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tedster

Posted 2021-09-29 3:29 PM (#2289 - in reply to #2288)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

Blimey, Zeff on an Athlon!

I've never had an Apple machine, they don't really appeal to me. But it's something for you to tinker with and that can't be bad!

However, my news is. I've managed to source an i7-3632QM cpu for my Thinkpad T-430, off the 'bay of wonders! Pretty hard to find these 35w i7's. So when I finally spotted one I snapped it up. Should give the old girl a boost, not that I had any complaints with the original i5 that was in there. But I do like to mess!

DXZeff

Posted 2021-10-06 3:44 AM (#2290 - in reply to #71)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 618
500

Location: Hull, UK

@Brostenen: By contrast, I've no love for Mac at all, but as usual have no reason to fault others for wanting to use them.
720p YouTube is one thing, but I always feel a little miserable when I think back to being able to watch 360p YouTube on a 266MHz Pentium II without issue, as things sure did bloat since.
Can't remember how much it cost to print per copy. £3 per copy is probably good enough. Be warned, it's not great, as I wrote it for myself, really, with little regard for anyone else.
As for the XT, it has since gotten a hard drive. XT-IDE is troublesome, so it's ended up on an old 21MB 8-Bit IDE drive that probably doesn't have much life in it, but it's an obscure interface, so worth tampering with just because. Slower than hell throughput, but that hardly matters in this machine anyway. Hoping to find an RTC card for it some day, for research reasons mostly, as I suspect some 'weird' performance is coming from applications falling back on the ~18Hz IRQ 0 timer, versus the 1KHz timer it might use if a RTC was present.

@Tedster: Hopefully it's faster than this 2620M, as it's becoming a bit of a drag now.

tedster

Posted 2021-10-08 10:22 AM (#2291 - in reply to #2290)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

Is there a bios mod to let you use Ivy Bridge cpu's?

It is a bit faster but it was another bloody rabbit hole. I had to get a bigger power brick, so that was another 20 quid!

tedster

Posted 2021-10-21 12:18 AM (#2293 - in reply to #2291)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

Got another bloody ThinkPad!

I took the heat sink off my old R50e to clean it and the bloody fan crumbled to pieces. Well, I found one for sale in China but that's on a slow boat, probably. So, a quick scan on the 'bay sourced an identical machine to mine. Listed as "for parts or not working" I thought it worth a punt for the 23 pounds inc shipping!

Well, bugger me, the thing turned up and it's in better condition than mine! The seller had no charger and plugging it in using mine, I got an instant sign of life. Loads of complaints about wrong time and date and no bootable device. Typical for a dead cmos battery. So I pulled it apart, pulled the cmos battery, stripped it and taped up a new CR2025. Added another 512mb stick of ram alongside the installed one. Pulled the drive out of my old R50e and the thing booted right up. It's a lovely little machine, sporting a Pentium M 1.7 GHz and even Intel WiFi, which mine doesn't have.

I'll transfer the good bits of mine over to it and make it into my retro XP lappy. My old one will get a couple of sticks of 256mb ram and become my 98se retro lappy! Well, it will if my Cineasium cooler turns up. What a result.

Brostenen

Posted 2021-10-30 6:06 PM (#2294 - in reply to #71)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

I have not been on this forum for some time. My parents had their golden wedding during the first weekend of october, and I have had my children during the vacation that is during fall here in Denmark. One week school off, good for the kids. So we had a blast with different stuff, like carving pumpkin heads.

I did buy a couple of things....

- TF-1230 accelerator for my Amiga1200 (64mb edition)
- Angled CF-IDE adaptor with an extra 40-pin IDE header.
- Kickstart 3.1 Roms for my Amiga1200.
- PCMCIA-SD card adaptor that are 16-bit Amiga 1200/600 friendly.
- 16GB Sandisk Ultra CF Card.

The TF-1230 is British designed, and it is an awesomme piece of hardware. It is extremely cheap for what it is. 160 to 170 Euro for a 64mb edition.
And compared to vintage whatever 030 accelerators like Blizzard, that goes for up to 900 Euro, then this is a nice thing.
Sure there are no maprom or whatever. But the main goal is to provide an 68030-50 CPU and 64/128 MegaByte of Ram (plus an IDE port)

EDIT:
My 1200 are almost as the one that I bitterly regret selling in 2006. That one had an GVP TurboJaws-II accelerator (030-50 and FPU)
It also had an PCMCIA-SCSI adaptor, but these days I do not see a real need for CD-Rom on any Amiga. It can all be done with CF or SD Cards.
Finally I love the TF-1230 already. It is open hardware or whatever. And Steven Leary (AKA Terrible Fire) are fixing firmware bugs 30 min's after
he notice or get news about potential or excisting bugs. It is simple, delivers the basic stuff and it keeps it more close to what the machine is.
Compared to something like a Vampire, that tries to change the overall machine into something else. Nope. I like it more "genuine" so to speak.

Edited by Brostenen 2021-10-30 6:42 PM

(TF-1230.jpg)

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TF-1230.jpg (771KB - 271 downloads)

tedster

Posted 2021-11-08 8:32 AM (#2298 - in reply to #71)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

Such a lovely miggy, nice one!

I never mentioned but the "Chineasium" cooler for my Thinkpad R50e turned up within a fortnight! What a fine job it is too, takes 15C off the shite one that came as standard, shit loads more copper accounts for that and it even has a copper pad for the GPU. The bloody thing was left bare with the stock R50e cooler. No wonder it was the cheapest one IBM ever did. I've ordered another R52 cooler, from the same source, to go on the other machine now.

The week after this, my original R50e gave me a load of beeps on boot. Four rapid beeps in a cycle. Online searches indicated a dead embedded controller.... no it was a dead bios battery. I taped in another and after a bit of a fuck about, normal service was resumed.

I wonder how many of these early machines have been junked as faulty, when a new bios battery would have saved them?

Edited by tedster 2021-11-08 8:43 AM

DXZeff

Posted 2021-11-15 11:52 AM (#2303 - in reply to #71)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 618
500

Location: Hull, UK

Indeed. I'm not an Amiga guy, but that is a particularly nice looking one.

Meanwhile, not much going on here due to gut problems, hopefully to be fixed soon. I did get the "Key De-fiddler" made up for my XT, though, because I'm not spending all that money on a PC keyboard.

I also got a different type of keyboard that goes back way further than any of this stuff: http://dxzeff.com/trash/arp2813.jpg

spacedrone808

Posted 2021-11-18 4:10 PM (#2304 - in reply to #2303)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

UMC U5S

Posts: 55

DXZeff - 2021-11-15 11:52 AM

Indeed. I'm not an Amiga guy, but that is a particularly nice looking one.
Meanwhile, not much going on here due to gut problems, hopefully to be fixed soon. I did get the "Key De-fiddler" made up for my XT, though, because I'm not spending all that money on a PC keyboard.

Wish you quick health recovery!

Brostenen

Posted 2021-11-21 5:27 PM (#2305 - in reply to #2304)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

Gotten the 3.1 kickstarts installed, and now I can have the 64mb ram enabled. For some reason the TF-1230 need at least 3.1 in order to enable the mem.

tedster

Posted 2021-11-28 12:11 AM (#2306 - in reply to #2305)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

64 mb of ram on a miggy! K'inell.

I'm sat here without power after the storm of the century hit us Friday night. No mobiles too, internet still works tho! I'm running off my genny with limited capacity, not bad tho some poor buggers are sat huddled around a candle!

tedster

Posted 2021-11-30 11:26 AM (#2307 - in reply to #2306)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

Power's back on! Holy crap, that was a long 4 1/2 days without retro computing!

Brostenen

Posted 2021-12-20 1:45 PM (#2311 - in reply to #2306)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

tedster - 2021-11-28 2:11 AM

64 mb of ram on a miggy! K'inell.

I'm sat here without power after the storm of the century hit us Friday night. No mobiles too, internet still works tho! I'm running off my genny with limited capacity, not bad tho some poor buggers are sat huddled around a candle!

Yup. That is kind of overkill, but it is the cheapest that are possible these days. I asked on the Exoshost forum about the option of making a cheaper accelerator, by cutting the Ram to 16mb and ditch the IDE-Port. The answer was that the 32mb chips are the cheapest to buy. And the IDE connector only cost around one Euro.

Happy to hear that you are back online....

Brostenen

Posted 2021-12-20 7:46 PM (#2312 - in reply to #2311)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

Finished soldering job on my Ps2 Remote Keyboard Adaptor for C64.

(C64-Ps2-Keyboard-Adaptor-Small.jpg)

Attachments
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C64-Ps2-Keyboard-Adaptor-Small.jpg (563KB - 256 downloads)

DXZeff

Posted 2021-12-23 8:14 AM (#2313 - in reply to #2312)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 618
500

Location: Hull, UK

I wonder if it really needs that Arduino, or if it can be done with a puny little PIC like the XT-to-AT one I made.

An RTC card is on its way for my Turbo XT:

Unfortunately the parallel port can't be disabled, as far as I can tell, and will wind up either conflicting with the VGA card or the hard drive. My plan is to just put tape over the IRQ pin and ignore the problem.

I also mailed two books out to Denmark yesterday, so hopefully those will reach their destination soon, though they probably won't until the other side of Christmas.

Brostenen

Posted 2021-12-25 5:44 PM (#2315 - in reply to #2313)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

DXZeff - 2021-12-23 10:14 AM

I wonder if it really needs that Arduino, or if it can be done with a puny little PIC like the XT-to-AT one I made.

An RTC card is on its way for my Turbo XT:

Looking forward to the books. :-) I know my father will love to get a book like that.

As for the C64 Ps2 adaptor, then it might be possible to design something more simple. However looking at the webshop, then it is good enough for me.

There is actually a lot of different stuff from UNI64. And the mission is to revatrialize Commodore64 as a kind of new-age vintage-platform. Just the kind of stuff that I love. Taking an old 30-40 year old platform and making it as up to date as possible, yet still maintain the old feel of it. Almost all custom chips are on the virge of being reproduced in modern tech, resulting in this hardware platform, as being the most complete modernised 8bit platform of all 8bit platforms. Just amazing.

DXZeff

Posted 2021-12-27 6:26 AM (#2316 - in reply to #2315)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 618
500

Location: Hull, UK

No doubt, and the accessories certainly do seem to achieve that aim. By contrast, I enjoy using hardware that was already available to solve the problem and, in the case of the XT, the PIC chips were already available since the 1970s.

tedster

Posted 2022-01-03 6:25 AM (#2318 - in reply to #2316)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

My lovely Missus bought me a USB microscope for crimbo!

Should help with those tricky solder jobs. Random stick of ram pictured for a test. The stick looked clean as a whistle to the eye, it was pulled out of a box of sticks sent to me recently by a pal.

(usb_microscope.jpg)

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usb_microscope.jpg (219KB - 232 downloads)

Brostenen

Posted 2022-01-03 11:03 PM (#2320 - in reply to #2318)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

tedster - 2022-01-03 8:25 AM

My lovely Missus bought me a USB microscope for crimbo!

Should help with those tricky solder jobs. Random stick of ram pictured for a test. The stick looked clean as a whistle to the eye, it was pulled out of a box of sticks sent to me recently by a pal.

Yum, yum, yum....

Brostenen

Posted 2022-01-12 11:13 AM (#2322 - in reply to #2320)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

I have lately messed around with my Amiga-1200. And it is beginning to become a great machine. First I wanted to stack up TF-1230 against Tsunami-1230 accelerators, and keep the one I like the best, then sell the other again. It turned out that I actually like the Tsunami better, but then I messed up, ripping a cap from the TF-1230 on the underside of the card. I have absolutely NO idea how I did it, but the cap went off while I closed the trapdoor lid. Went to exxoshost forum, and asked around what the component does. It turns out that it is a leftover component from the TF-330 card, and Mister TerribleFire (the designer him self) answered that it will probably run fine without. However I have the component, the BOM-List and need to get it fixed. Better safe than sorry.

Then I got a copy of Zeb's HDD image, and installed it on a 16gb CF card. Fixed two lines in the Startup-Sequence file. Copied the Kickstarts to the WHD-Loader folder and played some more. I was surprised that the PCMCIA-CF adaptor software comes as a default in the image. This Tsunami suits me better, as I have a few issues because of the lack of the timing bug fix. The TF-1230 requires that fix, in order to run as perfect as possible, compared to the Tsunami that just works on my board revision. I ran a systest on the system, and it gave around some 9330 to 9340. I can not remember the exact number, think it was 9335 or something. The HDD-Speed is just around 2.4 megabyte/second, when doing the run 3 times in a row.

So now I am left with a TF-1230 that have a cap ripped off, that acording to the designer, really have no impact on the way the card runs it self. So I guess I will be selling it at a really low price now, and point out this issue in the sales add. But the good part, is that I now have my dream 1200. I have an IndivisionAGA MK3 installed, and it has HDMI output. The sound is routed through a passive analog audio-switch that I have also bought. This way I can have 3 things hooked up to the speakers at the same time, and not fiddle with cables all the time.

What I need to get now, is a new case for my 1200. I have my eyes on a grey one, in order to hide the yellowness of the keycap's better. Eventually I will need to retrobrite them in one way or another. Or I will need to source replacement keys that have not yellowed. That is perhaps the biggest task, as Danish layout is rather rare on a global scale.

(Ripped-Cap-ScaledImage.jpg)

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Ripped-Cap-ScaledImage.jpg (856KB - 240 downloads)

Brostenen

Posted 2022-01-12 6:55 PM (#2323 - in reply to #2322)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

Found an revision 8a.1 Amiga500 in extremely good cosmetic condition. Nearly no yellowing and case have no cracks. Seller asked between 157 and 158 Euro plus shipping, so I bought it. I need the key-caps for my 1200, and if I throw in an original A500 box with styrofoam inlay, then I might be able to resell it globally at a lower price than I paid for. I just want the keycaps, because the rev 8a.1 and 500+ models do not yellow for some reason. If I can get 130 for it, with slight yellow key-caps and in an original box, then I am happy enough. I only want those keycaps.

And I think it will sell. The 8a.1 revision is basically an Amiga500 Plus, downgraded to 512kb Ram, clock/battery never installed and with Kickstart 1.3 compared to the Plus model (rev 8a) that had the pesky varta installed. Else they are basically the same custom chips and board layout. Both are full ECS machines. If one thought that the Plus was rare, oh boy, then the 8a.1 model is even more rare. And even in stock config, as most are converted to "plus" models these days. That is everything converted to Plus, except the real time clock circuit.

Edited by Brostenen 2022-01-12 7:01 PM

DXZeff

Posted 2022-01-14 2:34 PM (#2324 - in reply to #2323)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 618
500

Location: Hull, UK

Still moving furniture and stuff. Have to move the server and the networking hardware a few times, so this site might be up and down a little bit.

Brostenen

Posted 2022-01-16 2:35 PM (#2325 - in reply to #2324)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

Cleaned up the outside of the 500 Rev8a.1 with full ECS chipset, that I recieved yesterday. Still need to test it fully, but if it is working, then it is not bad for 157/158 Euro. It is actually fully factory default. Everything is in it, even the plastic standoff on the middle of the RF shield, that acts as a internal keyboard stand to keep the keyboard from bending. Sure a tiny bit of rust here and there and nearly no yellowing. Crossing fingers that it is working....

(a500-rev8a1-01.jpg)

(a500-rev8a1-02.jpg)

(a500-rev8a1-03.jpg)

(a500-rev8a1-04.jpg)

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a500-rev8a1-01.jpg (725KB - 232 downloads)
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a500-rev8a1-02.jpg (718KB - 232 downloads)
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a500-rev8a1-03.jpg (673KB - 232 downloads)
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a500-rev8a1-04.jpg (551KB - 227 downloads)

tedster

Posted 2022-01-16 6:34 PM (#2326 - in reply to #71)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

Well, that looks like a beauty, nice find!

Brostenen

Posted 2022-01-17 7:18 AM (#2328 - in reply to #2326)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

TM Crusoe

Posts: 671
500

tedster - 2022-01-16 8:34 PM

Well, that looks like a beauty, nice find!

Thanks. I have high hopes for it to work, when looking at the cosmetic state of the machine. I am really beginning to wonder if I should keep the keycaps and sell it again with more yellow keycaps as original planned. Or I should keep the entire machine in my collection. It is after all fully complete with every bits and pieces in place.

tedster

Posted 2022-01-18 12:05 AM (#2329 - in reply to #71)
Subject: Re: Recently Played/Bought/Messed with

Rise MP6

Posts: 263
100

If you have the space and don't need the money, keep it intact. They're only getting harder to find.

There's something appealing about a nice original machine.

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