rasz_pl wrote on 2024-07-24, 16:42:

>The EEPROM is soldered on the board so it's pretty much a brick now.

basic soldering iron is $10 with shipping 😀

Nice. I got a soldering iron. I also got 20 other retro projects to work that are more pressing. So this one will go in the list as #21. At least I backed up the rom before lowering the wrecking ball.

Would be nice if this board worked with MrBIOS or something interesting like that. I guess I can try the tiger eye BIOS when I get a chance.

Managed to get a Aurel Vortex 2 working on both Windows and a Debian Etch on my "new" K6-2 550.
It's been days I had problems with this card.
A pad was damaged on a the chip and no more soldered ...
Now I have to try FreeBSD 5.
Too bad, no drivers for the Aurel or Ati 8500 on BeOS PE 🙁

Also got 2 IDE hard drives, 80 and 200 G for 10 $

I hate fan noises.
Those old computers usually don't have fan speed management / drivers.
I wonder if I make a cheap Arduino based card PWM with cheap CTN.
Plugued in PCI or ISA, just to get power.

Ugh managed to dig out my copy of IBM PC Assembly Language and Programming, 2nd ed. Yes the one with the brilliant red cover. It was buried. I don't have a lot of books anymore, I had hundreds. But what I'm looking for is always near the bottom of the pile.

I have been doing some Applesoft BASIC these days on my Apple IIc (which is due a retrobright next summer) to refresh some old memories, and exercite some (old but not so old) programming muscles....

Once I finish revisiting it I will be doing the same with VB4 on Win 9x...

Before you retrobright any plastics, I advise you condition it with mineral oil perhaps or some other plastic conditioner. It's said retrobright causes miniscule cracks to appear on the plastic surface. If plastic is old and dry, even perhaps brittle some, you're doimg additional damage by exposing it to peroxide.

Not "retro" but "old" hardware:

Tested a 2.5GB USB adapter on a Synology DS1512+ from 2012. It works and link speed is good but real world usage is at most the same as the 1GB NIC. Likely the ancient Atom D2700.
Currently have 70TB on this NAS and about to go from 20TB to 24TB drives. Going to take a looooong time if I ever have to restore. heh.
This is the only NAS I have to robocopy to, all the others I'm using ZFS replication.

But you can cut down the number of backup floppies to only 41 million or so if you use the 1.7MB format.

BitWrangler wrote on 2024-07-25, 17:11:

But you can cut down the number of backup floppies to only 41 million or so if you use the 1.7MB format.

2MB unformatted FTW.

DosFreak wrote on 2024-07-25, 17:06:

This is the only NAS I have to robocopy to, all the others I'm using ZFS replication.

Glad to hear someone else uses robocopy. Been using it for 20+ years. One of the most reliable tools out there. Even used it at data centers to get out of some sticky situations.

Major Jackyl wrote on 2024-07-23, 21:40:

Heh, yes. It is FULL of hard drives and optical drives (and other 5.25/3.5 items) now, XD I like vintage filing cabinets to hold […]
Show full quote

pan069 wrote on 2024-07-23, 10:28:

Major Jackyl wrote on 2024-07-22, 21:52:

I acquired these pieces:

The attachment 20240722_164731.jpg is no longer available

A filing cabinet? 🤣

Heh, yes. It is FULL of hard drives and optical drives (and other 5.25/3.5 items) now, 🤣 I like vintage filing cabinets to hold my heavy computer parts, the old ones can handle the weight.

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Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-07-23, 01:44:

Major Jackyl wrote on 2024-07-22, 21:52:

I acquired these pieces: […]
Show full quote

I acquired these pieces:

The attachment 20240720_151702.jpg is no longer available

Panasonic T33 Electronic Typewriter (fully functional, too) AND...

The attachment 20240722_164731.jpg is no longer available

AMS AT system with a Pentium 75Mhz and 2x8MB RAM. 2MB s3 video, Creative CT1770, and a modem. Has a 3.2GB Quantum Fireball in it, but it must be going bad, as it growls like no-other.

The attachment 20240720_190014.jpg is no longer available

My favorite feature so far is the "turbo" that actually works. Runs 33Mhz with "turbo off" and gets even slower with the cache turned off, now I can easily play the speed dependent games.

It was(is) having a strange issue with drivers (I loaded DOS6.22/W3.11) and it won't load MSCDEX.EXE into the upper memory. EVERYTHING else loads HIGH, including the driver for the CD and the ASPI2DOS for the SCSI. Even GUEST.EXE for the parallel ZIP loads HIGH. My other DOS computers do it fine, leaving me with 605k conventional, but this one is being a bugger, so I REM'd MSCDEX out of autoexec and load it if I need it, for now. Otherwise the thing is gouged (of course) and left with 557k, which causes issues.
May not be a problem in the future, because the original drive was a Plextor SCSI CD caddy drive:

The attachment 20240722_163034.jpg is no longer available

Which is getting de-yellowed and going to go back in. The TDK drive that I have in there right now is pretty neat, though. The whole tray is translucent blue.

I also cleaned said TDK drive (finally, after having it for months now) tested it (Good)

And I'm about to be formatting floppies all night, as the ones I got from my brother are mostly bad, but come back to life with the use of IMAGEDISK. Brilliant program.

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I'm curious about that type writer - can you still get supplies to keep it going? Are you stuck looking for stuff like ink on eBay?

I haven't actually looked yet, as I've only had it a couple of days and have a few other projects to work on. BUUUT... I saw a local place with cases of ribbons AND correction tape (what motivated me to get it, was 5 bucks, no big deal) so I hope I can pick some up this weekend, maybe?

Wow, now that's what I call a collection of hardrives, you had a good find with the cabinet, PC, and a Panasonic old school word processor.

I just love that photo, the irony of a pre-computer piece of equipment designed for file storage, containing many pieces of computer equipment designed for file storage, with the storage capacity comparison easy to see. The cabinet could hold folders containing 100's, maybe 1000's of files, all of which could be stored on just one of those drives. It's hard to convey to non computer people just how much magnetic, then optical, and now digital storage capacities have advanced, and what the MB's, GB's and TB's actually relate to in real term. Having grown up using computers with C15 tapes then floppy disks, I appreciate storage capacity.

Out of curiosity, I would love to know what their (the HDD's) combined storage capacity would be?

You have me inspired, I should make a slip case for SD cards out of a dead 3.5" floppy.

I thought I do it a little bit different this time, used some discarded wood.

PD2JK wrote on 2024-07-26, 13:40:

I thought I do it a little bit different this time, used some discarded wood.

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Battery riser, environmentally friendly. You couldn't have done it better. 😀

Got an old 2006 Dell 4:3 VGA 15 inch LCD from a guy I work with. Hooked it up to my PicoMite VGA and loaded up PETSCii Robots to test it out.

Works good! I needed a decent 4:3 VGA display. 😀

Never liked bulky permanent heatsinks as they didnt fit in my CPU case, so decided to remove them today.

Whats under them is a very blurry printed Cyrix label, and a blank for the TI.

Am I hallucinating or do I have a similar green heatsinked 486 that says IBM?

After being sick for nearly more than 2 weeks straight (note to self - heatstrokes are the worst thing to happen than a winter fever.), I'm planning to figure a way to run Katmai and possibly Coppermines on a Luckystar 6BXC.

It's a neat babyAT mobo - 440 Bx, 3x SDR, pretty much a good recipe for a fast AT build. I also saved the JNC PSU I got with it, before selling the case to a friend who needed an AT case (for those wondering, it was one of those Comprace cases that IIRC @Robert B covered as well.) and might rebuild that as well - I hope I haven't got rusty in regards to PSU hijinks!

Anyways, my main goal is getting a Katmai running in the first place. Coppermines will be an extra feature I suppose.

BigDave wrote on 2024-07-26, 05:36:

Wow, now that's what I call a collection of hardrives, you had a good find with the cabinet, PC, and a Panasonic old school word […]
Show full quote

Major Jackyl wrote on 2024-07-23, 21:40:

Heh, yes. It is FULL of hard drives and optical drives (and other 5.25/3.5 items) now, XD I like vintage filing cabinets to hold […]
Show full quote

pan069 wrote on 2024-07-23, 10:28:

A filing cabinet? 🤣

Heh, yes. It is FULL of hard drives and optical drives (and other 5.25/3.5 items) now, 🤣 I like vintage filing cabinets to hold my heavy computer parts, the old ones can handle the weight.

The attachment 20240723_163836.jpg is no longer available

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2024-07-23, 01:44:

I'm curious about that type writer - can you still get supplies to keep it going? Are you stuck looking for stuff like ink on eBay?

I haven't actually looked yet, as I've only had it a couple of days and have a few other projects to work on. BUUUT... I saw a local place with cases of ribbons AND correction tape (what motivated me to get it, was 5 bucks, no big deal) so I hope I can pick some up this weekend, maybe?

Wow, now that's what I call a collection of hardrives, you had a good find with the cabinet, PC, and a Panasonic old school word processor.

I just love that photo, the irony of a pre-computer piece of equipment designed for file storage, containing many pieces of computer equipment designed for file storage, with the storage capacity comparison easy to see. The cabinet could hold folders containing 100's, maybe 1000's of files, all of which could be stored on just one of those drives. It's hard to convey to non computer people just how much magnetic, then optical, and now digital storage capacities have advanced, and what the MB's, GB's and TB's actually relate to in real term. Having grown up using computers with C15 tapes then floppy disks, I appreciate storage capacity.

Out of curiosity, I would love to know what their (the HDD's) combined storage capacity would be?

I re-organized today, to figure that out. I got curious. With 26 drives currently in the drawer, a total 0f 5279.4GB (Card is for a tape drive under)

Went browsing ebay for a NEC V60 in PGA package, or something that might contain one. I saw some old SEGA arcade boards, but they are $$$ even for nonworking ones. While I was at it, I also ran across an unidentified PCB somebody was selling as scrap, which I happen to recognize as being a Panasonic Exec. Partner FT-70 motherboard. Wasn't expecting that! Not worth buying a huge motherboard just to loot a few DRAM chips though.

Well, I can safely say it's been a success!

Luckystar 6BX2, brought to snuff with a BIOS patch + update. Running a 500MHz Katmai P3 with no issues so far.

BONUS: HDD limit patched, as well as Coppermine (and Tualatin... but you'd have to be an absolute madman to run a Tuallie in a babyAT form!) support added. Untested yet, but if anyone wants, I can share the patched BIOS to test it out, if ye have a slotket handy. Oh, and 133FSB support, though idk if that's feasible given that I have no idea how low in voltage the VRM goes.