General Stuff(tm)

[stephen_usher]

Well, no retro-computer stuff most of this week as I've been doing the model railway and then taking a rest after getting the first two loops of track finished. I was feeling a bit knackered after that. I can't do any more on the layout really until the credit card statement comes and I can pay it off. (I seem to be getting one mail delivery a month at the moment!)

On Friday, however, I did rescue a number of things from the department "scrap pile"

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Three industrial PCs (Pentium MMX 233MHz), a Pentium MMX 233 desktop machine, an Athlon 1200 desktop, a Sun Blade 2000 and the 21" Sony professional video monitor.

I started testing them out today:

The Sony monitor is really nice and the Spectrum 128K SCART output looked lovely. I had to turn the brightness down on the monitor, which show just how few hours the monitor has run for.

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After this I attempted to recap the old black and white telly. I discovered that I'd failed to add a number of capacitors to the BOM so had to leave those in place. For some reason the screen wouldn't work until I'd put the back on. Weird, I've re-flowed solder almost everywhere so there shouldn't be any dry joints.

Unfortunately the poor reception and hence wobbly image remains. The problem must be in the tuner.

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Next came the industrial PCs:

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I knew one was bad as it fails to POST and beeps. The other ones did POST.

I got one up and running, loaded MSDOS 6.0 and upgraded to 6.22. Was about to run memmaker and the fan ran down a bit and it turned off. Tried power cycling and it wouldn't POST at all. Tried the other "good" board and that worked for a few minutes before dying in a similar manner. Darn!

Oh well, on the desktop machines.

The 1997 vintage Pentium MMX machine just needed a new BIOS battery and some cables, which I could scavenge from the dying industrial machines. Unfortunately the case side to this early no-screw case has gone missing, along with the hard drive bay. Pity as this was a very nice design.

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It's now got Windows 3.11 installed on the hard drive taken from one of the industrial machines.

The Athlon machine works. I had to use Electrolube on the AGP port before it would work but the Jeyway 663AS Ultra motherboard checks out, once the BIOS battery was changed. I've ordered an IDE-SD card interface for it from Amazon and, as it has the license info on the front, I'll install Windows ME onto it.

[stephen_usher]

The IDE-SD board has arrived along with a pack of three full sized SD cards.

I was sure that the IDE-SD card used a full sized SD card... Erm, nope!

[stephen_usher]

Just noticed the caps on the Jetway 663AS Ultra motherboard... How the heck is it working? They're all spewed!

[PhilC]

Just noticed the caps on the Jetway 663AS Ultra motherboard... How the heck is it working? They're all spewed!

Photos?

[stephen_usher]

Tomorrow. Too tired tonight and already in bed

[stephen_usher]

Here are the bad caps...

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[rubber_jonnie]

I had a Dell server board with caps like that. It got particularly unstable towards the end.

Nice haul though, I like the industrial PCs and that Sony display is very neat.

[stephen_usher]

The displays will (hopefully) go to the RMC Cave. I'll need to hire a van as the 21" Sony won't fit into my BMW 3 Series boot (aperture too small) or through the passenger doors.

It's a pity that all the industrial PCs have stopped working though. I need to get the POST card out to see if they're even trying to POST.

[Higgy]

We have a load of Advantech stuff at work. Various models from over the decades, could start a museum :)
Got one of those little cube ones in the room next to me.

PC/104 is quite impressive. A few of our 'modern' PC/104 systems can run at something like 800Mhz. DOS gaming might be too quick on them ;)

[stephen_usher]

I finished the outer tracks of the model railway layout just over a week ago and got trains running on one loop. I still have to finish the wiring of the other.

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I've been waiting for the credit card bill to drop through the door so I can pay it before I spent another load of money on the rest of the track. That happened at the beginning of the week, 2.5 weeks after it was posted, giving me -1 days to pay before I got fined as I can no-longer pay the bill electronically, I have to send cheques! Bah! (I seem to be getting one postal delivery a month at the moment.)

Anyway, the payment's been sent off so I can spend again... So another ~£600 later I should have everything I need to finish the track over the next few months.