PD2JK wrote on 2024-09-05, 05:59:

I gave these speakers a Deoxit treatment, the pot meters and power switch that is.
...
So we have a 120 Watt (PMPO) speaker set, equipped with 15 W woofers + 3 W tweeters, and the amplifier is capable of giving 2.1 Watt. Per channel I hope. 🤣

I need to do the same thing to the old Harman/Kardon HK-206 speakers that are plugged into the TV in this house. I don't personally watch TV (at least nothing new), but there was a good movie on last night. For the old Badcaps members, that's the same set of speakers that I recapped back when I was in high school (because the caps were actually bad - two vented, and every single other electrolytic had capacitance out of tolerance). I'll throw a can of Faderlube (or maybe plain Deoxit since the lube might protect metal contacts in encoders like mouse scroll wheels) on my next order at a place that sells it (Parts Express or Digikey).

I've been ripping DVDs today since a different version of MakeMKV worked on my modern desktop (having a full-size SATA drive is nice for availability and price when I need to replace it - drives fail much more often than discs). I found two that have circular scratches that make them unreadable. One failed without having scratches, but there is a weird cloudy-looking spot on the bottom (maybe the layers separated).

Went through some boxes of cards to see what I had, to motivate myself to test and list some for sale (elsewhere than here). As I haven't looked at this gear for at least 5 and maybe 8 years, there were a few surprises in the form of cards I didn't know or had forgotten I had (Gainward 6600GT...), or that turned out to be not in the machine I thought they were in (PCX2... and I seem to have 2...), or weren't actually the sort of card I thought they were (what I had thought was a Banshee largely because of the green heatsink turned out to be a Savage 4).

Then ran some tests on cards already in my recently de-mothballed PC, found some connection issue or other and thereby fixed some runime glitches (or so it seemed). More things worked than expected (voodoo2s especially).

Ran some DOS games on both my Windows 98 machines, which caused them to hang. Evidently I have lost the magic touch. Couldn't immediately get dosbox to run them either. Simply been too long to remember clearly, I havent done this for years. Need to take it one step at a time.

Installed a 3DLabs VP970 in one of my 98 boxes, expecting it to fail to boot, but in fact it runs fine. I'm sure that motherboard hated it 5/8 years ago. However, seems that if I go into Display Settings -> Advanced -> Advanced and change the optimised application to (say) Diablo II from the default Directx, a reboot is required after which the graphics driver has to be reinstalled, wtf. This card used to be fine under 2000 (and those advanced settings worked there...), unfortunately that's not in my plans at present.

All of which reminds me how time-consuming faffing with hardware can be.

Hmm, there's this non-working X800 GTO PCI-E card that I'm pretty sure it gave some short POST screen and also regulated it's fan when I got it in a scrap lot.
In the second try it never worked again and even the fan always running just full-speed right on from power-on.
After checking everything else on the card against a schematic, every voltage regulator, every component, even the contents of the BIOS chip only the GPU-chip itself was left over.

So I thought "well it's dead, can't make it any deader, right?" (or "more dead"?, what's the superlative of "dead"?), put the card over a heating plate and gave it some 400°C hot air to try to reflow the GPU. If the outcome was that the card stayed non-working that would have been ok (it surely would). Part of the exercise was to gain some more experience in solder technique. So far so good.
But man, how hard can that be. I couldn't get the GPU to move any bit, even after 10-15min continuous heating from below and above. Smaller components would move with hot air directly above them but the GPU itself, no way. Didn't expect that.
OK, lesson learned. Next time, bigger guns!

DudeFace wrote on 2024-09-08, 20:18:

dominusprog wrote on 2024-09-05, 18:35:

Repair, recap and retrobright these Typhoon speakers. Also changed the LED because why not 😁.

The attachment IMG_20240905_215241.jpg is no longer available

nice! i had those same speakers, my dad was using them till recently, i noticed he changed his speakers so i asked for them back, he then told me he threw them out as they stopped working, i wasn't happy as i would have had a go a fixing them, im pretty sure they were the same ones i got with my socket 7 pc back in 98, i'll probably never find another set 🙁

They are not uncommon, just look for them on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115723722326?_nkw=Ty … %3ABFBM1t2n5rpk

dominusprog wrote on 2024-09-09, 10:55:

DudeFace wrote on 2024-09-08, 20:18:

dominusprog wrote on 2024-09-05, 18:35:

Repair, recap and retrobright these Typhoon speakers. Also changed the LED because why not 😁.

The attachment IMG_20240905_215241.jpg is no longer available

nice! i had those same speakers, my dad was using them till recently, i noticed he changed his speakers so i asked for them back, he then told me he threw them out as they stopped working, i wasn't happy as i would have had a go a fixing them, im pretty sure they were the same ones i got with my socket 7 pc back in 98, i'll probably never find another set 🙁

They are not uncommon, just look for them on eBay.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/115723722326?_nkw=Ty … %3ABFBM1t2n5rpk

yeah i had a look on google images they had alot of typoon's, just not the same model, ill have to keep my eyes open and see if i can track some down, thay are over 25 years old so may be difficult, good set tho and loud compared to others i've used.

Had to use this method https://winaero.com/microsoft-has-patched-the … m-check-bypass/

But succeeded in installing Win11 on a Dell Precision M4400 laptop, upgraded to a C2Q 9300X and 8 GiB of memory.

The laptop has a Windows Vista sticker, but ran XP back when I had it for work use. It has since gone through Win7 and Win10 before now being on Win11

Because I could 🤣

Decided to try out jasondavidcarr’s "Launchbox For MS-DOS" found here on the forums.

Put it on my DOS 6.22 system and started setting it up. I really like, simple and effective!

I also installed After Dark for DOS just because I loved old-school screensavers! Just look at that close up pixelated goodness!

I would link to it, I recall this version being released as free at some point, but my memory is nowhere near reliable, so just in case I decided not to link it. If you're on here, you can find it on your own. 😜

Today's work: Voodoo2 Single 3DM99 World Record. Thoroughly succeeded.
I have been holding SLI for a long, Single failed but now I stew there
Current record: 4016
My run:

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-09, 21:21:

Today's work: Voodoo2 Single 3DM99 World Record. Thoroughly succeeded. I have been holding SLI for a long, Single failed but now […]
Show full quote

Today's work: Voodoo2 Single 3DM99 World Record. Thoroughly succeeded.
I have been holding SLI for a long, Single failed but now I stew there
Current record: 4016
My run:

Very cool! Nice going! Funny, I used to see ho w far I could push my hardware back in the late 90's and early 2000's, but somewhere along the line I lost interest in it. I wish I had kept up with it, it was a lot of fun.

Though, if I ever manage to track down a Voodoo I don't have to take out a small loan to buy, I may mess around with it. Still kick myself in the rear for selling mine off before the retro market exploded into crazyland. 😜

StriderTR wrote on 2024-09-09, 21:47:

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-09, 21:21:

Today's work: Voodoo2 Single 3DM99 World Record. Thoroughly succeeded. I have been holding SLI for a long, Single failed but now […]
Show full quote

Today's work: Voodoo2 Single 3DM99 World Record. Thoroughly succeeded.
I have been holding SLI for a long, Single failed but now I stew there
Current record: 4016
My run:

Very cool! Nice going! Funny, I used to see ho w far I could push my hardware back in the late 90's and early 2000's, but somewhere along the line I lost interest in it. I wish I had kept up with it, it was a lot of fun.

Though, if I ever manage to track down a Voodoo I don't have to take out a small loan to buy, I may mess around with it. Still kick myself in the rear for selling mine off before the retro market exploded into crazyland. 😜

Thanks 😀
The SLI set goes very much in SLI, Single's weak 1-1 members, Aristo of and single the king.

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-09, 22:13:

StriderTR wrote on 2024-09-09, 21:47:

DarthSun wrote on 2024-09-09, 21:21:

Today's work: Voodoo2 Single 3DM99 World Record. Thoroughly succeeded. I have been holding SLI for a long, Single failed but now […]
Show full quote

Today's work: Voodoo2 Single 3DM99 World Record. Thoroughly succeeded.
I have been holding SLI for a long, Single failed but now I stew there
Current record: 4016
My run:

Very cool! Nice going! Funny, I used to see ho w far I could push my hardware back in the late 90's and early 2000's, but somewhere along the line I lost interest in it. I wish I had kept up with it, it was a lot of fun.

Though, if I ever manage to track down a Voodoo I don't have to take out a small loan to buy, I may mess around with it. Still kick myself in the rear for selling mine off before the retro market exploded into crazyland. 😜

Thanks 😀
The SLI set goes very much in SLI, Single's weak 1-1 members, Aristo of and single the king.

Final screenshot. Uploaded to HWBot. 107MHz under stable Win98. Running all tests +all on the screenshot. This card is excellent, I don't know when it arrived, but it got into the machine for 10 years, it stood a lot without turning it on.
https://hwbot.org/submission/5641502_darthsun … ecalculate=true

I recently bought 1 of those crappy "Ultimate Products Zone 100" games consoles for a very cheap price. Was supposed to be in full working order, but clearly something had leaked inside the Player 1 controller (probably a spilt drink) and the battery compartment was almost completely destroyed!

Several hours ensued of soldering and desoldering wires, hot glueing in a new battery spring and several bodge wires to fix lifted traces that I accidentally caused, as well as a bodge wire to connect the new battery spring which had completely corroded away from the board.

This thing wasn't fun to work on at all, the traces were desperately trying to peel themselves away from the board like tinfoil! I also accidentally snapped off a componenent whilst handling the device and had to solder that back on, using jump wire to bypass a cut trace!

In the end though, success, the controller works again! I now have a fully working Zone 100, with it's amazing fake motion controls & arcade rip-off games. 🤣

Not sure if this counts: browsing back issues of PC Magazine (Feb. 1982 to Jan. 2009) with Google Books. It's more than a digital library but a museum. 👏 As a foreigner it's particularly interesting to see a service or product popular in US / North America but completely unheard of locally.

bakemono wrote on 2024-06-12, 12:36:

Now a weird thing is happening where Windows wants to run CHKDSK everytime it boots, but it doesn't actually run it because it says it's "not a Windows 2000 disk" 🤣.

Finally solved this. It came down to a byte in the first sector of the first FAT. I changed the 0x0F to 0xFF and now CHKDSK works normally.

Let's see:
- repasted an Pluto core Athlon 700MHz
- tested an ASUS A7N8X-X and a Gigabyte 7N400E - both came from Shrek's swamp
- tested an DTK PRM-0076I E1
- finished my Compaq Armada E500 rebuild - if anyone wants pics, feel free to ask!
- sold an ASUS P8H61-M LX R3.0 + Celeron G530 kit
- WD40'd a pair of seized fans removed off the Athlon, as well as a neat 462 cooler that uses its own lever based system to clamp, a la 754/939/AM2/AM3 coolers

Waiting on the K7 Pro to arrive later, as well as might order a 7DXE+ from the US later.

Only retro activity I did today was assemble back together two IDE optical drives that I took apart and washed (plastics and metal case) on Monday. They came out looking pretty clean. Haven't tested them yet, though. One is a beige Sony DVD-ROM / CD-RW combo drive from 2005 with a gear-driven tray (yay!) The other is a beige LG (yay) DVD-RW drive from 2006. Got the former for approx. $0.50 from the flea market and the latter for FREE as abandoned / left behind by someone in the flea market. I have more than enough IDE drives at this point (especially beige ones), but still can't say no when they are cheap/free like this. They usually get scrapped for metal by the sellers otherwise. They make less out of that than selling it even for $0.50. So win-win??

Thermalwrong wrote on 2024-09-08, 18:27:

Hmm, trying to figure out why I'm getting memory errors in games on my FX5600 card which used to have a big Zalman cooler on it but I put a smaller regular cooler on it. It runs okay for a few minutes but when it warms up then reality in games starts falling apart with triangles heading off into infinity 🙁

IIRC, that's how my FX5600 has been in a select few games for ages.

Before tearing into your card, try lowering the GPU core clock for 3D mode and also the memory clock, one at a time. I don't remember which one of these did it for me, but it allowed me to continue using the card for many more years without any issues... and actually still works fine this way the last time I used it (maybe a few years ago.)

Cleaned a Pentium II today. Got a board that does Slot1/S370, so I'm testing my untested CPUs that are listed as compatible. So far, they all work.

My Sager 8500 laptop suddenly had background noise on the audio output, I noticed that it only appeared when the battery charge light came on. The battery was not working anyway, I just cut it out leaving only the plastic case, the noise did not appear anymore.

Obviously replacing the battery or capacitors will also help, but I don't want to mess with that, the laptop is too heavy to be portable.

Tested my boxed Metabyte Vengenace Banshee and eventually determined that the reason it didn't look like the one on the box was that it was a different card, in fact a Provideo. It's always been like that, I just never resolved the discrepancy before. Must have bought it 20-ish years ago. So I never had the Metabyte after all. A lot of trouble getting it to post but when it eventually did - it worked fine. I think it just needs shoving down hard into the AGP slot but I need to test that theory afresh a few more times just in case there's something else about it.

"Tested" an S3 Savage4 32mb (I think) and after wasting literally hours on different drivers (including Phil's...) and multiple reboots and hangs... it still freezes a few seconds into Windows 98. Now rated as my worst card ever. To be honest I had several similar experiences 25 years ago with my first outing when it wasn't retro, just a little bit old, and I think an s3 figured there somewhere.

Edited the 98 registry to get rid of the Voodoo2 OC panel which the fastvood drivers left behind... also deleted something else v2-related that I possbly didn't need to but everything works (except that s3 card which still doesn't).

Getting ready to polymod a MSI MS-6163 VER 1 (BX3).