That's awesome I loved the look of those and their performance was quite good as well. That system looks like it was just purchased new. The previous owner really must of taken good care of it.

Recorded the Transport Tycoon Deluxe soundtrack from my SW60XG.

One of the best GM soundtracks in my opinion. Have not heard any versions better than the SW60XG yet either! (Subjective of course...)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfAwTM0X_fg&a … nel=LJRRetroPCs

I've been eBaying for SCSI stuff. I absolutely LOVE the crazy noises old SCSI drives make so I've ordered an Adaptec 2940UW, a SCSI HDD and a 68 pin cable - all for around £70 😁.

Wow, this sounds so clear !
Thank you very much for those fine tunes ! 😁

Horun wrote on 2021-04-18, 04:43:

chrismeyer6 wrote on 2021-04-18, 04:10:

That's a nice micron PC and the civ 2 CD is a nice bonus. Does it have the cylindrical micron heatsink?

Thanks ! Yes has the original Micron blue screw on heatsink. Here is the picture before going thru it before powering on, you can see the HS had slid part way off the cpu....(my phone takes fuzzy pics)
Someone had stored it very well. Am amazed everything works as new being that old AND not be used for so long.

I recently wrapped up selling four of those on eBay in similar condition.

Today I tested all my unknown P4 chips with this board I picked up yesterday

Well, all the Socket 478 ones anyhow.

Woody72 wrote on 2021-04-18, 13:26:

I've been eBaying for SCSI stuff. I absolutely LOVE the crazy noises old SCSI drives make so I've ordered an Adaptec 2940UW, a SCSI HDD and a 68 pin cable - all for around £70 😁.

I recently got a new-in-box AHA-2740 and a 2 Gb 10k RPM IBM drive to go with it. Sticking all that into an EISA 486 soon enough.

Build a slightly overkill socket 939 Athlon 64 rig from components lying around:
-Asrock 939dual-sata2
-Athlon 64 3500+ Manchester @2700
-4GB DDR400
-Sapphire HD3850 AGP 512MB
-Windows XP 32-bit
-Seagate 200GB SATA
-Sony DVDRW Optiarc LightScribe SATA
-3D printed I/O shield

I categorize this my fastest retro build because of single core and AGP. Runs easily @2700. This board has an interesting future CPU port, card is not easy to find but I might get lucky some day 😀

There were some issues though. SATAII port didn't recognize HDD, I didn't try different drive so it just might be picky. Also couldn't hear audio from onboard AC97 Realtek 850 so I had to use SB Audigy SE what was next in line. I remember buying A64 3000+ when these were new, later it was upgraded with some Opteron 2x, probably 180. Too bad I sold those when upgrading to AM3 Phenom.

I built up a Sandy Bridge Core i3 in an old Dell case to experiment with BeOS R5. Here are the base specs:

Core i3-2120 (3.3 Ghz, 2 Cores, 4 Threads)
Asus P8Q67-M Micro-ATX Motherboard
4 GB DDR3-1333 RAM
Sound Blaster 64 PCI Sound
Generic NEC PCI-E 5-Port USB 1.1/2.0 (OHCI/EHCI)
2x 24x DVD+/-RW Drives (SATA)
KingDian 32 GB SSD (SATA)
Corsair CV650 Power Supply

This is turning into a bit of an idiosyncratic machine. BeOS refuses to boot if I specify a PCI or PCI-E video card as primary, but it will boot if I set integrated graphics to primary. If I have a Matrox Millennium installed (either in a PCI slot or PCI-E to PCI adapter), video on the integrated graphics freezes and BeOS switches to displaying out of the Millennium after the boot-up sound. It does this with my GeForce 6800 GS (PCI-E) as well, but the 6800 doesn’t put out a display (just a blank screen). I haven’t gotten any other PCI-E video cards to work at all.

I reprogramed the BIOS a couple of years ago to add a 1080p VESA mode to the integrated Intel graphics. It works with most generic VESA drivers in other operating systems, but it never displayed 1080p properly in BeOS when I used a VESA mode setting patch (it would only produce a 640x480 desktop in the upper left-hand corner of the screen). Today, though, I discovered that I can get a proper 1080p desktop (see screenshot) from the integrated graphics if I set “Use Fail-safe Video Mode” from a BeOS safe-mode boot menu. Weird!

Now, I’m waiting on a NOS PCI network card to arrive so I can get this modern BeBox online.

A while back I bought this Evergreen AcceleraPCI Pentium III 1.0GHz upgrade card, but it was one of those "dream hardware" sales with no photo. When the unit arrived, the heat sink/fan assembly was hanging off of it and there was a loose capacitor in the box, with some other capacitors about ready to fall off. I desoldered and replaced the other loose capacitors. I then found that the CPU had been removed and jammed back in the LIF socket, with one of the pins bent (and broken off), so I swapped it for another P3 I had. I remember when I first got the card I'd tried using it in a machine and it wouldn't turn on. Now at least. the machine turns on, and executes the option ROM on the card. It has a configuration menu for enabling and disabling the accelerator, as well as setting bus speed, multiplier, and voltage.

Unfortunately I cannot fully test the card, possibly because none of the systems I have are "compatible" according to the compatibility test app. If I enable the accelerator, it fails with POST 00 on the system on the card. I would think even if it was incompatible with the motherboard chipset, it would get a little further than that.

I remember seeing those back in the day in my Tiger Direct catalogs and always wanting one. I remember and episode of The Screensavers on techtv did a review on them.

I made a generic Midi enclosure for my DreamBlaster stuff.

That CHiLL II setup looks amazing. Gotta upgrade mine from the CHiLL to CHiLL II soon.

Finally I got the time to 'clone' a 540MB Maxtor 7540AV HDD with DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1 on a 4GB CF card.

Tried first CloneZilla Live CD- but it failed with strange errors - both on Socket 5 and Slot 1 motherboards. Maybe latest version is not supporting 1996-1998 motherboards, so not spending more time on this (for now).

Settled for a straightforward process summarised below:
- have both HDD and 4GB CF card with IDE adapter connected on IDE primary and secondary
- BIOS detects it both - mandatory 😀
- boot from HDD using DOS - drive C in this case
- use fdisk to create 2GB primary FAT16 DOS partition (drive D) and a second logical one for storage (Drive E)
- format D:
- transfer DOS system files to D drive (CF card) with sys D:
- use xcopy to copy all files from C drive to D drive - copy all data recursively, including hidden files
- disconnect HDD, and boot from DOS floppy
- use fdisk to activate the primary partition on CF card (as you cannot activate a second primary DOS partition once booted from HDD)
- run fdisk /mbr

After all steps above, 4GB CF card with IDE CF adapter successfully replaces the Maxtor 540MB.

This comes handy when testing 486/P5/P54C/Nexgen setups. 😀

I cleaned up (most of) a really moldy Thinkpad 770 today. It works!

Before:

After:

Tomorrow I'll clean the absolutely horrible keyboard and try to install Windows 98 on it.

Tested the newly acquired DMG-01 Play It Loud clear edition and no defects on the screen and everything works.

I sold a Dell Celeron 433 and prepared an HT 3.0 for sale, and then, something I've been wanting to do for a long time...

Preparing these:

To be benchmarked here:

They range from SX-20 (not sure if I'll be able to get the ISA-486SV2 to go that low - undocumented jumper experimentation FTW!) to the OverDrive.

I even have two 486 DX4s, one WB and one WT. I seem to recall most of these CPUs work - the VRM is under the giant 10k RPM server fan, under which is my WB DX4 out of my Siemens. Anything 3.3 3.45 4.0 will be passed through that one. The ones on the lower right are an AMD DX4-120, and a 486-133 (an early 5X86 P75)

I've even got an i487 there, which this board explicitly supports. The only thing I am missing is a DX(or SX)50 MHz - It would be nice to see if my Mach32 would be able to cope with that 😉

Can't wait to get started 😁

Ah nice, you just seem to be lacking a Cyrix 5x86 😀

Jed118 wrote on 2021-04-21, 06:09:

I sold a Dell Celeron 433 and prepared an HT 3.0 for sale, and then, something I've been wanting to do for a long time... […]
Show full quote

I sold a Dell Celeron 433 and prepared an HT 3.0 for sale, and then, something I've been wanting to do for a long time...

Preparing these:

To be benchmarked here:

They range from SX-20 (not sure if I'll be able to get the ISA-486SV2 to go that low - undocumented jumper experimentation FTW!) to the OverDrive.

I even have two 486 DX4s, one WB and one WT. I seem to recall most of these CPUs work - the VRM is under the giant 10k RPM server fan, under which is my WB DX4 out of my Siemens. Anything 3.3 3.45 4.0 will be passed through that one. The ones on the lower right are an AMD DX4-120, and a 486-133 (an early 5X86 P75)

I've even got an i487 there, which this board explicitly supports. The only thing I am missing is a DX(or SX)50 MHz - It would be nice to see if my Mach32 would be able to cope with that 😉

Can't wait to get started 😁

ooohh!! This is going to be a super fun project to follow along.

appiah4 wrote on 2021-04-21, 07:09:

Ah nice, you just seem to be lacking a Cyrix 5x86 😀

I didn't even think about that! Oh well, this ought to be enough. 😁

yourepicfailure wrote on 2021-04-12, 21:24:

Nice, always love seeing another classic Toshiba see the light of day. My T4400 has a nice display, though it takes a little to […]
Show full quote

Thermalwrong wrote on 2021-04-09, 00:03:

~snip~

Nice, always love seeing another classic Toshiba see the light of day.
My T4400 has a nice display, though it takes a little to "warm up." Once it does the colors are nice, sharp and the viewing angle is nice.

BA908BFA-B936-4C9A-8249-1E000DB24BCF.jpeg

The floppy drive also works, but if I stick the wrong floppy in there the belt starts slipping again. I should take care of that next time I go in there.
I only wish I could find a 32mb ram card for it. Because, theoretically, you could stuff a POD in there since it's socketed.
Unlike the newer 486 (and pentium 4900&4950) Toshibas that have soldered processors.

And a T4900, I wish I could find one. I'm only stuck with this 4800 that I don't have the time and money right now to fix up.

Cool, I had no idea those older ones used regular PGA168 processors 😀 The backlights on all of these are pretty tired I think, the T4900CT's backlight matches how yellow it is, in that it's quite dim. I'm considering retrofitting some kind of LED backlight at some unspecified point in the future when it stops working right. This T4900CT was a lucky find, sold as 'working' and I snapped it up once I found it had both a 640x480 TFT LCD and integrated sound. But it didn't work, the standby battery had leaked and damaged traces around the video chip, so it wouldn't display anything. It works after I fixed those up, but it's got additional problems with the hard drive, which I might just replace soon. Right now, it requires a good *whack* from the side on boot for the seek arm to work, and that's starting to cause data loss.
It's not something I was aware of at the time, but this laptop was pretty special when new. Released in late 1994, it was one of the first 'low voltage' pentium 75 CPUs and one of the first Toshibas with an integrated pointing device - which is tolerable but quite RSI inducing with prolonged use. My particular one had an aftermarket EXP 16MB DRAM 3.3v memory upgrade, giving it an amazing 24MB of RAM, as well as a warranty until early 1999, maybe 4 or 5 years?

Don't these old TFT screens that have glass fronts just look kinda special? The T4900CT has the later plastic anti glare coating like a modern LCD, but the T1950CT's glass front looks especially nice.

Today has been quite a great day for 'retro activities'. Over the weekend I took the TDA1517 amp chip off of a very dead sound card, to make an amplifier board, since I've got some old un-amplified speakers that really benefit from having a proper amp. It didn't work, but today I figured out what I'd messed up on the protoboard PCB and now the amp is working excellently with my Sony SRS-7 speakers, which I bought a veeeery long time ago. They sound pretty great except for the comparatively poor handling of bass tones.

I also got hold of a new LCD for my Toshiba Satellite 2180CDT, which I received with a smashed screen. The correct LCDs for this model aren't cheaply available on ebay anymore, so I got a Torisan LCD which I knew was similar. But upon receipt, the pinout was different, not only was it flipped (so it shorted the laptop on initial test), but the LVDS pairs were 1-pin spaced instead of 2-pin spaced. But the LCD works now that I've moved the pins across on the LCD. Great to have this particular laptop finally up and running, while it's a later machine, I think the video and sound work really well for dos games.

Lastly, while doing some of these things, I was watching Necroware's (scorp's) latest videos on youtube, some very impressive repairs in the last 2 videos.