Nebulon

I agree. I also think it's mechanical and likely a simple drive replacement. just wondering though -- if it did turn out to be a circuitry problem, is it as easy to fix as swapping a chip on the motherboard?

So once you get the metal shielding off and remove the battery, do you put the shielding back on or just leave it off and plug the card in without it?

You know, there actually is an optical drive in the chain. There are two devices hooked up to an A2091 SCSI controller. One is a Quantum Fireball 1.2 GB hard drive and the other is a CD-ROM drive. I verified that the CD-ROM drive works (although it needs diskchange commands to get it to check for discs for some reason). Strange, since my A4000 doesn't need diskchange commands for its CD-ROM. But that's another topic.... I'll look into both the termination of devices and the SCSI ID order. Thanks!

I've got a 1040 STe that is having intermittent disk read issues using the internal diskette drive. These same disks have been verified as good on another STe. On the problem machine, if I pop the disk out and back in again, it quite often finishes loading data successfully. Thoughts? If it turns out to be some kind of controller issue, how hard is it to replace the diskette drive controller circuitry on an ST?

If I remember correctly, there are two cards in there: One is a 68030 accelerator card. The other is a SCSI/RAM combo card. I think you're right about the SCSI conflict. I've seen delays in SCSI chains like that in the past (many eons ago). Unfortunately I can't recall what exactly solved it back then. Do you suppose re-jumpering to change the SCSI ID might help?

To those who have removed the battery from the Amiga 500 RAM expansion module... how did you remove the metal case for the module without ruining it? I guess the other question is: How did you get it back together again? It looks like part of it are soldered together.

Here's a related question. One of my two accelerated Amiga 2000s takes forever to boot. It just sits there for a long time and then finally starts to boot from the hard drive. I'm pretty sure it's the 68030 accelerator card causing the delay. Not sure if its counting RAM or what...

You just gave me an idea and I think it might work. Connecting to the Amiga using a parallel cable and the PC2Amiga utility could do the trick since you can delete Amiga files from the PC side. If I run into a full drive issue in the future, I'll give this a try.

Just a minor detail. The 8375 is locked at NTSC and is not switchable.

I've done this on a number of Rev. 6 boards and it worked fine. <-- for anyone out there curious to try it. Both the 8371 and 8372A worked great.

So those batteries are alkaline? I was used to car batteries and using a mix of baking soda and water. Now that I know it's alkaline on these computers, I guess baking soda's not the way to go?

PC2Amiga is pretty awesome. Easy to set up, quite quick, and maintains long file names. http://www.blitter.com/~nebulous/utilities.html

Cliffhanger arcade (1983). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGhgO_dv9fU

It's interesting how at 14:00 it looks a lot like today's server racks.

Well, if you just need a motherboard, there's this (quite an interesting write-up here): http://www.ebay.com/itm/S-100-CPU-Card-8080A-SBC-or-Replacement-for-ALTAIR-8800-or-IMSAI-8080-with-CP-M/252769636387?_trksid=p2047675.c100011.m1850&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D1%26asc%3D41402%26meid%3De6f67e5f5ccc4c329c535c4b23a18402%26pid%3D100011%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D10%26sd%3D132071136792

Oh man. Debug. What a nasty piece of work that utility was. Ugh. I see that there are quite a few Switch ads on YouTube lately. So it looks like they're at least making an attempt to hype it.

I totally agree. I'll often play just to see how long I can survive. Other times, I just zone out completely and decompress while playing old-school arcade games. It's very therapeutic.

Super Metroid! And of course anything with Kirby in it. This is coming from someone who also discovered this stuff long after the NES, SNES, and SEGA were replaced by later consoles.

So I'm looking for advice on what baseball game to get for the 360. What I'm looking for is something like ColecoVision Super Action baseball (with better graphics -- of course). Features include: - Base stealing - completely manual control over outfielders - effort-based running - ability to pick off players while getting ready to pitch - infinite time to get the ball from the outfielders to infield. Right now, I'm finding that a lot of modern baseball games do too much for you: too many automated features or time limitations. The effort-based running would be nice to have. On the ColecoVision, you'd use the spinner to run the player from base to base. The faster you spun it, the faster they'd run. That and total control and unlimited time for the outfielders meant that you could really screw up royally in the outfield (let's face it, that sort of thing does happen in real life). Anyway, just thought I'd see what people recommended.

For the sound card, try moving it to a different slot (if possible). Also, for the SB Live, try to get ahold of the original drivers (as opposed to the newer ones). The original SoundBlaster Live drivers work really well under Windows 98se so -- in theory -- you should be able to get that card running. If I recall correctly, it's possible to have multiple sound cards running at the same time in Windows 98. If you happen to see any exclamation marks under the Control Panel -> System -> Hardware, you can actually delete them and reboot (this'll force Windows to try and re-detect them). Try different methods of installing drivers: From disk without using the Wizard, through the Wizard that (should) pop up, and through the Device Manager (in the Drivers section). If you've updated DirectX, consider trying a slightly older version of DirectX. As for DMA, it's usually toggled just for hard drives. If you find that you're having crazy-slow hard drive access times, try turning it on/off and compare. Should be in Device Manager, in the ATA/IDE section, and likely under a tab called [Advanced]. Of course, there's always the option of nuking Windows 98 and re-installing it from scratch.

My brother's all about the puzzles. He recommends a game called Gururin: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3ptEBJNPio

Pinickies (arcade) -- unless that one's too well known.

If I wasn't already retro, THIS would certainly convince me to go retro in a big way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB1Zy7nA_Hc

Yes. Dial-up. A 56K external modem. It's actually not as bad as it sounds considering that file sizes back then weren't nearly as huge as today.

I actually did make use of multitasking on my Amiga (especially the Amiga 4000/030). I recall having 55 files downloading at the same time while decompressing the data that had already been downloaded (in a shell), while formatting diskettes (two at a time) to put the data onto, while playing Mod music. This was a pretty regular occurrence at my place from around 1992 to 1996. As for the graphics.... I really was impressed when I purchased Blood Money as soon as it came out. Once I popped the disk into the drive and powered the machine on, I was like "Holy sh*t!" That would have been 1989.