This is going to sound silly, but I went to some garage sales with my wife today. Found a sealed 50 pack of early 2000's Maxell CD-Rs for 50 cents and I was WAY too excited to see them. 😜

I need them for use on my DOS system. Bought 2 10 packs on Amazon, one Verbatim one Maxell, both has 2-3 bad disks, about $17 total. Found out the "modern" ones kinda suck and have reliability issues.

So far, used 9 of these, working perfectly. It was a good day!

Upgraded the Coolermaster HSF on my Athlon 700, almost the same cooler, but 60 grams heavier and a bit higher. That should keep it 1°C cooler... 😏

Spent the day doing more testing of my GPUs in storage and now I have two dead Voodoo3 PCI cards, both just black screen and cause the PC to beep. So either its dead bios or possibly the voltage regulators, not sure how to test and replace them but it cant be ay harder than recapping an entire motherboard.

So ill set them both aside till I have time to operate on them ... or I find someone who knows what they are doing and get their advice.

Kicking myself too since both are high end V3 cards, one is a 3000 the other is a Compaq OEM 3500 with a normal VGA port so its worth repairing.

Also tested my Voodoo5 and it works ok but needs new fans as the OG ones have finally bit the dust, anyone have suggestions for good replacements that don't require weird attachment solutions 😁

[/quote]
Ok, I've updated more than a dozen things I've been "meaning to" for a bit...
(including the latest DDLINK source code)
[/quote]

Thx! Much appreciated.

Unfortunately not much. I got some kind of awful flu that's constantly keeping me sick, in the sense that I have nausea at all times.

However:
- one of my Slot A mobos died to a shorted CPU
- finally got the MSI MS-6167 running
- may swap the HSF from the shorted CPU (700MHz Thunderbird) on the 700MHz Pluto.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-06-14, 17:36:

Unfortunately not much. I got some kind of awful flu that's constantly keeping me sick, in the sense that I have nausea at all t […]
Show full quote

Unfortunately not much. I got some kind of awful flu that's constantly keeping me sick, in the sense that I have nausea at all times.

However:
- one of my Slot A mobos died to a shorted CPU
- finally got the MSI MS-6167 running
- may swap the HSF from the shorted CPU (700MHz Thunderbird) on the 700MHz Pluto.

Ouch, thats gotta hurt losing a Slot A Athlon and board.

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-14, 17:38:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-06-14, 17:36:

Unfortunately not much. I got some kind of awful flu that's constantly keeping me sick, in the sense that I have nausea at all t […]
Show full quote

Unfortunately not much. I got some kind of awful flu that's constantly keeping me sick, in the sense that I have nausea at all times.

However:
- one of my Slot A mobos died to a shorted CPU
- finally got the MSI MS-6167 running
- may swap the HSF from the shorted CPU (700MHz Thunderbird) on the 700MHz Pluto.

Ouch, thats gotta hurt losing a Slot A Athlon and board.

Technically just the board. The CPU seems to have been DoA, at least upon verifying the backside of the CPU core after the damage was done - a short so massive it acted as a short SO HUGE on the MB VRM it even made it shoot some solder balls, god knows only how.

PcBytes wrote on 2025-06-14, 17:51:

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-14, 17:38:

PcBytes wrote on 2025-06-14, 17:36:

Unfortunately not much. I got some kind of awful flu that's constantly keeping me sick, in the sense that I have nausea at all t […]
Show full quote

Unfortunately not much. I got some kind of awful flu that's constantly keeping me sick, in the sense that I have nausea at all times.

However:
- one of my Slot A mobos died to a shorted CPU
- finally got the MSI MS-6167 running
- may swap the HSF from the shorted CPU (700MHz Thunderbird) on the 700MHz Pluto.

Ouch, thats gotta hurt losing a Slot A Athlon and board.

Technically just the board. The CPU seems to have been DoA, at least upon verifying the backside of the CPU core after the damage was done - a short so massive it acted as a short SO HUGE on the MB VRM it even made it shoot some solder balls, god knows only how.

How many AMPS do you want .. ALL OF THEM !

Spent two days unsuccesfully trying to troubleshoot a nonworking Panasonic 475-3 5.25" drive. The thing gets power but its head never initializes/moves and it always gives Floppy drive errors at POST 🙁

appiah4 wrote on 2025-06-15, 12:26:

Spent two days unsuccesfully trying to troubleshoot a nonworking Panasonic 475-3 5.25" drive. The thing gets power but its head never initializes/moves and it always gives Floppy drive errors at POST 🙁

Could it be a dead component?
Post pics, you never know 😀

Trashbytes wrote on 2025-06-14, 13:38:

Spent the day doing more testing of my GPUs in storage and now I have two dead Voodoo3 PCI cards, both just black screen and cau […]
Show full quote

Spent the day doing more testing of my GPUs in storage and now I have two dead Voodoo3 PCI cards, both just black screen and cause the PC to beep. So either its dead bios or possibly the voltage regulators, not sure how to test and replace them but it cant be ay harder than recapping an entire motherboard.

So ill set them both aside till I have time to operate on them ... or I find someone who knows what they are doing and get their advice.

Kicking myself too since both are high end V3 cards, one is a 3000 the other is a Compaq OEM 3500 with a normal VGA port so its worth repairing.

Also tested my Voodoo5 and it works ok but needs new fans as the OG ones have finally bit the dust, anyone have suggestions for good replacements that don't require weird attachment solutions 😁

So . .I decided to throw both of these onto a system that had a older Athlon XP compliant PSU . .57 Amps on the 5v rail and 37 on the 3.3 and the EvilKing Voodoo3 PCI card fired right up and ran happily ..Im like WTF .. why, it point blank refused to run in three other boards with two different PSUs.

So it seems that at least one of the two Voodo3 cards works ok it just needs a decent PSU, the Compaq V3 however is dead .. doesn't even get recognized by the BIOS or Windows as even being inserted in the board. Checked with a few tools that can read the PCI bus and the card is not there at all, the card itself does get warm, so that's something I guess, ill poke the voltage regulator on it to see if its working ok but right now its DOA .. turns out its not a 3500 as I was lead to believe but a 2000 so I'm not going to sweat over it if its not repairable.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-15, 12:54:

appiah4 wrote on 2025-06-15, 12:26:

Spent two days unsuccesfully trying to troubleshoot a nonworking Panasonic 475-3 5.25" drive. The thing gets power but its head never initializes/moves and it always gives Floppy drive errors at POST 🙁

Could it be a dead component?
Post pics, you never know 😀

Good idea, will do.

I spent 30 minutes wondering why my previously working Terratec Maestro 32/96 sound card was no longer working and causing the system to lock up.

Then I realized I was trying to enable it with Turtle Beach Tropez drivers instead of the Terratec Maestro drivers.

Note to self: Use the correct manufacturer drivers with the correct sound cards.

Today I took pics of this keypad for Apple II.
No idea on how to test it without an Apple II.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-17, 14:16:

Today I took pics of this keypad for Apple II.
No idea on how to test it without an Apple II.

Hey, a cool gadget!
I have an Ultrabay Numpad for old Thinkpads:

But it's a USB device, and I didn't find a way to have its Numlock independent from the built-in keyboard Numlock, which is awkward.

dr_st wrote on 2025-06-17, 16:50:

Hey, a cool gadget! I have an Ultrabay Numpad for old Thinkpads: https://u.cubeupload.com/dr_st/t/AX3x02692.jpg […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-17, 14:16:

Today I took pics of this keypad for Apple II.
No idea on how to test it without an Apple II.

Hey, a cool gadget!
I have an Ultrabay Numpad for old Thinkpads:

But it's a USB device, and I didn't find a way to have its Numlock independent from the built-in keyboard Numlock, which is awkward.

Oddities that made sense back then.
Yeah, I can picture the "why doesn't it work?" situation. For a numlock 😀

Note to self: Geforce 2 series will REFUSE to run on a MSI 6167 period.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-17, 17:30:

dr_st wrote on 2025-06-17, 16:50:

Hey, a cool gadget! I have an Ultrabay Numpad for old Thinkpads: https://u.cubeupload.com/dr_st/t/AX3x02692.jpg […]
Show full quote

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-17, 14:16:

Today I took pics of this keypad for Apple II.
No idea on how to test it without an Apple II.

Hey, a cool gadget!
I have an Ultrabay Numpad for old Thinkpads:

But it's a USB device, and I didn't find a way to have its Numlock independent from the built-in keyboard Numlock, which is awkward.

Oddities that made sense back then.
Yeah, I can picture the "why doesn't it work?" situation. For a numlock 😀

Oddities, that can still make sense, though. I've been using an external numeric keyboard occasionally, especially for PCB designing, so I can punch in coordinates with my left hand and keep the right hand on the mouse/trackball. But that, of course was with a primary keyboard, which has numpad, so I have no idea if the Num Lock could have that described irritating behaviour.

H3nrik V! wrote on 2025-06-18, 12:46:

Oddities, that can still make sense, though. I've been using an external numeric keyboard occasionally, especially for PCB designing, so I can punch in coordinates with my left hand and keep the right hand on the mouse/trackball. But that, of course was with a primary keyboard, which has numpad, so I have no idea if the Num Lock could have that described irritating behaviour.

IIRC, a lot of keyboard of that era didn't come with a numeric keypad.
An accountant, friend of my parents, had an external keypad made specifically for the job. It had 0, 00, 000 and all the symbols directly involved in that business.
Again, IIRC, in combo with Lotus 1-2-3 or such program.
Nothing special I presume.

I didn't check but USB keypads are still sold, maybe for specific games too. It has its uses.

Nexxen wrote on 2025-06-18, 13:36:

IIRC, a lot of keyboard of that era didn't come with a numeric keypad.
An accountant, friend of my parents, had an external keypad made specifically for the job. ...

I used external keypads a lot in the early days - almost never for numeric data entry, but having easy and consistent
access to "special keys" was very nice ... keypad numeric keys send different code than the over-letter numbers,
most software treated them the same, but for example in my editor I made all the special functions available
on they keypad.

I had a number of them which connected by a cable, but my fav. (and the only one I still have) is this one:

https://www.networkhardwares.com/en-ca/produc … pad-f8t068ttapl

Very handy with laptops (which almost never hae a decent keypad), and being bluetooth, no wires or dongals.

Yes, it was sold as a Mac accessory, so it's Insert key is mislabeled as search - but it works well.