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Chips 386
Posts: 38
Location: Canada | The power flickered at my mom's and her monitor wouldn't come back active but the computer sounded like it was working. I hooked up the VGA cable instead of the DVI and it works. The power flicker must have damaged the DVI out on the puter or the DVI in on the monitor, didn't test it any further after I got it working with the VGA cable due to time constraints.
I have a lady's computer(desktop) to fix, an i7 HP - The problem? Ransomware, right after you power it on it comes up with a password window. I don't know which virus it is but she said it wanted $300. I don't think it's Wannacry... might b though. It has windows 10 on it, haven't dug into it yet as I just got it this afternoon.
Edited by Robman 2017-05-17 5:56 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
 
Location: Hull, UK | Probably be fine with VGA anyway, I'm still reliant on it and haven't had any problems as yet. I'm not sure I'd want to take it past 1920x1440 though.
Ransomware is something I've not had to deal with, but I've heard all kinds of horror stories about trying to get rid of it. |
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Chips 386
Posts: 38
Location: Canada | Yeah the Samsung 22" seems to handle an analog signal well enough, it's 1680x1050.
We'll see how it goes. I'll pull the hdd out and try to heal it before trying to get the pictures and crap off for her. Then format and reinstall if healing don't work.
IT BETTER GO WELL!
Edited by Robman 2017-05-17 7:47 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Good luck, here's hoping it hasn't encrypted bloody everything on the drive or dicked with the file table.
If you find nudes, don't be afraid to share them. :P
Edited by DXZeff 2017-05-17 7:55 AM
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Chips 386
Posts: 38
Location: Canada | Yeah, especially because I told her I could likely save her files.
rofl... yup, I've found nudes on puters before, and one grainy/poor quality home video where more than just the front door was used, if you catch my drift. |
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Chips 386
Posts: 28
Location: Wigan, UK | So, the Asus Socket 462 board arrived today, and it works pretty well, even with my stupidly ghetto heatsink-mounting setup. (gutted an old Dell SFF a while back and got a very solid copper heatpipe based cooler from it)
Though, the Geforce 6600 I ordered a while back seems to either be dead, or just really doesn't want to work nicely on this motherboard, not really sure. The seller was just a guy in Greece, and he seemed trustworthy enough, so I'm pretty sure it is just a case of the board being at fault here. Not really sure what to do with this Sempron 2600+ now that I own it, the onboard video does work, though seems to be some shitty low end SiS card. Guess I'll just keep it around for future use, I know I'll come in handy at some point or another...
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IDT WinChip
Posts: 237
Location: USA | If volume shadow copies is turned on, you'll be fine. If not, hope there is another backup running. I turn on shadow copies anymore on customer computers and servers I manage, along with of course a real backup of the servers because of ransomware. |
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Chips 386
Posts: 38
Location: Canada | Well, I hooked it up to another puter and it read as a raw hdd, no data. No amount of reverting it back to a previous state or scanning it with whatever worked.
I reset the shit back to its factory defaults, installed avg free and firefox/ her printer drivers and called it a day. Collect a hundred bucks, have a few beers with her and that's that.
Edited by Robman 2017-05-18 3:44 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Damn ransomware, hopefully she's not too upset at losing her stuff.
@RobWolf; That image, I had a Quadro which did that, but only on the analog output. Unfortunately it wasn't reparable, though it did later donate parts to keep the 4 Ti running.
Last Sempron I had ran as a file server for what little time it lived, had one of those naff K7S41GX boards in it, so I guess that's a potential use if you need a bridge between newer and older machines for file sharing.
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In what little time I've had, the new K5 motherboard appears to have paperweighted. I tested the SCSI card and it seemed to work, so I started messing with software, nothing major, just booting DOS and doing a few tests to make sure everything worked. Had to restart because certain things want memory managers loaded and found myself with nothing but a blinking cursor upon hitting Ctrl-Alt-Del. Hit the reset switch and the cursor disappeared. Now it won't POST. What the hell is with the world not wanting me to own a K5? Seriously, I'm convinced, because every time I try to build one something goes wrong like this. I've tried different CPUs, different RAM, different video cards, but nothing. PSU tested under load and comes back fine/
I think the board is still under warranty and the guy I bought it from is good, so I can likely return it if it won't run. The CPU seems to be OK and that's what I was most worried about as I'd rather not have to buy another one and the SCSI card will definitely be useful elsewhere. Not ready to give up yet though, so I'm going to strip the machine down again and try a few things, perhaps re-flash the BIOS again - though I'm not sure what good this will do - and playing with the cache chips as it isn't impossible for them to cause a problem I guess. With the luck I have, it could be anything; dirt, weather, who knows. The only thing that bothers me is how it broke in a similar manner to the Pentium D and also in a similar way to when the K6 won't start, I'm honestly starting to question the only common factor between them and that is the lack of earthing on the electrical outlets. Motherboards and such generally ground themselves to the case, but the case is live because of earth leakage that can't go anywhere, who knows what effect this might have but I'd bet it probably isn't anything good. If this turns out to be a problem then I think there may come a time where I have to seriously reduce my usage of these machines just to save them from breaking, because the council won't fix the problem and I can't afford to have the place rewired, let alone the resulting fine from doing so. I have ideas on how to get around the problem, but they're even more dangerous than the problem itself and I'm not sure if I'd be willing to go that far.
Edit: The hell! Another faulty EEPROM, I guess they don't last well past the 20 year marker or something. Either way, I'm glad because I really like this board and it is back to normal operation.
Edited by DXZeff 2017-05-19 1:16 AM
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Chips 386
Posts: 38
Location: Canada | I phoned her and told her I wouldn't be able to save her personal files and that if she wants, I can bring it back to her and she can take it somewhere else to try.
I got 2 seconds from her house to drop it off and she called me saying that she was only worried about some pictures of her grand daughter but remembered that they were sent to her so they weren't the original copies and said I should/could format the hdd. And yes, randomware sucks. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Seems the K5 is fine until I hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, then if fills everything from 0x0001 C000 on the EEPROM with blanks (FF) for whatever reason. Otherwise it's fine, so I'm going to try disconnecting the write pins and see if the problem goes away. Also going to try a slightly older version of the BIOS I have.
Part of me suspects the SCSI controller, because I once had an NCR card that somehow appeared to copy its own BIOS into the system BIOS through unknown means, but I never confirmed this.
Edit: Indeed, problem only happens when a SCSI card is installed. Said problem goes away if I remove the "Flash Voltage" jumper from the motherboard, something I don't need anyway because I never flash a BIOS in-board anymore because I prefer using a programmer when possible.
Edit 2: One of those odd things where stuff just aligns in a way that is so oddly coincidental you'd almost swear it wasn't, but it certainly is beyond any doubt -
The K5 motherboard, the NCR SCSI card and the other motherboard which had a similar problem with BIOS corruption all came from the same seller BUT this is truly a coincidence, there is nothing the seller could have done to make this happen and it truly is just a coincidence. I guess he (and likely I) just happen to gravitate towards hardware that just happens to act weird under a certain set of conditions or something.
Edited by DXZeff 2017-05-19 7:56 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| I have been offline for some time, more or less, only using the internet for homebanking and Youtube.
Used the time for some gardening too. Cut the lawn and planted 9 fresh strawberry plants.
For the computing-activities, I have not done anything with old hardware. Anyway....
Yesterday I played with my OrangePI (model Plus 2), to see how it can be set up as a retro gaming device.
I have watched people on youtube, having Armbian installed on the eMMC storage, so I thought that
the Retro-OrangePI operating system could do the same, as it is based on Armbian.
And yes... Both Armbian and Retro-OrangePI can run straight off the eMMC. Sweet, good to know.
Then why would it not? The Plus2 model comes with Android preinstalled.
I have no trust in that, because it is a chinese edition without any Google apps..... Hmmm.... Chinese?!!
Don't trust anything Android'ish from China, that lacks the Google Apps. Smell's like sequrity risk to me.
The PI has eMMC and SATA after all. (SATA is connected over the USB bridge, making it a USB drive).
Installing both Armbian and Retro OrangePI on the eMMC works. Sata harddrive not that much.
Shure I can install on both storage units by running "sudo nand-sata-install" though the PI only boot eMMC.
Though booting from a SATA harddrive seems like it is not possible to do straight out of the box on my PI.
Going to experiment a bit today, to see if Retro OrangePI can see and use a EXT4 formatted harddrive.
If it can, and I can set it up as a container for the rom files, then I have a 120 and a 160gb HDD.
The best part is, that I can then run the OS from the eMMC and free up the SD-Card for other uses.
Edited by Brostenen 2017-05-19 8:58 AM
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Chips 386
Posts: 28
Location: Wigan, UK | @Brostenen
Reminds me, I have an early Raspberry Pi Model B laying around, I remember when I first got it in 2013 I was able to push it to around 1.35ghz, which considering it runs at stock 700mhz is very impressive. Had a very beefy heatsink on the processor, and a large fan mounted onto the case. At the time I was trying to help figure out Darkplaces' performance issues, and also had some progress in a Quake TC of Half Life in the works, though most of the files for that are lost. (Nothing special, I was mostly just botching HL's data files to together to work in the stock Quake engine, so I could have the strange satisfaction of running it under pure MS-DOS.)
Pretty cool low-power devices to play around with, though the older single core Pi's offer performance comparable to a Pentium 3, and graphics performance very similar to a Geforce 2. No clue what to do with the thing, it's been making a very nice paperweight these past two years or so.
Last night, decided to dig out my old Axion 14'' CRT. I've owned it for years, but the last few times I remember using it, it smelt a lot like burning. Ended up opening it up, and I'm currently met with 20+ years of dust. Explains the burning smell... Hopefully it'll still work nicely, even once-common CRTs like this are getting pretty hard to come by these days. |
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IDT WinChip
Posts: 237
Location: USA | @HT I have thought about that wiring issue in your house as being the reason you seem to have a lot of problems with computer stuff. I can't imagine the grounding issue is good at all on computer power supplies and motherboards. I've had a couple computers over the years come in for power related issues that work perfect at the store, but fail to either turn on or are horribly unstable when the customer takes it back home. In those situations, I can only figure wiring issues in the home are causing the problems, barring the computer isn't plugged into a power strip with several other devices or something like that...
Old hardware sure isn't for the faint of heart! Some sort of memory range conflict with the eeproms perhaps?
I am thinking, since the FX-60 is really more than I want to pay right now, an E6 stepping 89W 4400+ X2 might be the way I want to go and overclock the biatch. IDK. I didn't think S939 stuff had become hard to find and expensive for the faster speed chips, like the opteron 180/185/X2 4800/FX-57/60 and good motherboards. I am tempted to scrap the idea of a S939 and just move up to the AM2 since those chips are cheap and cheerful, but if anyone has an FX-60 or Opteron 185 collecting dust, I'd be interested in it.
Edited by waybacktech 2017-05-19 4:31 PM
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Chips 386
Posts: 28
Location: Wigan, UK | @waybacktech
I do remember coming across a few cheap iWill DK8N boards on eBay a while back, they all had leaked caps, apparently causing the firewire to not work. They're dual Socket 940 boards that have AGP 8x slots, if you come across one they're pretty good for running dual (or even dual dual-core!) Opteron processors and offer decent performance. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VfzsIwDF-k)
Edited by RobW0lf 2017-05-19 7:30 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | @Brostenen; Gardening? I don't do that, but I have a valid reason. The council get mad if I don't cut the grass, but they stole my garden tools when I was moving. This suits me fine as I don't really like gardening that much and simply respond to their complaints with "Yeah, well, maybe you should have thought of that before you stole my tools? Would you like to replace them any time soon?" to which they have no response and the complaint disappears. Grass is over a foot long now, tree is growing into the neighbors bay window (they don't care or I would fix that one) and there are weeds cracking my path.
Hmm, replacing Google applications with random Chinese ones does sound suspect, I sure as hell wouldn't want to put any important information into any of them.
I'm still tempted to use one of these Pi devices should I ever get my TV set up again. Mostly just so I could strap it to the back of the TV, have a wireless keyboard and use it to grab videos from the network or online. Hooking the laptop up to it is just irritating.
@RobW0lf; Darkplaces? I remember there being some Blood remake of sorts in that engine. Odd you should mention modding as I've been doing some things in the Build engine as of late, I might post some of that later.
Opening CRTs is something I avoid for as long as possible, I won't lie, they frighten me a little. That high pitched whistle when they're running just sounds like death to me and I'm quite happy to remain ignorant of what's going on in there unless I really have to, though removing dust certainly qualifies as a good reason as it sometimes becomes conductive enough for bad things to happen.
@WaybackTech; Further to that effect, there was that case I tried putting the Athlon in years ago where the motherboard tray didn't connect to ground, no motherboard I had would work in that case and I often suspected that to be at least partly to blame. Power strip? I use a 12-Gang one with several 4-Gangs piggybacking from it, sounds like a fire waiting to happen but I've never had problems because I don't use all the outlets at once and know how far to push it - if I don't exceed 13A load nothing bad will happen and I'd still have license to draw far more from other wall sockets at the same time as British wiring favored 32A Ring mains for outlets until recently, I think they've changed to the less capable Radial now.
I still have my (mostly broken) 939 gear somewhere, still have a hard drive which should boot as it was when I abandoned the platform. Overall, I've had better luck with S754. I would imagine that AM2 probably is still cheaper and the 4400+ seems to exist on both sockets, so that does look like an option at least.
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Just woke up, but I have some recording to do. K5 is on hold as I forgot the drive doesn't have inbuilt termination, could probably get away with it but with the luck I have it seems wise to wait for a terminator. Annoyingly, it won't boot from SCSI CD-ROM drives regardless of how I set the adapter up, small problem I guess because I can just use an IDE drive to get the system going and disconnect it once Windows is installed. I don't remember Win95 having any issues with SCSI CD-ROM drives anyway, so in theory it should be relatively seamless... in theory... it'll probably blow up or something knowing my luck.
Still might post some shots or something of the random doodling I've been working on in Build. It's awful, but it is at least supposed to be awful. |
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UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| I just bought a Intel PCIset PIIX4E socket 7 motherboard and, other than being an AT form factor motherboard, this seems like an acceptable motherboard for the 233MHz P1 MMX processor I also bought. The cards I plan to add to it are a Matrox Mystique 220, Diamond VooDoo 2, SB16, and serial I/O card. I still need to mount a fan and buy a PSU and I'm looking for tips.
Edited by 486u 2017-05-19 10:58 PM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | Where exactly do you need tips?
If you need a heatsink you can use Socket 370 heatsinks as well as Socket 7 ones. Some K7 heatsinks, namely those with only a single clip on each end, will also work. AT power supplies turn up from time to time and vary in price. |
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UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| DXZeff - 2017-05-20 12:51 AM
Where exactly do you need tips?
If you need a heatsink you can use Socket 370 heatsinks as well as Socket 7 ones. Some K7 heatsinks, namely those with only a single clip on each end, will also work. AT power supplies turn up from time to time and vary in price.
General tips and warnings, if any
Will an ATX power supply adapted to AT work? I assume it would seeing as they sell adapters for them. If so, can I use a basic bitch 400w power supply? |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | ATX supplies with adapters will work, but with a few exceptions. Newer supplies don't provide -5 Volts which a few devices need, most do not though and as far as I'm aware 99.9% of SB16 cards moved their amp over to -12 Volts, which newer supplies still do provide.
Check the ISA pinout and make sure none of your cards connect to that pin - Pin B5. Sometimes the finger is still there but isn't connected, something which should be easy to see. If nothing uses it (which I very much doubt that hardware does) you should be fine unless the motherboard is just weird.
Also, serial IO. Why not the onboard serial headers? Most Socket 7 boards provide serial from the get-go, you may have to find a way to disable this if you're going to use a card. Usually there are options in the BIOS but some boards use jumpers. |
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UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| DXZeff - 2017-05-20 3:06 AM
ATX supplies with adapters will work, but with a few exceptions. Newer supplies don't provide -5 Volts which a few devices need, most do not though and as far as I'm aware 99.9% of SB16 cards moved their amp over to -12 Volts, which newer supplies still do provide.
Check the ISA pinout and make sure none of your cards connect to that pin - Pin B5. Sometimes the finger is still there but isn't connected, something which should be easy to see. If nothing uses it (which I very much doubt that hardware does) you should be fine unless the motherboard is just weird.
Also, serial IO. Why not the onboard serial headers? Most Socket 7 boards provide serial from the get-go, you may have to find a way to disable this if you're going to use a card. Usually there are options in the BIOS but some boards use jumpers.
It seems to have the AT keyboard 5-pin DIN and that's it despite the Intel chipset being from the '96-'97 time frame. Maybe it was an upgrade path? |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 618
Location: Hull, UK | They're usually near the keyboard port and appear as pin headers, you need a header which fixes into the backplane of the case to use them.
These tend to show up on eBay quite regularly as they do still make them, likely because many server and industrial boards often still offer this option for various reasons.
(Edit: Here's one - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/StarTech-com-2-Port-16-inch-DB9-Serial-Po... )
It would be very uncommon for a Socket 7 board not to have them and I've never heard of one at any rate. Still, it is entirely possible and is a rather novel quirk if your board doesn't have them.
There is one thing I forgot to mention, one you're probably well aware of but I still have paranoia over it when I'm working - AT power cables can be connected the wrong way, so look out for that. Black wires should be in the center - "Black to black, you've got the knack, red to red you're ******* dead." is my preferred way of remembering this.
Damn, internet just blacked out. Bloody KCom.
Edited by DXZeff 2017-05-20 3:40 AM
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UMC U5S
Posts: 54
| Yep, those headers are present on my board so I'll grab that link. Thanks for the warning about the power supply too.
Edited by 486u 2017-05-20 3:53 AM
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| #RobW0lf:
Yeah... They are pretty awesomme, those small PI's. I have just run into a sort of problem with mine. Actually it is the software that are making problems for me, because the RetroOrangePI software will not launch any games. Everything is working as intended, though for some reason, the OS reports that there is a configuration error. For now the Orange PI is going back in the closet.
I can install Armbian on my board, and have it running from the onboard 16gb eMMC storage, and with a little tinkering, it can be set up with samba. Making it an awesomme small fileserver for personal files. You know... Pictures and video's from the phone and so on. I have had gparted installed on it, and had a 160gb sata harddrive connected through the SATA port. I know the SATA chip is connected over the USB port, yet having a SATA connector makes it a bit more easy to set it up with a real harddrive.
Anyway...
I guess the OrangePI-Plus2 that I have, are mostly for server and desktop use untill a better version of RetroOrangePI is released. Yet as soon as a new release is out, that is working as intended. My board will be awesomme as a retro gaming box. |
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TM Crusoe
Posts: 671
| #DXZeff:
Yup... Gardening. Me and my woman lives in a house, that are part of a sort of shareholders union. I really do not know what the english version is called. We all own our house and the land it is placed on. Yet the outdoor pathways and lawns are collectively owned. The houses were build collectively on a huge loan, so we are all part of it. All 150 houses. So... Naturally there are some rules. Not that many and they are not that hard to follow. Rules like it has to look good, the sheds have to be painted the same colour, hedges need to look well maintained. Yeah... Just rules like that. It has to look nice. So there were actually no way around not doing the garden. And we got some more strawberry plants this way.
For the android... I deleted it and installed the Armbian linux on my board. Runs like a champ if I want a cheap and silent text editor or fileserver for my files. (or actually both at the same time). Uses less to nothing in electricity. Though it really has its limits, I like it as a toy to tinker with.
Speaking of... You should really look into prebuit RetroPI images. Just download, write to an SD card and off you go with retro gaming box. And if you have no tv, a HDMI to VGA converter will work. I have my PI running from 640x480 and up to 1024x768 on a 6:4 aspect ratio TFT screen.
I used one of these converters |
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