What retro things have you done today?

Yes indeed.

There was the Skunk Rom loading device, which wouldn't really suit my needs or this one. Expensive, but I wouldn't know how to create one of these from scratch.. :p
Cheers, I'd forgot about those skunk boards but from memory, those need to be hooked up to a pc for using I think?

I've got my original Doctor V64 from about 1997/8 I ordered from Bung enterprises!! I was going to order a skunk board around the same time but I think they went out of stock or I couldn't find one and then never bothered.
 
Finally managed to get some nice Copper Heatsinks for my 3dfx Voodoo 5 5500, got to say they look good and seem to be working well

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Hopefully they will keep the card going for a few more years to come

Chris
 
I've been trying to repair an Acorn Electron that wont read from cassette. I know the cassette is fine and the cables as I've tested it on other Acorn Electrons which have worked fine with the same cassette and cables.

I decided to do some fault finding and I found a shorted out diode... I wonder if this component will be the only fault... I don't have any spare so I will need to hunt down a replacement diode on ebay. I can do BBC Basic on it tho. :)

I was thinking that if all else fails if replacing the shorted out diode doesn't sort the issue that maybe I might do a Raspberry Pi keyboard mod and turn it into a RISC OS machine... just an idea for now...
 
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EBay morons do wind me up.

Sold my Voodoo 3 and they’ve now come back asking for a full or partial refund because the card has had a repair job and shows heat discolouration. I wasn’t aware of either but they are visible in the pictures of the original listing so I would’ve expected someone who knew what they were looking for (and it seems like the buyer is as they’ve mentioned owning several other Voodoo cards) would spot them if they’re an issue.

But it’s a 20+ year old graphics card. Listed used and it works. What do people expect. I didn’t say it was new or anything.

Offered them £25 refund or they can return it for a full refund.
 
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EBay morons do wind me up.

Sold my Voodoo 3 and they’ve now come back asking for a full or partial refund because the card has had a repair job and shows heat discolouration. I wasn’t aware of either but they are visible in the pictures of the original listing so I would’ve expected someone who knew what they were looking for (and it seems like the buyer is as they’ve mentioned owning several other Voodoo cards) would spot them if they’re an issue.

But it’s a 20+ year old graphics card. Listed used and it works. What do people expect. I didn’t say it was new or anything.

Offered them £25 refund or they can return it for a full refund.
You do get this with Ebay, people trying to take advantage. I usually post multiple pictures of the cards running and provide a detailed description to cover my back. Just mention anything that you might think they can pick on. When they get back to you, you can ask them if they've read the description, as it is mentioned. If they reach out to Ebay you will win as you covered the bits in the description.

I don't mind at all providing a refund to a genuine buyer, like I did in the past, but some are just taking the pI$$, like this guy below. From his name I could tell he is romanian, so I sent him a message back in romanian. I told him that I will provide a full refund, but I want all my stuff back. He requested a return and never sent the items back, so ebay closed the case. I just don't want to give them the satisfaction of winning.

"Hi,

I've just opened the parcel, and I have few issues.
The both Arctic fans are broken. And definitely the were opened because the boxes weren't sealed.
Also, the cooler does have bent fins, so definitely is not in an excellent condition, as you stated. Let's find a way to sort this problems. Thank you."

This was for a Fuma 2 heatsink, very cheap, opened box with a few bent fins which were shown in the pictures. And the fans he was talking about were brand new, they don't come sealed and were listed as a "free extra".
 
I remember when I sold something on ebay and it went super cheap because the auction only got 2 bids and the item was worth an easy 20 quid. I lost money on it the buyer won it for just over 2 quid and he moaned about me over charging him by 11p on postage and I got negative feedback.

Another time I sold a gameboy fully working the buyer messages me to say its broken, it doesn't work so I told him to open a return case, when I got it back there was nothing wrong with it I put batteries in it and all was fine.
 
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GP2040-ce firmware is what im using on these. I used Arduino pro micros in my bartop cab but the Arduinos cost almost 4 times as much as the rp2040 zero which come in at under 2 quid each :eek: stocked up well on them.

Will have to work out how to design a case now.
 
GP2040-ce firmware is what im using on these. I used Arduino pro micros in my bartop cab but the Arduinos cost almost 4 times as much as the rp2040 zero which come in at under 2 quid each :eek: stocked up well on them.

Will have to work out how to design a case now.
Yep always stock up while things are cheap.
 
I've been thinking about doing some experimental retro PC builds using modern parts, socket LGA775. I've got a few spare beige boxes I can put parts into, it be fun and interesting to see how it all comes together. DOS 6.22 on an SSD and maybe Windows 3.11 as well as experimenting with FreeDOS on another partition of the SSD.

 
I've been thinking about doing some experimental retro PC builds using modern parts, socket LGA775. I've got a few spare beige boxes I can put parts into, it be fun and interesting to see how it all comes together. DOS 6.22 on an SSD and maybe Windows 3.11 as well as experimenting with FreeDOS on another partition of the SSD.
Yes, do it and keep us posted. The sound card is the tricky bit to get working in Dos 6.22.
 
I've never tried SBEMU but sounds interesting. There are PCI sound cards that work reasonably well with DOS. I bought another motherboard to try out for my project, the socket 462 with AGP look interesting although boards are reasonably cheap processors are pricey. I do have a few 462 motherboards somewhere but they are berried deep in the back of a large storage cupboard and if I remember rightly they need re-capping. They still have the processors on them. I can't really be bothered to dig them out but I will if I have too.

This is an interesting video. I have one of these boards that works...

 
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I've been looking through my stack of old junky dual core machines looking for motherboard candidates for my experimental DOS machine. I have a GIGABYTE GA-P31-S3G that is already inside a beige retro case. I generally found this motherboard to be very reliable and solid. I could change the processor to a 420 1.6GHz celeron and turn off all performance and CPU cache in the BIOS. I can fit a DDR2 256MB RAM stick. I think this is the smallest I can get in DDR2... the board has IDE and a floppy header with PCI slots. There are DOS supported PCI sound cards I'm sure I can find a PCI GPU like a TNT or something.
 
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