-limit is not really compatible although the disk size is seen as limited.
Can anybody confirm this? Or am I doing something wrong?

Upgraded my Pentium 120 system to a Pentium 133.

It may seem a bit silly, but I prefer the look of a "133" on the front of the case. Plus, I wanted to specifically go for a spec of processor that represented peak gaming in late 1995/early 1996 just before the advent of 3D acceleration.

Also upgraded to a modern StarTech socket 7 copper heatsink and Noctua NF-A6x25 FLX 60mm fan. Did have some trouble with the StarTech's stock clip as it wouldn't latch to the socket. Ended up cannibalizing a clip from an older heatsink to get it attached.

Generous heatsink you could run a late 75Mhz pent at 133 under that. 🤣

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-11-09, 08:11:

I recently picked up a couple of thin clients to do some retrogaming on: a Wyse Cx0 and an HP T5710. Both were covered on Phil's […]
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I recently picked up a couple of thin clients to do some retrogaming on: a Wyse Cx0 and an HP T5710. Both were covered on Phil's Computer Lab, so many of you will be familiar with them. I picked up some cheap IDE cables off AliExpress, along with a couple of adapters to use with SD cards.

I started off with the Wyse and things went pretty smooth. It is really easy to take apart and it had no trouble recognizing my IDE to micro SD card adapter. The only challenge was getting things unplugged or plugged in to it's IDE slot. I haven't worked with IDE for about 15 years, but I don't remember the connections being so tight. Maybe it's the cheap cables/adapters that I bought from AliExpress. I also didn't work much with 44 pin in the past.

wyse.jpg

I installed Windows 98 and it's actually pretty quick. Unfortunately, I think the graphics and audio hardware is too new to have Windows 98 drivers, so I have been using VBEMP 9x and a $5 USB sound card. I have been able to run a lot of DOS games from Windows and the built-in SB emulation worked a lot better than I expected. Apart from being stuck with PC speaker sounds, pure DOS works well. Despite these limitations, I really like the device. It's also really small and the cutest little computer. Here's it next to the HP and a can of peas for scale:

hp_wyse_peas.jpg

I had a lot more trouble with the HP. First of all, it was a lot harder to access the IDE slot. It's situated right next to the case and I had to take the entire board out to plug in an IDE cable.

hp.jpg

I first tried using a compact flash adapter with a CF to SD adapter in it. The bios recognized it, but Easy2boot kept on locking up when I tried to boot to a USB drive. I also booted into a Linux distro, which wouldn't recognize it. I tried changing a few bios settings and different USB ports, but gave up after awhile. I ended up taking the adapter from the Wyse, but it also failed with Easy2boot. I was starting to worry that there might be something wrong with the thin client, but I decided to try installing Windows 98 using the Linux method described at Parkytowers (https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/projects/win98.shtm). It ended up working! I haven't gotten around to playing around with it yet, but I've heard good things about it.

Funny thing, I was just given a Dell Wyse t50 and a Wyse Cx0. The Dell is nearly useless as anything besides a remote terminal host but the Cx0, yeah I saw that phils computer lab as well. There is a seller on ebay with a 4gb DOM module for $10 that looks like it should be a direct fit, no need for the cable. I've not had time to really sit down and tinker but it looks promising.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2022-11-10, 04:37:

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2022-11-09, 08:11:

I recently picked up a couple of thin clients to do some retrogaming on: a Wyse Cx0 and an HP T5710. Both were covered on Phil's […]
Show full quote

I recently picked up a couple of thin clients to do some retrogaming on: a Wyse Cx0 and an HP T5710. Both were covered on Phil's Computer Lab, so many of you will be familiar with them. I picked up some cheap IDE cables off AliExpress, along with a couple of adapters to use with SD cards.

I started off with the Wyse and things went pretty smooth. It is really easy to take apart and it had no trouble recognizing my IDE to micro SD card adapter. The only challenge was getting things unplugged or plugged in to it's IDE slot. I haven't worked with IDE for about 15 years, but I don't remember the connections being so tight. Maybe it's the cheap cables/adapters that I bought from AliExpress. I also didn't work much with 44 pin in the past.

wyse.jpg

I installed Windows 98 and it's actually pretty quick. Unfortunately, I think the graphics and audio hardware is too new to have Windows 98 drivers, so I have been using VBEMP 9x and a $5 USB sound card. I have been able to run a lot of DOS games from Windows and the built-in SB emulation worked a lot better than I expected. Apart from being stuck with PC speaker sounds, pure DOS works well. Despite these limitations, I really like the device. It's also really small and the cutest little computer. Here's it next to the HP and a can of peas for scale:

hp_wyse_peas.jpg

I had a lot more trouble with the HP. First of all, it was a lot harder to access the IDE slot. It's situated right next to the case and I had to take the entire board out to plug in an IDE cable.

hp.jpg

I first tried using a compact flash adapter with a CF to SD adapter in it. The bios recognized it, but Easy2boot kept on locking up when I tried to boot to a USB drive. I also booted into a Linux distro, which wouldn't recognize it. I tried changing a few bios settings and different USB ports, but gave up after awhile. I ended up taking the adapter from the Wyse, but it also failed with Easy2boot. I was starting to worry that there might be something wrong with the thin client, but I decided to try installing Windows 98 using the Linux method described at Parkytowers (https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/projects/win98.shtm). It ended up working! I haven't gotten around to playing around with it yet, but I've heard good things about it.

Funny thing, I was just given a Dell Wyse t50 and a Wyse Cx0. The Dell is nearly useless as anything besides a remote terminal host but the Cx0, yeah I saw that phils computer lab as well. There is a seller on ebay with a 4gb DOM module for $10 that looks like it should be a direct fit, no need for the cable. I've not had time to really sit down and tinker but it looks promising.

You'll have fun with the Cx0. It's such a fun little machine.

I successfully set up a DTC 7287 RLL controller under Windows 98SE last night. This is mostly for giggles. The DTC BIOS seems... Less than well engineered, shall we say. It has corrupted my CMOS settings a couple times and complained after it tried to low level format a CD-ROM drive on the secondary IDE channel. I wish there was a replacement, maybe someday I will get around to that project myself.

I don't see any reason why this couldn't be done with other AT-class MFM/RLL/ESDI controllers, this is just the one I had on hand that I knew was working. I didn't try Windows with any XT controllers but I'm not aware of any real reason that wouldn't work outside of driver support either. The card (in it's default configuration) occupies the standard primary IDE channel resources (I/O 01F0-01F7, IRQ 14) and though it can be set to secondary addresses I find that for some reason the controller acts up. Not sure why, probably the garbage BIOS. Your mileage may vary.

If this is useful to anyone, the driver in Windows 95 is called "Primary IDE controller (single fifo)" and the driver in Windows 98FE/SE is called "Standard IDE/ESDI controller" and uses the file "ESDI_506.PDR" There does not appear to be a working Windows 2000 driver at this time. I would love it if there was one, though!

Until then, here's some pictures of the setup (DTC 7287, IBM 0665-53, generic Pentium II machine) and a video of the system in operation for the curious.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/705427 … -1675851795.mp4

PcBytes wrote on 2022-11-10, 01:14:

AFAIK, didn't HD4000 have official Win 8 drivers? I clearly remember those being very close in arhitecture to 10's drivers, though I could be slightly wrong.

They have Win7 and Win8 drivers but no Win8.1 or Win10 ones. Installing Win8 drivers under Win10 gives you an error message.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-09, 11:39:

I got some stuff from a coworker to test and see what works and fix if something can be easily fixed. […]
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I got some stuff from a coworker to test and see what works and fix if something can be easily fixed.

https://ibb.co/0qfqVcd
Sound Blaster SB100; Radeon 9250; Radeon 9600
All seem to be good at first glance.

https://ibb.co/bdg5Bm6
Athlon 2000+; K6-2/500; Celedon D 2.5GHz; Celeron 1.7GHz(x2); Celeron 700
The Celeron 1.7 needed some pin straightening.
Otherwise only the Athlon and the K6-2 has any kind of meaningful value, but the rest are good disposable test processors for the boards.

https://ibb.co/d6k1n0j
https://ibb.co/Ctv73BM
https://ibb.co/CWbDgXT
https://ibb.co/t383hr3
https://ibb.co/hfCwLdF
An MSI looking s370 board with Universal AGP. Seems to be a passable test board or budget Win9x board.
An ASUS A7V266-E, decent Socket A board, but with some bulging caps. It had a missing chipset cooler.
AsRock K7VT4A Pro, decent looking Socket A board, don't seem to have any visible faults.
ASUS P4P800 SE, decent Socket478 board with cooler and unknown CPU. Don't seem to have any damage.
ASUS P5S-MX SE, seems to be a worthless budget board S775, but doesn't have any visible damage, only a missing chipset cooler.
ABIT BD7II, either non-RAID version with only a missing chipset cooler or the RAID version with also missing some IDE connectors. Probably the former.
Some Spacewalker (?) S478 board with no visible damage or missing parts.
ASUS P5E3 Pro, decent looking late S775 board with no visible damage.

I can keep an item or two as payment and help sell the rest. If the ASUS A7V266-E can be reliably fixed, this one has connector for my ASUS iPanel, I'll take it as payment. If not, i'll likely go with the AsRock. The K6-2 would be good too, but I don't have a board for that so I can't even test it. Otherwise not a lot of value here.

Mildly disappointing day of testing.

None of the s478 boards posted. Some spun the fans.

None of the Socket A boards posted. The ASUS did spin the fans, the AsRock did nothing. I still hold on to the hope that a recapping might fix the ASUS.

As for the Socket370 board, I also took the leap of faith with that and it initially worked fine, booted into Windows 98 with my CF.

Successfully tested the expansion cards. Except for the last one. When I tested the last one, the Radeon 9600, it was artifacting. It had a loose leg on a VRM chip which got soldered back on. Next time when I started, something popped and the board no longer posted. The only damage I found was a small cap which popped off that seems to have been connected to a serial controller.

As for the cards:
SB0100 - Works as intended, sounds fine.
Radeon 9250 AGP - Works as intended, the heatsink is a little hot, probably needs new grease. 49fps in Quake III Arena (GoG, timedemo).
Radeon 9250 PCI - This joined the party today, works as intended, also needs fresh grease, 43.5fps in Q3A.

I don't know if this last board was actually killed by the R9600 or something just happened to give out right then and there. The graphics card doesn't seem to be shorted when checked with a multimeter and the part where the cap was blown off has nothing to do with the AGP port.

I don't know what S370 board that was but it is entirely possible that the R9600 drew too much power from the AGP port for a Socket 370 era VRM to handle, particularly when it is 30 years old..

It was this OEM board:
http://pb.retropc.se/luna.html
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/msi-ms-6323-v1.x-va3

Today I built another computer...

Well ok, I technically just fitted a recently purchased Issue 6A motherboard inside an empty Spectrum case that I had, it counts as a build right? 🤣

I bought this motherboard knowing that it had an issue with the RF output (probably failing capacitors), but I didn't care as I was going to composite mod it instead. I used a 100uF 10V capacitor, as most of the guides suggested.

The result is a fully working Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, outputting via Composite. Tested loading games via my phone with PlayZX, as well as with a divMMC. I'm happy to finally have a 48K Spectrum in my collection, just for it's iconic looks mostly. I already have a Spectrum +2B in my collection since I was a kid, I'd just never owned the original rubber-keyed 48K model before and this was quite cheap overall!

This motherboard has been fitted with a reset switch, connected to the white wire pictured. I currently just have it sticking out the case at the back and mounted with blu-tack until I decide what I'm going to do with it. Nice to have a reset button, rather than having to switch the computer off and on from the plug socket!

Now I must resist performing any further mods or tweaks to it unless I absolutely have to.

I bought a NEC APC-H412 keyboard on ebay. The space bar stabilizer wasn't functioning correctly. I opened it up and noticed the clip holding the stabilizer down was broken (brittle, 30-year-old plastic had snapped). I super-glued a piece of plastic to it behind the back-plate to hold it down and it works again.

I think people are sleeping on this keyboard. A mechanical keyboard with full n-key rollover with a great feel for this price...

appiah4 wrote on 2022-11-10, 13:48:

I don't know what S370 board that was but it is entirely possible that the R9600 drew too much power from the AGP port for a Socket 370 era VRM to handle, particularly when it is 30 years old..

IIRC the very first Socket 370 CPU was the Mendocino Celeron released in August 1998 so even the oldest S370 MB is no more than 24 years old.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-11-10, 13:31:

Successfully tested the expansion cards. Except for the last one. When I tested the last one, the Radeon 9600, it was artifacting. It had a loose leg on a VRM chip which got soldered back on. Next time when I started, something popped and the board no longer posted. The only damage I found was a small cap which popped off that seems to have been connected to a serial controller.

I would assume that your checked for solder bridges with a multimeter after your repair. A bridge can very easily be invisible to the naked eye.

PTherapist wrote on 2022-11-10, 16:54:

Today I built another computer... […]
Show full quote

Today I built another computer...

ZXSpec-Comp3.jpeg

Well ok, I technically just fitted a recently purchased Issue 6A motherboard inside an empty Spectrum case that I had, it counts as a build right? 🤣

ZXSpec-Comp2.jpeg

I bought this motherboard knowing that it had an issue with the RF output (probably failing capacitors), but I didn't care as I was going to composite mod it instead. I used a 100uF 10V capacitor, as most of the guides suggested.

ZXSpec-Comp1.jpeg

The result is a fully working Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, outputting via Composite. Tested loading games via my phone with PlayZX, as well as with a divMMC. I'm happy to finally have a 48K Spectrum in my collection, just for it's iconic looks mostly. I already have a Spectrum +2B in my collection since I was a kid, I'd just never owned the original rubber-keyed 48K model before and this was quite cheap overall!

This motherboard has been fitted with a reset switch, connected to the white wire pictured. I currently just have it sticking out the case at the back and mounted with blu-tack until I decide what I'm going to do with it. Nice to have a reset button, rather than having to switch the computer off and on from the plug socket!

Now I must resist performing any further mods or tweaks to it unless I absolutely have to.

Congrats! I have myself a zx issue 3b to which i added the composite mod, and in i hope in this year i will do the dc-dc mod. Thankfully the cables of the keyboard are still good, it was very little used it looks!

How do you load games and/or programs? Do you use a cassette player? Phone app?

Martin85 wrote on 2022-11-10, 22:38:

Congrats! I have myself a zx issue 3b to which i added the composite mod, and in i hope in this year i will do the dc-dc mod. Thankfully the cables of the keyboard are still good, it was very little used it looks!

How do you load games and/or programs? Do you use a cassette player? Phone app?

I'm primarily using an old Android phone with the PlayZX app. That app isn't so great for multi-load games, as there's no way to skip back or forth, so it's easier to simply convert those to WAV and play in a normal media player app.

I do have a divMMC SD card solution for instant game loading and it works well, but I'm favouring that for my 128K+2B Spectrum instead.

Gluing this T2150CDT back together, first with superglue to join the clean break of the front plastic, then epoxy behind to reinforce it. The black mark is where epoxy couldn't go because it'd block the capacitor by the CPU. I really hate working with epoxy, I got some under a fingernail this time 🙁

Then some really tiny soldering to repair all the scratched traces on this thing's motherboard, thankfully it worked after. I haven't had a good use for the microscope for ages but this copper enamel wire was small enough that I was having trouble even seeing it. I cleaned up any bridged traces and put solder mask on it and it looks pretty good now.

The external floppy drive had some interesting problems too, that's another EME278TB drive which is belt driven. The belt was okay but it wasn't possible to put a disk in, that turned out to be a tiny metal tab was bent over enough that it couldn't be moved by the nylon arm that moves when a disk is pushed in. Kind of amazed the belt is still good in this one and I'm the first person to have a go at fixing it, no alignment problems hooray.

Tested an Athlon XP 2800+ Barton core.
Installing XP SP3 was a horror, drivers was boring.

Cpu score on PCMArk:
2002 - 6111
2005 - 2743

No idea if it is good, but cpu is stable. I have a batch to go. 🙁