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What retro activity did you get up to today?

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Reply 24720 of 28625, by Dorunkāku

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Made some low budget ISA clock frequency counter cards.

With brute force and power tools I removed all components of some broken ISA cards. Glued on a piece of cardboard and painted them black to hide the carnage.

The electronics are 4-5 euro '1Hz-50MHz Frequency Counter' kits which are available from EBay/Amazon/AliExpress.

Last edited by Dorunkāku on 2023-07-24, 15:56. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 24721 of 28625, by konc

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Dorunkāku wrote on 2023-07-24, 12:31:

Made some low budget ISA clock frequency counter cards.

Ha! Really nice, is it some published project or did you do it yourself? Tell us more, I needed exactly this in the past and couldn't find anything similar.

Edit: thanks for the edit and further explanation

Last edited by konc on 2023-07-25, 07:57. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 24722 of 28625, by creepingnet

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Finally moved into my new place about 92%. Have the Tandy 1000A all setup minus networking (I'm toying with using Wireless Bridges now instead of Long Ethernet cables), and my NanTan FMAK9200C up and running in full swing on the new ginormous bar counter. Switched ISPS as well, have AT&T Fiber now instead of Spectrum.

I'm REALLY trying to resist the urge to bring some more out of storage before I'm done with my garage space. I technically have 4 "computing areas" in this new place....

- My desk in a hutch area in the livingroom which hosts the Mac and one vintage machine (currently the Tandy 1000)
- the Bar counter in the kitchen (laptops, NanTan currently)
- Our patio has a outlet so I can sit out there with my vintage laptops and play DOS games as well....waiting for the BBQ before I finalize this
- The garage has at least one outlet, seams for wall studs are visible so hanging the TV might be possible, and I'm thinking of getting more of a Adrian's Digital Basement type workbench thing setup there so I can video my repairs. I REALLY want to do the FMA3500C for DOSCember since It needs a CMOS battery replacement, and maybe some more tech digging in the circuitry

~The Creeping Network~
My Youtube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/creepingnet
Creepingnet's World - https://creepingnet.neocities.org/
The Creeping Network Repo - https://www.geocities.ws/creepingnet2019/

Reply 24723 of 28625, by Thermalwrong

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konc wrote on 2023-07-24, 14:55:
Dorunkāku wrote on 2023-07-24, 12:31:

Made some low budget ISA clock frequency counter cards.

Ha! Really nice, is it some published project or did you do it yourself? Tell us more, I needed exactly this in the past and couldn't find anything similar.

It looks like a generic frequency counter kit PCB grafted onto what I think is a depopulated ISA modem? That's a superb use / sendoff for an ISA modem card 😁

Today I got a Toshiba board working that I thought was dead - it's a Toshiba T2130CS that had serious corrosion and I had trouble removing it. Pulling it seems to have dislodged some pins on the mainboard around one or more of the something like 4x main big QFP chips. Eventually found it would start if I pressed hard in one area, so resoldered just about everything around there and it's back up and running again.

Also, that Mitsumi FX400 CD-rom drive I burned a week or two ago, I spotted a 'cheap-enough' donor / replacement that has a damaged bezel and lacks the headphone jack on the front. It took like half an hour to swap over the front button PCB from the burned drive, they're the same PCB layout just the replacement drive didn't have those populated or have the holes in the bezel. With the board swapped over and the burned drive's front bezel fitted, this replacement drive looks and works great:

The attachment Mitsumi-FX400-fixy.JPG is no longer available

Creepingnet: do you happen to know the pinout for the NEC Versa V/E/M/P hard drive packs? Also have you come across any problems with the Versa laptops that cause the screen to flicker when displaying dark colours / dos prompt but is fine in Windows?

Reply 24725 of 28625, by riplin

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I finally mustered up the courage to solder the interposer onto my Tualatin 1.4Ghz CPU.

Il1WCiB.jpg

And it worked! Purring like a kitten in an Asus P3B-F motherboard! 😀

1d5JYOU.jpg

Reply 24726 of 28625, by riplin

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Trashbytes wrote on 2023-07-12, 06:31:

Had the same issue with my Rev 1.06 P2B-DS, managed to grab 2 Abit Slotket III cards which work fine with dual Coppermines, Soltek also make a Slotket that supports dual cpus SOLTEK SL-02A++ IIRC is the model.

How long ago was this? I've been trying to get another Abit Slotket III and can't find any for the life of me.

Reply 24727 of 28625, by konc

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Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-07-24, 22:03:
konc wrote on 2023-07-24, 14:55:
Dorunkāku wrote on 2023-07-24, 12:31:

Made some low budget ISA clock frequency counter cards.

Ha! Really nice, is it some published project or did you do it yourself? Tell us more, I needed exactly this in the past and couldn't find anything similar.

It looks like a generic frequency counter kit PCB grafted onto what I think is a depopulated ISA modem? That's a superb use / sendoff for an ISA modem card 😁

Yep you got it right, the original post has been edited and describes exactly this.
This is the frequency counter: https://www.aliexpress.com/i/32904031574.html

Reply 24728 of 28625, by Trashbytes

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riplin wrote on 2023-07-25, 07:44:
Trashbytes wrote on 2023-07-12, 06:31:

Had the same issue with my Rev 1.06 P2B-DS, managed to grab 2 Abit Slotket III cards which work fine with dual Coppermines, Soltek also make a Slotket that supports dual cpus SOLTEK SL-02A++ IIRC is the model.

How long ago was this? I've been trying to get another Abit Slotket III and can't find any for the life of me.

Snagged one mid last year as part of a combo buy the second one was about two months ago when it popped up on Evilbay at a not outrageous price. Before I got the second one I was just running a pair of 677 slot1 Coppermines, I just have a saved search and alert setup for Evilbay for things like the Slotkets.

Really hoping I can get a second Soltek SL-02A++.

Reply 24729 of 28625, by riplin

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Minutemanqvs wrote on 2023-05-05, 05:39:

That's a super amazing project indeed! I hope it works in the end 😀

Sorry for necroing one of your old replies, but I'm unable to respond to private messages. Too new on the forum. 😀 Suffice to say, I'm interested! PM me an email address if you want and we can talk that way.

Reply 24730 of 28625, by TheAbandonwareGuy

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Well, the Radeon 8500DV arrived today. Except its not an 8500DV. Despite having a factory label that clearly says "AIW 8500DV 64MB".

The BIOs and Drivers both report it as a Radeon 7500 AIW, and the board layout aside from that label matches. Weirdly GPU-Z reports it has having 2 vertex shaders, where as RV200 should have zero. Specs reported otherwise match Radeon 7500. 3DMark reports unable to complete PS/VS 1.1 level tests due to lack of HW support.

What is with ATI cards and incorrect factory S/N P/N labels? I have a Radeon 9700 Pro around here somewhere with a very much factory label for an X800 Pro.

I'm not going to return this despite it objectively not being what I paid for, there is no way the seller could have known this was a fake (?). Like I assume this is someones early 2000s scam biting me 20+ years later. Either that or ATI was reusing serial number labels meant for other card models without changing the listed part model.

Cyb3rst0rms Retro Hardware Warzone: https://discord.gg/jK8uvR4c
I used to own over 160 graphics card, I've since recovered from graphics card addiction

Reply 24731 of 28625, by H3nrik V!

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Does installing W2K count as retro? Trying to install it on the ThinkPad G41 from USB. Last attempt, it was missing some files for the SP4. Trying another ISO now, but it's sloooow. 🤣

Spent some waiting time installing W98SE on a VMWare on my daily driver (i7-9700) and playing MSHearts. That, otoh went blazing fast ...

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 24733 of 28625, by Repo Man11

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Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-25, 00:19:

Stripped and cleaned this AT case. Probably going to use it for a 486 build in the near future...

I've a near identical case that I grabbed out of a dumpster back in 2019. I'd decided that I wasn't going to mess around with any vintage computer stuff until I moved to a more permanent location after losing everything in the fire (to keep my load of personal stuff low for ease of movement), but then one day I was out for a walk, minding my own business, when there I saw it, beckoning to me from the top layer of stuff in a dumpster where they were obviously cleaning out a garage. The siren song of EDO SIMMs and "It's now safe to turn off your computer" got me, and I climbed into that dumpster and walked home with that overly heavy museum piece with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.

"We do these things not because they are easy, but because we thought they would be easy."

Reply 24734 of 28625, by Veeb0rg

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Repo Man11 wrote on 2023-07-25, 22:03:
Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-25, 00:19:

Stripped and cleaned this AT case. Probably going to use it for a 486 build in the near future...

I've a near identical case that I grabbed out of a dumpster back in 2019. I'd decided that I wasn't going to mess around with any vintage computer stuff until I moved to a more permanent location after losing everything in the fire (to keep my load of personal stuff low for ease of movement), but then one day I was out for a walk, minding my own business, when there I saw it, beckoning to me from the top layer of stuff in a dumpster where they were obviously cleaning out a garage. The siren song of EDO SIMMs and "It's now safe to turn off your computer" got me, and I climbed into that dumpster and walked home with that overly heavy museum piece with a smile on my face and a spring in my step.

Yours looks pretty close to the one I rescued from the scrap yard with a 386 system in it.

Reply 24735 of 28625, by ElectroSoldier

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Spent an interesting morning installing Windows 2000 Professional SP4 (LBA registry mod on install, PAE enabled) onto an old Dell Precision 690.
Pair of Intel Xeon X5365 processors and 16Gb FB-DIMM (4x 2Gb, 2x 4GB) over the memory risers.
Installed onto a 40Gb PATA disk (Master) with a LG DVD-RW (Slave)
IBM 500Gb SATA hard disk on SATA 0, with a pair of Seagate 250Gb disks on the SAS 5/iR striped set.

Discovered my Compaq branded Adaptec AHA-39160 dual channel SCSI U160 controller (66MHz PCI-X) doesnt get past its BIOS boot up 🙁

I didnt know Win2k Pro supports a TNT2 M64 with its own drivers... (Guillemot Cougar Video Edition PCI).

Its not much but its taken me a few months to find the SAS RAID drivers for Win2k...
Ive now saved them to floppy disk, which means the next step is to install onto the SAS RAID. But I would like to do that onto SAS disks not just SATA ones.

What I would like to ask is.
I know the last officially supported nvidia card for Win2k was the 8800 Ultra...
However I do have a 9400GT running on another Win2k system I have and that has nvidia official drivers, so Im wondering if the 9800 GX2 will run under the WinXP drivers installed onto Win2k.

Last edited by ElectroSoldier on 2023-07-26, 11:06. Edited 1 time in total.

Reply 24736 of 28625, by H3nrik V!

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Shponglefan wrote on 2023-07-25, 21:53:
H3nrik V! wrote on 2023-07-25, 21:40:

Does installing W2K count as retro?

At this point even Vista is considered retro, so I think, yes. 😉

Yeah, it's crazy. Especially since, in my mind, W2K is actually kind of current 🤣

If it's dual it's kind of cool ... 😎

--- GA586DX --- P2B-DS --- BP6 ---

Please use the "quote" option if asking questions to what I write - it will really up the chances of me noticing 😀

Reply 24737 of 28625, by PC Hoarder Patrol

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TheAbandonwareGuy wrote on 2023-07-25, 21:26:
Well, the Radeon 8500DV arrived today. Except its not an 8500DV. Despite having a factory label that clearly says "AIW 8500DV 64 […]
Show full quote

Well, the Radeon 8500DV arrived today. Except its not an 8500DV. Despite having a factory label that clearly says "AIW 8500DV 64MB".

The BIOs and Drivers both report it as a Radeon 7500 AIW, and the board layout aside from that label matches. Weirdly GPU-Z reports it has having 2 vertex shaders, where as RV200 should have zero. Specs reported otherwise match Radeon 7500. 3DMark reports unable to complete PS/VS 1.1 level tests due to lack of HW support.

What is with ATI cards and incorrect factory S/N P/N labels? I have a Radeon 9700 Pro around here somewhere with a very much factory label for an X800 Pro.

I'm not going to return this despite it objectively not being what I paid for, there is no way the seller could have known this was a fake (?). Like I assume this is someones early 2000s scam biting me 20+ years later. Either that or ATI was reusing serial number labels meant for other card models without changing the listed part model.

🙁 is yours anything like this 8500DV AIW Software Suite w/ TV Tuner as these do seem to pop up now and again

Reply 24738 of 28625, by Munx

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I feel that soon any OS that is it's own product and not a service will be considered retro.

My builds!
The FireStarter 2.0 - The wooden K5
The Underdog - The budget K6
The Voodoo powerhouse - The power-hungry K7
The troll PC - The Socket 423 Pentium 4

Reply 24739 of 28625, by Cloudschatze

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Completed a collection of the Roland-published, "Listen Series" GS MIDI albums.

rjl.png