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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
  
| DXZeff - 2020-03-16 10:44 PM
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.
Yup. The old threads were just worn out on some of the holes. I saw no other way, than to change it. The computer is from 1983 anyway, so it is just natural that they were in the state that they were in. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| They wearn't that strong when they were new! I always put a small glob of silicon grease on. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | I stuff fag paper packets, or in extreme cases matches, down them when they go shit. Luckily not too much of my stuff has those now aside from case bezels which rarely have to come off. Not sure whether to share more drawings or just leave them a mystery for the (likely months) time until the project they're for is done. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| About time you did a vid or a stream, you must be long overdue a a rant! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Yeah, unfortunately the two videos I planned hinged on filming outside, but this whole virus panic has put a stop to it and I didn't really have things beyond that planned yet so not sure what to do. Can't even fall back on my reserve capture cards video as the main focus of it decided to toast its voltregs. Could maybe just do an update on the Pentium II or something as a holdover? I do have a partial script for a Duke3D video, but don't like uploading those without having a main video. The drawings are for another video but that's probably a long way away, I don't draw fast.
At some point I will at least return to Tomb Raider on the second channel and was toying with the idea of a really boring stream on said channel, some day, where I read a part of my book just for the hell of it (and at a potentially cheaper way of proof-reading for problems).
Edited by DXZeff 2020-03-18 2:23 AM
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Well, whatever you manage, they're a welcome respite, often informative and usually a good laugh!
That capture business is bloody expensive too! |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Today's snaggin's!
A Radeon 9500 vanilla. It has the L shaped memory chip arrangement on the card.
These can, often times, be soft-modded with the Omega drivers, into a full fat 9700 with all the pipelines unlocked. This was a success with this card and of course, I removed the stock cooler and that bloody die shim! I had to soak that yellow thermal cement they used in WD40 for quite a while before I could remove the shite. WTF?
Anyway, stuck on one of those cheap Chinesium vga coolers on there. They work a treat and are inexpensive. A wast improvement over stock. I'll stick some ram-sinks on if postie ever brings them.
 (9500.jpg)
 (9500_fan.jpg)
 (pipes.jpg)
Attachments
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 9500.jpg (219KB - 397 downloads)
9500_fan.jpg (159KB - 369 downloads)
pipes.jpg (90KB - 382 downloads)
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Been playing games all evening. It works pretty good too, not much difference between it and my 9700 Pro to be fair. I've a couple of graphical anomalies on a couple of games. With 2 stuck pixels in the exact same place but only at 1280x1024. Lowering the res a notch cures it. So one of the pipes must be defective, perhaps that's why it didn't cut it as a true 9700. Anyway, it's a defect worth living with as it's easily avoided and the performance gain is substantial.
So for the price I got it for, it's a nice addition to the hoard and something interesting to play about with. Pretty rare too, as not many were made and few survived the die shim bollox anyway. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Todays foolery.
A 9800 Pro got the "treatment". A bit of a scare with this one, as playing any games induced a hard system freeze. Gulp!
I soon deduced that only D3D games were affected, openGL being fine. So out with the 6.2 driver set and in with the last Omega drivers.
That cured it. First time I've had a problem with the 6.2's.
So this gives me a full set of "paperweights". A 9500, 9600,9700 and now a 9800.
Should keep me going for a bit....
 (9800pro.jpg)
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9800pro.jpg (125KB - 408 downloads)
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| I found out what was going on with this 9800 Pro. It was being overclocked automatically!
I noticed the core clock was showing as 391 MHz in the Omega Driver's CPL. The default should be 375. The memory was at 380, instead of the 340 standard.
In the bios of my A8V motherboard. There's an option to "enable AGP 3.0 calibration cycle". This is off by default. I enabled it and the card now reports its correct speeds.
Weird shit man. none of my other 9x radeons dhowed this behaviour. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Hmmmm.... Radeon are sometimes strange indeed. However I like them.
As for me. I installed SparkyLinux on an IBM Thinkpad R52. The machine is one of them old Pentium-M with 1 gigabyte of memory. SparkyLinux can happily live on 256 megabyte of memory, and I got an lightweight OS that are up to date. (more or less that is) |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Oh nice one, love those old Thinkpads. Got an R50e myself, which is the lowest of the low but I love the old thing. I put a 1.8GHz Dothan in there (came with a 1.4 cellery) and 2x1 gig sticks, running xp still. The biggest benefit though was swapping out the HDD for an m-sata card. In a IDE enclosure it just fits like a regular drive and the performance is vastly improved!
I got a brand new keyboard (NOS) for it, the other week, off the 'bay for peanuts. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-03-22 12:43 AM
Oh nice one, love those old Thinkpads. Got an R50e myself, which is the lowest of the low but I love the old thing. I put a 1.8GHz Dothan in there (came with a 1.4 cellery) and 2x1 gig sticks, running xp still. The biggest benefit though was swapping out the HDD for an m-sata card. In a IDE enclosure it just fits like a regular drive and the performance is vastly improved!
I got a brand new keyboard (NOS) for it, the other week, off the 'bay for peanuts.
Yup... Thinkpads are great laptops. The last two or three laptops that I have had, have all been Thinkpads. There are just something wonderfull about them. My daily driver is an Thinkpad X220. Small screen, yes. However it just works with Ubuntu Mate installed on it. And the keyboard are so nice to type on. Never lets me down, except for the fan, that need to be changed with a new one. It is worn after hard use.
You should really look into that Linux distro. With the right theme on the desktop, it is actually a wonderfull distro. That said. These old machines are not really the fastest for youtube, however as a writers tool and going on forums. Then it is still possible to get something out of them. And yeah. Homebanking and email works too.
Edited by Brostenen 2020-03-21 11:13 PM
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Thanks for that, I'm downloading an .iso to burn now. Not for the Thinkpad tho, but for a Lenovo Q180 that as I use as my HTPC. Since M$ ended support for Win7 it's run like a donkey. They must have installed some degredation shite on purpose.
I'll try it on that, I only use the machine for Youtube vids and Kodi so it should be good? It has a Quad Atom @ 1.8GHz and a dedicated Radeon HD6450A with half a gig. Also with 4 gig of system ram.
Edited by tedster 2020-03-22 11:46 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | I can't help but smirk whenever I see 'Linux' and 'Lightweight' in the same sentence, last I saw they still couldn't get the boot time down to within the same year.
ThinkPads might be good, I wouldn't know, because whoever designed them has clearly never actually seen human hands. they may have improved some of the keyboards slightly but they still use that weirdly ass-backwards pointing device setup, that I can only assume was designed by aliens or an AI with only a textual memo, on a napkin for good measure, on how people's hands work. I suppose one should expect no less from the company that used to install heating elements in their drive bays.
Then again, HP can get bent also as they ruined the EliteBook line. |
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| DXZeff - 2020-03-24 12:37 AM
but they still use that weirdly ass-backwards pointing device setup
What? No love for the keyboard clit?
Running a X1 6th gen and a X230 here.
@Brostenen I have a new replacement fan that I intended to use in my now failed attempt to repair a X230 Tablet. If you want it let me know. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Oh, I have no problem with AccuPoints, it's the dumb buttons, I assume they thought you'd face your fingers towards your body and never use the middle one, they're just not right.
Nothing going on here, haven't made any progress with a script to replace what was planned, haven't had much sleep because of idiots having parties, everyone is arsey with me when I'm in shops and I'm probably going to end up slapping someone before another week is out. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Ha, so I got a lightweight, low resource OS on my old thinkpad. It has great compatability with old games, connects to my network just fine and can do the odd document, or whatever, as needed.
What is it? Good old Windows ME of course!
I swapped out the 2 x 1 gig ram sticks for 2 x 256 mb ones and dropped in a 80GB Samsung HDD. I had the devil of a time finding proper drivers for the onboard Intel Extreme Graphics 2 chip and the SoundMax digital audio bollox, but I got there in the end. If anyone needs Win9X drivers for those, spam me a PM.
The piss take is this little bugger scores higher in the "Final Reality" benchmark than my Athlon 64 build. DOS is shite due to the audio but ME can run DOS box and the machine can piss it, so no worries.
Edited by tedster 2020-03-31 3:04 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Rawit - 2020-03-26 11:11 PM
DXZeff - 2020-03-24 12:37 AM
but they still use that weirdly ass-backwards pointing device setup
What? No love for the keyboard clit?
Running a X1 6th gen and a X230 here.
@Brostenen I have a new replacement fan that I intended to use in my now failed attempt to repair a X230 Tablet. If you want it let me know.
Thanks. But I just have to blow a bit through the ventilation port, in order to make it unstuck.
I will give heads up, when it is completely broken. :-D No need for the hasle these days.
I thank you a lot for the offer. However, I have used some money for some other project that I need to solder. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| DXZeff - 2020-03-28 4:19 PM
Oh, I have no problem with AccuPoints, it's the dumb buttons, I assume they thought you'd face your fingers towards your body and never use the middle one, they're just not right.
Nothing going on here, haven't made any progress with a script to replace what was planned, haven't had much sleep because of idiots having parties, everyone is arsey with me when I'm in shops and I'm probably going to end up slapping someone before another week is out.
Nearly everything is closed here. However, shops are alowed to keep open here, if they carry two specific type of things.
One is food and the other is medicine. If a shop does not sell eighter of those two, they are closed down.
In the local super market, they have free desinfection at the front door, and there are big stickers on the floor reminding
people to keep a distance of at least two meter between each person. And only one person from each household are alowed
inside the store. Personally I love this personal space, and I love that nobody is crossing my path.
People are wearing rubber gloves all over, so the chances of infection are rather slim here. Love it. Personal space. WONDERFULL...
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| And what did I buy today? Something really wonderfull. A small kit-computer (more or less)
Board, resistor packs, resistors and caps... Basically, I have some soldering to do in the future.
(Hint... I went for the 466-board, because it is the last revision of all the longboards)
This one here.....
It is a really nice looking kit, not 100% complete, and I need to source the chips and some connectors.
However. I will be soldering/building my own brand new machine from scratch.
Brand new, as in as brand new as it can be done. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Found a NOS rf modulator for the C64 replica kit, that I bought yesterday. One part less to worry about now. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Bought this board, to harvest parts from.... I know it is "a sin" to harvest from a working board. However, the board it self, are cheaper to buy than sourcing the same parts. As an example, the cartridge connector it self are a tiny bit more expensive to get (including shipping) than the entire board without shipping costs. And the shield over the cartridge connector are impossible to source anyway. Basically. Cheaper to buy a working board, for some parts and then sell the board, extremely cheap of course and for parts, once I have harvested what I need.
This board here....
EDIT:
It is for my SixtyClone project. And I hope it is going to be a sweet result.....
Edited by Brostenen 2020-04-06 8:11 AM
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| You'll have, pretty much, blueprinted your own C64 when you're done, so nice one!
Had a heck of a time with the "crapathon". Bloody thing, randomly, wouldn't boot, bios kept corrupting, wouldn't remember its bios settings, Allsorts of random shite! It started by randomly locking up in games then quickly escalated.
When it did start it would appear fine, everything worked.
Anyway, turned out to be my US Robotics pci gigabit network card. Pulled it and normal service resumed. I thought the MB was crapping out tho! It took a while to find the culprit. Never seen a bad card do that before. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-04-08 3:03 PM
You'll have, pretty much, blueprinted your own C64 when you're done, so nice one!
Well... Not exactly. Because I am not the one that have made the actual gerber files at all. I am looking at it, as buying a C64-Longboard machine in a kit-form, from various sources. I had to upload the gerber files for the RF modulator replica/replacement on PCB-Way my self. However the 250466 board are just a product that I ordered from the UK creator and maker.
There is a long way, untill I can actually start building the machine. I have yet to source the actual custom chips, though I know what exact special parts that I want to find and put into the machine. Like the case. I will choose eighter the Breadbin grey version of the Model-C case, that they are offering brand new produced. Or I will go for the smoke grey plexiglass case from Germany. I have a couple of original keyboards from original breadbin's, so I will not order the mechanical replica keyboard that are created with a thick aluminium plate and have Cherry-MX switches.
They best part of this C64 Replica that I will build. Are that I am making it my self. The joy of doing a jigzaw puzzle for the nerd.
Edited by Brostenen 2020-04-08 10:26 PM
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