General Stuff(tm)

Blogs & guides and tales of woo by forum members.
User avatar
stephen_usher
Posts: 5577
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:19 pm
Location: Oxford, UK.
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Today I picked up the machines I'd rescued from the work scrapheap:

IMG_2527.jpg
IMG_2527.jpg (62.46 KiB) Viewed 1670 times

A couple of LCD screens which should hopefully do 15KHz refresh, some AT keyboards, one in its original box, a Sun Ultra 45 and an old 486 PC, which I snipped the VARTA (destroyer of motherboards) out of. The VARTA had only just started to leak so the M/B is fine. The M/B also has an IBM PC-AT compatible "external battery" header so no need to hack anything.

Unfortunately the PSU on the 486 was a bit unwell. It would power the machine up sometimes but not every time, so before I moved the machines I took the PSU out, I then moved everything but the PSU into my storage unit.

To cut a long story short, I had in stock all the major capacitors so I swapped the twin 2200uF, 1000uf and 470uF caps and tested with some hard drives as the load and it looks OK now. The ground planes were awful. The Hakko took a few seconds to melt the solder but my 70w iron had huge difficulty.

IMG_2532.jpg
IMG_2532.jpg (54.05 KiB) Viewed 1670 times

So, tomorrow evening I think I'll bring the machine back from the storage and see if I can get the two had drives to work. The 1991 vintage BIOS seems to have a hard disk detect utility built in so it may be bale to set the drive types correctly.
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
User avatar
rubber_jonnie
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 10462
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2017 7:40 pm
Location: Essex
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by rubber_jonnie »

Very nice haul. 😁
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
User avatar
PhilC
Moderator
Moderator
Posts: 6012
Joined: Fri Mar 23, 2018 8:22 pm

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by PhilC »

Nice little colle tonight there @stephen_usher , especially getting that ultra 45.
If it ain't broke, test it to Destruction.
User avatar
stephen_usher
Posts: 5577
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:19 pm
Location: Oxford, UK.
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Managed to get the 486 to boot eventually, once I'd determined the disk parameters, how the IDE cable went and turned off the external cache memory.

I wonder if this motherboard is one with fake cache or it's just gone bad.

Both hard disks work, amazingly.

IMG_2533.jpg
IMG_2533.jpg (84.83 KiB) Viewed 1630 times
IMG_2534.jpg
IMG_2534.jpg (42.34 KiB) Viewed 1630 times
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
User avatar
rubber_jonnie
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 10462
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2017 7:40 pm
Location: Essex
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by rubber_jonnie »

The 486 needs more Doom :)
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
User avatar
stephen_usher
Posts: 5577
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:19 pm
Location: Oxford, UK.
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

The config.sys has a menu entry for setting up for Doom, though it's not on either disk.

The motherboard is a strange one. From the BIOS identifier it's made by "Lucky Star", it has no silk screen printing giving anything identifying other than "486 Local Bus Ver1.0". There's no information about this board on-line and everyone I've asked is stumped, so there's no way of determining the correct jumper settings for changing things such as cache size.

From the chip date codes it looks like the machine was from mid 1992.

IMG_2535.jpg
IMG_2535.jpg (123.67 KiB) Viewed 1601 times

Those aren't VESA local bus connectors, they're a pre-VESA one, possibly Omni Local Bus.

Other than that I've lashed together a BIOS battery, and that seems to be all working. CheckIt verifies the hardware.

From the filesystem it looks like the last time the machine was used was 1999.
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
User avatar
stephen_usher
Posts: 5577
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:19 pm
Location: Oxford, UK.
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

rubber_jonnie wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 11:06 pm The 486 needs more Doom :)
You wanted Doom, so here's Doom...

Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
User avatar
rubber_jonnie
Site Admin
Site Admin
Posts: 10462
Joined: Thu Aug 17, 2017 7:40 pm
Location: Essex
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by rubber_jonnie »

stephen_usher wrote: Sat Jan 08, 2022 12:51 pm
rubber_jonnie wrote: Thu Jan 06, 2022 11:06 pm The 486 needs more Doom :)
You wanted Doom, so here's Doom...
Splendid!! Still a favourite of mine even after all these years!!

Nice bit of archeology on the machine too. That bus is really weird, I haven't seen one like that and definitely not VLB.
Collector of many retro things!
800XL and 65XE both with Ultimate1MB,VBXL/XE & PokeyMax, SIDE3, SDrive Max, 2x 1010 cassette, 2x 1050 one with Happy mod, 3x 2600 Jr, 7800 and Lynx II
Approx 20 STs, including a 520 STM, 520 STFMs, 3x Mega ST, MSTE & 2x 32 Mhz boosted STEs
Plus the rest, totalling around 50 machines including a QL, 3x BBC Model B, Electron, Spectrums, ZX81 etc...
philbo34
Posts: 191
Joined: Tue Apr 21, 2020 10:46 am

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by philbo34 »

I always thought you were supposed to dodge the fireballs
User avatar
stephen_usher
Posts: 5577
Joined: Mon Nov 13, 2017 7:19 pm
Location: Oxford, UK.
Contact:

Re: General Stuff(tm)

Post by stephen_usher »

Tell that to the demo authors :-)
Intro retro computers since before they were retro...
ZX81->Spectrum->Memotech MTX->Sinclair QL->520STM->BBC Micro->TT030->PCs & Sun Workstations.
Added code to the MiNT kernel (still there the last time I checked) + put together MiNTOS.
Collection now with added Macs, Amigas, Suns and Acorns.
Post Reply

Return to “MEMBER BLOGS”