What retro things have you done today?

LewisRaz · 25 Mar 2020 at 00:40

Spent some time tonight getting both my 486 as complete as they can be awaiting parts. (Who knows when things will turn up now..)

Top one
486sx2 50mhz. 16MB Ram. 500mb HDD. Soundblaster 2.0. 4x CDROM. Windows 95.

To do list on this one: I am waiting for some cache chips to arrive from Israel and if I can get that working nicely I may replace the sx50 with a dx 66. I might also leave this one as dos 6.22 or windows 3.1. It will likely just be stored for occasional use once finished as its a bit beat on the top panel.

Bottom one
486dx4 100mhz. 16mb ram. 1GB CF HDD. (mounted in pci bracket which is amazing for transferring files over!) Yamaha MF-719. 48x creative CDROM and windows 95.

To do list on this one: This is my "dream" 486 build. Recreating my first PC. I need to obtain a working serial mouse as I am stuck with keyboard only right now. Add more RAM. I have bags full of memory to add so no reason not to have at least 32mb. Play games on it!

I might also look into setting up the MHZ display but it looks daunting so I may also leave it. (Previous owner has cut some wires on it for unkown reasons.)

I also really need to look out for an ISA or VLB VGA card as both machines are sharing the same trident card right now.

ST_Craig · 25 Mar 2020 at 00:48

Serial mice are quite expensive on the bay, might be worth one of these.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PS-2-Fem...094094?hash=item56b4001e4e:g:Mu8AAOSwaMtbYKbn

Then get a cheap PS/2 Mouse, there are hundreds on the bay, often around a fiver.

LewisRaz · 25 Mar 2020 at 01:00

ST_Craig said:
Serial mice are quite expensive on the bay, might be worth one of these.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PS-2-Fem...094094?hash=item56b4001e4e:g:Mu8AAOSwaMtbYKbn

Then get a cheap PS/2 Mouse, there are hundreds on the bay, often around a fiver.

I have one of those adapters but they only work if the mouse supports the serial bus

(none of my 4 or so do..)
I grabbed a new old stock serial mouse from ebay but it was posted hermes on monday so I dont know if I will see it in 2020

It was quite cheap too! ~£10 posted Reasonable compared to what some are asking for them.

ST_Craig · 25 Mar 2020 at 01:09

You should be ok. I had my OCUK rma sent back to me and DPD delivered it yesterday. I also had 2 deliveries from Yodel, and one from hermes - all 3 came from ebay. The Yodel one was amusing. He knocked on the door then legged it to my gate. When I answered the door he shouted from the gate "Can I have your first initial and last name", I shouted back, then it was "Did you say E ?" , "No, I said V", "G ?", "No, V". "Did you say V", "Yes". "Whats your postcode ?", I thought, this is going to be fun.
Hermes just left the parcel at the door then legged it, didn't even get a knock.

almoststew1990 · 25 Mar 2020 at 08:41

The other option in getting a mouse onto your 486(s!) is to check if your boards have a PS/2 mouse header, usually next or near to your AT Keyboard connector. One of the older builds I picked up over the years had one, and the necessary PS/2 connector and bracket. Although Google is not turning up many results for the one I had in mind, which has four pins in a single line like a PC speaker...

LewisRaz · 25 Mar 2020 at 10:05

almoststew1990 said:
The other option in getting a mouse onto your 486(s!) is to check if your boards have a PS/2 mouse header, usually next or near to your AT Keyboard connector. One of the older builds I picked up over the years had one, and the necessary PS/2 connector and bracket. Although Google is not turning up many results for the one I had in mind, which has four pins in a single line like a PC speaker...

I did check that mate, no joy tho!
The older one actually has ps/2 for mouse and keyboard! Just the 50mhz SX with 0kb of cache is really not enough to run anything I am super interested in.

LewisRaz · 25 Mar 2020 at 14:01

Mouse arrived!
Worked straight away as it should.
Time to get installing some games

LewisRaz · 26 Mar 2020 at 16:48

Really enjoying all this free time right now...
Not enjoying the inapropriately named "dream" 486.
It performs nothing like my original one. Not really sure why, the OG one did have PCI for the vga but dont think that is the problem here.
Transport tycoon was a slideshow, not playable at all, same for dungeon keeper. Both titles I played back when and even if they were ~20fps back then it was still playable. This system is single figures FPS on dungeon keeper even in DOS mode.

I think im going to laugh that system off and replace with a socket 7 133mhz pentium that I got from a trade. Will fit nicely in this proper AT case. Will be able to relive my youth without needing the nostalgia glasses for framerates.

Today I cleaned my P3 system with some 99.9% IPA. The bios issues are gone and now its restored to life! Grabbed a super cheap case from the loft to fit it in. Just getting windows 98se set up on it.

almoststew1990 · 26 Mar 2020 at 18:45

@LewisRaz I would check out these benchmarks. http://www.vgamuseum.info/index.php/benchmarks

It could well be that your ISA card, or rather the ISA interface, causing the problems. In something like Doom, ISA is a big limitation.

Also have you tried out fastvid? https://www.philscomputerlab.com/dos-graphics-boost.html

ST_Craig · 26 Mar 2020 at 19:52

You haven't got the "Turbo" button switched off, by any chance ?

LewisRaz · 26 Mar 2020 at 19:55

@almoststew1990 I did have a look at those benchmarks and the massive difference between ISA and PCI also played a part in my decision to switch to pentium instead.
I do have VLB available but the prices for good ones of those are more than an entire system in some cases!
Ironically Doom was the most playable game I tried

Had quite a while on it but was distracted by the issues with the other games.

LewisRaz · 26 Mar 2020 at 19:56

ST_Craig said:
You haven't got the "Turbo" button switched off, by any chance ?

aha I did think that and after hitting it my slideshow turned into a postcard show

ST_Craig · 26 Mar 2020 at 20:51

LewisRaz said:
aha I did think that and after hitting it my slideshow turned into a postcard show

Ahh, so it's a "Slow Motion" button

I remember back in the 90's, around 93/94, when I was building PC's for home users, at a local shop where I was employed. A woman had phoned in early, before I got there, to complain about her computer was running slow. I knew, as soon as the boss mentioned her name that she pressed that damn button thinking it gave her "Turbo" mode. I remember saying to the boss, if we keep wiring these buttons up then we are going to keep getting these type of complaints. The cases at the time had those LED speed displays on the front, and you could see the speed change in real-time. Trying to explain to these people that the turbo button wasn't some magic turbo button, it was more a compatibility for older games and software.

The stories I could tell, from that shop alone, you wouldn't believe. From a old bloke who took a printer home, phoned up 10 min later to ask where the printer 3.5" disk went - he couldn't find a slot in the printer, lol. To a man who took a complete system home with him, only to phone up and rage it didn't work. I drove 22 flipping miles to find he hadn't plugged the thing in. A woman who kept complaining about crashes, and locks. I drove there to find un-bee-lievable heat in her home, and the PC was literally right next to the wall heater. I moved it, and bingo, no more crashes. A family, who's PC I spent 2 days building, setting up windows 95, the printer, all her damn office work transferred from her old one - they took it home then tried to install windows 95 from the CD and undone everything I had done previously. I left their home, that day, at 8pm - the shop closed at 5pm. And the best yet - a 20-something bought a pre-owned Pentium 60, 8Mb ram, CDrom, etc.. took it home, never heard from him for a few days. Then the boss asked me to go and pick it up from his home, it wasn't booting. Got the PC back, sure, it wasn't booting. Took it apart and there lies the problem - he had swapped out all our hardware, and put in non-working hardware thinking we wouldn't notice. This got real nasty, and it went to court and he lost. In the end, we agreed to put the original hardware back, and that was it.

LewisRaz · 26 Mar 2020 at 21:29

ST_Craig said:
Ahh, so it's a "Slow Motion" button
I remember back in the 90's, around 93/94, when I was building PC's for home users, at a local shop where I was employed. A woman had phoned in early, before I got there, to complain about her computer was running slow. I knew, as soon as the boss mentioned her name that she pressed that damn button thinking it gave her "Turbo" mode. I remember saying to the boss, if we keep wiring these buttons up then we are going to keep getting these type of complaints. The cases at the time had those LED speed displays on the front, and you could see the speed change in real-time. Trying to explain to these people that the turbo button wasn't some magic turbo button, it was more a compatibility for older games and software.

The stories I could tell, from that shop alone, you wouldn't believe. From a old bloke who took a printer home, phoned up 10 min later to ask where the printer 3.5" disk went - he couldn't find a slot in the printer, lol. To a man who took a complete system home with him, only to phone up and rage it didn't work. I drove 22 flipping miles to find he hadn't plugged the thing in. A woman who kept complaining about crashes, and locks. I drove there to find un-bee-lievable heat in her home, and the PC was literally right next to the wall heater. I moved it, and bingo, no more crashes. A family, who's PC I spent 2 days building, setting up windows 95, the printer, all her damn office work transferred from her old one - they took it home then tried to install windows 95 from the CD and undone everything I had done previously. I left their home, that day, at 8pm - the shop closed at 5pm. And the best yet - a 20-something bought a pre-owned Pentium 60, 8Mb ram, CDrom, etc.. took it home, never heard from him for a few days. Then the boss asked me to go and pick it up from his home, it wasn't booting. Got the PC back, sure, it wasn't booting. Took it apart and there lies the problem - he had swapped out all our hardware, and put in non-working hardware thinking we wouldn't notice. This got real nasty, and it went to court and he lost. In the end, we agreed to put the original hardware back, and that was it.

Ah man, I used to run a little bit of laptop repairs and a bit of buying and selling. Got scammed hard once and gave it up. I do not envy people who have to deal with the public!

hohum · 28 Mar 2020 at 11:25

Noticed that despite which agp graphics card I use, agp texture acceleration is listed as 'not available' under dxdiag on Windows 98 (9.0c). AGP bus speed shows as working correctly (4x), as does sideband/fastwrites. Have tried different agp driver versions with no success, however if I install WinXP instead everything is fine (and performance seems to improve noticeably - Q3 timedemo goes from averaging 100fps to 135fps at the same settings).

Don't suppose one of you would be able to check your setup to see if you have the same issue? This is with a SIS 650 chipset.

Edit: Never mind, decided to just go with XP with this setup. Win98 can be an absolute pain if it doesn't want to play nice, and I'm fed up with reinstalling it by this point!

LewisRaz · 29 Mar 2020 at 00:59

I think I am about to quit trying to make a nice windows 95 setup.
Spent in excess of 8 hours now over the last 2 days and have nothing to show for it!
Swapped out the 486 system for a socket 7 pentium system.
Inserted boot disk. Formatted drive. Started windows setup... Boom: "kernstub error during boot"
Cant find much help online so take out ide-CF and try a real HDD. Same problem. Different bootdisk.. Same problem except now sometimes the pc will just halt at random times. Once with a garbled screen.
Remove everything non essential from PC and the same. Assume bad ram so replace with some spare that I had. New problem once windows tries to install: "Standard Mode: Fault in MS-DOS Extender"
A few posts on google point at the memory so I change it back to the original memory and now windows attemps to install... Except it doesnt and the PC restarts without warning just before the installer would start.
After a few tries this is what I saw and was the point where I gave up:

hohum · 29 Mar 2020 at 10:45

Looks like a bit of a nightmare that. As you've tried swapping a few components around already, are there any that you haven't (such as power supply)?

My recent notable failure is a 3dfx V3 2000 that I bought fairly recently (didn't cost that much thankfully). Undamaged card, all working fine for two days then decides to stop working whilst idling on the desktop! No graphical corruption or anything like that, just no video output whatsoever. I suspect caps given how old it is, but for now I'll have to add it to the 'stuff to fix' box. Really need to get a decent soldering setup and get practising!

LewisRaz · 29 Mar 2020 at 11:26

hohum said:
Looks like a bit of a nightmare that. As you've tried swapping a few components around already, are there any that you haven't (such as power supply)?

My recent notable failure is a 3dfx V3 2000 that I bought fairly recently (didn't cost that much thankfully). Undamaged card, all working fine for two days then decides to stop working whilst idling on the desktop! No graphical corruption or anything like that, just no video output whatsoever. I suspect caps given how old it is, but for now I'll have to add it to the 'stuff to fix' box. Really need to get a decent soldering setup and get practising!

Argh thats a shame, its definitely worth replacing the caps its not too difficult if you have the right tools. I think all of my gear was less than £40 and is enough for my usage so far (Iron, solder, stand, desolder pump, flux pen, desolder braid).

The only things I have not changed are motherboard, cpu and IDE cables. Technically also the ram as my non EDO sticks would not allow windows to progress because of "Standard Mode: Fault in MS-DOS Extender"

I couldnt pop into the loft to grab another cpu/ram as everyone was asleep but today I will do and see what I can get going. My only other socket 7 board that know is 100% good has 2 ps2 ports instead of AT keyboard connector so I might not be able to access those ports in the case. (I do have an external serial PCI bracket now so may end up going that route.)

Did you check the chips for touching pins on your voodoo? on other forums I see cards mostly faulty due to that or dead ram. Although dead ram is usually quite obvious corrupt visuals

hohum · 29 Mar 2020 at 13:11

LewisRaz said:
Argh thats a shame, its definitely worth replacing the caps its not too difficult if you have the right tools. I think all of my gear was less than £40 and is enough for my usage so far (Iron, solder, stand, desolder pump, flux pen, desolder braid).

The only things I have not changed are motherboard, cpu and IDE cables. Technically also the ram as my non EDO sticks would not allow windows to progress because of "Standard Mode: Fault in MS-DOS Extender"

I couldnt pop into the loft to grab another cpu/ram as everyone was asleep but today I will do and see what I can get going. My only other socket 7 board that know is 100% good has 2 ps2 ports instead of AT keyboard connector so I might not be able to access those ports in the case. (I do have an external serial PCI bracket now so may end up going that route.)

Did you check the chips for touching pins on your voodoo? on other forums I see cards mostly faulty due to that or dead ram. Although dead ram is usually quite obvious corrupt visuals

Yeah, I'm going to invest in a setup soon, although any future purchases will currently wait until I see what happens with my place of work and furlough.

I guess RAM would be a good first thing to check properly, although that graphical corruption isn't something I would normally expect from system ram. Could still be though.

No pins touching on the voodoo, the only visual defect I can find is a small cap near the voltage regulator which has a small indent on the top (they're all solid caps on the board, not regular electrolytics). Maybe that's the cause.

LewisRaz · 29 Mar 2020 at 13:27

hohum said:
Yeah, I'm going to invest in a setup soon, although any future purchases will currently wait until I see what happens with my place of work and furlough.

I guess RAM would be a good first thing to check properly, although that graphical corruption isn't something I would normally expect from system ram. Could still be though.

No pins touching on the voodoo, the only visual defect I can find is a small cap near the voltage regulator which has a small indent on the top (they're all solid caps on the board, not regular electrolytics). Maybe that's the cause.

Does your motherboard beep for no VGA when you turn it on or is there just no image?

I am starting to think my problem may be I/O based and the problems almost always occur during CDROM access (I have tried 3 different drives and both IDE channels.)