What retro things have you done today?

[phatboy]

After years I have cleared out the garage and made a start on the "man lab". Work bench is installed and brother who is very handily a sparkie has been over and got power into the garage properly for me as the previous owners did the same grade "job" they did to the rest of the place that we needed to fix lol

Just need to dig out all my old failed hardware that i have to create more wall art

(screen / plugs is 100% straight on that wall btw, for some reason phone made the picture look bowed!?!)

 

[DHR]

After years I have cleared out the garage and made a start on the "man lab". Work bench is installed and brother who is very handily a sparkie has been over and got power into the garage properly for me as the previous owners did the same grade "job" they did to the rest of the place that we needed to fix lol

Just need to dig out all my old failed hardware that i have to create more wall art

(screen / plugs is 100% straight on that wall btw, for some reason phone made the picture look bowed!?!)

@phatboy have you had to do any insulation etc. what sort of garage door have you got? Reason I ask is we're in the process of looking to do something similar.

 

[phatboy]

@phatboy have you had to do any insulation etc. what sort of garage door have you got? Reason I ask is we're in the process of looking to do something similar.

So we only have just over a third of a garage as the rest was converted to a play room before we bought the house. The wall the screen is mounted on is the partition wall that was built when they did that.

I am looking into the insulation front next as there is a single outside facing wall that I am considering doing that on. We are lucky that the other 2 sides back on to internal rooms so its actually never that cold out there The garage door is a normal one but i have invested in 3M draft excluder stuff for it which is due to arrive this week and meant to be pretty decent.

Its by no means a proper garage conversion, just a middle ground where I can work on stuff without it being on the dining room table lol.

 

[!bluetonic!]

I literally have everything I need.

So why did you buy an Amstrad CPC 6128 on Gumtree then?

 

[phatboy]

just powered up the 233MMX and was going to play some Quake 1. I have an MX420 64MB in there and it cannot run quake at anything acceptable other than 320x240 resolution.

That sound right or does something seem a miss. I am currently assuming its just a wall from the CPU

 

[Armageus]

just powered up the 233MMX and was going to play some Quake 1. I have an MX420 64MB in there and it cannot run quake at anything acceptable other than 320x240 resolution.

That sound right or does something seem a miss. I am currently assuming its just a wall from the CPU

What version of quake? If it's the original dos or windows versions rather than e.g. glquake or a more modern port then the graphics card won't really be used

A 233mmx will get around 19fps @640x480

Quake (DOS) software-mode tested from 320x200 to 1280x1024 on 36 CPUs (and 7 platofrms) from 1996 to 2004 \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org

 

[phatboy]

What version of quake? If it's the original dos or windows versions rather than e.g. glquake or a more modern port then the graphics card won't really be used

A 233mmx will get around 19fps @640x480

Quake (DOS) software-mode tested from 320x200 to 1280x1024 on 36 CPUs (and 7 platofrms) from 1996 to 2004 \ VOGONS

www.vogons.org

that will be it then! Thanks for the knowledge i genuinely didn't have there

FPS in that Vogons link is near enough identical to what i am seeing, for some reason i thought that Quake used the VGA card

I have GL Quake installed but it just black screens annoyingly, think its not supported by Voodoo2 looking at the readme, wondering if i have the incorrect version

 

[GeX]

I've had my Spectrum Next project unfinished for a few years now, finally got round to tidying up the last bits.

Sticking point has been the keyboard, I bought and built Zelux membrane. This gives mechanical buttons and also backlighting



Which is too IN YOUR FACE, even running the LEDs at lower voltage was still too much. In that photo is a silver keymat, and the light shines through the tops of the keys and it just looks naff to me



So I bought some more keymats, replaced the silver with a white but the light still shown through. I then bought a black mat, and aha!



but now.. what colour faceplate? I like how the black looks when off, less so when on.



What about white?





I prefer that for when on, but prefer black when off.

What else is there? Titanium!




I think that's a nice balance of the two.

Next (ahaha) problem, the blue LEDs have 0ohm resistors and the LEDs are too bright imo. So I took all those off



and replaced them with 51ohm resistors



Much better.

Next up, I've just ordered the little caps I need for the Drive, Reset and NMI buttons on the side and I'll also remove the bright red LED from the Next board that's visible on the right along with the red (and blue) LEDs from the WiFi module on the left.

 

[Retro6]

I've made a start on the Windows ME build from the retro PC tower I found next to the dumpster. I'm confident I can repair the original socket 370 motherboard and the PSU both need new capacitors, as I have no replacements yet and also to save time I've installed another motherboard and PSU with is better for Windows ME, the socket 370 boards are best saved for the 95/98 builds.

The board I selected is from 2003 so it should be compatible with Windows ME and has an AMD Athlon processor with an AGP ATi RAGE GPU card.

So far the PC posts and seems to work but that is as far as I will go for today because I have no hard drive for it yet, I will need to order a IDE to SATA adapter and see if it will detect an 80GB SATA HDD then I can install Windows ME to it. I will install MS-DOS 6.22 on it first on a 2 GB partition and then Windows ME on another partition.

I also need to get some more coin cell batteries. I could not get Windows ME to boot which is strange because I'm sure my Windows ME CD is bootable, it is the full version, not the upgrade. I magaged to get a Windows 98 boot CD to boot tho so at least I know the computer is working as it should.

I could not get DOS to boot from floppy or any floppy boot disk so I change the Floppy drive and the replacement floppy drive broke when I pushed in the cable, the circuit board had become very brittle so I can't use that now and I've only got 3 more spares that aren't suitable for the case. Parts are becoming so ridiculously expensive but before I start looking on ebay rip off merchants & scalpers I think I just might have another known working floppy drive in another case I can use.

Its at testing stages so far just to make sure all parts are good. It will be getting a DVD drive as well but right now all I have is black DVD drives so I will either have to swap face plates of the optical drive or find a beige colored DVD drive.

I also had to modify the power supply so that it fits the board and add some molex & floppy connector which I cut from a dead PSU.

 

[Retro6]

I've been doing a bit more work on the Windows ME build and I decided to use the SATA to IDE adapter that I was saving for my Windows 95 build, I will just have to order another for that project.

I'm using an 80GB SATA HDD, I have 3 of these drives all tested and 100% good. Its always handy to have these for retro builds, saves messing about with CF cards etc.

Everything is working well on this computer now. I just need to find my other floppy drive to fit and fit some connectors to the front panel wiring as the plugs don't fit the board but I have the on/off connected so that is all I need for now at this stage. I've installed MS-DOS 6.22 from floppy.

It be ready to install Windows ME... for some reason the Windows ME CD is not bootable but Windows 98SE is? I can see why people install Windows 98 on everything now, this PC will be strictly a Windows ME build tho so I may have to install Windows 98 then upgrade to Windows ME and this install will be separate from the MS DOS 6.22 partition.

The IDE to SATA adapter looks quite interesting with those red lights but I will be insulating the adapter with a piece of heat shrink. I know some people like using electrical tape but I find it a bit messy and goes sticky after a while and makes a mess.

 

[phatboy]

Been reading up more on the Dreamblaster S2 with the intention of getting one ordered up ASAP to match up with my Yamaha OLP3 card in the P233 MMX system.

Just realised i still have a Windows 95 hard drive in my Athlon XP system that is dormant so may look to see if i can move that over the P233 system as a dual boot alongside W98. feels much better placed. Athlon has 2GB of RAM in it so 95 refuses to work understandably.

All this whilst listening to the Jaguar XJ220 Mega CD soundtrack

 

[cee-S-dee]

@phatboy the s2 is a nice little wavetable module. If you can, i'd stretch to the X2GS if your only going to get 1 module. I have the original X2 with the Buran bank, and it sounds awesome, the GS has the added roland GS Bak which is pretty much on par with a SC-55.

 

[phatboy]

Also, something I will put out the the group......have a huge dilemma on whether to sell up a load of kit or do "just one more build"

I have found an AW9D-Max board in the cupboard I forgot about and still have a set of reference HD4870's sat here.

Space would be nice, but so would a Crossfire setup

 

[phatboy]

@phatboy the s2 is a nice little wavetable module. If you can, i'd stretch to the X2GS if your only going to get 1 module. I have the original X2 with the Buran bank, and it sounds awesome, the GS has the added roland GS Bak which is pretty much on par with a SC-55.

oh wow that sounds immense!

 

[Retro6]

Also, something I will put out the the group......have a huge dilemma on whether to sell up a load of kit or do "just one more build"

I have found an AW9D-Max board in the cupboard I forgot about and still have a set of reference HD4870's sat here.

Space would be nice, but so would a Crossfire setup

I hear ya pal... I've got around 20 retro PC's I can't bring myself to sell any of them, I know the feeling of not having space. I would love to set them all up one day.

 

[GeX]

*looks around his kingdom for Really Useful Boxes

Many PCs there and well over 100 GPUs..

 

[Retro6]

*looks around his kingdom for Really Useful Boxes

Many PCs there and well over 100 GPUs..

Luckily AGP GPU's are still cheap/reasonably priced. I might stock up on some more just encase.

 

[phatboy]

Luckily AGP GPU's are still cheap/reasonably priced. I might stock up on some more just encase.

Reminds me I need to fit the vortexx cooler to my x1950 to see if it stops the artifacts. Seems they have a rep for just doing it as standard on the stock little coolers.

My boxed XFX AGP 7600GT is sat in my "shouldn't you just sell that" pile but I love the box art too much lol

 

[Retro6]

Well thats Windows ME installed and drivers installed I just need the driver for the onboard sound of the motherboard which is (PC CHIPS M811 VER 3.1) I don't suppose anybody knows what the sound chip is?

 

[!bluetonic!]

The journey with the Amstrad CPC 6128 has so far been successful.

The floppy drive was working, but not reading discs. A quick clean later and it's still not reading disks. So, it now has a fancy pants Gotek drive with rotary encoder.

I have an acquaintance that will hopefully fix the CRT for me. In the meantime, I bought the relevant Scart adapter and power and hooked it up to an old TV.

My first computer was an Amiga500, so this was a bit before my computing history. A schoolmate had the Amstrad CPC464 which was very fancy for the time. I wanted to play computer games at his house and he wanted to show me Page3 girls cutout from the paper.

This was a whim purchase. It probably will be sold once I've scratched an itch.