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deepthaw

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Status Updates posted by deepthaw

  1. Curbside pentium 4 is officially a lost cause. On the plus side, I’m sure the 600W power supply and cf/ide adapter I bought will be useful in whatever my next project is. 

    1. Keatah

      Keatah

      Why lost cause? Surely there are parts to salvage, that in and of itself is a win!

       

  2. This old Dell Dimension 8250 is so proprietary, it’s probably not worth any more effort in restoring it for fun.  

    1. Austin

      Austin

      Yeah, those Dells are tricky with their custom case designs. Still perfectly usable though. Plenty of slots for upgraded GPUs, sound cards or network cards.

    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      Well, the power supply died the first time I tried it. So I bought a new one but I had to cut up the case to mount it and now the weird clamshell case won’t close all the way with the power supply in it because it doesn’t fit.

       

      I would see if I can move the motherboard to a different case but it has a proprietary ribbon cable and PCB for the front USB and the power button. That’s assuming the motherboards screw holes will even line up with an ATX case.

       

      The real reason I grabbed it off the side of the road was for the CRT, and that works fine so I’m happy with that.

  3. Pop! Goes the power supply.

    1. Tickled_Pink

      Tickled_Pink

      Hulk: "Puny power supply. Power supply should go BANG! Like Hulk!"

    2. TwentySixHundred

      TwentySixHundred

      Snap, crackle, pop and the blue smoke is never good :(

    3. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      ‘‘Twas a roadside Pentium 4. The CRT works, which I am more interested in. And it gives me a chance to teach my nephew how to replace power supplies and test/reinstall ram and cpu. 

  4. Snatched an (untested) Pentium 4 PC off the side of the road with CRT monitor. How well would this run DOS games? Are there even SB16 compatible cards available in PCI that'd work with DOS?

    1. Show previous comments  19 more
    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      I've messed with a Retropie substantially but I've been moving back to original hardware. I have a Trinitron that I can press into service for consoles.

    3. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      But I don't have the money for arcade boards.

    4. ∞ Vince ∞

      ∞ Vince ∞

      Retropie is alright. I've built one of my light up arcades around one.

      Not perfect, not great for more advanced systems (32bit) but on a budget you can't beat it.

       

      On the other hand, I've got a seriously powerful (overkill) self built rig for everything Emulation with a full MAME and CHD set at the heart.

       

      Ironically the coin-op with the light up controls is powered by the Pi.

       

      Original boards are so very expensive plus you need to have a lot of room for one game machines... And repairs. Nightmare. I'll stick to the Emulation route.

  5. Taught my nephew some basic soldering by having him help me convert my Xbox 360 fight stick into a Sega Genesis one. He only burned himself once and now he respects the iron. 

    1. jd_1138

      jd_1138

      Making memories and teaching the lad skills -- awesome.  

    2. ∞ Vince ∞

      ∞ Vince ∞

      We've all been there! I remember my first time with a glue-gun.

       

      For some reason(!) I decided to glue half my hand and wait until I could peel it off (when it cooled down), it was excruciatingly painful but there you go. Never did it a second time.

  6. Didn't realize until I tried to hook it up that the WiModem232 uses a mini usb cable for power, not a micro usb. Also: Who else forgot mini usb was even a thing?

    1. DragonGrafx-16

      DragonGrafx-16

      Nah I still use them... a USB hub, external hard drive, and for charging PS3 controllers and for loading games onto my PSP... though now even micro USB is being made obsolete by USB-C.

  7. When will eBay finally let us skip putting any text in when we leave feedback? I'm not even creative or non-sequitur with it anymore, I just paste "positive feedback" in there.

    1. Show previous comments  3 more
    2. Keatah

      Keatah

      They are indeed things you previously entered.

       

      I just say "good job" and leave it at that if I'm in a rush.

       

    3. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      I used to write "Great Seller!  Cthulhu Loves You!",  clearly not everyone has my sense of humor/style/surreality, but some people thought it was the coolest thing ever.

    4. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      While others probably thought,  What's that guy smoking, and where can I get some?

  8. Another blog entry. Impressed with myself for how long I've kept my attention tinkering on the Apple II.

    1. save2600

      save2600

      Impressed as well! Having been briefly reminded as to the sounds of Apple ][ gaming... the dribble fart-like sounds out of the tinny speaker and the out of focus sloppy composite graphics, my hats off to you sir!  🤣

    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      Hey, at least the floppy drive’s faster than a 1541! :D

  9. After raiding an old closet at work that was getting thrown out for recycling... I think I'm 75% of the way to piecing together a Pentium 4 w/Radeon All-in-Wonder. Wonder if that's too new for an MS-DOS machine.

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      Roughly 100 untested sticks of mixed DDR2 and PC100 RAM, two pentium 4 2.8ghz, and an Athlon 64 X2.

    3. doctorclu

      doctorclu

      Sounds like a fun project.

    4. thanatos

      thanatos

      I had an original All-In-Wonder-Radeon, and it was in a Win98 machine.  I would think the 9700 would work for DOS, being from 2002.

       

       

       

  10. Long time computer lab tech is retiring at my work, and IT is giving me first dibs on cleaning out his storage area before they recycle it all.

    1. ClassicGMR

      ClassicGMR

      Nice. Treasure hunt time!

  11. @bluejay Did you ever get your Apple II up and working? I've been learning to get one up and running as well.

    1. bluejay

      bluejay

      Oh, I was out of town for a while and totally forgot about it. I should probably get back to fixing that damn 80 columns card!

    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      @bluejay If you still need help drop me a line. I just got done fixing what sounds like an identical problem on my own system.

  12. Think I have the Raspberry Pi setup to host ADTPro. We'll find out when my null modem and serial <-> USB cables show up tomorrow...

  13. Grabbed a 27" Trinitron for free off FB Marketplace. Been a good week for retro scores.

    1. masschamber

      masschamber

      that is a nice tv

    2. DragonGrafx-16

      DragonGrafx-16

      I just got one yesterday... I love it. I dunno if it's 27" but it's 20-something... within the golden range of CRTs (not to small you can't see anything and not too big that you can see the red/blue/green rectangles). 

    3. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      This is going in my basement (my retro-nook is finally coming together) so I didn't want another WEGA (I had one, despite being the same screen size, it felt like it weighted twice as much) and 27" really is the perfect size. There's also a pretty good write-up on RGB modding it, so that'll be a future goal too.

  14. Snagged an Apple IIe with Duodisk, Monitor 2 and Imagewriter (all untested) for $70. Looks nice, so even if it needs some repairs I think it was worth it.

    1. Show previous comments  2 more
    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      So this thing seems to work. Monitor is nice and sharp (and sexy green), self test succeeds, and was able to load a couple titles via the cassette interface. The duo disk makes weird noises and the light stays on, so that will need attention once I actually have floppies to read.

    3. simbalion

      simbalion

      Sounds good so far. All my green monitors have hit the recap stage and I really need to find someone in the area with the skills to redo one or two. Me.. I'm scary with solder!

    4. bluejay

      bluejay

      $70? Damn!

      Congrats!

  15. Been playing a lot of Quake 1 lately. Finished it on hard, working on the mission packs now.

    1. Austin

      Austin

      I still need to finish the second mission pack. I found it to be a significant difficulty spike over the base game and the first mission back.

  16. Been on an 80’s movie kick of late. Watched Fletch, Stripes, UHF, Beverly Hills Cop, and about to start Lethal Weapon. 

    1. Machine

      Machine

      How did "Fletch" hold up? Stripes is still great, just watched it last year.

       

    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      Eeeeh... It has its moments, but as an adult, it's all the more obvious it's just Chevy Chase's excuse to dress up and play not particularly funny characters.

    3. Machine

      Machine

      We saw Chevy at a Screening of "Caddyshack" a few months back.  He answered questions for around 90 minutes afterwards. He came off very likeable and still funny. Said Fletch is one of his favorite movies he was in....My 15 yr old son LOVED Caddyshack and thought Chevy was cool. We both are huge fans of the TV show "Community".

  17. Groop, I implore thee.

  18. I despise stock Intel CPU fans. On the plus side, the upgrade is complete.

    1. CPUWIZ

      CPUWIZ

      Don't think that was my fault.

    2. Zoyous

      Zoyous

      I just replaced mine!

    3. RodLightning

      RodLightning

      The older LGA775 fans and sinks seemed to be slightly better made than what they currently produce.

       

  19. They called me MAD when I said i was going to mod a Jaguar controller to use a rotary phone dial in place of the keypad. Turns out they were right.

    1. Swami

      Swami

      I remember the opposite: The pulse phones where you push a button on the phone keypad and it would click the number of times for the key. Unsure what it did for star or asterisk, probably 11 or 12. Anyhoot, 🦉 those Jaguars 🐾 just don't like your rotary phone clicks.

  20. What's the point of having all these streaming services if none of them offer Beverly Hills Cop, 48 Hours, or Spies Like Us?

    1. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      ^This!  While still not perfect, having a lot of DISH movie channels (which I no longer have *sigh*) to flip through allowed me to find something most of the time,  Like do I want a Horror movie?, do I want a gangster flick?, do I want an 80s movie? etc.,...Of course, that said I do still like Netflix, and I wish I had apps for all of those services on my DISH box...But Stream too much and you're not saving much, plus you have to really search (can't flip through channels) and may have streaming issues...

    2. deepthaw

      deepthaw

      The biggest mistake I ever made was selling off my DVD collection because Netflix offered all of it, and I assumed it would stay that way.

    3. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      I still also have a huge DVD collection and some Blu Rays too...

  21. I'm not ashamed to admit my decision to go for a freesync monitor with AMD card for my upgrade was partially to emulate PAL games and software without screen tearing.

  22. There really wasn't a good AND arcade-faithful port of Double Dragon to any system, was there?

    1. Show previous comments  6 more
    2. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      I'm not so sure even an Arcade Faithful Port would be Good...I see Double Dragon as a product of its time...Very fun in the 80s ...for about 3 weeks ... or so...Just seems like one of those ideas that didn't seem good for very long.  I put Rampage in the same boat...Jus my 2 cents...

    3. Cobra Kai

      Cobra Kai

      i own the LYNX game. It's not good.

    4. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      Some games may have been fun when they first came out, like say Karate Master or Karateka (TBH I get those 2 confused), but what good were those after Street Fighter 2 came out?   

       

      And although Double Dragon was fun for a time, wouldn't ya rather play a Streets of Rage game? 

       

      I do get it though,..I mean I still love Galaxian even though Galaga came out.

  23. Wonder what Bionic Lester's up to nowadays.

  24. That new Boston Dynamics video was only a few steps away from pure dystopia. So I took those steps.

     

    https://youtu.be/vKrsxIkefw8

     

    1. Keatah

      Keatah

      ..aaand what video might that be?

    2. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      So,  you took their video and added the Terminator music?   (Which is actually pretty funny haha)...

    3. GoldLeader

      GoldLeader

      I mean,  we were all thinking it...

  25. Pulled an old PC out of storage to repurpose into a Minecraft server for my friends to play on. I'm seriously having more fun tweaking it than they are playing it.

    1. Keatah

      Keatah

      Yup. That's common.

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