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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
 
| What is it with ATI and those bloody DIE SHIMS?
My XP gamer has a Radeon HD4870 in it that I bought new, back in the day. From (almost) day one I had it fitted with a Zalman VF1000 cooler. The stock blower was just that, a leaf blower!
Anyway, temps on the card have always been respectable. Under 70C full load. I've been playing Bioshock on it the past few days and left GPUz running in the background to monitor temps.
I was surprised then to see it had been getting up to 80C. No worries, perhaps the TIM has dried up, I'll check it. The die was almost bare where the bloody shim had started lifting the cooler from it.
It seems the glue they use to stick the shim to the PCB expands with age. It's not as bad as it was on some of the 9000 series cards but it's bad enough. I bet it would have killed the card years ago, if I'd left the stock cooler on there.
Like a time fuse really, twats! |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Swept the chimney today, well, yesterday now. That's a shitty job. I can see why they shoved small children up there in years gone by! 
Put a small fan on the XP gamer's north-bridge. That sucker was too hot to touch, despite me having 5 case fans! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Yup.... Children are small and they can get into everything. The victorian era were really bizarre. Yikes.
As for me. Tested out my new RetroTink 2x Mini with my Commodore64 breadbin (rev 250407).
Composit are good. S-Video cable are AWESOMME.... I will post some pictures tomorrow.
I am extremely surprised with the quality that this little thing delivers.
Amazing stuff, when it is upscaling a Chroma/Luma signal at 240p/50hz to perfection.
Plus the C64's video signal is noisy as hell. Like. What were they thinking, when Atari800xl had better?
This C64 setup that I have on the table right now, are just stunning. In some ways better than CRT. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Nice one and as CRT's die off or get too expensive, you've still got satisfaction.
Reinstalled 98se on the Crapathon today. It'd got a bit unstable, mostly due to me swapping hardware in and out every five minutes.
Edited by tedster 2021-01-28 8:31 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | The day I have to use LCD is the day I quit this hobby.
Successfully got a CGA card to display on a VGA monitor. No luck with EGA yet, but I think my card is broken.
Colors are a bit off, bleeds happen sometimes and the picture occasionally rattles around, but I do at least get a picture. Not sure if it is possible to capture at present. Will return to EGA conversions as soon as possible, but have no money as I've had to replace the shed roof twice in the past week and even if I wasn't broke, I feel completely worn out from climbing around up there in the wind, rain and cold until gone midnight for several days in a row.
Edited by DXZeff 2021-01-30 4:09 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| @DXZeff
Well, true. You are however one of those that can fix CRT stuff when there is a problem. I can't do it.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Not if I can help it, the insides of CRTs scare me.
Progress on EGA conversion. The card was indeed broken and had to be repaired, as well as a little minor reverse-engineering to figure out what things were supposed to do, largely guesswork as I no more have an EGA monitor than a CGA one. A picture eventually appeared, but I had to get here blind as text mode wasn't displaying;
So I tampered with sync signals and did some fiddling with diodes and resistors;
Green is still a bit too strong, need to add trimmers as it's fine on a CGA card. The circuit is rather leaky and kludgy anyway, so colors tend to bleed a little, or change intensity depending on what's on the screen, but now if I have to repair anything that's stuck with only EGA or CGA (say if a laptop wasn't showing anything on its screen), I'd be able to work with it now.
I have managed to get intermittent images out of an MDA card, but I think it would need much more circuitry. As it is, I can power cycle my existing circuit and see flashes of what's on screen with MDA, which will do for now as I can't see myself working with those at all.
All in all, around a 125% success rate on this project and it was free, because I made it with parts from burned out stereos I found on the side of the road. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Looks good to me and a nice pay off for a bit of ingenuity.
Managed to snap a picture of one of my resident mouse catchers!
 (owl-1.jpg)
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 owl-1.jpg (39KB - 360 downloads)
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| @DXZeff
Nice job. :-)
@Tedster
That is a nice owl. :-P
As for me....
I am now officially 45 years old today, so I had my children, their half-sister and mother over for some nice cake.
Three spunge cake, with layers of goodness in between. From the bottom up, the first a thin layer of blueberry marmelade.
Then on top of that, whipped cream (1/4 litre) mixed with one tablespoon of Scottish single malt (Glen fiddich) and
some crushed macrons (those slightly burned marengs).
Top layer of goodness is vanilla custard/creme and 150 gram of chokked dark chokolade and on the top of the cake,
some dark frosting, made from powdered sugar, baking cocoa and a splash of boiling water (to make a shiney finish).
And then homemade hot cocoa with whipped cream.... Ohhh yeah.....
 (la-ka.jpg)
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la-ka.jpg (145KB - 378 downloads)
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Hope you had a great day! I'm not even looking at that picture, not one bit, no you can't tempt me! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2021-02-06 2:20 AM
Hope you had a great day! I'm not even looking at that picture, not one bit, no you can't tempt me!
Happy to water your mouth.....
I have done some re-arrangement of my monitor setup. I have found the best solution and combination for getting a Commodore64 onto a modern display. My solution is a RetroTink 2X Mini and a Samsung MultiSync T22A300 television. For Amiga, I have my Dell 2001FP, that do accept 15khz signal, however is awesomme when using one of the RGBtoHDMI adaptors and a HDMI-DVI cable. And the Dell is a great monitor for vintage PC's as well. I have it running with a box, that prevents any monitor to go into sleep mode. Something that I have had issues with, when dealing with really old ISA VGA cards. Yup, even a few VLB and PCI cards as well. Anyway.... I can now use my setup for old 8bit computers, Amiga's and Dos computers. This entire setup, is the result of 6 years of fine tuning and testing tons of different adaptors, converters, upscalers and monitors. And I have my wonderfull Logitech speakers on the side of the monitors as well..... I will hang on to my other LCD monitors, and my trusty old Dennon CRT television. Just in case I need stuff for testing and repair.
 (NewHobbyDesk.jpg)
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| That's a tidy little set-up you've built. I wish I could be so neat, mine looks like an explosion in an old computer shop! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2021-02-07 10:53 AM
That's a tidy little set-up you've built. I wish I could be so neat, mine looks like an explosion in an old computer shop!
Thanks. Well... The monitor stand is quite easy to make. All you need is a plank and three dead 3.5 inch harddrives. Finally some longer screws that can go into the threads, a drill and some epoxy glue.
Put the screws in the holes in one side of the drives, drill the holes and fill them up with glue and place the drives into the holes. Wait 24 hours and finish it up by adding some filt standofs in order not to scratch the table, when moving the stand. That way you can have cables tucked away and the clearance is high enough for something like a C64 breadbin to go under. You know, to hide the cablemess behind the machine. The idea was borrowed from the 1980's.
Also...
I ordered the last parts for my SixtyClone project. However that is just the board parts. I still need to source the keyboard brackets that goes into the Commodore64. Hopefully I have my own homemade C64 replica done by April. I do have a NOS TV modulator somewere, yet I wish to use an aftermarket replacement that do not have RF out, just feeding the signals to the videoport only. RF is too outdated these days anyway. And getting rid of that, will provide a better Composit and S-Video signal for a machine with a really noisy video signal in stock factory configuration. I find it strange, that the 8bit machine with one of the noisiest signal, became the most sold machine of all time. And became the machine with one if not largest software library of all time. Yup. The signal is horrible, and I will do anything to make it better, taking my monthly budget into account that is.
Also...
I found this wonderfull Amiga project. It is a dropin replacement for M68K that is basically an accelerator. So I donated 32 euro to that project. I can find a link, if anyone is wondering what that is. All I can say, is that it is really strange and bizarre. So much that it is awesomme looking. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| I might have sourced a cheap Amiga1200.... Price is shipping plus what I want to pay once recieved. State of the machine is unknown, though physically complete. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Sweet! Hope it's a nice one. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2021-02-12 11:02 AM
Sweet! Hope it's a nice one.
Yup...
I am really loking forward to see the state of the machine. The first thing is to take it apart, inspect it and then test it quickly.
If things go well, then I will let it sit idle for 30 minutes and check if it begins to smell of fish. Finally do a systest of the machine.
If things look well and in order, then I will clean it up and see what needs to be fixed. And finally do a complete restauration,
except for retro bright. That shit scares me, because of the chemicals. I have seen brand new cases online, so it might get a new.
All in all. This will be a nice project to bring back to life. I am certain that it needs a recap. And that might not be cheap.
However such a rare machine, really deserves some love and respect.
And it will be a nice thing for one of my children to take over in the future, once I am dead and gone. I know my son might be interrested. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| I hope he doesn't inherit it for quite a while yet! :D |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2021-02-12 7:04 PM
I hope he doesn't inherit it for quite a while yet! :D
I think I have 28 years left. I turned 45 this month. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| This is surreal.... I never thought that I would get an Amiga1200 for the price of shipping plus what I then decide that it is worth. Right now it is stripped down and the board is hooked up, in order to let it sit idle for that fishy smell. If it needs a recap, then the price will be lowered. After the initial idling, then I will hook up more stuff. The case however, is not that beautifull. It is really yellowed.
There were no accelerator inside the machine, however there are the original 120mb Conner drive, and I hope it works. Else there are always CF cards. Kickstart are 3.0 (need to buy 3.1.4 anyway) and the board revision is 1D.1 and is cosmetically in excellent shape.
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IMG_20210215_162359435.jpg (526KB - 351 downloads)
IMG_20210215_162350334.jpg (411KB - 373 downloads)
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| The Amiga1200 is now cleaned and tested.....
It gives a slight fishy smell from one capacitor, so a full recap is in need. Then it needs a new floppy drive and finally it needs a new keyboard membrane. I offered 200 euro for the machine, and the seller accepted. So I am a happy man. Last thing to do, is to make a full backup from the harddrive that was in the machine. He would really like a small snapshot of the drive. And as I can mount an Amiga harddrive on Linux, then it will not be an issue to make a backup. It is only a 120 megabyte harddrive anyway.
So....
My plan is to have it recapped. Buy a new membrane and a new floppy drive. Then I will buy a new case, a scandoubler, Kickstart 3.1.4 roms and finally a memory upgrade or an accelerator board. CPU uograde is not what I want to go for, I just want some hefty memory upgrade. Like 32 to 128 megabyte memory would be awesomme.
I will be using it for a writing tool, demo machine and module player. Finally have ADF files that I can write to floppy disks.
So far, I have had it taken fully apart. Washed all plastic, even the keycaps. Removed rust spots on the shield, using vinagre and sealed the metal were the rust was. Then gave it a full test. And now it is all back together again.
Edited by Brostenen 2021-02-15 11:58 PM
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Another one saved, nice! |
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| Finally got back to my Celery build. Did lots of testing and comparing between the Celeron 266 and the 300A. For now I've decided to go with the 300A as it has L2 cache that can be used for caching video ram. This in combination with Fastvid improves framerates drastically in some late DOS games like Screamer. Early DOS games have speed issues either way, even the ones that are known to run on a 233Mhz MMX, so no advantage there for the 266.
Did manage to destroy some of the CF cards I was using as HDD's. Pretty pissed about that, those were nice Transcend Industrial Grade ones. I temporarily used a Sil 3114 and a CF->SATA adapter to get things running but it seems to have worn out the SLC memory completely with little use.
Also had annoying little issues with IO and sound that came down to the PSU being flakey. It was the last part I replaced when looking for the cause of the trouble. Might be the cause of the CF disk failure but not going to try again for now. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Ah, the wonderful Celery 300A. I've still got mine, I used to run it on a BX board @ 100 MHz FSB for PII-450 killing speeds.
Shame about your cards  Personally, I just don't like the idea of using SD and CF cards, not with all the cheap SSD's available. They are pretty reliable too, touch wood! |
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Harris 286
Posts: 19
| My previous build had a CF reader on the motherboard, worked like a charm. I do use an SSD now in combination with a Promise SATA controller. It feels out of place there but enables me to use SATA stuff, which is a lot easier to find and more affordable than IDE stuff. Only old IDE laptop harddrives available and those models I don't really trust. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Aye, maybe cards are best suited to DOS and such. I've just moved on to SSD's because, well, they are bloody brilliant! At least for my needs anyway. I have three on the go with 98se, ME and Win2K on them. I've a caddy in a front drive bay that I can pop them in and out of to choose the OS of the day. |
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