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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
  
| Finally had my ATX-64 powered on for the first time, with the chips installed. Actually only missing the ROM chip, however I can still run DeadTest. All tests run perfect, no errors so now I will have to find a programmer/burner for the eeprom chip. All looking good. I uploaded a video on YouTube about this and now I am having a cold brew cause of good work. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| I have been playing around with the VIC-II part of my ATX-64. I had these artifacts that one normally do on a C64. However I was not able to get rid of them. I tried to adjust the onboard luma/stripe-fix, however it did not change much. I took notice, that with a S-Video cable plugged into the dedicated S-Video port and a Dell 2001FP that was turned off, removed all stripes and artifact's like it should. However that is not durable in the long run, and not really handy to have it hooked up to a monitor that I am not using. (Using DIN-to-Svideo and Retrotink for display)
I tried to attach a dedicated Lumafix64 between the motherboard and the VIC-II and that removed nearly all stripes when dialed in. But it still left that red/green tint effect on the picture quality, so I headed over to the LOOP64 website and asked what else I could do. I was recommended to remove the Composite jumper to disable Composite output, and that actually fixed my issue. Of course there are still a few artifacts here and there, however it is now less than what is found on a classic Breadbin+CRT setup. Crisp and clear video with perfect contrast and no colouring artifacts. There are only a faint level of vertical stripes now. Kind of what you see on a CRT if you look close. However the contrast is extremely strong, and one of the absolute best that I have ever seen on a C64. It rivals that of an emulator.
Fully happy with the result so far. Awesomme to have build yet another C64 from the ground and up. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Unfortunately I didn't take any photos when it was completed, but Prophet-5 PSU rebuild and alterations are done. As none of the aftermarket suppliers ever got back to me, I built a circuit to replace the dodgy original +5V one;
This wasn't completed when the photo was taken as all rails now run through this board and have TVS diodes in place to protect the synthesizer if the PSU goes wacky. The end result is that the synth works well, runs colder and is far more stable as a result. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Found an old Packard Bell laptop on my shelf today, and decided to get it up and running again. It is from 2003/04 and build for WinXP. Drivers were not to be found on Packard Bell website, so I had to use a hardware tool from Ultimate Boot CD, in order to get vendor and device ID. Then looked the numbers up on a website with a database.
It is an Sempron-M 3000+ with K8T800 or something chipset. S3 gfx, 20gb HDD and 1gb Ram. Not the most exciting. But I managed to hunt down Win2K drivers and now it is up and running again with Win2K SP4. I was not able to find the modem drivers, but that is something nobody really uses here anymore.
Installed MS Office 2K, Alcohol120 and Winrar as well. The issue now, is that I have no use for it. Was fun to set up though. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| It's nice to just mess about setting up an old laptop.
I just fixed one of my Ipod Classics. HDD had died due to me dropping it. I used one of those iFlash boards with a 128GB SD card. That was the hardest thing in the world, just to open the bloody thing! Fortunately, I didn't lose any digits or wreck it too much.
The iPod is the only Apple product I've ever wanted.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Mmmmm..... iPod. The definitive best product from Apple to date. Just not the touch version. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Aye, I've only had the "classic" version. The one above is a 7th gen. I dropped it whilst sitting at my desk, loading tunes on it. Three feet to the ground? Anyway, it was enough to shock kill the HDD.
I then got a 160GB 6th gen to replace it and I still use it almost daily, it plugs into my car stereo utilising the steering wheel controls perfectly. It always bugged me about the broken one though! So, I took the challenge to resurrect it using one of those cool iFlash boards.
Did I mention how difficult they are to open? Holy cow! |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Haven't done much lately due to stomach problems, but after two years with no medication for it, I've now gotten started on Cimetidine.
In other news, the proof copy of my book arrived:
The very back page (#363) has a special note about how it was written:
Even conversion from a Word 8.0 document was done with this, using an ancient version of Adobe Distiller.
Edited by DXZeff 2021-08-19 6:36 PM
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Congrats on both counts! Being a published author is pretty cool. |
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Intel P5
Posts: 85
Location: UK | That's awesome, where can I buy the book? I'm still stuck here in the UK so hopefully not too hard(there must be one up side to this purgatory!). |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Don't know about that yet. Never was too concerned with the idea of selling copies, I just wanted to see it in print. Shouldn't be long now, just waiting to hear back about those minor alterations that need doing.
Meanwhile I've been trying to save for something all year and should be close to affording it. Might be another month or two. |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| It's going to be a Thinkpad isn't it?  |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | It bloody won't be. I might be buying something equally useless, though - a Turbo XT. Only want a motherboard but they're overpriced and buying a full system may effectively be cheaper. This system would be solely for testing purposes.
That's not what I've been saving for, though.
Edited by DXZeff 2021-08-25 10:17 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| My ATX-64 is finally done, and working. I did it correct and did no solder mistakes. Like. That is awesomme.
Anyway.... Did a video and uploaded to my Youtube channel.
IT'S ALIVE..... ALIVE!!!!!
I have even modded the Kernal ROM and personalised it, with the use of a HEX editor. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| #DXZeff
Wooo.... Congrats on the book. That is SO awesomme.  |
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Rise MP6
Posts: 263
| Awesome news on the C64, I'll check out your vid.
Just got an nvidia shield pro. I'll be checking out retro arch for some fun this weekend. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| tedster - 2021-08-27 2:32 AM
Awesome news on the C64, I'll check out your vid.
Just got an nvidia shield pro. I'll be checking out retro arch for some fun this weekend.
Sounds like a fun little device you have gotten your hands on. :-)
And thanks. Just don't expect much from my English. I am really shitty at speaking it. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Indeed, I shall make a note to check out the video also. In the mean time, I decided to buy a Turbo XT, because motherboards start at £80 and don't even have full RAM. Full system was £116 with full RAM and a floppy drive. Seems like better value to me.
Of course it's a whitebox clone (Part Arabian, part Taiwanese), because I won't touch big brand OEM gear if I can help it. I love clones.
Comes with a monochrome card and I don't have anything that can sync those, so it'll be going over to this CGA card when I get it:
To be used with the new, brown and intense black capable Video Bastardizer I built a while ago. Will be swapped in and out with EGA at times depending on what I want to test.
If I like the system, I'll buy it a hard drive later, but will resort to bodges (nothing permanent or board altering) for now just to make it run. Will have to build myself a keyboard converter at some point, probably PIC based.
Edited by DXZeff 2021-08-28 9:52 PM
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Intel P5
Posts: 85
Location: UK | @ DXZeff
That's a lovely old beast! Seems like a bloody good price too in this current market! you might even find that XT-IDE will work for you on that one(hell, anything is possible). Hope the book will be available to read/buy, If your writing is like your music I'm sure I'll enjoy it 
@tedster
good job on that, all the dead kit I have here is f@cking Apple, a leaking water cooled dual core G5, it pissed into the PSU, the board and all over the CPU's, it's got the American made General Motors water cooler, so that explains that.....utter garbage.....
The caps are shot on my Quadra 610 and when I last powered it up recently the SCSI HD decided it's time has come and destroyed itself in a VERY loud and impressive manner. Not a lot of point of fixing it now to be honest.
And the Powermac 6500/275 made it's usual very impressive "DONG" then gave no display....I stopped caring at all at that point, it's not a great machine anyway, so I doubt I'll bother with that either. It's all really e-waste now waiting to happen.I've owned all these 3 since new, the Quadra since back in my days at NEC in the mid/early 90's..., the 6500 was my son's computer in the early 2000's and the dual G5 was my main workstation back before x86 stopped sucking for actual computation type things LOL When I just think of what this now landfill cost me at the time...well let's not even go there.
@Brostenen
Great work on the C64 and a very good video., some brilliant work there
Due to the plague, several machines of mine are out on loan to friends, the i7 950/GTX 760(Godzilla), the Phenom II X4/Radeon 5870 and, the recently acquired HP Z200 Xeon.
So last week I built a little cheapy box to supplement the trusty Opteron at home, I got an Intel DQ57TM 1156 motherboard from ebay for £14 delivered, Clarkdale i3 550 CPU from CEX for 10p(yep, really 10 bloody pence)! Nvidia geforce GTX 560Ti for £16-ebay. 8GB of Corsair DDR3 1600(4x 2GB) £1 a stick from CEX again, and a Hynix 120 GB SSD for £10, CEX. A Socobeta cooler(6 pipe copper heatpipe, fan in middle between the fin stacks) from amazon for £6.74, a pal game me a midi tower case, a decent 120mm fan and i used a spare akasa 500 watt PSU.
You know what, it's turned out to be a really decent little machine! I just went with the cheapest bits I could find that fitted together and wouldn't be utter sh@t for daily usage(and picking a GPU *just* within the PSU abilities). I'm using Mint, my goto OS these days and even with that little dual core hyper threaded CPU it does just fine, costs bugger all in electricity to run too, I've left it on since I built it. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Thanks all....
It is now in case. I have it hooked up to PSU and all that. I might get a 1581 replica drive for it as well or build a HDD controller. I have a bunch of 3.5 inch 128gb Seagate drives that I do not know what to use for at the moment.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| I bought a Mac Mini A1103 for 26 euro plus shipping.
1.42ghz G4 processor
1 GB Ram
75 GB HDD
Only machine and the power supply. Normally I would not buy a Mac, but it was cheap and have that PPC G4. Going to install OsX Tiger 10.4 and a couple of productivity software on it. And it is a tiny machine as well. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | There sure is something comical about seeing something with all the power of a C64 in such an oversized chassis.
Meanwhile, my health is still being dodgy, but I'll get there. Also fell off my e-bike doing 30MPH when a kid stepped out in front of me, but I only have minor injuries and the bike isn't damaged.
The Turbo XT arrived, worked for about 10 minutes and then broke. I tried swapping out RAM chips, but no good. It's such a simple thing it should be repairable. There seems to be nothing on the bus at all, so I suspect the CPU has gone bad.
Beyond that, a bunch of cheaply produced books appeared;
Couldn't fix the boldface text issue, so I'll look at having another, smaller run done with a different printers in the future, maybe. Now back to trying to mend that XT. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| Nice... You recieved the books. Nice. :-)
It is indeed strange to see such low computing power in such a big case.
I recieved the Mac Mini today. Looks really good for it's age.
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Indeed. Let me know if you want a copy or something.
Much as I hate Apple hardware, for that price if you're gonna get use out of it, I definitely can't fault it.
Makes me think of the i3 in my shed. It's a crappy little OEM All-in-one box with a weird PSU and everything, the sort of machine I wouldn't usually entertain, but it was dirt cheap and is sufficient for playing music on and looking at datasheets and stuff while working out there.
The Turbo XT works flawlessly after a good wash, so not sure what broke. Best guess is that some conductive crud was stuck under a slot or something, as it only takes the right two pins to have some continuity and it'll stop the CPU in its tracks. It hasn't broken or failed to start up once since the cleaning, so now the wait is on for the hard drive, which has just reached the airport in the US ready to be flown over.
Athlon 2800 is having GPU problems. Will attempt to fix it, but might have to drop back to a weaker GPU than the Ti 4600, as it doesn't seem likely it'll be easily replaced. Will, of course, update on this once progress is made, but that might be quite a while away. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| DXZeff - 2021-09-25 12:29 AM
Indeed. Let me know if you want a copy or something.
Much as I hate Apple hardware, for that price if you're gonna get use out of it, I definitely can't fault it.
True, at that price then I was all like: Bring it on!!
I have installed the 10.4 (Tiger version) on the machine and it is running quite nice. Not fast or fancy or anything. Just fine. And I have installed a couple of games on it as well as some productivity programs and so on. It is just a strange system and it is different in a wierd and bizarre yet somewhat logic way. Basically it is what it is and it is kind of doing its own thing. That said. The hardware it self is wonderfull. Personally I think that the mid-00's are when Apple hardware were best. It is well build and it works without ant issue even today. I like Mac's up to around Core2Duo, but then it kind of went south for Apple again. Today it is kind of crappy again.
Though it is all fine and dandy that OsX installation. Then I am only using it to learn something new. When times come, I will delete it, and try other operating systems. I have found an Os9 installation that are specifically for Mac Mini G4. And I have to try MorphOS on it as well. It looks like I will be getting more out of this Mac, when installing MorphOS. There have just been a brand new web browser released for the OS, and it should be compatible with modern websites. 720p Youtube playback also looks pretty decent from what I can tell. So I might just get a 250 or 500 gigabyte harddrive for it and then install Os9 and MorphOS in the end. Perhaps OsX 10.4.11 as well and have a tripple boot setup. That way I have access to those 3 alongside my collection of Dos machines, C64's, Amiga's and so on. I just love to have choices for when I want to play with computers in general.
Regarding your book. What are you charging for a signed copy? I am not a book reader and have never been. My father though, he loves first edition books, and have been a collector his whole life. He is one of those people that read the news paper the day he started in school at the age of 6. And at the age of 15, he was already reading thick books on English. He is a retired history and geography teacher, and one of his mentor's in British Roman history were Mick Aston from England. They worked together on the subject of Roman roads in England. But I would love to buy two signed copies from you.
DXZeff - 2021-09-25 12:29 AM
Makes me think of the i3 in my shed. It's a crappy little OEM All-in-one box with a weird PSU and everything, the sort of machine I wouldn't usually entertain, but it was dirt cheap and is sufficient for playing music on and looking at datasheets and stuff while working out there.
The Turbo XT works flawlessly after a good wash, so not sure what broke. Best guess is that some conductive crud was stuck under a slot or something, as it only takes the right two pins to have some continuity and it'll stop the CPU in its tracks. It hasn't broken or failed to start up once since the cleaning, so now the wait is on for the hard drive, which has just reached the airport in the US ready to be flown over.
Athlon 2800 is having GPU problems. Will attempt to fix it, but might have to drop back to a weaker GPU than the Ti 4600, as it doesn't seem likely it'll be easily replaced. Will, of course, update on this once progress is made, but that might be quite a while away.
Nice that you have that XT up and running again. In time, you probably have to resort to one of them XT-IDE cards that are out there. You probably might already know that they can be found with an CF slot onboard, or have a header for a ribbon cable so one can use whatever drive one need. I think they are a nice invention for these old machines, for when the MFM or RLL drive dies completely and a new is not obtainable anymore. At least they give a choice for storage at an affordable price tag.
I3 you say... Hmmm.... I would want to make it into some kind of Linux based NAS or something. As much as I love using Linux on my daily driver, then I know it is not for everyone to do this. I am a kind of rare computer user on this point. However I think that the strongest use that Linux provide, is to serve as a file server. Or as the core of a RouterOS. You know. These kind of things. Or just as a minecraft server or mail server. And it does not hurt to learn more about Linux in general. Quite usefull for playing with a RaspberryPI, if you want to do some automation setup of some kind, that requires some more computing power than an Arduino are capeable of. |
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