Re: General Stuff(tm)
Posted: 03 Sep 2023 21:08
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"
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.
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.
Next came the industrial PCs:
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.
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.
On Friday, however, I did rescue a number of things from the department "scrap pile"
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.
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.
Next came the industrial PCs:
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.
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.