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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
  
| I have begun to look into an Amiga software package, called "HstWB". It is basically a bunch of free software and installer scripts, that will turn an Amiga into a WHD-Loader machine, with features such as a boot-loader and stuff. If sucesfull, then I will post how I did it in simple terms. It is not really that straight forward, if you know little about the AmigaOS. So far, I think that I need to have some extra software, burned onto a CD, such as images of my AmigaOS 3.1.4 dsks. However, I can use the original disks that I have bought last year. It is only the modules disk that I do not have on a physical floppy as of now, and getting the ADF file onto an Amiga and writing it, takes a while. Faster to just have it on the CD.
I will report on this, when I have a fully working setup. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Got one of these to enable a pair of, otherwise, useless, USB 3 ports on my ME machine.
Allows you to just connect them up to one of the headers on the motherboard, sorted.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | This is where I'd probably just bastardize something with a soldering iron and regret it later.
Hoping to learn how to weld today, otherwise working on the CZ-1 demo slowly but it's more a case of pencils and rulers than being anywhere near electronics. Saving and planning has begun for the new workstation, no idea on timescale for having it done but it's pretty much a certainty that it will be a Xeon W-2200 rig at this point. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| I have a Clarke gasless one from Machine Mart. The wire is dearer but you don't have to run the rip-off gas bottle cartel or buy the pathetic little bottles.
Of course, the welding isn't pretty but then it's more pilot error than anything. Nothing a grinder can't pretty up! Nothing I've melted together has come apart, yet! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Finally got around to trying to weld today, for five minutes before heavy rain put an end to it. Definitely going to need practice at this, thus far all I've managed to do is burn a hole in a piece of metal and leave black slag all over the place that doesn't serve as a weld, though granted the wire feed keeps jamming and that didn't help. I'll keep messing with it, was just getting a feel for it, dialing in the correct settings, when the rain started.
But I have to get good, given I need to make a frame to support a 4HP diesel engine, we'll soon know if my welds are shit when I get around to that one.
Edited by DXZeff 2020-03-02 6:18 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| #DXZeff
Hope you get that welding going, and teach your self a new trade. I guess what you are trying to do, is a good practice platform. Hope you succeed.
As for me.
Bought this complete in a box Mario Kart, a second wheel and then a HDMI converter for our Wii console. In total 45 Danish Kroners.
(That is 5,24 British pounds or 6,70 US Dollars)
Edited by Brostenen 2020-03-03 7:50 PM
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| Slowly starting my new build using the most hated CPU in Intel's history: the original Celeron.
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| I liked 'em. Well. the 300A that I have, you could just run it on a 100 Mhz FSB where it kicked the arse of the then, flagship, P2-450.
Snagged a Radeon 9700 Pro off the 'bay today. Fingers crossed it runs and that stupid bloody die shim hasn't cooked it. |
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| tedster - 2020-03-04 10:51 PM
Snagged a Radeon 9700 Pro off the 'bay today. Fingers crossed it runs and that stupid bloody die shim hasn't cooked it.
Hopefully the caps are alright. That line was a victim of the capacitor plague if I recall correctly. Cold boot bug etc. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| I think the die's usually cooked on them before the caps got chance. This one's got a huge, passive, Zalman cooler on the thing. It's still got the shim on the die though, you can make it out on the photo. We'll see, I should get it in a couple of days. If it's alive, I'll stick a better, active, cooler on it along with some ram sinks amd pop off that bloody shim!
I've only got it because I can't help clicking on shit on the 'bay! In my defence, it was pretty cheap compared to the stupid prices usually asked on there. I've swapped my recent ME build for 98se. I've been running a 9600 Pro in there and it's flawless, pretty much anyway. All my games work and even Vesa works in DOS. No way could I get that working with an Nvidia card.
What else is going in that Celery build?
Edited by tedster 2020-03-05 3:09 PM
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| The Celery build is going to replace my current build based on the Cyrix GX1 233Mhz. There is a S3 Savage4 card in it along with a Gravis UltraSound ACE, those will be used. Hopefully this one will hit the sweetspot. The Cyrix board sounded really good on paper, having Sound Blaster 16 compatibility, ISA slot, Windows 3.1/DOS drivers for everything. 233Mhz (around Pentium 133/166 benched in most cases) looked like it was enough for my 1993 and up DOS gaming experience.
In practice I ran into some issues that spoil the fun:
- High DMA issues with the Gravis (raison d'être);
- Sound Blaster 16 clicking bug (Cyrix even cloned the Creative "features"!);
- Very weak OPL (not a connaisseur, but it sounds really off);
- No NMI I can use;
- Stability issues;
- Unpredictable performance.
So I hope this build changes that.
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Nice one, should be pretty sweet!
It's not a bug it's a feature! lol
Got the Radeon 9700 Pro Today, junked the Zalman passive cooler and fitted one from a dead 9800 Pro that I had. They run too hot for passive cooling, in my opinion. It's a beast of a card. Well suited to my, overkill, 98se machine. It uses the same driver as before so everything still works, just much faster!
Couple of piccies..... before and after.
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| So cool that this forum works on my Win98 machine. Nice one Admin!
Internet Exploder rocks! Well, not really but it works.  |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Found two "new" Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 drives in the parts hoard today! Dated from 2004 and still in their anti-static bags. In 160GB and 200GB SATA flavour. They must have been intended for a clients machine when I used to build them. I've restored an image from my 98se build onto the smaller one and put it in there. It runs great, not much slower than the SSD, hardly noticeable anyway. |
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Intel P5
Posts: 85
Location: UK | I got a couple of Ati Radeon cards myself today, hopefully one of these will play nice in my Opteron, it's an utter TWAT for video cards, out of at least 6 cards I have tried in her, only an ancient NV41 core Geforce 6800 has no issues! I also grabbed some new famicom games while I was out, we are stuck indoors a lot more as much has been cancelled here due to the VIRUS, so good time to play some old games.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | @Brostenen; Oh god, Mario Kart Wii might just be the most dickishly unfair version, second only to the SNES original. I'll always be more of an F-Zero guy. F-Zero X alone beats all Mario Kart games, it's faster, it's more fun, it runs at 60FPS and it has a better soundtrack than all the Mario Kart games combined.
Oh, you'll see what I'm doing with the welding soon enough, just waiting on a part to come in from a machine shop. I really ought to get a lathe some day.
@Rawit; Oh cool, a Solitaire Machine. Odd that the die cover on the box is a different shape to the production CPUs, but it's probably purely for aesthetic reasons rather than, say, an older version of the chip. There were some Covingtons where I worked, I did everything in my power to get rid of them, you were lucky if you could get through the Windows installer without crashing (helped in no small part by MSI motherboards - that's a whole story on its own, I genuinely thing MSI were much worse on average than PC Chips) and like five machines took up most of my time. The boss didn't want to let them go, eventually I swapped the internals when he wasn't looking, with whatever I could dig up. Think one even ended up with a Pentium MMX which was still better because it didn't continually break down.
Gravis DMA issues? Have fun with that, those cards always throw issues somewhere.
@Tedster; I remember seeing those 'Excalibur' cooler labels on cards at LANs a long time ago.
When you think about it, there's little reason most of the web shouldn't work on Win98, but everything is so bloated now.
@CyrixInstead; Ah, the days of ugly graphics card boxes and coolers strikes again. You almost have to wonder if the people who design the pictures ever went outside before or if they just got locked in a basement as kids, being forced to render box art and stuff.
Famicom... my Master System really needs more love some day, a flash cart probably.
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| Well I hope my QDI 440EX board does better than those MSI boards, it would suck if it's so unstable. You would think that a slower FSB, no L2 cache and reduced power consumption would contribute to a stable (but slower) build. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | QDI boards usually work, I swear by the P6I440BX.
I've been trying to draw lately for something, may as well share one layer of a backdrop.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| This little nifty adaptor, works like a charm on "TheC64 Full Size" machine. It is wonderfull to be able to get rid of that original joystick. I honestly do not know what they were thinking. Let's just make a joystick with the looks and same dimensions as Competition Pro... That stick and the ZipStick are some of the worst ones ever. Yes, they are well build and they have microswitches. However. What use is that, when my hands cramp up, after 15 minutes of gaming? So... Today I played my TheC64-FullSize with The Arcade and swapped to Wico Command Controll later on.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| DXZeff - 2020-03-10 3:38 PM
@Brostenen; Oh god, Mario Kart Wii might just be the most dickishly unfair version, second only to the SNES original. I'll always be more of an F-Zero guy. F-Zero X alone beats all Mario Kart games, it's faster, it's more fun, it runs at 60FPS and it has a better soundtrack than all the Mario Kart games combined.
My son loves Wii Mario Kart. So I dropped it off at their mothers place, the other day. :-)
Better the game being used daily, than ones every 4 to 6 months. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| The screwholes for mounting the keyboard inside my C64 Breadbin, was a bit tired after being build in late 1983. So I cut off some of the old plastic, and glued in brass standoff's for all 8 screws. I used epoxy glue in the holes that are all the way through the plastic standoff's and screwed in the brass ones. Then put some more glue on the outside, covering it all a bit more.
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| That'll be much more sturdy, nice one. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Decided to "self isolate" if only to avoid all the tossers buying bog rolls!
Been playing with the "Omega" drivers for my Radeon, great stuff! Had a couple of hours playing the original "Lords of the Realm" using DosBox as it lets me run it in a window, just how I like it. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-03-16 2:32 AM
That'll be much more sturdy, nice one.
Thanks... It actually feels more sturdy to type on now. Wrote a blog entry about the result and how I did it. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Not sure how well known this is, but when dealing with plastic screws, push on them a little and turn them backwards until you feel them 'click' over the end of the threads, then turn them in. This stops the threads of the screw chewing new ones into the plastic and wearing it out.
Still drawing. |
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