I was running my Gateway Solo 2500 yesterday, and it lost its backlight. I don't have the energy to do much hobby stuff right now, and I'm going to spend a lot of my free time getting in better shape. I will have to fix it eventually, but it will be to keep other old stuff running instead of gaming.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2024-11-09, 20:58:

Hmmm. Tested a "broken" card before taking the heatsink for the working one (6600 AGP). What is this?! It crashes at POST, but always works; would a BIOS flash possibly fix this thing?

With the artifacts and incorrect characters, I would guess that it has bad video RAM or bad BGA soldering. Those aren't easy to fix with hobby soldering tools.

386SX wrote on 2024-11-10, 15:43:

the great Canon A70 (great camera but on a fragile zoom mechanism)

Was that one of the models that had a defective CCD? I remember the A60 being recalled because that was my parents' first digital camera. Its CCD failed after the repair period expired.

lti wrote on 2024-11-10, 17:13:

386SX wrote on 2024-11-10, 15:43:

the great Canon A70 (great camera but on a fragile zoom mechanism)

Was that one of the models that had a defective CCD? I remember the A60 being recalled because that was my parents' first digital camera. Its CCD failed after the repair period expired.

I suppose the A70 probably had the same problem but it didn't happen to my unit or maybe I think it happened more on the A60 but still I remember anyway that maybe the Digic processor and/or the camera CCD sensor may have had problems reading forums messages later. But at that time I was thinking the zoom mechanism would have died at any time considering the noise it did and it didn't felt much fixed/stable on its rails. But the camera itself resulted in great 3MP images, very detailed and with nice clear colors. In its time it was a bit expensive but I was reading most positive comments after their releases.

386SX wrote on 2024-11-10, 15:43:

darry wrote on 2024-11-10, 14:39:

That was my first "real" digital camera (S5200 is the North American model) after 2 or 3 years of using an Olympus D560 Zoom. My […]
Show full quote

386SX wrote on 2024-11-10, 12:24:

Today I repaired an old 2006 second hand Fujifilm S5600 camera using a second not working unit. Had to only change the internal battery plastics/cover but unfortunately I've broken a button metal pin from the inside of.the working one and had to switch all the hardware into the second unit (when I was supposed to do the opposite) whole optic included. A painful work in such compact case space with flat cables and old fragile components. Now at least one unit is fully working and with a just bought brand new 512MB memory card quite expensive too. This camera is interesting cause one of the early Super CCD sensor based cameras from Fujifilm, an interesting concept discontinued after various versions a decade ago. Of course not great compared to nowdays standards but still has a good optic (F2.8>3.2 at 10X zoom).

That was my first "real" digital camera (S5200 is the North American model) after 2 or 3 years of using an Olympus D560 Zoom. My mother still has that S5200 . It's in a box somewhere. I need to ask her about taking it for a spin again after all this time. Hopefully, the coin cell hasn't leaked.

EDIT: Those 🤣 cards sucked, speed wise, especially the slower M variants, AFAICR. RAW was painfully slow, AFAICR. Not sure if the faster H variants actually were faster in the S5200 (or if they even worked, they might have required s firmware update). Anyway, this is all stuff you probably already know or can still find in the Internet.

I wonder what drew you to this camera in the ccurrent day and age? Was it something you used back in the day ? Fascination with SuperCCD ?

EDIT2: AF speed and accuracy was very good in decent light, for uts time, AFAICR. I am really starting to miss this thing. As, I have archives of all the photos I've taken, I might just have a go at reprocessing some RAWs. DXO Pureraw does not support this, so I will have to rely on RawTherapee and NeatImage.

The 512MB card I've bought is an H variant and I've read even the 2GB version might actually work, probably depending on the camera firmware indeed. Maybe not officially I'll see to find one. On the speed size it doesn't look much fast but of course we're used to modern Micro SD speed; I imagine just a bit faster than the slower ones like the original 16MB sold with it. I suppose the various interesting IC processors running on the main PCB may be also limited, it never felt much fast like the zoom speed on the internal gallery app while decoding a full resolution image.

I knew about this digital camera because in the early 2000 I bought many other ones from the cheapest Trust early VGA cameras to the great Canon A70 (great camera but on a fragile zoom mechanism) and ended up to the Fujifilm S5500, the previous 4MP standard CCD version that many were talking really good about and I bought it at release brand new (quite expensive too), I still have that one fully working. After a while I remember reading about this new Super CCD tech and at that time on paper it looked like the future and a smart way to get more data captured on a compact camera sensor like these. So I wanted to buy the S5600 but still it wasn't that much different from the S5500 to buy it so I didn't. I've bought the first working unit a week ago in a second hand retro store; it only needed to fix that battery door which seems quite a known problem on both the S5500 and 5600 projects where plastic will eventually break given the force the four AA batteries will push and at the end I've broken the main silver button pin removing that internal battery case.

Glad you're giving it a new lease on life. I really loved my S5200. My main reason for "upgrading" was the desire for adding a flash . The S9000 I replaced my S5200 unit with never felt as stable in my hands, had more iffy focus and the lens felt softer . It was still a good camera and I did get some nice shots out of it, but it felt like a letdown after the S5200. RAW writing speed sucked with both CF and 🤣 cards on the S9000, AFAICR.

I hope a more permanent and durable solution to the brittle plastic problem will be found.

Hi,
What do you think about this handmade cooler 80x80x10 for Voodoo3 video cards?

Postman5 wrote on 2024-11-10, 18:29:

Hi,
What do you think about this handmade cooler 80x80x10 for Voodoo3 video cards?

That takes me back to what I rigged up back in 2002 to allow me to overclock my Ti 4200 a little bit.

darry wrote on 2024-11-10, 17:51:

Glad you're giving it a new lease on life. I really loved my S5200. My main reason for "upgrading" was the desire for adding a flash . The S9000 I replaced my S5200 unit with never felt as stable in my hands, had more iffy focus and the lens felt softer . It was still a good camera and I did get some nice shots out of it, but it felt like a letdown after the S5200. RAW writing speed sucked with both CF and 🤣 cards on the S9000, AFAICR.

I hope a more permanent and durable solution to the brittle plastic problem will be found.

I'm glad you told your story about this camera, thanks. A friend had the S9000 and it felt so much better on paper but was expensive and I had lost a bit of interest in spending too much upgrading digital cameras at that time. The whole Super CCD tech indeed was the main subject of interest for Fujifilm cameras at that time.

The re-cap job on the K7S5A went smoothly. About to be testing this again today and assembling it into a system.
Oh yeah!! Looking good!!

The pile of old caps: There were 60 total.

Picked up a couple cheap internal CF/IDE adapters to use as internal storage drives in both my DOS and Win95 machines. My primary on both are SD/IDE adapters, accessible from outside the case for easy swapping like many people use these days. I just wanted something internal for backups or extra file storage, and I still had these two 2GB CF cards lying around. Tested everything today, all works perfectly.

😀

Installed XP on an old Asus X50n notebook that was headed for the recycler (AMD Turion 64 and Geforce 7000M). Not too bad for W98-era games.

LPX case revoring and more... gradient coloring 😉

Postman5 wrote on 2024-11-10, 18:29:

Hi,
What do you think about this handmade cooler 80x80x10 for Voodoo3 video cards?

Looks like it does the job.

Personally though, I like to give "Murphy" the imp of the perverse who names "Murphy's Law" less loopholes to work with, so I would be wanting to tie it to the drive cage or make a nonconductive plate that holds in the PCI slot so that it does not swing the fan into the card if the system is moved. Although I guess it might take a bit of a knock if that wire is rigid.

Postman5 wrote on 2024-11-10, 18:29:

Hi,
What do you think about this handmade cooler 80x80x10 for Voodoo3 video cards?

I highly recommend these <$5 brackets which allow you to more securely mount case fans to a PCI bracket:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005868217402.html (I'm NOT recommending this particular seller, please shop around)

I'm using two 92mm fans to cool my Voodoo 3 3000:
First post - restored Pentium III & Athlon X2

Babasha wrote on 2024-11-11, 18:29:

LPX case revoring and more... gradient coloring 😉

That looks exceptionally good, nice paint job. I think I still have to practice a lot to achieve such a result.

bZbZbZ wrote on 2024-11-12, 05:30:

I highly recommend these <$5 brackets which allow you to more securely mount case fans to a PCI bracket: https://www.aliexpress. […]
Show full quote

Postman5 wrote on 2024-11-10, 18:29:

Hi,
What do you think about this handmade cooler 80x80x10 for Voodoo3 video cards?

I highly recommend these <$5 brackets which allow you to more securely mount case fans to a PCI bracket:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005005868217402.html (I'm NOT recommending this particular seller, please shop around)

I'm using two 92mm fans to cool my Voodoo 3 3000:
First post - restored Pentium III & Athlon X2

That’s the exact setup I have for all my V3 3000’s. Keeps them ultra cool.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-11-11, 21:17:

wire is rigid.

Yes, this is a fairly rigid insulated iron wire with a diameter of 1 millimeter.

bZbZbZ wrote on 2024-11-12, 05:30:

I highly recommend these <$5 brackets

Thank you! When I saw this, I had a new idea for a bracket mount for 80x80x10 fans.

Been playing with this Compaq ProSignia last night and this morning. Having fun with drivers at the moment in DOS.

Delete
Typing on phone

gmaverick2k wrote on 2024-11-12, 21:34:

Configuring my dos setup. Voodoo 3 2000 ago, Ess 1868f and picogus. Updated ga-5ax rev 4.1 bios from 1.3 to f4. SD to ide card was not being picked up so flashed bios and issues resolved. Had to use gotek with 98 startup disk then changed to bios flash disk.
Got an image of dos and oses and flashed onto SD card from the great archive organisation. Also got some dos disk images and tried out epic pinball and Duke 2. Sound ok. Also installed Norton commander 5.5 using gotek, pretty nifty piece of software
Waiting for pentium mmx 166 and k6-2+ 500 which still in the post so that I can replace the k6-2 500 non+ currently in there

Delete

I had a little time to play around with my QDI V4P895GRN board and a Cyrix 5x86-100 cpu.
This gives me wie a nice 486 setup 😀

Turns out my good ol' Cyrix still had it's power and runs all benchmarks just fine at 3x40 seeing and all ram at 0ws. Me happy 😀