Stuff and Things.

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, that's me back from Black Belt Camp for another year, better keep moving lest I seize up from the 10 hours of training and 3 1/2 hour return journey!!!

[rubber_jonnie]

OK, I finally did something with KiCad...


Screenshot 2026-08-25 at 15.55.48.png


A small beginning but it did teach me a lot. Might drop the gerbers into PCBWay or JLCPCB to see what comes back

Well these are on order and should arrive once I get back from France

[rubber_jonnie]

Well, this little chap has been drivng me mad:

PXL_20260909_153647152.jpg (142.27 KiB) Viewed 48 times

For some time now I've been having mouse trouble, in that going into Windows 95 it reports no mouse is present.

Now this machine has a control menu built in that's accessed by hitting Fn+F5:

PXL_20260910_140838651.jpg (302.68 KiB) Viewed 48 times

And from within the menu you can configure if the keyboard arrow keys are used as a mouse or if you want to use an external mouse or if you want to swap the arrow keys between mouse and keyboard functions.

That all seemed to work, but could I get internal or external mouse operation, nope. I then had a look around the BIOS and found there is a mouse enable/disable in there:

PXL_20260909_153736797.jpg (296.25 KiB) Viewed 48 times

It was disabled...

After enabling it, I found all the mouse options worked just fine, so if you have one, and mouse operation is not as expected, check in the BIOS.

There is one last part to this though. I'd never up until that point been into the BIOS, and the mouse worked just fine when I first got it, so how in the heck did mouse support get disabled...

At least it all works now.

[mrbombermillzy]

Its good practice to disable your mouse when not using it, for security reasons, of course! Didnt you know Jon?

Seriously though, it is quite funny looking back at all the quirks of the legacy PCs.

Remember those dreaded Compaq BIOSes?

What about all the 'pretend' or fake 486 cache RAM populated motherboards?

Ah the memories.

[PhilC]

Its good practice to disable your mouse when not using it, for security reasons, of course! Didnt you know Jon?

Seriously though, it is quite funny looking back at all the quirks of the legacy PCs.

Remember those dreaded Compaq BIOSes?

What about all the 'pretend' or fake 486 cache RAM populated motherboards?

Ah the memories.

I'm trying to revive a Compaq Contura 420C after fixing a Portable III and LTE 4/25C. The latter two are now fixed fortunately but having difficulty making diag and setup disks out of softpaq exes. Just had to dig out my IBM Thinkpad 600E to make them but now I'm having difficulty getting the SP files onto the bloody Thinkpad from off my Mac.

So, yes, I'm enjoying the whole compaq bios thing right now

[mrbombermillzy]

I'm trying to revive a Compaq Contura 420C after fixing a Portable III and LTE 4/25C. The latter two are now fixed fortunately but having difficulty making diag and setup disks out of softpaq exes. Just had to dig out my IBM Thinkpad 600E to make them but now I'm having difficulty getting the SP files onto the bloody Thinkpad from off my Mac.

So, yes, I'm enjoying the whole compaq bios thing right now

I feel your pain Phil

[rubber_jonnie]

Its good practice to disable your mouse when not using it, for security reasons, of course! Didnt you know Jon?

Trés amuseé...

Seriously though, it is quite funny looking back at all the quirks of the legacy PCs.

Remember those dreaded Compaq BIOSes?

What about all the 'pretend' or fake 486 cache RAM populated motherboards?

Ah the memories.

I was lucky enough not to have to deal with the Compaq BIOSes, but have seen many variants over others over the years. I have a Dolch L-Pac and its a 486 and the BIOS looks like somebody threw up on it because the colour scheme is all over the place!!!

[rubber_jonnie]

I'm trying to revive a Compaq Contura 420C after fixing a Portable III and LTE 4/25C. The latter two are now fixed fortunately but having difficulty making diag and setup disks out of softpaq exes. Just had to dig out my IBM Thinkpad 600E to make them but now I'm having difficulty getting the SP files onto the bloody Thinkpad from off my Mac.

So, yes, I'm enjoying the whole compaq bios thing right now

As a Mac user I have different ways of getting files over, usually I do it through OneDrive, or SD Card, but I also keep a PC handy with an FDD.

I can also do it via my MSTE which is network connected with CosmosEx, and sometimes my Archimedes A5000 that can handle quite a few different floppy formats and is also network connected.

There is also the GreaseWeazel, which is quite inexpensive.

I've had to get quite creative.

[PhilC]

@rubber_jonnie id usually be fine at getting floppies transferred over, have greaseweazel etc but these softpaqs come as an exe file that then writes the disk itself. So the problem has been with running the exe and it being able to use a real floppy drive, DosBox runs the exes but then can't access the floppy from the exe.

I'll be fine once I can get the stuff on to my old Thinkpad.

[alexh]

I'm trying to revive a Compaq Contura 420C

I just recently WEE binned a perfectly serviceable (albeit the batteries didn't hold charge) Compaq Contura 4/25 that I'd had since 1992 as I felt it had no redeeming features and no value (£35-£50 on eBay). Monochrome screen, terrible CPU power, only 4MB RAM that couldn't be expanded. Awful clip on upside down mouse ball. I honestly don't know why I'd kept it so long. Slight nostalgia because it was my Dad's work computer he used to for email over dialup and I had secretly used it to download things from the Newsgroups for my Amiga before the WWW. UUDECODE ah that brings back memories.