seleryba wrote on 2020-03-17, 02:12:

I found out the mother of all my retro issues.

Interesting issue you had there seleryba. A few days ago I had similar problems, when I was installing Windows 98 SE on my SD card on Celeron 333 Mhz PC build. When finalizing instalation, the DVD rom stopped working (Windows didn't recognize it), causing all kinds of problems with not booting properly. In device maneger I had a yellow message not recognizing IDE 2 or something like that. I started thinking in what moment exactly the DVD rom stopped working. After a few unsuccessful instalations I found out, that the issue mostly began during Plug and play hardware detection in the final installation stages of Windows 98. So I removed my Creative ISA sound card and removed AGP Voodoo card, and placed a generic VGA PCI card instead. After that, the instalation went through. When Windows 98 SE was successfully installed, I replaced a generic PCI Card with my Voodoo one, and installed Creative ISA sound card.

Turbo -> wrote on 2020-03-17, 10:40:

After a few unsuccessful instalations I found out, that the issue mostly began after Plug and play hardware detection in the final installation stages of Windows 98.

... I had entirely forgotten about this. My dad's Pentium Pro was fussy about the order of installing hardware in W95. There was some card - perhaps networking?- that could not be added as an upgrade, but had to be there during the install.

It was one of those "special experiences" that Windows burned into memory, because I was doing a 'quick update' for him while he was visiting town.

Created two FMCB memory cards for my un-modded PS2 using the other modded PS2. Also prepared an USB stick to store game ISOs, since only one has a hard disk.

Did some more experimenting with an old PC-50X games console. Tried it through several TVs, VCRs & a DVD Recorder - nope, it's not having any of that, signal doesn't lock and even with manual tuning it simply does not output correctly. Guess I'm going to have to get hold of an old CRT TV and try it out on that. Not sure if the console is broken or if it's just a case that it really doesn't get along with modern TVs.

Also tested out a similar Pong-based console from the same era (Pong built-in, not Cartridge-based), which does display fine.

Finally installed my Aztech SG Waverider 32+.

Works very well, the output is very quiet in terms of noise (much better than ESS ES1869 or SB Pro 2.0), built-in wavetable is not brilliant but sounds very good in Doom and Theme Hospital.

It also has pin header for line out, I was able to connect it to the audio output on the front of the case.

Tried to resurrect my system from 2003, an Asus P42800 motherboard with a 2.XGHz P4. Powers up for about a half second, then back off. It's of the age that capacitor plague is the issue, but I am really not in the mood to tear it all apart, map the caps, order new ones, wait for them, pull the dead ones, and install the new ones. Maybe some time in the possibly distant future.

Built a PC with the Socket 3 PCI motherboard I found this weekend. Wanted to build a budget PC from 1996 - AMD 5x86, 16MB ram, Audician 32 (Yamaha ymf719), S3 Virge, Windows 95 (the original version w/o addons).

Doom and Duke3D run pretty well, Blood and Diablo feel choppy.

Will run some S3D games later to see if the OG "Deccelerrator" can make games run faster on a 133MHz 486.

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-17, 16:01:

Created two FMCB memory cards for my un-modded PS2 using the other modded PS2. Also prepared an USB stick to store game ISOs, since only one has a hard disk.

If you can, go with the SMB share for those games instead of the USB route. The PS2 only has USB 1.1 ports, which will make some games run worse than off disc.

Not possible, because it has no hard drive. And it has no hard drive because it has no network adapter. 😉

It's a backup PS2 only anyway, the main one has everything and can use SMB, USB, HDD, and burned discs.

I have 2 systems that can do SMB, USB, and HDD easily, the other 1 needs an adapter, and the one has network capabilities, but no HDD capability (slim model).

Working from home due to the whole Covid-19 situation. Needed to set up a lab for my work (certifying some networking devices). One of the most important bits was capturing traffic to and from them. Easiest way is a mirror/span port on a managed switch. I assumed my nice little Zyxel web-managed PoE switch could do that. I assumed wrong. So I needed an alternative. That meant dragging out one of my Cisco antiques, old enough to be on-topic here. I chose a Catalyst 2948G from 2007. When new it was loud, with old fans with worn-out bearings the sound was something else. At least it kept my children (also kept home from school) out of my work room for an hour or two. I'm generally familiar with Cisco IOS, but this beast runs Cisco CatOS. Conveniently, pretty much everything regarding password recovery (yep, of course I'd forgotten and failed to document whatever I'd originally done there), system configuration and actually setting the damned span port, was completely different to the way it's done in IOS. Actually it's all pretty straightforward once you figure out how - and now I know 😀

Today I was testing and trying to revive a couple of 1.44MB floppy drives I got for free. Both have the usual symptoms: the PC boots, tests for the floppy presence (the head moves a bit) and everything seems to be OK, however when inserting any disk, here comes General Failure and starts reading my disks. All of them. I tried the usual cleaning the drive inside, outside, cleaning the heads with alcohol, etc. to no avail. I think they are easy to fix, but no idea what to do or how to troubleshoot them properly (any ideas/tips are welcome). I'm sure the problem is the drives, since I connected a well-known working drive and it works perfectly, so the system I am using for testing, as well as the diskettes are OK. So far, all I know is that both motors on both drives work (the diskette spins, and the heads can move).

Started the first of what might turn out to be quite a few 'lockdown' builds (some virus thingy or other!), so was cleaning and prepping this board

Any takers for make & (system) model?

It needs slots 😁

aha2940 wrote on 2020-03-19, 01:56:

here comes General Failure and starts reading my disks. All of them. I tried the usual cleaning the drive inside, outside, cleaning the heads with alcohol, etc. to no avail.

That's nothing you can fix by cleaning. If it really says general failure, there's something wrong with the drive's hardware. If it has jumpers, check if they are correctly set to work in a PC. But I assume the problem lies in the heads being out of adjustment, which is the most common culprit for a cleaned and otherwise working drive failing to read disks. You can check this by formating a disk. If that works but the drive fails to read existing disks, re-adjustment of the heads is needed.

ShovelKnight wrote on 2020-03-17, 18:24:

Finally installed my Aztech SF Waverider 32+.

Works very well, the output is very quiet in terms of noise (much better than ESS ES1869 or SB Pro 2.0), built-in wavetable is not brilliant but sounds very good in Doom and Theme Hospital.

It also has pin header for line out, I was able to connect it to the audio output on the front of the case.

The Aztech Waverider 32 was my first wavetable enabled sound card, and it was a blast. My favourite game to play on it was Descent. I even think that sounds better than my roland modules, but that is "memory bias" for sure.

Rush of nostalgia after seeing this :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxQpcw49RFs

Time to put my Waverider 32 back into service 😉

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-19, 07:42:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-03-19, 01:56:

here comes General Failure and starts reading my disks. All of them. I tried the usual cleaning the drive inside, outside, cleaning the heads with alcohol, etc. to no avail.

That's nothing you can fix by cleaning. If it really says general failure, there's something wrong with the drive's hardware. If it has jumpers, check if they are correctly set to work in a PC. But I assume the problem lies in the heads being out of adjustment, which is the most common culprit for a cleaned and otherwise working drive failing to read disks. You can check this by formating a disk. If that works but the drive fails to read existing disks, re-adjustment of the heads is needed.

I agree, I had an external floppy drive that could only read 1.44MB diskettes and not 720K diskettes. Turned out the heads were off center, attempted to adjust them and clean the heads, and still nothing. Some of my 1.44MB diskette drives do work without issues, except the one is very loud when reading from a diskette. Is it because the heads are sticking that could cause the floppy drive to sound very loud?

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-19, 07:42:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-03-19, 01:56:

here comes General Failure and starts reading my disks. All of them. I tried the usual cleaning the drive inside, outside, cleaning the heads with alcohol, etc. to no avail.

That's nothing you can fix by cleaning. If it really says general failure, there's something wrong with the drive's hardware. If it has jumpers, check if they are correctly set to work in a PC. But I assume the problem lies in the heads being out of adjustment, which is the most common culprit for a cleaned and otherwise working drive failing to read disks. You can check this by formating a disk. If that works but the drive fails to read existing disks, re-adjustment of the heads is needed.

bjwil1991 wrote on 2020-03-19, 18:20:

derSammler wrote on 2020-03-19, 07:42:

aha2940 wrote on 2020-03-19, 01:56:

here comes General Failure and starts reading my disks. All of them. I tried the usual cleaning the drive inside, outside, cleaning the heads with alcohol, etc. to no avail.

That's nothing you can fix by cleaning. If it really says general failure, there's something wrong with the drive's hardware. If it has jumpers, check if they are correctly set to work in a PC. But I assume the problem lies in the heads being out of adjustment, which is the most common culprit for a cleaned and otherwise working drive failing to read disks. You can check this by formating a disk. If that works but the drive fails to read existing disks, re-adjustment of the heads is needed.

I agree, I had an external floppy drive that could only read 1.44MB diskettes and not 720K diskettes. Turned out the heads were off center, attempted to adjust them and clean the heads, and still nothing. Some of my 1.44MB diskette drives do work without issues, except the one is very loud when reading from a diskette. Is it because the heads are sticking that could cause the floppy drive to sound very loud?

Thanks for the information guys. Unfortunately it seems these drives are dead. i tried to format a diskette on both and none will format it, they complain about "Invalid media or track 0 bad - disk unusable". However, the disk is OK, as it works on two other floppy drives I have. Anyway, does anyone have a couple floppy drives for sale? around here they sell them like they are made of solid gold, 🤣.

Tried to make Windows 98 SE (EN version) work correctly with Russian language to no avail. I could get Russian characters in both encodings (CP866 and Windows-1251) display properly under DOS (e.g. in Multi-Edit) and under Windows (e.g. in Notepad), but not in MS-DOS prompt under Windows. After messing with system codepages and translation tables I achieved a spectacular result: all files with Russian symbols in their names have become invalid and can be neither renamed nor deleted (File system error 1026). I will nuke this partition and install Windows 98 SE Russian version when time permits.

I built an adapter to connect a PS/2 mouse to my Socket 7 motheboard's internal header (just 9 pins standing there). I have the manual of the mobo, where all the pinouts of the headers are documented. However, I initially assembled the adapter wrong (inverted GND and +5V) and while testing, fried a Microsoft Optical Mouse. Now the mouse will light when connected to a USB port, but most likely will not move the pointer (sometimes does, which is weird). Anyway, once I realized my error, and inverted the cables and the adapter worked fine. Fortunately I did not test the adapter with my old IBM mouse, which is paired to my IBM Thinkpad 360Ce (486 DX-50MHz and 20MB RAM). It would be a shame to kill suck an old mouse which still works perfectly to this day.