zuldan wrote on 2024-05-31, 05:09:

ubiq wrote on 2024-05-30, 18:20:

I desoldered the mosfet, and jammed the necroware VRM output voltage down a couple specific jumper headers.

It works! 👍

Very impressive. Well done!

Thanks! It's my first time attempting any sort of hardware hackery that wasn't just 100% copying what someone had done in the past. Huge confidence builder. 💪

Very happy with this mod so far. Nothing is overclocked or over voltage. I really liked this system as a 233MMX, but I already have a great Socket 7 system and was looking at moving this one up to SS7 board. Not having one of those, this seems to be a good alternative. Also, love using a really early 430TX ATX board.

BigDave wrote on 2024-05-30, 09:08:

It's 1998, and just finished setting up my new Packard Bell Club 40 from Dixons, and exploring all the delights of the pre-insta […]
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It's 1998, and just finished setting up my new Packard Bell Club 40 from Dixons, and exploring all the delights of the pre-installed 'Club College' software pack, before setting up a NetP@ss account for free 56k dial up internet access.IMG_20240530_092440~2.jpg

OK, well it's all part of the Packard Bell experience I never had, and now in my 50s, and after 15 months trying to restore to as near complete and original, I finally get to enjoy it, thanks to a lot of help from you guys!

I posted everything in the Post Your Packard Bell Computers Here! thread.
Re: Post your Packard Bell computers here!

That looks fantastic 😀 What do the IR receiver on the top of the monitor and the case do? Is it for cd player controls or something more advanced?

Today I got my AST Bravo NB laptops out of the storage unit - one of them is getting prepped / repaired before I put it up for sale, but the other is the one I'm keeping because it's more broken. To start with if you'd like to see some of the history of my Bravo NB laptops:

Thermalwrong wrote on 2023-06-18, 13:23:

Another one from me sorry, but I think this is worth sharing. I have 2x AST Bravo NB laptops - a mono one and a colour DSTN one. […]
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Another one from me sorry, but I think this is worth sharing. I have 2x AST Bravo NB laptops - a mono one and a colour DSTN one. The AST Bravo NB is rare to see these days, afaik it's a Quanta laptop rebranded and you can find a Dell version of it too. This one's not mine but it looks the same: https://wiki.preterhuman.net/AST_Bravo_NB_4/25s
The DSTN one is nearly perfect now but it couldn't detect a PS/2 mouse at all for some reason. The built-in trackball is quite awful to use so it's not been much fun to actually use.
Yeah I could use a serial mouse, but PS/2 mice require less steps and I can use an optical mouse easily. I found that the outer pins on the PS/2 socket (5v and GND) were showing ~0.1v instead of 5v between the two pins.

Taking it apart, my first task was to rebuild a load of broken plastic that held the left hinge in place. Initially I tried gluing the bits plastic from that screwhole back together but then they broke in a new way. So I used a steel washer to make the screwhole's 'base' and crafted some black mouldable plastic that melts in hot water to rebuild it:
AST-Bravo-NB-fix (2).JPG
It's stronger now at least, the hinges feel a little less floppy.

Going deeper in, this connector with 6 pins runs the keyboard and mouse PS/2 ports - why is the black wire 5v and the red wire Ground?? Lots of bodge wires too
AST-Bravo-NB-fix (3).JPG

Took the motherboard out and followed the circuit around - the 5v trace goes into L37 which goes to 5v. Which no longer has any connectivity, it was that little blue block down by the PS/2 ports.
AST-Bravo-NB-fix (1).JPG
That's an inductor which is apparently rated for like 250ma so I can see why it broke running an external mouse / keyboard. I have some 500ma polyfuses left over from my HardMPU builds so the 5v can run across that instead - maybe that inductor was the fuse? Don't think polyfuses existed back in 1993, but it has a fuse now.
Put it all back together and now it detects my optical mouse, much nicer to use.

To start with, the colour one with the nice screen now *reeks* of fish when I power it on for a little while - I was hoping it was fixed for good after my last repair but it looks like the 2x 25v 220uF capacitors have leaked and started corroding things:

See that black goop? That's apparently electrolyte which was seeping everywhere:

Swapped out those caps and it's better but still stinks of fish, it needs a bath in the ultrasonic cleaner really. Why didn't I replace the purple capacitors? Those are OS-CON polymer capacitors, they're sealed with epoxy and I've never seen one leak. The remaining black capacitor in the upper left is a 50v 68uF capacitor that tested okay but I didn't have a spare to replace it with 🙁

Now my Mono laptop, that's had the polariser break down on its 9.4" LM64P83 LCD panel and I tried replacing the front & rear polariser to no avail, in fact I made things worse because it's got that LCD rot like you can see here: Re: Orange spider web on the screen , Help :(
Which I think happened because of pressure I applied trying to get the rear polariser off. 9.4" mono LCDs are hellishly expensive and I've given up trying to get the original working, then I found 10.4" mono LCDs, the LM64P89 are pretty cheap!
Does it fit? No! The hinges are too big so I had to cut the top of the LCD housing to fit:

And here are the casualties in making the new LCD fit - all the original standoffs and some plastic reinforcement bits in the LCD, not like this thing is very portable or robust now anyway:

But it looks lovely! So great to have this mono laptop back up and running even though there's a fair bit more work to do yet to make some kind of bezel and cover up the sticky out LCD:

Today, I decided I haven't had enough punishment from the PC Chips board I haven't solved yet and got two others from a local recycler that were posted as taken from working units. A 286 board:
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/trang- … -headland-ht12a

.. and another 486 board (lower end than the PCChips board however):
https://theretroweb.com/motherboards/s/kla-tencor-kt3052

Lesser known brands but if I can get them working, swell. And thats a BIG if, because they're both acting the same as the PCChips board: the diag board shows no diagnostic codes. I tried pushing down all the chips on each board, no dice. I tested the diag board on a working system - a P55 Pentium board - and it shows all the boot codes as it boots up, like you'd expect.

I could make a case for the two 486 boards that the CPU is the problem but wouldn't I at least get some codes even if it was bad? And that doesn't cover the 286 board not working...

Could these mobo's be too OLD for this ISA/PCI diag board? I am using the same power supply on all of them but that PS powers a P55 SBC on a passive backplane (and its ISA soundcard and ISA video card) just fine with only P9 plugged into the SBC. Could ALL of them have a bad bios chip? with each having the same problem I can't help but think I'm doing something wrong but damned if I can figure out what it could be.

NHVintage wrote on 2024-06-01, 00:48:

Could these mobo's be too OLD for this ISA/PCI diag board?

It's very possible. I did some googling and found this:

During the POST on AT-compatibles and above, special signals are output to I/O port 80H at the beginning of each test (genuine PCs and XTs don't issue POST codes, although some machines with compatible BIOSes do). Some computers may use a different port, such as 84 for the Compaq, or 378 (LPT1) for Olivettis. IBM PS/2s use 90, whilst some EISA machines send them to 300H as well. Those at 50h are chipset or custom platform specific.

-- https://mrbios.com/techsupport/award/postcodes.htm

I searched further and found some more thorough tables at https://www.minuszerodegrees.net/misc/post_cards.htm

So this is what's on the 286 board...

It took a bit to spot that this is AMI Bios. The 486 I picked up today is AMI as well.. Not sure what that means, I'm not sure about the port information either, as I don't see anything labelled to that effect. But as it's a mainstream BIOS, and we're on an ISA bus, I would expect that the post codes would go to the standard 80h. Certainly by the time the 486 rolled around most boards were sending to port 80.

Reordering some cards, which I had between my paws, and I had to put away, there is an ISA VGA from Cirrus Logic, and two ISA sound cards, one SB and the other one compatible (?), the latter of triangular shape, I revived the contacts, cleaning them to the best, the result is great except for two pins of the SB that have oxide, I sanded them slightly, the result should have improved the contact surface.

In the other compatible SB (the trapezoidal one), I had to remove the warranty label, unfortunately it will not be possible to use it anymore, but if I wanted I could also leave it, but being made of paper, I thought it could get moistened and create problems.

I saw the BIOS chip of the M550, I was expecting a known, typical and quite common brand, instead it turned out to be an H.T., I hope it works, and I will try to reprogram it, hoping that everything will be right.

Not technically a retro activity, but it's a rare sunny day in the UK, so perfect for a bit of Retro-Brite. First off, is my most recent computer addition, an Amstrad PCW8256, simply because I never owned or used one, so out of curiosity. The keyboard & dot matrix printer are fine, but the unit is heavily yellowed, I don't have time to dismantle, so done my usual paint on Jerome Blonde hair cream & cling film. Messy, but had good results on a Dreamcast & my VIC20's before.

I've also done my Packard Bell monitor speakers, and whilst I'm at it, spray the grilles, and fix the broken left channel, which I hoped would be just a faulty cable. Unfortunately, it's a couple of caps and a damaged IC, so caps done, and soldered in a 16pin DIP socket in readiness for the replacement TEA2025B audio amp IC.

I don't do many assemblies, I usually do tests on various MB, but some are particularly interesting, and for this reason, I mount them in a case 🏘 (free), sometimes I change my mind and use another case 🏘, I had the bench a little too full for my taste, I removed two MB to make room for as many, one the PCChips Slot1 BXCEL chipset baby AT format, I suspended the tests, so much I achieved the purpose, which was to bring it back to life.

The other card it occupied, more space being an ATX, is the ASUS 754, with Sempron 64, model K8N-E Deluxe, a card that was initially very problematic, to the point that I had almost given up, and I already had in mind to put it in the box of malfunctioning MB, fortunately I performed several tests with different RAM, and I found the perfect combination to install Windows, lately I did not have the time ⏱ to make other benchmarks, now I put everything inside a case 🏘 CoolerMaster, the result if you want is not so bad (see photo).

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are

Joss Tech JT-586TS4
Pentium 120MHz
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434 2MiB
32MiB FPM RAM (4*8MiB)
6.4GiB Quantum Fireball
Aztech Voyager/Washington 16
3COM ETHERLINK III
OPTi PCI to USB2.0

How easy to fix lines on Tiger Game.com console in just 5 minutes:

https://youtu.be/Y-0KVXc690E

dominusprog wrote on 2024-06-02, 17:12:

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are […]
Show full quote

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are

Joss Tech JT-586TS4
Pentium 120MHz
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434 2MiB
32MiB FPM RAM (4*8MiB)
6.4GiB Quantum Fireball
Aztech Voyager/Washington 16
3COM ETHERLINK III
OPTi PCI to USB2.0

Nice, good looking system !

Started to finally assemble a dual p3 system I've been collecting parts for. Still a few things left to do but so far looking good in my opinion. I did finally figure how to turn off the RGB.

Dual Pentium III 933mhz cpu's, 1gb PC-133 ECC Reg SDram, 146gb 15k SCSI hdd, Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS and one of the two Voodoo2 cards for SLI.
Still need to address the CPU fan wires I've ordered a batch of PCB's for the SLI bridge that was designed by a fellow Vogon member.

Horun wrote on 2024-06-03, 02:58:

dominusprog wrote on 2024-06-02, 17:12:

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are […]
Show full quote

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are

Joss Tech JT-586TS4
Pentium 120MHz
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434 2MiB
32MiB FPM RAM (4*8MiB)
6.4GiB Quantum Fireball
Aztech Voyager/Washington 16
3COM ETHERLINK III
OPTi PCI to USB2.0

Nice, good looking system !

Thanks 😀

BigDave wrote on 2024-06-02, 11:52:

Not technically a retro activity, but it's a rare sunny day in the UK, so perfect for a bit of Retro-Brite. First off, is my most recent computer addition, an Amstrad PCW8256, simply because I never owned or used one, so out of curiosity. The keyboard & dot matrix printer are fine, but the unit is heavily yellowed, I don't have time to dismantle, so done my usual paint on Jerome Blonde hair cream & cling film. Messy, but had good results on a Dreamcast & my VIC20's before.

vic 20's plural? sounds good, an overlooked early home computer than one, i remember them co-existing with the c64 for a while

dominusprog wrote on 2024-06-02, 17:12:

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are […]
Show full quote

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are

Joss Tech JT-586TS4
Pentium 120MHz
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434 2MiB
32MiB FPM RAM (4*8MiB)
6.4GiB Quantum Fireball
Aztech Voyager/Washington 16
3COM ETHERLINK III
OPTi PCI to USB2.0

IMG_20240602_155402.jpg
IMG_20240602_155542.jpg

pci to usb is a good touch, makes things much easier, very nice setup

gerry wrote on 2024-06-03, 14:36:

dominusprog wrote on 2024-06-02, 17:12:

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are […]
Show full quote

Just finished this Pentium build. The specs are

Joss Tech JT-586TS4
Pentium 120MHz
Cirrus Logic CL-GD5434 2MiB
32MiB FPM RAM (4*8MiB)
6.4GiB Quantum Fireball
Aztech Voyager/Washington 16
3COM ETHERLINK III
OPTi PCI to USB2.0

IMG_20240602_155402.jpg
IMG_20240602_155542.jpg

pci to usb is a good touch, makes things much easier, very nice setup

Thanks. Yes, it works very well.

Finished building my test bench platform. Routed a slot in the top for power cables, and added some edgebanding and anti-static mats.

Relatively few chains and spikes involved for a torture chamber 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-06-04, 03:56:

Relatively few chains and spikes involved for a torture chamber 🤣

He'll put an original Celeron and a Sound Blaster Vibra in it when it's time for some torture.

Veeb0rg wrote on 2024-06-03, 04:26:

Started to finally assemble a dual p3 system I've been collecting parts for. Still a few things left to do but so far looking good in my opinion. I did finally figure how to turn off the RGB.

Dual Pentium III 933mhz cpu's, 1gb PC-133 ECC Reg SDram, 146gb 15k SCSI hdd, Soundblaster Audigy2 ZS and one of the two Voodoo2 cards for SLI.
Still need to address the CPU fan wires I've ordered a batch of PCB's for the SLI bridge that was designed by a fellow Vogon member.

Is that a ASUS CUR-DLS? Great board.