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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
 
| Curse of Gigabyte strikes again. My BX440 board is completely unresponsive, no beeps, no post, no hope. Swapped out all components, same.
Only clue is that it's drained the cmos battery down to 1v in only a few days. Despite it having a mains connection.
Dunno? |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Couldn't begin to guess. I did have a Jetway board (actually still have it) that drained batteries too fast to be useful, but this didn't stop it POSTing. Probably worth checking your PSU under load if nothing else if you've had a few things die, just to be sure it's not doing anything silly.
As I seem to own every major vendor's 486 chipset, I'm contemplating setting up a machine on each just to measure the differences, but probably won't bother as they'd only be running long enough to do this, instead I'll probably just take the shittiest of the bunch and turn that into a video in the future. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| I have not had much time for anything vintage these past two weeks. I was given one month to move. Yesterday I packed 22 boxes (60x40x38 centimeter) of my shit for moving. I have not yet found a place for sure. Though I am going to have an apartment shown to me on wednesday. 3 rooms, 76 square meters of space. Yay!!! |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Oh my. I hate "moving" so good luck with finding a place!
Looks like my slot 1 board is toast, bloody thing, I've not got another. So I'll have to do with a Cellery D running XP instead. I only want to task it as a jukebox and pdf viewer in the workshop, so probably more suitable anyway.
Supposed to be getting full fibre installed on Weds. That'll be great if it happens! :D |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-06-09 12:50 AM
Oh my. I hate "moving" so good luck with finding a place!
Looks like my slot 1 board is toast, bloody thing, I've not got another. So I'll have to do with a Cellery D running XP instead. I only want to task it as a jukebox and pdf viewer in the workshop, so probably more suitable anyway.
Supposed to be getting full fibre installed on Weds. That'll be great if it happens! :D
Thanks. Well. Not my fault that I have to move. All I can say, is that it is not my child, and she have known for years, that I can not live with an infant in the house. I burned out around 2013. I was in a state for 3 months, were I was not able to do anything else than to eat and sleep. That is in like, burned out the hardcore way, and had to stay at a place with profesional help. Like a kind of emergency room for mental health. I have never fully recovered from that. And I can only be around infants for 3 hours max, and then I am drained the next two days. I tested it out last year a couple of times, as her friends just unloaded their 6 to 8 month old children a couple of times. When they had to go do something important. No way I am doing that anymore. I can take care of a child, however they need to be at least 2 to 3 years old, before I can handle it. It is that scream infants come with, when they are hungry, that drains me. Like that vibrating over the top scream. Thanks, but no thanks. I can't mentally deal with piercing and grinding high noises, that goes through everything.
Fibre? You are getting high speed internet? Sweet.
Edited by Brostenen 2020-06-08 11:08 PM
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Yeah, I too can't be doing with kids, I'm the "kid" in this house and I demand all the toys!
Aye, I'm in a rural location, been on a long copper wire for so many years, with all the limitations that brings. Still paying the same money that folk pay for a connection 100x better than mine, mind!
Fingers crossed for Wed's tho.... although, it'll still be the same shitty internet! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-06-09 1:26 AM
Yeah, I too can't be doing with kids, I'm the "kid" in this house and I demand all the toys!
Aye, I'm in a rural location, been on a long copper wire for so many years, with all the limitations that brings. Still paying the same money that folk pay for a connection 100x better than mine, mind!
Fingers crossed for Wed's tho.... although, it'll still be the same shitty internet!
How fast are the curent one you have? I say at least 10mbit down, and I would be ok. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| I get about 7mbit down at the mo. Which is ok but not if 2 people want to use it at the same time. I get less than 1mbit up so I'll be happy to improve that.
Just about to go out and hack a tree back with the chainsaw, great can't wait for that!
Edited by tedster 2020-06-09 3:18 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-06-09 5:17 PM
I get about 7mbit down at the mo. Which is ok but not if 2 people want to use it at the same time. I get less than 1mbit up so I'll be happy to improve that.
Just about to go out and hack a tree back with the chainsaw, great can't wait for that!
Damn... Yeah. I can see why you need more speed. Need for speed. ;-)
No seriously. That is not fast enough. I have been looking at what options I can choose from at the new place, if that is what I will be moving into. It seems that I can get a 50 mbit connection. That is 50 down and 12 up. Way more than I need, as I am used to have 20 down and 2 up. Reviews are good as well. People who complain, are those that for some reason have to wait 14 days because of some technical issues of getting hooked up. And others complain about a few hours of downtime a couple of months between. Nothing to be alarmed by, as far as I can tell. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Well, if they come and connect me, as promised, I'll have 150 down and 30 up! I may even get to see a 4K video then, as the best I can get now is 720p.
I had to lop 10ft off a tree as it had grown up with my overhead phone line running through it. They'll have to string the fibre alongside that wire and they couldn't very well do that with a bloody big tree in the way! Anyway, I managed it without tearing down my existing connection, which is a bonus! I'm paying for it now tho. I'm too old to be a lumberjack but at least I've added to my winter firewood collection. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Did they turn up? Did they fuck.... 6th oh fucking July now! No apologies, no concern. I don't know how these fuckers stay in business, well I do because saps like me keep paying them! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-06-10 3:10 PM
Did they turn up? Did they fuck.... 6th oh fucking July now! No apologies, no concern. I don't know how these fuckers stay in business, well I do because saps like me keep paying them!
Wow!!!! That is just plain... How to say it decent. That is unforgiving.
As for me. I got a freaking new home. Or. I said yes to the apartment. And it is really special. The layout makes it possible to have a tv space, eating space, and computer space in the living room. And there are two rooms. One for each of my children, when they are at my place. Good yet small hall, wide enough for shoes and coats. Nice kitchen and so on. Going to be awesomme. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Oh that's great, wishing you lots of luck in your new home, nice one! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2020-06-11 12:56 AM
Oh that's great, wishing you lots of luck in your new home, nice one!
Thanks.
I have already managed to get my brother to help me move. He can not lift anything, yet he can drive a car with a box-trailer. And he will only charge for gas. Then I have have just under 580 pounds for the deposit, yet I need to raise an aditional 866 pounds for that. (Aprox). Else everything is in order and I need to ask the bank. I have these guarantee proofs in the bank, wich is a bit like stocks or or bonds or something like that. So I think it will be no problem to lent the money from the bank. Plus I have a small amount in savings as well. I have to call them on monday and ask if I can borrow the money, else my ex father in law, have said that it is no big deal to borrow it from him. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Well, good luck with it!
I'm struggling with my Pentium 3 build. That Gigabyte board is definitely dead but I did find two slot one replacements in the hoard.
One's an Octek LX chipset board so has a 66MHz bus. The other is a bloody PC Chips BX board but it has that stupid hybrid AT - ATX layout that they did. So I may struggle to get it in the case. I'll have a meddle with it later. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | I've been trying to build a faster 286, but everything has gone wrong so far.
Also my old, slow 6MHz 286 has decided to fail its hard drive and a RAM chip somewhere. Hard drives for it are prohibitively expensive, floppies are too and are a waste of time, hoping the existing drive can survive as it is, in that it does still manage to boot sometimes but makes bad noises, in storage until I can get a new one. This goes well into three figures and if the existing drive fails completely, it's game over. If I have to use a new drive without the existing one working, the system can only boot from 360K floppies at that point, the drives for which are also expensive and the disks probably are too, not to mention all the time I'd inevitably have to spend with said disks not working and having to copy files by hand again. Of course my hands would probably be mush by then from punching the desk in anger and whatever the MFM drive is going to cost.
For the faster 286, I did order a motherboard after the one I was using went to shit and wouldn't come back;
Operational state unknown, also no onboard I/O which changes my plans a lot, but it's a Chaintech, so I can probably at least get it to work. Looks like a blown cap and some battery rot. Hoping that RAM works, because I intend to install the 4M from my dead 12MHz board and then steal the chips from this one for my old 6MHz board, although this might set that system back to 512K due to the way it maps memory.
Good luck with the move, I'm still waiting for the day they give up on these shitty cardboard boxes and I can actually get a house instead of whatever the hell this place is supposed to be. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Thanks both. Yeah. A good home is the best.
It is always sad, when old hardware is failing. On the other hand, we have to be happy that it have lasted this long. Especially stuff from before 1999. ;-)
#DXZeff
286's are cool machines. They do pose some limits. Have you considered an XT-IDE for these old machines? Like. As they do not need to swap that much on the drive, then CF cards are kind of the way to go, once mechanical drives are gone. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | I'm not a big fan of 286 hardware, because most everything I want to run needs at least a quick 386, but I do like to have one around. I'm surprised I care about it as much as I do, though more surprised I got 11 years out of it so far, especially on the very cost-cut clone motherboard from ~1985, before they seem to have gotten the hang of it, yet that part still works in its own way... as in it gets hotter than the sun, likely has loads of nMOS chips that cause this hanging off of it, and can't run very many things.
I've never had the XT-IDE BIOS work on anything I've tried it on and this thing can't boot IDE anyway, it expects an MFM controller (or presumably similar) to be on IRQ 5 with parts of it hanging around in the C8000 area upwards, somewhere IDE doesn't live. Even then I'd have no way to copy the contents of the old drive over as if I put another card there, I'd have to reconfigure the MFM card and the drive configuration would be lost, rendering the data also lost. All I can realistically do is get another MFM drive. It's looking as though buying a complete system and stealing its hard drive will be cheaper - same with the RAM; even if I'd not been trying to cobble a faster 286 together, I'd have ordered that board anyway as ordering the chips would cost four times as much.
You'll notice most people that do have 286 machines seem to either use later ones, or stick to crappy OEM boxes. Much as I hate OEM boxes and would never use one, you do have the advantage of knowing what you're getting yourself into with them, because they're all the same. Otherwise the older 286 boards, as with my 6MHz one, have some crippling limitations that makes working with them quite difficult at times - you can't even use VGA cards made after a certain point, generally. Most cards made after the 80s won't work in it, the system has to use a very slow Everex card from 1987 (presumably making it among the first) as TSeng cards and Cirrus cards don't work in it, Headland and RealTek ones do apparently, not that the slowness is a problem, that CPU can barely keep the card fed in EGA mode anyway.
Was gonna link an image of the machine's guts, but can't be bothered and I know you saw it in that AdLib clone video anyway. There's a really old one of the board from before I bought it though;
Sure is a crustly looking thing, but it does still work. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| You're a glutton for punishment with all that crusty old crap!
You love it really  |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Well.... Some people like 286's and other do not really like them. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| I don't suppose there's that much you can do with one?
I've put that Octek Rhino II LX chipset board into my PIII build. Of course it now see's it as a Pentium II 466MHz due to having only a 66MHz FSB.
There's not much difference really! It's a nice quality board though and at least I've got the thing up and running again.
Maybe time to fire up the Crapathon for a round of Dune 2000 with a nice glass of Bourbon!
Edited by tedster 2020-06-19 9:26 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| I signed the fucking lease contract for my new home/apartment. Ohhhh YEAH.... Then I paid 4 times rent as deposit. I was even asked if I wanted the keys today!! Wow! I have only rented from the first of next month. This is so freaking awesome. Welcome to northern jutlandian island. Yes. Top of Denmark is an island. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | New 286 motherboard arrived. As usual, I was right to buy broken, because it works. The BIOS it came with was dodgy, wouldn't run with more than 512K or RAM installed (Also why is it that in 286 land, 512K+128K=640K, but 512K+512K=512K? They're 9-Bit rows, so the 9th bit is for parity, so the other 512K can't be for parity. Stupid platform.) but I suspect that someone either changed that, or else they wanted to sell you the upgrade card and would give you a full featured BIOS with it. I replaced this with a better BIOS, but only have two options, the JATO BIOS that is better, or an AMI one that has a fun 'zoom' effect when opening menus that takes too long, the AMI one is useless as it has no IDE support and won't start the system if it detects no floppy drives.
However, we have a problem; I can't get hard drives to work. I don't own any ancient enough drives for the BIOS I got working and it has a fit over my Quantum Fireball, though luckily it does support IDE booting and it can talk to the drive at least. People keep nagging me to use XT-IDE every time shit like this comes up and I have no idea why. As far as I can tell, XT-IDE is a useless thing, because I have never once seen it work in anything. I have tried various configurations and various NICs, it does nothing. I even moved the config program to the 286 itself just to see what the auto configure option would yield... wouldn't you know if produced the exact settings I had used (though obviously I have to flash outside of the machine) so surely it should do something when the system boots, this system does at least handle option ROMs, unlike the old 6MHz box. Documentation for XT-IDE is also awful and offers no help, but if anyone has any ideas, I'm willing to try them because hard drives are expensive, although my few remaining EPROMs are starting to take a long time to erase and probably won't take many more cycles - they do pass verification though, so they have flashed correctly.
@Brostenen; Congrats, here's hoping you don't lift the floorboards only to find it's full of water or something, though I suspect you'd have smelled that. I speak from first hand experience. I hate this time of year, it's too hot and my kitchen stinks, as well as being full of flies, because it's all rotten under the floor.
Edited by DXZeff 2020-06-24 10:39 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Well....
The floor's are dry and nice. It is made by ship planks, that are some 2 centimeters thick or something. And there are this old school stuffing between the planks, that are made from some kind of twine. Good old school floor's and nothing of that new thin stuff that are not even wood. No odour or anything, newly painted.
I have some nice pictures of the place, that I took when I was shown the apartment for the first time:
New home...
The shitty part of these days, are that her new bloke, have already moved in. He has been sleeping here and his kids are also sleeping here. Like. I was given one month and a couple of days to find a new place and move out. And the new man moved in last wednesday. They are already decorating the house. Oh well.... I just have to wait and sit the time out. Three days, and I am all out. Only the attic is waiting for a cleanup. I only need a couple of things, like my DVD's and CD's. Then a few books.
By the way. Love the 286. Actually any 286's are cool in my book. As they force you to operate them inside a narrow spectrum of upgrade options and OS choices. Makes them a challenge to have fun with. Payout is huge on those. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Good luck in your new home! |
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