Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

Brawndo wrote on 2023-03-02, 05:43:

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment […]
Show full quote

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

While the psu works, I'd check voltages at the pins and make note. You can always make an adapter if the PSU dies and having the pinout for the voltages will make it easier to do.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2023-03-02, 06:04:

Brawndo wrote on 2023-03-02, 05:43:

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment […]
Show full quote

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

While the psu works, I'd check voltages at the pins and make note. You can always make an adapter if the PSU dies and having the pinout for the voltages will make it easier to do.

Wow, that's a fantastic idea. I never would have thought to do that on systems with proprietary power supplies, but it seems so obvious now that you mention it. Hopefully I remember to do this if the need ever arises.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2023-03-02, 06:04:

Brawndo wrote on 2023-03-02, 05:43:

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment […]
Show full quote

Finally getting to a point in getting the house and storage room organized enough that I can start going through some equipment which I've acquired over the past year or so in more detail. Tonight I opened up a HP Vectra VL 6/350 to check out the internals, then fired it up to make sure it's still working fine and it is. I have no idea what I'm going to use it for yet, but it was basically free so I may as well do something with it. Maybe a high powered Windows 95/DOS machine. The built in VGA chip is a Matrox MGA G100A-E. The case and main mainboard are an odd proprietary design, and the expansion slots are provided via a riser card. The power supply is a proprietary design as well, so hopefully it doesn't die on me.

While the psu works, I'd check voltages at the pins and make note. You can always make an adapter if the PSU dies and having the pinout for the voltages will make it easier to do.

Yeah that's a good idea. I was already thinking about that, since all PCs use the same voltages, it would be easy enough to adapt another PSU of needed, and I would probably just cut off the proprietary connector with the wires and splic them into another PSU.

Can also maybe get the new PSU inside the old PSU shell if it bolts up weird, but any particularly tiny, thin stick or pretzel form factors may be hard for that. HP however generally had reliable PSUs but you never know where you are on the death clock countdown with old stuff.

I always do a visual inspection of old power supply capacitors. They tend to be old, abused, and stuck in hot about environments. It's usually a good idea to open them up anyways, just to get some compressed air into them for cleaning.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-02, 17:32:

I always do a visual inspection of old power supply capacitors. They tend to be old, abused, and stuck in hot about environments. It's usually a good idea to open them up anyways, just to get some compressed air into them for cleaning.

Yes, a thorough disassembly and cleaning of all components is next in the list, now that I've verified it's working. I always open up old power supplies and blow them out, or just replace them with a new unit.

Fiddled with the poor IBM Thinkpad 770. I dont want to completely go down the rabbit hole of upgrading it, but so far it has 288mb of ram (still has the 32 pc66 in the hidden slot with a 128mb 100 + 128mb 133mhz chugging at 66mhz). Def have a 256mb stick somewhere and a 512mb 16 chip stick handy that would be neat to get working in it, but no luck with the factory 32mb stick still installed.

Loose keyboard connector + trackpoint error, but after forcing it to boot, and a scrub it looks mighty regal.

Kahenraz wrote on 2023-03-02, 17:32:

I always do a visual inspection of old power supply capacitors. They tend to be old, abused, and stuck in hot about environments. It's usually a good idea to open them up anyways, just to get some compressed air into them for cleaning.

To back this up while fiddling with the 770 I found a half decent Geforce 2 MX 200. It still posts, but the old bad series Teapos on that GPU are now burst. While 2 years ago before being put away it fully worked, and was my go test card for older AGP motherboards.

I just installed a Matrox G450 in the dual themed rig.
It's more fitting than the Geforce256 which was overkill anyway... The G450 still is, but I wanted some good 2D quality and DualHead.

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

Doing battle with the Prince of Weird, that Patriot SL4100, got 08h code on the POST card thus far, think we're on the Phoenix code list because with no RAM I get the 1-3-1 beep code... https://www.rigacci.org/docs/biblio/online/fi … mware/beep3.htm ... not sure if I'm cleaning the socket well enough, damn thing seems delicate though, broke a clip on one of the others. Anyone in ontario got a deoxit tank i can boil the whole thing in? 🤣 Maybe gonna have to get a magnifying glass and a dental probe and clean it's teeth like I'm a dental hygienist.

Edit: So I drenched the think in straight IPA and scrubbed at it's teeth with a brush. Wanted to give it a while to dry, so grabbed a SFF Compaq Deskpro and fired it up..
After the HDD going clackaclack a few times while it was complaining options no set, no keyboard, etc and so forth I thought HDD was gonna be dead, but maybe that's the noise it made when it detects... because after connecting keyboard and reboot, say yah whatevs to setups and...
It boots into Win98... wooo
says no mouse, okay, have a *grab anything* mouse, old MS serial that's so yellow it's brown... detects..
poke around, nothing much on there apart from
Worms Armageddon, yisssssssssssssssss
Fire it up.
There's sound.
wat
There's sound
It's coming from the monitor.... NEC Multisync LED 17" it's got speakers, DVI and an audio jack, but I only have the VGA cable connected and
There's sound
This is a friggin' new one on me...
I am 90% sure it's coming from the monitor, but ima have to check now that the system unit hasn't got PC Speaker round back corner.

EditII: Okay false alarm, never attribute to the supernatural that which is easily explained by Compaq weirdness, apparently the Soundmax digital integrated audio is hooked up to the internal speaker also. Not FM/Midi, just digital playback. That speaker was pointed toward the monitor at the time, hence my confusion.

EditIII: Aww crap I broke it, or the HDD was iffy... Some crap proggy froze up on uninstall... waited ages... forced reboot, hung on the shutdown screen no disk activity... powered it off, next boot scandisk comes up, saying a FAT problem it can't fix, and now it can't get into winders... will try chkdisk on it after supper.

EditIV: BTW when that happened I was just planning on retiring the mouse I was using to keep the miles off it, turned it up and it said serial and mouse port mouse, and I thought wait a sec, I've got 4 ports for 1 other mouse, Ima see if there's an adapter for this one around. Got Logitech card and mouse, and MS card, ATI Graphics Ultra with mouse port and a AST 386 with a mouse port.

Saw one of these a couple of weeks ago, didn't cross my mind at the time it was a mouse adapter, was thinking RS232 to Apple Serial port, derp.

So yesterday I've been approached by my colleague at work who asked me if I can help her make some pretty old scientific program (FSSR-1D/2D spectrometer software) running on her modern notebook because she had some old laptop borrowed by somebody else but it wasn't possible to run it correctly (it was some old Toshiba with 32-bit XP and the software kind of work there but the graphics are glitchy).

So a 5 minute DOSbox deployment and voila - everything works beautifully 😁

Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-03, 21:24:

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot.. Bought these (retro) hardware today ...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs […]
Show full quote

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

IMG_1407r.jpg
20230303_221421.jpg
20230303_221444.jpg

Had one. Died when I tried to run at 10MHz. Leave it be. Or change CPU and clock generator when changing from 8MHz.

Cheers,

Houston, we have a solid confirm, Lighning is Blue, repeat, Lightning is Blue, over.

Today was the first day of the local old junk market. This month it's extended to 2 days as part of a seasonal festival. It was very chilly and this first day wasn't all that good regarding vintage electronics and games. For PC hardware all I've seen was a generic networking card and a Creative AudioPCI. Though I found a guy selling some games. He said he only brought a sample to gauge interest and he said he'll bring the rest tomorrow. At other places I found AvP2 of which I already have 2 copies and Total Annihilation of which I already own one copy.

I also found a very tasteful bottle opener.

And she was here too.

I was criticized last time for not taking a photo.

This first day what I ended up buying was a The Planet of the Apes, hardcover and the Hair OST.

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-03-04, 01:48:

Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-03, 21:24:

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot.. Bought these (retro) hardware today ...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs […]
Show full quote

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

IMG_1407r.jpg
20230303_221421.jpg
20230303_221444.jpg

Had one. Died when I tried to run at 10MHz. Leave it be. Or change CPU and clock generator when changing from 8MHz.

Cheers,

Why should one overclock a 286? If its too slow I take a faster PC. I didnt have a ceramic CPU in spare therefore I took this one.

Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-04, 11:56:

pentiumspeed wrote on 2023-03-04, 01:48:

Predator99 wrote on 2023-03-03, 21:24:

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot.. Bought these (retro) hardware today ...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs […]
Show full quote

IBM 5170 board from scrap lot..
Bought these (retro) hardware today
...alive again. Only needed to add a CPU and one of the ROMs 😀

IMG_1407r.jpg
20230303_221421.jpg
20230303_221444.jpg

Had one. Died when I tried to run at 10MHz. Leave it be. Or change CPU and clock generator when changing from 8MHz.

Cheers,

Why should one overclock a 286? If its too slow I take a faster PC. I didnt have a ceramic CPU in spare therefore I took this one.

When it comes to 5170s I hate them being slower than TurboXTs so that would be my reason. Not sure what you got there though, 150ns RAM was for a 6Mhz I thought, but with a 16Mhz Xtal that's 8? Possibly you're getting lucky and the RAM runs at 8 until it gets too warm.

Started tearing down and repairing this 486 machine. The motherboard had one of those leaky barrel batteries.

Did a bit of cleanup and removal of the existing pins. Fortunately there doesn't appear to be too much damage beyond some surface corrosion directly under the battery.

I recapped floppy drive for my recently acquired IBM PS/2 model 35 SX. It wasn’t reading disks, so repairs was needed.

Here is the image of some caps (there are two more right of the motor) and they were all leaking. Gladly no major corrosion to other components or traces:

Important thing to note for anyone recapping this Alps drive: three capacitors next to motor are bi-polar/non-polar.

Final testing:

Now onwards with the project, as system is pretty much working 100% now 🙂