What retro things have you done today?
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Soldato
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That's what reminded me that I have one and I don't use it. I thought it might speed up a sale.
My 5200 sold within 2 hours (for the same price) but not before I sneakily swapped the cooler on it.
For some reason I really want an Excel 3.0 pin to pin to nothing whatsoever.
Had some time last night to strip down the now not a mystery box and see what was what.
This system was definitely a 286 originally the turbo display was set to 6/12mhz. I now have it set to show HI/LO as its only 2 digit.
Sony 4x CD Drive.
Mitsumi floppy drive
Gigabyte GA486IM + AMD DX4 100 + 16mb(4x4mb) of ram. Of which 2 sticks appear faulty so I have it running with 8mb as it doesnt like the other spare ram I have right now. Mobo and CPU look new as does the cpu fan.
Cirrus Logic CL-GD542X 1MB. Looks brand new.
LONGSHINE MICROSYSTEM, INC. LCS-6624 IDE/FLoppy controller. Looks older and used so likely from the original spec?
D-LINK DE-220CT. Another new looking card and also I think the only ISA NIC I own so may prove useful one day.
Generic soundcard with AZT2320 chipset. This card also looks unused. Will likely stay that way after I test it out for a bit.
Seagate ST3660A 545mb HDD. I did test it quickly and was able to read and write to it without any terrible noises but I cant see any obvious ways to mount it properly so removed it in favour of CF.
The finished product:
Swapped the ODIN RTC for a new DALLAS chip that I had. Just need something else for the other bay now. I also swapped out the VLB VGA for a PCI one and it is night and day difference.
I plan to do some benches vs my other dx4 and then may say goodbye to the weaker one.
This system was definitely a 286 originally the turbo display was set to 6/12mhz. I now have it set to show HI/LO as its only 2 digit.
Sony 4x CD Drive.
Mitsumi floppy drive
Gigabyte GA486IM + AMD DX4 100 + 16mb(4x4mb) of ram. Of which 2 sticks appear faulty so I have it running with 8mb as it doesnt like the other spare ram I have right now. Mobo and CPU look new as does the cpu fan.
Cirrus Logic CL-GD542X 1MB. Looks brand new.
LONGSHINE MICROSYSTEM, INC. LCS-6624 IDE/FLoppy controller. Looks older and used so likely from the original spec?
D-LINK DE-220CT. Another new looking card and also I think the only ISA NIC I own so may prove useful one day.
Generic soundcard with AZT2320 chipset. This card also looks unused. Will likely stay that way after I test it out for a bit.
Seagate ST3660A 545mb HDD. I did test it quickly and was able to read and write to it without any terrible noises but I cant see any obvious ways to mount it properly so removed it in favour of CF.
The finished product:
Swapped the ODIN RTC for a new DALLAS chip that I had. Just need something else for the other bay now. I also swapped out the VLB VGA for a PCI one and it is night and day difference.
I plan to do some benches vs my other dx4 and then may say goodbye to the weaker one.
Soldato
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Do you guys think that the 486 board not "seeing" my controller is because of my controller card or because of the motherboard? I can get another controller card for £20 or so but don't need a second card if it still won't play with the board!
In other news my Dad and I were going through my (recently deceased) Grandad's stuff and came across this Personal Word Processor:
I don't know why anyone would buy a Word Processor in 1996 when I'm sure for the money you could get a 386 or Amiga or something kitted out for the same price! It was so slow it couldn't keep up with my typing. The keyboard and commands were unintuitive compared to MS Office version... whatever I was using on Windows 3.1 recently.
In other news my Dad and I were going through my (recently deceased) Grandad's stuff and came across this Personal Word Processor:
I don't know why anyone would buy a Word Processor in 1996 when I'm sure for the money you could get a 386 or Amiga or something kitted out for the same price! It was so slow it couldn't keep up with my typing. The keyboard and commands were unintuitive compared to MS Office version... whatever I was using on Windows 3.1 recently.
I have to say @LewisRaz that was certainly a nice bargain you got there. Some nice parts in that system and the case is great!
I'm working a a 386 DX40 system at the moment but its far from finished yet. I need to get an external battery pack for the CMOS and i would like to pick up a VLB VGA card for it too. The Board is a Opti 495SLC Hybrid 386/486 board. This one has the soldered AMD DX40 on it. The Promise VLB Cache Controller is not playing nicely either so i need to try and get that going fully.
I'm working a a 386 DX40 system at the moment but its far from finished yet. I need to get an external battery pack for the CMOS and i would like to pick up a VLB VGA card for it too. The Board is a Opti 495SLC Hybrid 386/486 board. This one has the soldered AMD DX40 on it. The Promise VLB Cache Controller is not playing nicely either so i need to try and get that going fully.
@almoststew1990 I have a couple of spare I/O cards (VLB or ISA) if you wanted to rule out the fault before paying for a new card.
@cee-S-dee Cheers mate. It really cleaned up well and the front mounts all superglued back on nicely. Took way too long to figure out the Turbo display (not the actual display itself but getting the board to tell the display to change) but got there in the end.
I still cant get over how clean your case is. Seems like a long time ago I had that one and fixing the motherboard inside it was what really kicked off my interest in older gear.
The forum has been slow/messing up for me too lately.
@cee-S-dee Cheers mate. It really cleaned up well and the front mounts all superglued back on nicely. Took way too long to figure out the Turbo display (not the actual display itself but getting the board to tell the display to change) but got there in the end.
I still cant get over how clean your case is. Seems like a long time ago I had that one and fixing the motherboard inside it was what really kicked off my interest in older gear.
The forum has been slow/messing up for me too lately.
Soldato
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Yes please then if you've got an ISA controller card spare I can test this troublemarker board out with, that would be great!
Sure mate I will ping you a trust later on to sort out sending it over.
Hoping to get some time this evening to let my 486s fight it out but the lure of "fall guys" is strong.
Looks like my couple-of-month-old SanDisk Extreme 32GB CF card has already given up the ghost. Slot-1 machine had been playing up for a while, not always booting into Windows and being generally sluggish. Realised that it was in actual fact ALWAYS booting into Windows (98SE), and that actually it was just taking upwards of 30-45 minutes! Swapped the IDE cable, the StarTech IDE to CF adapter, and even tried using only the Primary or Secondary (with the other disabled) IDE port on the motherboard. Finally succumbed and tried an old Transcend 4GB and the PC is now running happy again.
I'm still not convinced by the longevity of CF cards as replacements for OS drives, secondary drives possibly as they get less reads and writes, but I think I'm going back to "normal" drives for now.
That's two dead CF cards (in different machines) in less than 6 months, and they aren't cheap.
Got a StarTech Bi-Directional SATA to IDE (and IDE to SATA) adapter on the way, going to change out for an SSD (TSCUNBOW 32GB).
I'm still not convinced by the longevity of CF cards as replacements for OS drives, secondary drives possibly as they get less reads and writes, but I think I'm going back to "normal" drives for now.
That's two dead CF cards (in different machines) in less than 6 months, and they aren't cheap.
Got a StarTech Bi-Directional SATA to IDE (and IDE to SATA) adapter on the way, going to change out for an SSD (TSCUNBOW 32GB).
Soldato
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That's interesting as all three of my cards are going strong after loads of re-partition and formats. They generally get filled up with each install I use them for too. I usually find my issue is power - the 50p molex or sata to floppy adapter is playing up. I go for the smaller (older?) cards though, 512MB for DOS and 8GB (30 and 60mbps) for Windows 98. TBH I am probably going to switch to SD cards though as they're so cheap.
I lost a good part of 2 hours last night trying to diagnose why my VLB controller could detect floppy drive but not my HDD no matter what settings. Turned out the master/slave jumper had fallen off the CF adapter.... >.<
Also managed to find another 8mb of ram to bring it up to 16mb.
That aztech soundcard is ******, fit my AWE32 instead which is also being a bit fussy but at least works in windows and sounds good.
Also managed to find another 8mb of ram to bring it up to 16mb.
That aztech soundcard is ******, fit my AWE32 instead which is also being a bit fussy but at least works in windows and sounds good.
Yep, they are terrible, I have two of the things.
I dont know what was wrong with it. WAV files were played back at like double speed and sounded really tinny. Aswell as it being a PnP card and not actually being detected..
Soldato
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My journey into the world of SCSI crashed and burned. It was an indulgent and expensive exercise which yielded nothing.
I bought a SCSI card with an external 68 pin connector. Trying to find a cable for this was fraught. In the end if was from eBay and a seller in Australia. Expensive and stung for tax. It was 68 pin to Centronics connector.
The optical rewritable drive powered on, but with everything connected, the machine just froze.
I picked up a tidy caddy-based external CD drive I also bought some extra caddies in anticipation. The drive was recognised on startup and given a letter, but the drive doesn't want to read the discs. It just spits them out.
I would sell it all, but the drives are heavy, so postage will be costly. So it's ended up in the garage for now.
It's been a few months with my Dell out on show. It's time to stock rotate. I'll see what I can dig out of the garage next..
I bought a SCSI card with an external 68 pin connector. Trying to find a cable for this was fraught. In the end if was from eBay and a seller in Australia. Expensive and stung for tax. It was 68 pin to Centronics connector.
The optical rewritable drive powered on, but with everything connected, the machine just froze.
I picked up a tidy caddy-based external CD drive I also bought some extra caddies in anticipation. The drive was recognised on startup and given a letter, but the drive doesn't want to read the discs. It just spits them out.
I would sell it all, but the drives are heavy, so postage will be costly. So it's ended up in the garage for now.
It's been a few months with my Dell out on show. It's time to stock rotate. I'll see what I can dig out of the garage next..
Soldato
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Good point. The card I'm using supports Auto-Termination and the CD drive worked fine (powered up and was given a drive letter) without a terminator.
On another note, I do need to get some more stuff tested and sold. I'll find some time for this over the weekend.
On another note, I do need to get some more stuff tested and sold. I'll find some time for this over the weekend.
Sounds like it to me. That’s either the BIOS not initialising at all, or damage to the board causing a lack of communication from the BIOS to the ISA bus.