Ideally, don't use a type of brake cleaner which contains tetrachloroethylene. It may vary by country, but some say the CRC red cans have it, while others may not.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-26, 04:50:

Ideally, don't use a type of brake cleaner which contains tetrachloroethylene. It may vary by country, but some say the CRC red cans have it, while others may not.

So what?

I use various crc products ALL the time. A number of crc product have red cans so what one specifically are you actually referring too....?

I thought geeks were ment to be intelligent folk? Maybe, but those that have post complete rubbish regarding cleaning computer boards are not smart or have any common sense or interpersonal communication skills.

You will need to do your own research to determine which particular brake cleaner products contain tetrachloroethylene, if you consider it's dangers worthy of avoidance.

People who value good health (of themselves, their families, and the environment) will tend to avoid the indiscriminate long term usage of tetrachloroethylene products, based upon scientific consensus, such as that I posted directly above in links.

I hope you haven't been unknowingly using tetrachloroethylene products all this time, Mark P. But it sounds as though I'm unlikely to convince you about anything at this stage, so my warnings about the substance are primarily for the community's sake.

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-26, 06:48:

You will need to do your own research to determine which particular brake cleaner products contain tetrachloroethylene, if you consider it's dangers worthy of avoidance.

People who value good health (of themselves, their families, and the environment) will tend to avoid the indiscriminate long term usage of tetrachloroethylene products, based upon scientific consensus, such as that I posted directly above in links.

I hope you haven't been unknowingly using tetrachloroethylene products all this time, Mark P. But it sounds as though I'm unlikely to convince you about anything at this stage, so my warnings about the substance are primarily for the community's sake.

You really really are on a different planet dude. Go hug a tree.

Most members here can make up there own own minds what to use to clean their computer related boards.

Yes, my belief in not routinely spraying my computer boards with carcinogenic brake cleaner sure does make me a "extreme greeny tree hugger". 🤣 🤣

Back on topic you lot..

Got myself a gas less mig welder and am repairing/adapting an early '70 Honda 500/4 to fit on my new project motorbike, a 1983 GS550M Katana. A fairly easy job really. It uses that terrible stuff called petrol for it's 4 stroke engine to propel it forward. Neat ah?

You can drink it and sniff it but it wont do your health any good and most likely will die eventually. It's toxic, combustible and very very easy to set alight. Yes I live dangerously.\

Trees can kill you if you hit one at speed. I suggest cutting down all the trees to prevent this from happening to you or the ones you love.

This is a community safety notice bought to you by the letters D,U and M and the number 1.
This post was proudly sponsored my garden gnomes.

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

goal's to eventually get the garage holding most of the machines and larger items like power supplies, while the loose cards/laptop stuff are at my apartment. the garage currently holds about 40% of what I own by volume.

probably 2/3 of this is stuff accumulated from e-waste.

Did some testing on the Kalok KL-330 hard drive. No bad sectors, no defects, and it has a pretty damn great interleave at 1:1, which means it takes 1 cycle to read 1 track. Plus, its track-to-track time is 9.13ms, which is pretty damn fast for an RLL drive.

I parked the drive and it'll go to a new home once I get materials to protect the drive, the controller card, and the cables.

libby wrote on 2022-11-26, 08:29:

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

That looks like heaven to me 😀 Very nice collection you have there. Will keep you busy tinkering with old systems for quite some time.

libby wrote on 2022-11-26, 08:29:

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

goal's to eventually get the garage holding most of the machines and larger items like power supplies, while the loose cards/laptop stuff are at my apartment. the garage currently holds about 40% of what I own by volume.

probably 2/3 of this is stuff accumulated from e-waste.

That would be fun to explore but not necessarily to own. This is like peer support in a way because my "collection" no more looks as bad as yesterday.

I've been working in totally different scale. Now planning to buy a real microscope.

Built a Socket 7 Pentium VRM today. It uses some prototype board, a 15+15 RA connector and a Chinese special '20A' Buck Converter. I think 20A is wildly optimistic, but it should be find for what the motherboard (GA-586ATM/P 66Mhz FSB) can handle. Had to go with a 12V input as the chip/circuit they used on the buck converter gets a little weird if the Input/Output differential is too small.

Early testing is good, computer boots and is stable. Longer testing is required though to see how it performs with other CPUs. End goal I suppose is to get a K6-2 running in this board, 2.0/6.0 multi at 66 FSB.

If nothing else it keeps me busy 😁

GigAHerZ wrote on 2022-04-23, 14:45:

Got this!

External SCSI SyQuest 230MB 3.5" drive. Full set, will archive the floppies unless they are already archived.

For whatever reason, it also seems to include coincidentally 230MB MO disk. I have an internal 650MB MO drive - i wonder, if it would work with that?

At last i got to it to check if it actually works as i had the bench computer with SCSI controller up and running... and it does!
My first experience with "removable hdd platter storage medium"! 😁 It even sounds like an HDD!

I have one disk and it seems to be okay.

Turbo -> wrote on 2022-11-26, 11:59:

libby wrote on 2022-11-26, 08:29:

been working at slowly moving a portion of my inventory/collection/hoard/whatever one wants to call it, to the storage garage this past week

That looks like heaven to me 😀 Very nice collection you have there. Will keep you busy tinkering with old systems for quite some time.

haha yeah I have enough stuff to last about three or more years full time at this point, but it's grown to a degree where it's entering "hoarders" TV show range, so I am more cautious about buying large lots of stuff now.

Upgraded my 'Ultimate' Windows XP build with this Asus P8Z68-V Pro/Gen 3 motherboard, i7-3770k CPU, and 2x2GB DDR3 RAM.

Based on the performance gains so far, I'm finally making better use of the 980 Ti I have installed in this machine. 😁

Hippo486 wrote on 2022-11-26, 15:54:

Built a Socket 7 Pentium VRM today. It uses some prototype board, a 15+15 RA connector and a Chinese special '20A' Buck Converter. I think 20A is wildly optimistic, but it should be find for what the motherboard (GA-586ATM/P 66Mhz FSB) can handle. Had to go with a 12V input as the chip/circuit they used on the buck converter gets a little weird if the Input/Output differential is too small.

Early testing is good, computer boots and is stable. Longer testing is required though to see how it performs with other CPUs. End goal I suppose is to get a K6-2 running in this board, 2.0/6.0 multi at 66 FSB.

If nothing else it keeps me busy 😁

Further testing, I've had both a K6-2 and K6-3 running in this board now, thanks to the VRM. (6 x 66Mhz / 400Mhz, using a 2x multi on the board), with the K6-3 being the better performer.

The BIOS for the board has absolutely no clue what the CPU is (to be expected) and amusingly reports the CPU to be a 486DX2-66 😁 so the K6 Dos tools/drivers may help me eek a little more performance still.

Quite pleased considering I started with a Pentium 100 on this board, then a Pentium MMX overdrive @ 200Mhz and now with the new VRM a K6-3 @ 400Mhz.

Hippo486 wrote on 2022-11-26, 20:16:

Further testing, I've had both a K6-2 and K6-3 running in this board now, thanks to the VRM. (6 x 66Mhz / 400Mhz, using a 2x mul […]
Show full quote

Hippo486 wrote on 2022-11-26, 15:54:

Built a Socket 7 Pentium VRM today. It uses some prototype board, a 15+15 RA connector and a Chinese special '20A' Buck Converter. I think 20A is wildly optimistic, but it should be find for what the motherboard (GA-586ATM/P 66Mhz FSB) can handle. Had to go with a 12V input as the chip/circuit they used on the buck converter gets a little weird if the Input/Output differential is too small.

Early testing is good, computer boots and is stable. Longer testing is required though to see how it performs with other CPUs. End goal I suppose is to get a K6-2 running in this board, 2.0/6.0 multi at 66 FSB.

If nothing else it keeps me busy 😁

Further testing, I've had both a K6-2 and K6-3 running in this board now, thanks to the VRM. (6 x 66Mhz / 400Mhz, using a 2x multi on the board), with the K6-3 being the better performer.

The BIOS for the board has absolutely no clue what the CPU is (to be expected) and amusingly reports the CPU to be a 486DX2-66 😁 so the K6 Dos tools/drivers may help me eek a little more performance still.

Quite pleased considering I started with a Pentium 100 on this board, then a Pentium MMX overdrive @ 200Mhz and now with the new VRM a K6-3 @ 400Mhz.

Good stuff!

I was looking through a lot of more modern machines I picked up for free from an institution. Mostly low end core 2 duo and AM2 machines - good source of disk drives and DDR2, the latter of which I oddly have very little of - and decided (out of boredom) to try and install windows 98 on one of them.

I picked out a Core 2 Duo e4400 with 2GB of DDR2 and a Gigabyte i945 mainboard. I took off half of the ram, put a PCI-E Geforce 6600GT in it and to my surprise, windows 98 SE installed and ran perfectly! I even managed to partition the SATA 160gb disk drive using win98's fdisk, despite it incorrectly reporting total disk size as 20gb instead of 160gb, by using the percentage trick. I wanted an 8gb partition for win98 and typed down 5% - and voila! Oh and I installed PATCHMEM at first boot to avoid the "out of memory" error.

I did encounter an issue when installing the graphics card... I managed to install intel's chipset drivers and dx8 just fine, and when I got to the graphics driver (66.93 - earliest driver that supports the 6600gt) it somehow installed the 6600 along side the "standard graphics adapter" that installed with the OS, as such the 6600 driver was allocated no resources and showed up with an exclamation mark in device manager. I had to manually remove both drivers and restart the PC. After doing that, it detected the monitor but was still in 16 color mode. I switched to 16 bit 800x600, restarted and it everything worked as it should. The video card is even detected as PCI-E 16x in the nvidia control panel.

These kinds of builds are great for someone just getting into the hobby. A cheap or freebee PC like this, paired with a supported PCI sound card (in my case a Yamaha DS-XG) an a PCI-E card with windows 98 driers (Radeon x300/x600/x700/x800 and nvidia 6200/6600/6800) makes for an easy way of playing retro games on real hardware. It can of course even dual-boot windows XP.

Next up - clean up the garage!!!..... yeah...

MarkP wrote on 2022-11-26, 07:11:

Shreddoc wrote on 2022-11-26, 06:48:

You will need to do your own research to determine which particular brake cleaner products contain tetrachloroethylene, if you consider it's dangers worthy of avoidance.

People who value good health (of themselves, their families, and the environment) will tend to avoid the indiscriminate long term usage of tetrachloroethylene products, based upon scientific consensus, such as that I posted directly above in links.

I hope you haven't been unknowingly using tetrachloroethylene products all this time, Mark P. But it sounds as though I'm unlikely to convince you about anything at this stage, so my warnings about the substance are primarily for the community's sake.

You really really are on a different planet dude. Go hug a tree.

Most members here can make up there own own minds what to use to clean their computer related boards.

Not everybody is an expert on everything. And open forums are not only read by its members.
So I appreciate the warning about brake cleaners.

Socket3 wrote on 2022-11-27, 10:59:

I was looking through a lot of more modern machines I picked up for free from an institution. Mostly low end core 2 duo and AM2 […]
Show full quote

I was looking through a lot of more modern machines I picked up for free from an institution. Mostly low end core 2 duo and AM2 machines - good source of disk drives and DDR2, the latter of which I oddly have very little of - and decided (out of boredom) to try and install windows 98 on one of them.

I picked out a Core 2 Duo e4400 with 2GB of DDR2 and a Gigabyte i945 mainboard. I took off half of the ram, put a PCI-E Geforce 6600GT in it and to my surprise, windows 98 SE installed and ran perfectly! I even managed to partition the SATA 160gb disk drive using win98's fdisk, despite it incorrectly reporting total disk size as 20gb instead of 160gb, by using the percentage trick. I wanted an 8gb partition for win98 and typed down 5% - and voila! Oh and I installed PATCHMEM at first boot to avoid the "out of memory" error.

2.jpeg

3.jpeg

I did encounter an issue when installing the graphics card... I managed to install intel's chipset drivers and dx8 just fine, and when I got to the graphics driver (66.93 - earliest driver that supports the 6600gt) it somehow installed the 6600 along side the "standard graphics adapter" that installed with the OS, as such the 6600 driver was allocated no resources and showed up with an exclamation mark in device manager. I had to manually remove both drivers and restart the PC. After doing that, it detected the monitor but was still in 16 color mode. I switched to 16 bit 800x600, restarted and it everything worked as it should. The video card is even detected as PCI-E 16x in the nvidia control panel.

These kinds of builds are great for someone just getting into the hobby. A cheap or freebee PC like this, paired with a supported PCI sound card (in my case a Yamaha DS-XG) an a PCI-E card with windows 98 driers (Radeon x300/x600/x700/x800 and nvidia 6200/6600/6800) makes for an easy way of playing retro games on real hardware. It can of course even dual-boot windows XP.

Next up - clean up the garage!!!..... yeah...

Should I feel proud that I own a similar Delux case? 🤣

Granted, mine surprisingly came with a K8T800 Pro based Sempron machine, of all things that it could hide in it.

Ugh, not my best day today...

Got a lot of 6 early VLB cards with obscure IIT/Xtec AGX016A chips on them. Reputedly slow XGA-clones, but actually support higher graphics modes with >1MB RAM, so interesting nonetheless - and 6 VLB cards that didn't cost me at least a single kidney isn't at all bad in any case. Assuming they work of course.

So I dusted off my VLB test bench (Cyrix 5x86-100 on a UMC-based board) and - nothing, not even with the original Cirrus Logic CL-GD5428 in it. Bugger. Test system died on me. Tested my early PCI tet bench (Cyrix 5x86-100 on a UMC PCI-based board, for nice 1:1 comparisons) which fortunately did work without issues. Swapped out PSUs and RAM: nope, both work in the PCI set, not VLB. So swapped CPU. Good news: both CPUs still fine. Bad news: must be the motherboard then.

Worse news: broke the little plastic clips holding the heatsink onto one of the 5x86s while doing that. So now have a board to fix and a new clip to source or bodge. And I still don't know if these VLB cards do anything.

Fortunately I do have alternatives, another VLB-based 486 system running my old sound cards and a Pentium VLB system, but both are built into irritting AT minitowers with cables out the back that are hard to reach. Oh, and there's my Alaris Leopard 2, which is in a NOS case (generic, not IBM) in its original packaging at the back of the cupboard waiting for suitable display options. Come to think of it, that would be the ideal pairing with an early, oddball card. It would however require the card to run happily in 16b VLB mode. Oh well, time to get digging and testing.