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BrianTheElectrician

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Everything posted by BrianTheElectrician

  1. BrianTheElectrician
    Well, I dug out a system recently that I haven't had the pleasure of messing with in a long time... A Dell Dimension 4100. I apparently installed a 40gb hard disk and Windows 2000 pro the last time I had it out which I don't remember how long ago that was (Definitely before we moved, over a year ago). Otherwise, it's a 1Ghz Pentium 3 with 512mb of ram, a Geforce 2 MX 32mb graphics card and a Sound Blaster Live for sound. It's amazing how fast Win2k runs on it, and I've been busy the last couple evenings slowly installing more games on it. I think I'm gonna have to see if I can track down an IDE Zip drive to install in it as well... if I can find one for a reasonable price anyway. For the moment I at least have an external one I can use if I get the itch to It makes me want to finally use my old gateway socket A motherboard and Athlon 1100 and finally build myself a Thunderbird machine.
  2. BrianTheElectrician
    Ah yes, the Abit BH6. I have a couple of them and they're fantastic boards. The soft menu in the BIOS for the processor FSB and Multiplier is great to have. They seem to be very stable boards too, at least with my experience with them.
  3. BrianTheElectrician
    It shouldn't be too hard to track down the pieces you need. I'd offer mine up but the ones off my T23 are also broken. I do know that Disappearing Inc has a lot more T23 laptops as well, so depending on where you're located he may be a good source.
  4. BrianTheElectrician
    Nice! I do know that the power management drivers seem to be needed on these old Thinkpads, I've had quite a few "unknown" devices suddenly become known after installing the PM drivers. I suspect maybe there's chipset drivers that are installed as well at that point, but not 100% on that. For XP I've generally found that 512mb is my bare minimum for running it acceptably, along with generally much faster cpus (Min. 1ghz, usually use with P4 or Athlon 64+). This is partly due to the fact that I ran Win2k until the end of service before I actually switched to XP, and find 2k runs much faster (Plus, you know... nostalgia and all that). The T22/T23 laptops are actually quite serviceable, I don't think it would be too hard to get it back together and workable again as long as you still have all the parts. They're great machines!
  5. BrianTheElectrician
    Well, when I was in town for LTX I had a chance to swing by Disappearing Inc and got my hands on a Thinkpad T23 parts machine with a good screen which I needed for my T22. Got the LCD panel swapped over (Backlight in the old one was dead, swapped with one from another panel and still dead), backlight didn't work, though it did in the T23 when we tested. Swapped the inverter board and still nothing... swapped the display cable and it all came to life, so perhaps the lamp I have in the other display is still OK so I'll still be keeping it for a spare. Have the machine all back together and it's working great now! Good to know that the LCD, inverter and LCD cable are all the exact same between the T22 and T23, and I suspect I could actually swap the motherboard over as well (T23 lower case isn't in the greatest shape) but that's an eventual maybe. I'll be keeping the T22's old LCD, the T23's keyboard and motherboard for spare parts and realistically likely scrap the rest. T22 Specs: Intel Pentium III - 900Mhz, 256mb SD Ram, 20Gb HDD, S3 Savage IX Graphics (8Mb), Intel Pro/100 Ethernet and Crystal Sound. I've installed Windows 2000 Professional with SP4 on it, as I already have several newer Thinkpads that are all running Windows XP and I really wanted a Win2k laptop. This fits the bill nicely and is really a quick machine with Win2k. I've still got install the last couple drivers but just about all done getting it set back up. Judging by the Windows 98SE COA on the underside, I presume this was originally a Windows 98 system. Maybe one day I'll see if I can find a replacement battery for it, or maybe look at rebuilding the one that's in it. It, not surprisingly, doesn't hold a charge at all haha.
  6. BrianTheElectrician
    Does the motherboard have L2 cache? If memory serves some of the AST systems didn't have any on the mb, though I think that was the older earlier p1 systems. Looks like it's in great shape! Those old bigfoot drives are neat too, though they are slow compared to similar size 3.5" drives.
  7. BrianTheElectrician
    If you get out of the city centre hotels should be cheaper too. Since we moved out of town, we'll be staying with family in Langley and I'll be driving in. Taking the bus from Langley would take a while though. Are you going to have a vehicle or rely on transit?
  8. BrianTheElectrician
    I volunteered at ltx2019 and it had a great vibe. I'd def say the vast majority are more like those here on the forum, not reddit lol. Never had an issue with anybody and it was always fun chatting with people. I'll be volunteering this year as well and am very much looking forward to it.
  9. BrianTheElectrician
    Best I can make out is it's a 100mhz pentium, which coincidentally was also our first family machine. Hardware wise ours had 8mb of edo ram, a diamond stealth 64 2mb pci video card (S3 trio64 chipset), a 33.6k modem and sound blaster 16. It was spec'd 16mb ram but my dad downgraded to 8mb because it saved $300. Also had a 1gb Wd caviar 11000 ide hard disk and 4x cdrom drive. Came running windows 95, and we later upgraded to 32mb of ram. The pentium 1s used either socket 5 for the earlier ones (75-166mhz), or socket 7. The very early 5v 60 and 66mhz ones were socket 4. The later pentiums and pentium mmxs are good paired with a voodoo 1, and the earlier are really 2d only for era correctness.
  10. BrianTheElectrician
    I'd say I certainly do. Whole systems even
  11. BrianTheElectrician
    https://winworldpc.com/product/microsoft-entertainm/best-of WinWorld has many disc/disk images of abandonware. I've used it for years and never had an issue, I consider all their images safe. I've linked the page for the "Best of" the entertainment pack which I believe has most of the games you're looking for, but there are other pages for images of each full collection. You should be able to directly mount the image in PCEM or most/all other emulation software.
  12. BrianTheElectrician
    Woah it's been a while since I've been on here. We're in the middle of Reno's and moving though so have been very busy. A shot of *most* of my old machines staged to go up to the interior. We will be somewhat space limited for the next couple years but we will eventually be building a new place, which also means a new workshop. The container were storing a lot of our stuff in I'll probably be converting into my new computer workshop.
  13. BrianTheElectrician
    Ok yeah that's pretty garbled lol. Surely an old version of Works could run on a newer system that that though!? Guess I know what I'm going to try this weekend lol.
  14. BrianTheElectrician
    I'll have to hop onto archive and grab the images. If there are a lot of similarities to the 1685 it would certainly be good to have! The software looks like a good collection as well! That's a very clean looking machine, but it's interesting that your boss wants it for old software... I can't imagine they would need access to any files or software that old anymore...? Maybe the old software is games?
  15. BrianTheElectrician
    That's a nice collection of chips... I even spy a 486 DX50... those flew for their day if you had cards that would handle the 50mhz bus, if not, then well you had a lot of system instability. A DX2-66 should be similar in performance but far more stable due to the 33mhz bus, though I'd imagine a dx50 would still beat it for memory performance. Definitely a neat collection. I myself only have one each of a 286 and 386... my 386 is a DX33, which I see you have several of.
  16. BrianTheElectrician
    That's a good point, I can always get footage during the build to edit and release after it's done.
  17. BrianTheElectrician
    Ah yeah I like Phil's channel. I also watch a lot of LGR, Tech Tangents, Adrian's Digital Basement, and 8 Bit Guy. I've had a bit of involvement with Tech Tangents too and keep in touch with Shelby. Thank you too, we're looking forward to the build just going to be a lot of work and the move means a job change of course, and it'll be harder to work with LMG. Doesn't mean it won't happen anymore, it'll just take more planning. I've definitely thought about doing just that, and it would give a lot of content too. Just depends on time. I've never done video editing before either so have to learn how to, and what's cost effective.
  18. BrianTheElectrician
    Technically, yes I do however I have yet to make and post a video. I've thought about getting into it, and I plan to but we're also trying to get some reno's done in preparation to sell and build a new house next year. We have a good opportunity to get a large piece of land up in a town called Salmon Arm so we're preparing for that change. Later this year I may have time to do a few videos, and I plan on designing in a space to film in the new house. TLDR: Not yet but it's planned lol
  19. BrianTheElectrician
    According to IBM's website documentation it should support up to 1gb, it takes pc133 sdram sodimms. I know for sure there are 512mb modules available. https://www.ibm.com/common/ssi/cgi-bin/ssialias?infotype=an&subtype=ca&htmlfid=897/ENUS101-353&language=enus&appname=skmwww&mhq=db2 olap function reference&mhsrc=ibmsearch_a Perhaps Windows 2000 would be a better option to run on it with only 256mb? Installing the unofficial service pack 5 and the extended kernal should provide most of the functionality of XP, and knowing IBM drivers shouldnt be an issue. Or if your set on XP perhaps run the rtm release or sp1/2 and avoid sp3? Edit: I realized I did the search for an A30 not an S30. The S30 does indeed have a maximum of 256mb, which looks like it's a chipset limitation.
  20. BrianTheElectrician
    Should be a great machine for that, though I think you'll want to upgrade the ram. XP I've found really likes 512mb or more. The ssd will be nice though, and 32gb should be adequate for what you can run on that machine. That's pretty cool that the battery is still decent too! That's rare with the older machines. I had to buy new batteries for my 40 series machines, surprisingly amazon has them new still, and cheap, I paid about $30cad each for mine. GOG is a good source for games, and their installers work on XP. Some even run on Windows 2000 but that's a bit hit and miss I've found. Maybe the unofficial sp5 for win2k would rectify that... hmm...
  21. BrianTheElectrician
    Dang that looks like it's in great shape! What are your plans for it? I imagine Windows 98 drivers would be available for it, so should make a good Win98, 2000 or XP machine. The 40 series I know you can still get brand new batteries off Amazon too for pretty cheap, I wonder if that's true for the 30 series as well...
  22. BrianTheElectrician
    It's also amazing what can be done with a good multimeter and some enginuity and/or math lol
  23. BrianTheElectrician
    That's a good point on there not being any indentation in the cable jacket. It maybe possible that the case grabs it tight enough to handle the odd light tug but honestly I think that's doubtful. I have to agree with you that that would be giving them too much credit I would def avoid this power strip. Hmm, i should open up one from ikea. They're pretty cheap i wonder how well they're put together...
  24. BrianTheElectrician
    That's a neat old Seagate, I don't have any that look like that... I've never come across one. All of mine are older (about 500mb) or much newer (10+gb). Hang onto that one, at least from what I've seen they seem to be fairly rare. I also spy what looks like a rage 128 in your video cards.
  25. BrianTheElectrician
    Well, picked up a vintage laptop on the weekend... a Toshiba Tecra 500CDT. It has a Pentium 120mhz, 80mb EDO ram, 1.26gb hard disk and a Chips and Technologies 65550 2mb graphics with a 12.1" tft display. Also has real Yamaha OPL3 with the sound which is ess if memory serves. Came with big box versions of Windows 95 (floppy version) and Plus 95, an old Toshiba branded laptop bag and the external floppy drive, which unfortunately needs some love I can't get it to actually read a disk. I also need to pickup a fresh cmos battery for it. It has more audio jack's I think than any other laptop I've seen before... I think I did alright for $60cad lol
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