Repairing a TRS-80 Model100 - an early portable computers from 1983.
I've had one of these since the 80s (one of very few computers I actually
bought new) and still use it frequently. (see it on "Daves Old Computers")
Very small - move around like a book
Instant on/off (no boot)
40x8 screen, full sized keyboard.
BASIC, decent text editor, communications and more built in.
Runs on AA batteries.

-Reportedly the last product code Bill Gates personally wrote!

I use it these days mostly to take notes while doing inventory etc.
Very easy to move around / enter data.

It gets several hours on 4 AA cells (6v), doesn't do well on NiCad or NMIH
(4.8v) - so when doing a lot of inventory it can go through a few batteries!

A while back a friend gave me one which didn't startup reliably - rough shape,
not sure why but battery clips had been removed and it's door glued shut.

I made up a 5-cell AA NMIH pack which fit nicely under the back, and would
run it for several days (and be rechargeable).. but I wasn't able to use it
much do to the startup problem (It ran fine once it came up, but you couldn't
even manually RESET it).

A bit of investigation - problem was the RESET circuit. Simple microprocessor
stuff from that era had very simple RESET - often just two components (cap
and resistor) - but this had 4 transistors, couple diodes, several caps and
many resistors, even a thermistor! - and being so early and small, no SMD and
tiny spacing of components.
(Reason for complexity is it RESETs CPU and RAM in such a way that the non-
volatile RAM couldn't be changed during power up/down)

I had to stand three of the transistors on a wire-lead stilts so that I could
take measurements while in operation in order to "figure it out".

Dave - https://dunfield.themindfactory.com

Hi Dave. Yes the 100 was a novel little.unit in it's time. 8085 based iirc.

No boot?? Come on Dave, you know better. 😀

Now was the 200 an upgrade or a whole new thing?

Until some of us got cars, or begged our p's to take us to puter shops, Radio Shack was the only means to learn about this stuff. They were everywhere. If you were lucky enough you could walk to one.

Shponglefan wrote on 2024-08-10, 21:57:

iraito wrote on 2024-08-10, 19:22:

Well that's your opinions, i know i loved the story in arcanum, planescape, half-life, red dead redemption 1\2, silent hill, bioshock, fallout new vegas and so on and so on... there's a ton of them.
I don't like extremes, i prefer balance and i find carmack's opinion that a story in a videogame it's like a story in a porn to be extremely limited, in a medium that permits writing, we should be happy to get a good story whenever possible.
Obviously i want a story that works in a game with good gameplay but i'm not against a game with a good story because i reject everything new (yes there's a lot of shit being released nowadays in the AAA field i know), i personally love reading and i always search for good writing in any medium.

This is a probably a topic that needs its own thread. I agree with Carmack's opinion in that respect, especially since a lot of the game medium is antithetical to storytelling (including arguably the very idea of gameplay itself).

But this probably needs its own thread to fully explore.

This is certainly the type of thing we'd argue about for months in a different thread. IMO, there is no one size fits all approach for games. Some benefit from little to no story, but opposite is true for others. I've put a ton of hours in Doom and still fire it up today. However, my most memorable gaming experiences are from story heavy games (Deus Ex, Half Life, Mass Effect). It's like food. I love steak, but it's not what I eat when I want something quick and easy.

oldhighgerman wrote on 2024-08-11, 02:10:

Hi Dave. Yes the 100 was a novel little.unit in it's time. 8085 based iirc. […]
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Hi Dave. Yes the 100 was a novel little.unit in it's time. 8085 based iirc.

No boot?? Come on Dave, you know better. 😀

Now was the 200 an upgrade or a whole new thing?

Until some of us got cars, or begged our p's to take us to puter shops, Radio Shack was the only means to learn about this stuff. They were everywhere. If you were lucky enough you could walk to one.

Really no boot - the Model100 ran from ROM and it's storage was battery backed up CMOS ram.
Yes, on RESET the ROM restarts - so you do end up at the main menu, but there is no "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps"
as everything is still sitting in memory, all it has to do is JMP to it.

Even things like BASIC keeps track of if a program has been entered and where you are - so if you partially
type in a BASIC program, then accidentally power-off - powere-on you will be at the main menu,
but if you choose "BASIC" - your partially entered program will still be there! even though you
never "saved" it to a file!

The 200 was basically an enhanced 100 with bigger screen and a bit nicer keyboard... but I found it to
be less useful as the 100 you could litteraly move around like a box - no need to open it etc.
I let my 200 go, but I kept the 100 (and now I have a couple more)

I also had a 102 - basically almost the same as a 100, slight ROM change (I think some sort of minor bug fix that I
never noticed) and slightly thinner - I let the 102 go as well.

And I do still use the 100s from time to time - nice to be able to enter information anywhere in
my location without having to arrange power / wait for a system to boot up.

Unlike many people today, I don't tend to save information in some proprietary softwares own unique file format...
I tend to use text - therefore I can easily use my own tools to manipulate it, and it's next to impossible for some
"software error" to lose data on me - I can always read and interpret text! (even if I have to dig it out of a deleted
file - and it's dead easy to move files to/from a PC -

Yes, it's an 8085 - in the day that was kinda important to me as due to my main system having been an 8080 based
Altair - I knew the 8085 instruction set very well and had LOTS of machine code written for it, some of which I ported
over to the model-100.

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

ssokolow wrote on 2024-08-09, 01:53:

Bruninho wrote on 2024-08-08, 23:52:

You should send these to macosicons.com!

Do they still want Yosemite-styled icons? I specifically made those for the OSX 10.13 boot option on the two Intel macs I have and I've read that style only lasted to 10.15.

My understanding is that they want any icon for macOS, no matter the style. The site has several icons way off the standard style without a problem.

dormcat wrote on 2024-08-09, 05:56:

Veeb0rg wrote on 2024-08-09, 04:03:

I used dialup to get onto the internet!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHZ7A8DFPNo

US Robotics Sportster with green background surrounding LED lights! Is it a 28.8K or 33.6K model?

Remember to contact The 8-bit Guy for tech support for your AST Computer. 😉

It's a 28.8k, felt more "correct" then the Courier I'd been using.

Nexxen wrote on 2024-08-10, 21:11:

The red heatsink alone is gonna up it up up to 1.56FPS. (mine is a joke but maybe it's true :)) Smart choice ;) […]
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dominusprog wrote on 2024-08-10, 19:46:

Recap this A-Trend S3 ViRGE and also add a red heatsink 😁.

The attachment IMG_20240810_173628.jpg is no longer available

The red heatsink alone is gonna up it up up to 1.56FPS. (mine is a joke but maybe it's true 😀)
Smart choice 😉

Looks way nicer than stock, good job!

Thanks, much appreciated. The thermal design must be in the ballpark of 40–45 °C, so a heatsink definitely helps.

dominusprog wrote on 2024-08-11, 12:04:

Thanks, much appreciated. The thermal design must be in the ballpark of 40–45 °C, so a heatsink definitely helps.

Not only that. When I was getting the PCEngines apu4c4 I use as a router, which sinks its heat into its case, their documentation for the enclosure said this:

Based on our measurements, at full load the CPU runs a few degrees cooler in the black (case1d2blku) or red (case1d2redu) enclosures, compared to the plain anodized enclosure (case1d2u). There is a reason why heat sinks are usually black - better emissivity.

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-11, 03:40:

Really no boot - the Model100 ran from ROM and it's storage was battery backed up CMOS ram.
Yes, on RESET the ROM restarts - so you do end up at the main menu, but there is no "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps"
as everything is still sitting in memory, all it has to do is JMP to it.

Ok In strictest terms I suppose. I guess we've just gotten sloppy with our usage of bootstrapping over the decades. As "boots into BASIC" and the like.

The 100 did have a floppy drive though, or you could add one. I want to say no additional OS was offered. It was just to store stuff.

oldhighgerman wrote on 2024-08-11, 13:37:

DaveDDS wrote on 2024-08-11, 03:40:

Really no boot - the Model100 ran from ROM and it's storage was battery backed up CMOS ram.
Yes, on RESET the ROM restarts - so you do end up at the main menu, but there is no "pulling yourself up by your bootstraps"
as everything is still sitting in memory, all it has to do is JMP to it.

Ok In strictest terms I suppose. I guess we've just gotten sloppy with our usage of bootstrapping over the decades. As "boots into BASIC" and the like.

The 100 did have a floppy drive though, or you could add one. I want to say no additional OS was offered. It was just to store stuff.

Perhaps a better way of saying "no boot" would have been "no waiting for boot" - it really is instant-on.

It did have the "Personal Disk Drive" (and yes, I still have two) - a 3.5" DD
(not HD) drive that connected via the RS232 port.

There were no OS additions, but you could get the drive to send you a BASIC
program which installed "File Manager" as an executable program. (Obviously
the drive understands Motorola 'S' download records, because "first steps" is
to enter a 3 line BASIC program which sends such a record to the drive, which
then sends back a program to stuff the file manager into a file at the top of
memory (I assume so it could run at a known address).

The file "FLOPPY.CO" then appears on the main menu, and if you launch it, it
offers functions to read/write files, formats disks etc. - there is no "on the
fly" access to floppy files - it just provides a faster and easier way to save
file in the non-volatile RAM to diskette. To use them again, you would have to
load them back into "real files".

Dave ::: https://dunfield.themindfactory.com ::: "Daves Old Computers"->Personal

I wanted to take a p4 3ghz cpu out of a pc that i got for next to nothing together with some other stuff. Seemed to have been some kind of homeserver or whatever. It's been in the attic for a few months and just now though i'd get the cpu out to put in an ABIT IS7 i bought some time ago.

Well it almost needed digging out ... then i noticed the vent hole was plugged and wondered what i could do to get the thermal paste out without poking in it and getting it to where i can't reach. Enter the Solder sucker with flexible tip. Worked like a charm.

iraito wrote on 2024-08-10, 17:57:

In many cases for consoles i simply care about experiencing a unique story, there's a lot of well written games on consoles just like there a re a lot on PC, the more the merrier.

Yeah, I bought Lost Oddyssey not because it's a Xbox 360 exclusive, not because it's a traditionnal JRPG, but because of the story and who wrote it.

And I was not disappointed. This was the true Final Fantasy XIII.

ssokolow wrote on 2024-08-10, 22:55:

What makes a "good" game also heavily depends on the genre.

I generally don't like visual novels (I find them to be not-enough-of-a-game crossed with an artificially slow-to-read book) but I've been a big fan of point-and-click adventure games over the years and those are also a case of something that lives or dies on its narrative. (Give Monkey Island 3 a try if you want the best possible introduction to the genre.)

[...]

Even if you don't like visual novels, you've got to try Snatcher on the Sega CD. 😀

The Sega CD version of Snatcher is a must-play, if you can experience it at all. I LOVED that title and rented it multiple times from the nearby video store, so I could beat it. The only real thing the Sega CD had going for it was the audio side of multi-media gaming and it was very much a game-changer for immersion.

Game testing, lots and lots of game testing on my DOS 6.22 machine.

Had some issues with with games crashing, not launching, or having no sound, but I think I've got a vast majority of that sorted out. So I'm going through and removing the few games left, that no matter what I do, just don't want to work properly, and installing more that I want and testing them out. My trusty old GoTek is really getting a workout.

I did just realize today that I don't have a proper 2 drive FDD cable on hand, just the single drive cable I'm using on the GoTek. I could have sworn I had one, but I went to swap out the cables today and realized I was mistaken when I dug through my box of ribbon cables and them all to be IDE. Guess I'll need to get one off Amazon if I want to run both my GoTek and standard floppy drive at the same time. Kinda sucks I have to drop $10 or more on one, but, it is what it is I guess.

I'm testing out my old games, which I hadn't played in ages due to the wonkiness of using a modern system with a modern GPU. I recently bought a 165hz gaming monitor - to break free of 60hz - and after hooking it up, pretty much all of the older games from the late 90's and early 2000's seem to be working fine. I don't know if it's because of the monitor or various system software updates over the years, but it's a true joy to be able to play some of these old games again.

Yesterday I tried to repair a 64 MB RAM module (PC100???), initially I thought I had only one problem, an SMD capacitor was soldered male, rotated 90 degrees, a fairly easy job for those familiar with soldering , unfortunately when removing it, it fell off the counter, and I couldn't find it.
If it was a particular component, I would have had trouble finding one, but I think it's not particularly difficult to find it in a scrap MB.
The second problem I identified yesterday is the lack of the SPD chip, which has four contacts per side, and was located at the top right.
I have no idea if this SPD is indispensable, i.e. if the RAM can work without it, it was suggested to me to recover one from an unrecoverable module (perhaps similar), but not knowing what chip it was, not so if there may be differences.
Any suggestions in this regard are welcome, also because I do this repair, as a hobby and for a change, since it usually protects MB, this RAM could be useful in the old S.7 PC.

I'm finishing up the last 2 pieces for my P2/awe64/voodoo2/matrox g200 PC case.
This is the one I spent more time working on and the last 2 pieces are finally painted decently.

Still drying but it was totally worth it.

Dumpster dived and found a legendary XP copy.

Why is it legendary you may ask? FCKGW should tell ya enough 😁

PcBytes wrote on 2024-08-13, 14:57:

Dumpster dived and found a legendary XP copy.

Why is it legendary you may ask? FCKGW should tell ya enough 😁

Published by Verbatim, I assume 😀

If you mean the disc brand, nope. It had a weird Raxon brand on it.