Show off your old and retro computer parts

[BrianTheElectrician]

Well, I had a call-out earlier this week and on my way back I had a chance to stop at the Free-Geek in Vancouver... Picked up a Thinkpad 600X and a replacement motherboard for my IBM PC365.

 

The Thinkpad had the coating deteriorated and sticky so that was a chore to get rid of... lots of scrubbing with Windex and magic erasers. Replaced the cmos battery as well but I can't seem to get into the bios. Should be the F1 key on these but it'd not working.

 

The motherboard I have not tested yet but I believe Free-Geek tested it when it was pulled out of the machine. It's a dual socket 8 (Pentium Pro) with 4 168 pin ram slots, but it takes a funky EDO ram, not SD. Came with the ram slots full and a single Pentium Pro 200, 256K. It was sitting in a box on their shelf since 2018, I'm glad I happened to mention if they ever came across a board for one of those lmao. The Pentium Pro really is a physically massive chip and has considerable heft to it.

 

Paid $50CAD for each, so $112CAD total including tax. Not bad in my book.

[Mark Kaine]

Just found this monster… DS4 for size comparison.

 

Will I get it to work… probably not, but ill sure try, im sick of the flimsy DS4 controllers…

 

[Mark Kaine]

To my surprise this thing works, got immediately recognized by steam too!

9/9 controller basically:

http://www.lulays.com/jr/saitek/px5000.asp

 

 

 

 

 

[Linakesh]

Hello everyone,,

 

Not only does it work, but its in great cosmetic shape, the battery inside hasnt exploded (yet) and i got it to boot before Error 301 (no keyboard). 640kb of ram passed.

Its got a 20mb HDD, and a 720k 3.5" FDD. I dont have any 720k disks but i think i can format some 1.44mb ones to work, if not i can just go back to the place i got it, there were a lot of PC DOS ibm branded floppy disks there.

The thing was dirty outside, but after a bit of kitchen cleaner and a scrubby sponge, it looks near brand new. It doesnt sound that great, the HDD is loud as can be, but seems to be clicking correctly and isnt making any nasty sounding noises. So when i get a ps/2 keyboard ill try it out.

It has build in MCGA graphics which use a 14 pin VGA connector, but it worked fine with my crappy Apex LED monitor by removing a pin from one end of the cable.

Any suggestions as to what i could toss in this thing? It has two open 8 bit ISA slots, half size but full height. Im thinking important stuff first, sound card and maybe something for storage as a backup, since an aging HDD and FDD probably isnt a safe place to store anything.

[Master Disaster]

The most common upgrade to these is to pull the HDD and replace with an XTIDE then drop in a CF2IDE. You need the XT2IDE as they use MFM HDDs.

 

Beyond that there's not really too many other upgrade options. You cannot upgrade RAM beyond 640K on an 8086, adding a sound card is pointless since almost all the software from back then was programmed to use the PC speaker only (because that's all that existed) and IIRC almost all PS/2s came with VGA as standard.

 

Great find though and a steal at that price.

[da na]

Not quite a computer part but thought I’d share anyway. I was hoping to mod a game boy cartridge with no battery to add a battery to it so games could be saved when it lost power. I disassembled a cartridge that had a battery to see how it worked… turns out there’s a big difference between them. The one on the left has a RAM chip for storing info and a real-time clock as well as the rom chip of the program. The one on the right is just Tetris and that’s it.

[da na]

On 6/26/2021 at 3:20 PM, CerealExperimentsLain said:

Look at more than the monitor.

 

 

 

Never obsolete! 

[BrianTheElectrician]

11 hours ago, Linakesh said:

Hello everyone,,

Not only does it work, but its in great cosmetic shape, the battery inside hasnt exploded (yet) and i got it to boot before Error 301 (no keyboard). 640kb of ram passed.

Its got a 20mb HDD, and a 720k 3.5" FDD. I dont have any 720k disks but i think i can format some 1.44mb ones to work, if not i can just go back to the place i got it, there were a lot of PC DOS ibm branded floppy disks there.

The thing was dirty outside, but after a bit of kitchen cleaner and a scrubby sponge, it looks near brand new. It doesnt sound that great, the HDD is loud as can be, but seems to be clicking correctly and isnt making any nasty sounding noises. So when i get a ps/2 keyboard ill try it out.

It has build in MCGA graphics which use a 14 pin VGA connector, but it worked fine with my crappy Apex LED monitor by removing a pin from one end of the cable.

Any suggestions as to what i could toss in this thing? It has two open 8 bit ISA slots, half size but full height. Im thinking important stuff first, sound card and maybe something for storage as a backup, since an aging HDD and FDD probably isnt a safe place to store anything.

Dang that's a very nice looking machine! To be honest I'm not sure if a 720k drive will read 1.44mb disks even when formatted as 720k but it's worth a shot.

 

As has been mentioned an XTIDE is probably your best bet if you run into issues with the hard drive in that machine but sometimes all those mfm drives need is a good lube job.

 

There is of course always the option of simply running it off of floppies if the hard disk does die but it's nice to not have to disk swap constantly. It may also be possible to upgrade to a 1.44mb drive but that is dependant on of course being able to find the drive but also if the bios supports them.

[Kilrah]

3 hours ago, Mel0nMan said:

Not quite a computer part but thought I’d share anyway. I was hoping to mod a game boy cartridge with no battery to add a battery to it so games could be saved when it lost power. I disassembled a cartridge that had a battery to see how it worked… turns out there’s a big difference between them. The one on the left has a RAM chip for storing info and a real-time clock as well as the rom chip of the program. The one on the right is just Tetris and that’s it.

Yup, if the game wasn't designed to have saves you're not going to get any.

[luckybob77]

6 hours ago, BrianTheElectrician said:

Dang that's a very nice looking machine! To be honest I'm not sure if a 720k drive will read 1.44mb disks even when formatted as 720k but it's worth a shot.

 

As has been mentioned an XTIDE is probably your best bet if you run into issues with the hard drive in that machine but sometimes all those mfm drives need is a good lube job.

 

There is of course always the option of simply running it off of floppies if the hard disk does die but it's nice to not have to disk swap constantly. It may also be possible to upgrade to a 1.44mb drive but that is dependant on of course being able to find the drive but also if the bios supports them.

 

16 hours ago, Master Disaster said:

The most common upgrade to these is to pull the HDD and replace with an XTIDE then drop in a CF2IDE. You need the XT2IDE as they use MFM HDDs.

 

Beyond that there's not really too many other upgrade options. You cannot upgrade RAM beyond 640K on an 8086, adding a sound card is pointless since almost all the software from back then was programmed to use the PC speaker only (because that's all that existed) and IIRC almost all PS/2s came with VGA as standard.

 

Great find though and a steal at that price.

 

 

I see XTIDE mentioned and I wanted to chime in and correct everyone.  Slightly.

 

#1: The XTIDE is THE way to go, but you need to use a special version for IBM machines.  The hard drives are reliably horrible, even when they were new.

#2: The 8086 will not upgrade to the 1.44mb floppy.  At least not without MAJOR mods. the 286 version uses the 1.44

#3: There are TONS of games that use sound and will work here.  You will not be playing doom or anything like that, in fact most games will be quite primitive.  

#4: there have been some "hacks" to upgrade the memory to ~1MB.  I haven't used them personally and I'd consider it more of a pro-level mod.  It's on my "to-do" list.

 

I haven't done much to my 8086, But they are fun machines.  Here is a list of games that should mostly work on an 808x machine:  https://www.mobygames.com/attribute/sheet/attributeId,64/offset,0/p,2/so,0a/

 

I personally have fun with text based games and the early Ultima series.  Well, "fun" and "ultima" in the same sentence is quite subjective, but the very early D&D-esque, dungeon crawlers are a personal favorite.

 

You can use 1.44 disks SOMETIMES in 720k drives.  I can go into detail if people want to know, but to nip things in the bud, those cheap USB 1.44 drives will not work AT ALL. When it comes to 720k disks.  personal experience here.  If this machine will be something you want to keep long term, it will take some infrastructure to keep everything working.

[wolfsbane3083]

Found this old beast in storage: 

 

Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz

8GB DDR2 800

Zotac 9800 GT (Used to be SLI but the fan on the second card died)

 

Dusting it off and I'm going to put it in a rackmount case as a NAS for a few 8TB Seagate drives I snagged off Amazon for £117 each

[Kilrah]

Followup of previous post, but my 486 is now fully working  

 

Repaired the display cable by jumping 3 faulty connections with wires.

Then tackled some intermittent boot fault, sometimes got error 103 (system board, Timer interrupt failure), sometimes not but it would spend way too long on the POST screen and then the screen would just go black without doing anything, and sometimes it would boot but increasingly rarely.

Found 4-5 unsoldered pins in a corner of the CPU that were likely making intermittent contact especially since the CPU is on a semi flex mount. That area actually seems to have been tampered with before, the CPU soldering job really looks a bit weird for factory work. Wonder if someone replaced the CPU in this thing back in the day.

Anyway also received replacement CMOS battery today, and it's now 100% - except for the missing HDD, but I might get the seller to ship it to me, or at least the caddy. Apparently had (25 year old...) patient data on it and that's why he didn't include it. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[WhitetailAni]

5 hours ago, wolfsbane3083 said:

Zotac 9800 GT (Used to be SLI but the fan on the second card died)

Replacement fans should be super cheap. I found one for my PhysX PPU for $5. Shipping took forever, but it did come and works fine.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

6 hours ago, wolfsbane3083 said:

Found this old beast in storage: 

 

Q6600 @ 3.6Ghz

8GB DDR2 800

Zotac 9800 GT (Used to be SLI but the fan on the second card died)

 

Dusting it off and I'm going to put it in a rackmount case as a NAS for a few 8TB Seagate drives I snagged off Amazon for £117 each

No offense dude, but rotate that cooler!

[Bitter]

4 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

No offense dude, but rotate that cooler!

Why? It's exhausting heat out the mesh top of the case and this orientation clears the RAM.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

1 minute ago, Bitter said:

Why? It's exhausting heat out the mesh top of the case and this orientation clears the RAM.

You lose airflow over ram, plus you are losing air from the gpu being in the way.  The hot air rising is negligible when you have fans. Plus if you have front in take fans, then it's going to have a weird air current, it causes a lot of turbulence

[wolfsbane3083]

9 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

No offense dude, but rotate that cooler!

Had to put it that was to pull some air through the chipset cooler, MCP was hitting 90c  Lost the little fan for it years ago.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, wolfsbane3083 said:

Had to put it that was to pull some air through the chipset cooler, MCP was hitting 90c  Lost the little fan for it years ago.

Ah, that makes sense then. I'd try to find a little 30mm fan to ziptie onto the chipset then.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, wolfsbane3083 said:

Had to put it that was to pull some air through the chipset cooler, MCP was hitting 90c  Lost the little fan for it years ago.

Little fans are cheap on eBay.

Here's a cheap 30mm 3-pin fan for $8.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/252100622161?epid=1547992295&hash=item3ab25e3751:g:dUMAAOSwEetWAcZB

[Bitter]

3 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

You lose airflow over ram, plus you are losing air from the gpu being in the way.  The hot air rising is negligible when you have fans. Plus if you have front in take fans, then it's going to have a weird air current, it causes a lot of turbulence

DDR2 doesn't need airflow.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Just now, Bitter said:

DDR2 doesn't need airflow.

Need? No. Does it help? Yeah.

But still, it's best parctice to not cause unneeded turbulence in the airflow, there’s already going to be enough from the computer being in the case. Plus, like I said, you get less air with the gpu being right there

[Bitter]

1 minute ago, FakeKGB said:

Little fans are cheap on eBay.

Here's a cheap 30mm 3-pin fan for $8.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/252100622161?epid=1547992295&hash=item3ab25e3751:g:dUMAAOSwEetWAcZB

Go baller, get the tiny 40mm Noctua. Comes even in PWM flavors!

[Bitter]

Just now, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Need? No. Does it help? Yeah.

But still, it's best parctice to not cause unneeded turbulence in the airflow, there’s already going to be enough from the computer being in the case. Plus, like I said, you get less air with the gpu being right there

I'll bet if he rotates the cooler and puts a fan on the NB there will be differences only within the margin of error.

[WhitetailAni]

1 minute ago, Bitter said:

Go baller, get the tiny 40mm Noctua. Comes even in PWM flavors!

I am planning to get two or three for the front of my case to take care of my 695's exhaust.

[wolfsbane3083]

Hehe don't worry about the hardware, the case is full open and doesn't even have any fans in atm. Purely just testing it/getting everything set up.

Have a cheapo 4u rackmount case, some 60mm chipset fans and other bits and bobs coming to turn it into a poor mans 8 bay NAS machine.

 

The chipset cooler on this board is honking huge too this board was nuts back in the day.