She's looking sexy. Not the lady on the screen. Eyes on the computer. ITT Xtra XP restore is done. This 1985 system was really in pristine condition. The innards look basically unused. Did a vinegar treatment on the underside of the motherboard to clean up residual flux which cleaned up very nicely. Replaced the original full length CGA card with a Paradise VGA. Also installed a multi I/O card for the NIB vintage joystick I have on the way. Reseated every chip on the motherboard as well. The keyboard had a full scrub down inside and out as some of you know from a previous post, but I decided against a retrobrite. All checks out ok. Never did find the driver for that ITT Xtra memory board expansion card so I removed it. It has 640K on-board and that is plenty for a dual 360K floppy system TBH. More than likely the 1MB expansion could not have been used for DOS anyways as my research has led me to articles that explains the memory expansion card was used for hard disk cache, print spooling or a RAM disk via special ITT utilities. Anyways, that vintage joystick I have on the way... I like the whole weird cowboy with the finger guns and the name... WOTTA SHOOTAH...

thats a nice keyboard!

luckybob wrote:

thats a nice keyboard!

Yeah. A super groovy guy on the western frontier found that unobtainium keyboard in his stash of hardware and sent it my way. I got real lucky!

liqmat wrote:

luckybob wrote:

thats a nice keyboard!

Yeah. A super groovy guy on the western frontier found that unobtainium keyboard in his stash of hardware and sent it my way. I got real lucky!

A tad yellowed, but it toally fits the system model-wise and the stain can be tackled at a later point in time anyways.

Neat system...

Today I will try out using a controller card (ISA) in order to circumvent proprietary HDD and FDD boot restrictions on a Toshiba T3200.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

A tad yellowed, but it toally fits the system model-wise and the stain can be tackled at a later point in time anyways.

Let me quote my own post from up above.

liqmat wrote:

The keyboard had a full scrub down inside and out as some of you know from a previous post, but I decided against a retrobrite.

The retr0bright process can weaken the plastics so there are two camps of thought and it usually is divided between collectors who like the better looks and then the preservationists who want to keep the articles in as original condition as possible. I am not a collector. I don't hoard the objects I find. I restore and donate to museums when time and money allow. Basically people who don't mind the risk for the looks and people, like me, who don't mind the yellowing and actually kind of like the look as it shows the item's journey. The yellowing can also return even after the retr0bright process has been applied. As long as it's cleaned and functioning, I'm happy with that.

vcfed.org has a good thread on the subject that shows the research on this and the two camps of thought on the process:

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?300 … ut-RetroBright-!

The yellowing can return and sometimes rapidly with very little exposure to UV light which of course means repeated retr0bright treatments on an object is going to cause a lot of damage over time.

http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2013 … y-temporary.htm

liqmat wrote:

The retr0bright process can weaken the plastics so there are two camps of thought and it usually is divided between collectors w […]
Show full quote

The retr0bright process can weaken the plastics so there are two camps of thought and it usually is divided between collectors who like the better looks and then the preservationists who want to keep the articles in as original condition as possible. I am not a collector. I don't hoard the objects I find. I restore and donate to museums when time and money allow. Basically people who don't mind the risk for the looks and people, like me, who don't mind the yellowing and actually kind of like the look as it shows the item's journey. The yellowing can also return even after the retr0bright process has been applied. As long as it's cleaned and functioning, I'm happy with that.

vcfed.org has a good thread on the subject that shows the research on this and the two camps of thought on the process:

http://www.vcfed.org/forum/showthread.php?300 … ut-RetroBright-!

The yellowing can return and sometimes rapidly with very little exposure to UV light which of course means repeated retr0bright treatments on an object is going to cause a lot of damage over time.

http://www.classic-computers.org.nz/blog/2013 … y-temporary.htm

I actually wholeheartedly agree. I left all my yellowed computers untouched so far, and not aiming to do any briting on them. Actually I only have "retrobrit" (correct past-tense?) in one occasion so far: A Generalmusic WX2 Keyboard Workstation that was in very very sad condition as it came out of a music school where a fire has happened. Now it didn't burn, or melt or anything, but the innards were full of smoke residue and the keys have severely yellowed due to heat. And with severely yellowed I mean they were basically brown. Legitimately brown. There is nobody in the world who would have interpreted that as some for of dark yellow. Just...brown.

That is the only time I retrobrit anything as it usually doesnt bother me if beige/grey plastics yellow over the years. It's a sign of age that most hardware has earned.

jaZz_KCS wrote:

I actually wholeheartedly agree. I left all my yellowed computers untouched so far, and not aiming to do any briting on them. Actually I only have "retrobrit" (correct past-tense?) in one occasion so far: A Generalmusic WX2 Keyboard Workstation that was in very very sad condition as it came out of a music school where a fire has happened. Now it didn't burn, or melt or anything, but the innards were full of smoke residue and the keys have severely yellowed due to heat. And with severely yellowed I mean they were basically brown. Legitimately brown. There is nobody in the world who would have interpreted that as some for of dark yellow. Just...brown.

That is the only time I retrobrit anything as it usually doesnt bother me if beige/grey plastics yellow over the years. It's a sign of age that most hardware has earned.

I've seen retrobrite, RetroBrite, retr0bright, etc. 🤣 Whatever works and conveys the idea.

My biggest challenge is to remember when I am soaking objects in the bathroom sink in sudsy water is to block the overflow drain. I have had to take sinks apart to recover keys and buttons because they got sucked into that damn overflow drain. 🤣 I move around a lot so carrying a large plastic tub is not an option all the time.

Like I said, that keyboard is so hard to find in the wild and the fact I received the exact model keyboard that shipped with that system, by chance, makes me a very happy camper.

Tough to photograph on the fly, but recapped this bad boy a couple of weeks ago.

Bought 2 ATX 24-pin (no -5v) to ATX 20-pin (w/ -5v and toggle switch <-- optional) adapters on eBay, got them today, and I installed one in my Socket 370 system for the Media Vision Pro Audio Studio 16 card that requires the -5v for the card to work correctly.

Note: you probably cannot see the image if you're using an old computer that has the old version of FireFox since Imgur requires a security protocol that the older version of FireFox cannot see (version 2.0.0.20 to be precise).

Did that resolve your issues with the PAS16?

Definitely. Sounds better and everything now works. Now my system just locks up and I figured the standby timer was active (dummy me), but all is well. When I close out Hot Pursuit 2, it locks the system up (did this with the PSU by itself without the adapter in place).

Booted up my new/old Slot 1 Pentium 3 PC with its new motherboard. Surprisingly enough, Windows Me soldiered on like a champ after changing three motherboards and two videocards (from two different vendors I might add). I am really astonished. I uninstalled the 3dfx drivers and installed nVidia Detonators, launched Quake 3 and had great fun with 32-bit textures and Trilinear filtering.

I also managed to lock myself out of the house yesterday, and in searching for the spare keys in the car's glove compartment I found this unlocked Pentium MMX 166 that can doo 200 and 233, that had been missing for a year now. In the meantime I bought another P166 MMX and a P233 MMX, but it's a great chip to have in my collection so into the CPU box it went.

As a sidenote, how do you guys store CPUs? Socket 7 and Socket 370 are my main issues here. I don't have enough boards to keep all my CPUs on speerate CPUs, and I can't for the life of me find CPU trays for Socket 7 and Socket 370..

@appiah4 - you found the lost cpu in your glove compartment? Of all the places... 😀

As for how I store my cpus, I don't have a lot, maybe 10-15 at the most. I try to keep each on a piece of foam to protect the pins/contacts. Then they usually are placed loose on a shelf just for them. Sometimes if I have multiples of the same, I'll slip them into a ziploc bag. Not ideal, but it's worked for me so far.

appiah4 wrote:

<snip>

As a sidenote, how do you guys store CPUs? Socket 7 and Socket 370 are my main issues here. I don't have enough boards to keep all my CPUs on speerate CPUs, and I can't for the life of me find CPU trays for Socket 7 and Socket 370..

I bought a few of these on eBay. There are variations for pretty much all CPU sizes. These are for Socket 7 / Socket 370. Seller was from The Netherlands, so shipping was okay. You can also mut 486 CPU's in there, but they slide around a bit, and I have one variation of the S7/370 tray that won't allow for 486 cpu's.

The rest goes in a cardboard box, motherboard size with ESD foam.

EDIT: there is a Russian seller with 3D-printed trays for pretty much all sockets. A bit expensive though...

jaZz_KCS wrote:

Today I will try out using a controller card (ISA) in order to circumvent proprietary HDD and FDD boot restrictions on a Toshiba T3200.

You don't give up, eh? 😎 Cool, share your findings once you're done.

As for me, I have played a little bit with my Toshiba T3200sx with Compact Flash card and tested solution in Toshiba T3100e. Glad to see it works as a charm. I also tested CGA monitor that I managed to grab a couple months back.

Now that the ITT Xtra XP is done and ready to ship I am starting on my last restoration which will be a Kaypro 4/83 CP/M system. Testing the system's two drives and a new old stock spare on my Socket 370 system. All checked out ok once the heads were cleaned. If you have heard the clanking of an Apple IIe drive when it is in use you will be right at home with one of these 360K Kaypro Tandon drives. If you look closely you will see the blue terminator chip on the drive that's hooked up to the Socket 370 system. This will be my last restoration for the foreseeable future as I have higher priority obligations in 2018, but it has been a blast restoring these machines for the last few months. I find it very therapeutic and stressful simultaneously which can drive a man mad I tell you!

Played two hours Need for Speed II SE on my P1-MMX 200 MHz with Voodoo1. This game aged really well; it's just as much fun as it was 20 years ago. 😀

My least favorite part of restoration. The keyboard. So time consuming. Luckily no yellowing since Kaypro keyboards have an all metal case and the keys are black. Soaking the keys in some soapy water for an hour while I clean in between the switches.

Ozzuneoj wrote:

Ohgg... this is sad. […]
Show full quote

Ohgg... this is sad.

I've had three amazing lots of stuff come to me this week, and one of them had a bunch of old boards and CPUs. Among them was this really interesting Evergreen AMD 486 DX4-120 CPU upgrade. These seem fairly uncommon. The heatsink is easily the most interesting design I've ever seen. The center of it is actually threaded and screws into the part that slides over the CPU. This way, you tighten it against the CPU by turning it. Really cool.

Sadly... it had several bent pins and apparently Evergreen used some garbage metal for the pins. I can't even remember the last time I broke a CPU pin, and I've straightened many... but with this chip they snap off almost immediately when I try to straighten them. Its rare enough that I'd attempt to fix it if its remotely possible (I have good soldering tools) but I'm not sure how that'd go. Either way, its really sad... its likely that every pin that is bent will break when straightened.

Anyone have any tips? I don't even want to touch it again without a plan for how to fix the broken pins.

Well.... Yet even the dx4-120 is a really uncommen CPU, even for members of Vogons.
I just do not see that many of those here. And never seen one on eBay at all.
The type of CPU cooler is kind of rare as well. I had one beween 1995 and 01.
That was the last time that I saw one of them as well.

Sourced some NOS Serial Mice, so bought 4, installed one on the Am486DX-100 today running Windows 95OSR2.1, also installed Seamonkey, then found BOINC 5.4.0 requires IE5, so am about to install that, damnit I might as well have installed OSR2.5