spencerhm

Hello. Does anyone know where I can buy the F18A-MK2 Video Display Processor? I tried F18A VDP (dnotq.io) site by Matthew Hagerty, but nothing in his store at the moment. Tried searching but nothing on where to buy it. Tried ebay but nada. I really like console5s AV mod for the CV. It's a stereo mod but I'm guessing the CV games don't do stereo - not sure. The F18A-MK2 sounds like something I'd like to try out. Thanks, Spencer.

Problem Solved. Ultimately I tried everything that was suggested prior to posting except one thing - SCSI. Prior to installing SCSI I removed the real mode drivers, removed the sound card (it does have an IDE interface), tried FROG, tried finding drivers for my specific CD-RWs (triead at least five of mine), removed a PnP Linksys card, and all others because as we all know PnP wasn't all that great in those hardware/software days, tried setting the jumpers for MA and CS, I could go on. Nothing worked and "CDROM" did not show up at any time in Device Manager. And the bios did show CD-ROM Identified on boot. Solution: broke out an old Yamaha SCSI (don't know the model off hand) CD-RW I had with all the software and manuals that came with it except the orig. box. The manual suggested a Adaptec AHA-2940 series controller. I bought two NOS (unopened) for $18 a piece (on eBay in the last few days) and bought them both. When I installed it and set the jumpers for the ID and termination on the drive, installed the necessary drivers for the card and installed Yamaha's burning software it all worked: write CDs, shows up in Device Mgr. One peculiar thing is the software will not let me burn to CD-RW disks; it burns only to CD-Rs and the software makes them rewritable; however, only on the Yamaha drive. I have to do an "Eject" within the software to remove the CD. I've only got this all going since last night, so haven't had much time to play with it yet. Thanks very much for all the positive and helpful feedback. I knew I could get some good collaboration from AtariAge.

That's the thing - I don't see it listed in device manager and I was wondering about the real mode drivers I am loading. My drives (CD-RWs and DVDs) are not PnP. In Device Mgr. all I see is Creative's CD interface (from a PnP Creative Sound Blaster) but it's got the yellow exclamation mark. My assumption is because I do not have a drive plugged into this cards IDE interface. I tried pugging the drives into this interface but doesn't work. All the software doesn't work. I tried installing several different interfaces within 98 using the 98Se add new hardware and can't seem to get it to work within 98. Without the real mode drivers I don't even see it in File Explorer. I've ordered a scsi PnP card and a scsi drive AND a Creative CD-RW. That's all the money I intend to spend! I'll toy with it until I see insanity then I'll STOP. Thanks!

That's interesting. I've got an orig IBM (I think Mod 57 48x guy) with the original OS/2 2.1 installed. Still have the orig box. About a year or so ago I played with getting an external 5 1/4" diskette drive installed but never got it to work. That's another I'll have to get to. I'll leave that for another thread. I toyed with putting Warp on it but want to keep it original. I have NO idea how to clone or image it. My 98 box I may buy a scsi controller and drive on ebay. I found a few not too bad. But yeah I don't want to keep shooting myself in the foot. All us computer nuts sometimes can't resist buying more stuff to try and GET IT TO WORK!

That's interesting about Ghost dropping into its own DOS environment. I use Acronis and have for probably 20 years; it drops into its own Linux shell even in my Win98 version.

I've got plenty DVD drives around; I'll try it for grins and get back.

My box is an old Pentium Pro; I believe it was the first Pentium that use internal cache to its CPU. It's 200Mhz, and when I got it setup I was blown away back in the mid-to-late 90s. Eh right now I'm trying to unwind from the work world, so building a new box may be out about 6 mos or so. I will look into the mobo boards though. I'll bet they're not cheap. Nothing vintage is cheap anymore. Thanks a million!

Hmm!!! I never thought beyond "no way will a DVD work" of trying one. Hmm that's interesting you got a DVD to work in 98SE. Are the drives atapi IDE or scsi? I've got an older version of Ghost. What version do you use? Thanks! P.S. I'm retired now and sick of Informix, databases on web servers, user support issues, and the work world. Just wanted to get back to my old roots (DOS and Windows games). Actually it all started for me with CP/M, but have no desire for that; there's no graphics, games of real value nor fun(to me). Just a tid bit - sorry.

Yeah I was thinking Win9x could be the culprit. I remember when I built this system back in the late 90s I never could get a cd-rw to right. I remember also it took me awhile to pay for the cd-rw on credit too!!!! Remember how expensive they were?!?! I'll still play around with it to see if I can get lucky with some good programmers that may have created a driver. One user suggested Frog ASPI; I downloaded it, unzip the rar file, now I'll try it for grins. Otherwise like I mentioned I'll just play my Win9x games on the box. Honestly I never tried an 9x VM; guess I'm too old (59) to teach an old dog new habits. Thank you for your time!

Hmm on my Win7 box after seeing your reply I do not see the spaces, but on my Win10 box I see them. I'm on Win7 right now, but I'll get on my Win10 box real soon and do an edit for the spaces and see what happens. Ah ha I sort of was thinking Win10!

Yeah I think I'll give the ASPI a try. I don't have anything to lose. I've got a clone of the drive, so just in case I get a virus or crash it with some bad DLL I can always go back and use my clone. Since experimenting with this I thought it would be a good idea to make a bootable Win98 diskette in case I have to go back to an old DLL file. Thanks for your response. And sorry for all the space. I honestly do not know what happen! I did preview before the post.

Yeah I've been looking at scsi cards and drives on ebay. Wow they're pricey, but I did find a few not too bad. I don't mind shelling out say $100 but more than that - neh. I'll just enjoy the box with my old Dragon's Lair game. Thanks for the reply! I'll search for the Frog ASPI driver.

"Come on now" hmm I apologize; however I do not have a clue why all the "space after your post." I previewed the post prior to posting and didn't see it.

Hello all. I searched for this in Hardware and didn't see anything when searching on Windows 98Se. Hope I'm not repeating. I resurrected my Win98Se box and cannot figure out why I can't get my Cendyne CD-RW drive to write to CD-R or CD-RW discs. I tried Nero, ImgBurn, and Magic Creator 5+ and nothing works. It's a brand new Cendyne CD-RW I opened from my stock. On PC boot my bios shows => CD-ROM Identified after doing an "Auto" when setting it up in the bios. Currently it's hooked up to my mobo 2ndary IDE interface as master, and it's the only device on it. I did try the IDE interface on my Sound Blaster (PnP) card too. Neither interface will allow the software to see the drive when starting the software. I can boot a DOS CD fine, it can read CD-RW and CD-R discs fine, and it can read other program CDs fine. However, if I didn't load the DOS real mode drivers (sbide.sys and mscdex) in the config.sys and autoexec.bat files then Win98Se would never show a CD drive in File Explorer. I tried a few other CD drives but nothing will allow me to write to them. Any ideas? I looked all over the Internet for the Creative Labs MK4214 CD-RW Blaster 8432 but nowhere did it show up. Thinking if I find this drive and hook it up to the Sound Blaster card's interface it would work. Thanks!

Well I haven't been able to find any NOS pots for this game system, and haven't been able to find a suitable substitute for the pot. Yeah I found other 500K pots similar to it but not with the 1" D shaft. I found some that were about a half inch - knew it probably wouldn't work, but they were vintage, so I bought them anyway. I actually removed it from the system board thinking it would be easy to find them since I found some pots for the older Valley VI games I have. So I decided to take Stargunner's suggestion and clean it. I used a cleaner/lubricate and yeah it certainly loosened it up and the resistance did show 500K, SO I re-soldered it to the board. It works much better than before but NOT like a new one would. At least now it's controllable, whereas before it was impossible to hit the volley ball with the paddle. I'd still love to find some NOS if anyone has a spare or two. I'd of course pay s/h. Thanks, Spencer.