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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jan 25, 2006 10:41:51 GMT -5
386 can barely use plain memory with parity ;D Got another "dead": a IBM motherboard (P75). It was on a trashcan, and when i tested it, it did not booted. I checked it with another IBM of the same model (we have plenity of these on my university), and the problem was... cache not properly installed (it use small 256K chips in longer sockets, and alignement there is vital, 256K chips must go aligned to the right of the socket, while 512K chips fill the entire socket). Added some more VRAM from a dead Trident, and booted fine! Unfortunately the thing did not detected my ol' 85M harddrive, and when using the slot riser card from my Acer, system is unbootable (both machines use EISA riser cards that provide ISA and PCI slots, but the IBM riser card is taller and uses a extra AT power connector) Finally, i did a strange "heart change" to the Acer guts: the board fitted with a litte of effort (+/-1mm between the holes in the board and the guides in the case), fixed the PSU to the case with tape (it has a plastic base that also supported the floppy drives, but the RAM and IDE cables are so tall that the thing did not fitted back, i had to use a old HD and some floppies as spacers to raise the PSU, and fix it with tape since the case has no holes for screws), did some miracles to fix a floppy drive and the power button to the now missing plastic base), and voila, the system, reborn! "The AcerPAC monster, IBM powered!" Photos coming soon. As for the dead board... it now has a place in a window of my room, with some other dead boards
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Jan 27, 2006 4:09:27 GMT -5
that says sector in it
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oompa loompa
I AM THE GOVERNATOR
"Git 'Er Dun!"
Posts: 1,301
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Post by oompa loompa on Jan 27, 2006 18:05:29 GMT -5
386 can barely use plain memory with parity ;D Got another "dead": a IBM motherboard (P75). It was on a trashcan, and when i tested it, it did not booted. I checked it with another IBM of the same model (we have plenity of these on my university), and the problem was... cache not properly installed (it use small 256K chips in longer sockets, and alignement there is vital, 256K chips must go aligned to the right of the socket, while 512K chips fill the entire socket). Added some more VRAM from a dead Trident, and booted fine! Unfortunately the thing did not detected my ol' 85M harddrive, and when using the slot riser card from my Acer, system is unbootable (both machines use EISA riser cards that provide ISA and PCI slots, but the IBM riser card is taller and uses a extra AT power connector) Finally, i did a strange "heart change" to the Acer guts: the board fitted with a litte of effort (+/-1mm between the holes in the board and the guides in the case), fixed the PSU to the case with tape (it has a plastic base that also supported the floppy drives, but the RAM and IDE cables are so tall that the thing did not fitted back, i had to use a old HD and some floppies as spacers to raise the PSU, and fix it with tape since the case has no holes for screws), did some miracles to fix a floppy drive and the power button to the now missing plastic base), and voila, the system, reborn! "The AcerPAC monster, IBM powered!" Photos coming soon. As for the dead board... it now has a place in a window of my room, with some other dead boards =P, even though i've lost track of your progress, you're doin a great job =D check out this page: winhistory.de/exp.htmit's in german, but ya can always translate the stuff with babblefish. there's a whole buncha things they've done, like run windows xp on an old, underclocked pentium
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jan 27, 2006 19:09:11 GMT -5
Run XP at 8MHz? Man, that its a ROYAL PAIN IN THE ASS!!!
Win98 on a 386, eh? Ye old trick of "install on machine A and take the HD to the machine B". My idea is to install Win2K in the IBM box, but i need more RAM to attempt it (32M is okay, right?), and a HD (my Maxtor 7420AV is dying quickly...).
Here is a even extreme idea: run Fedora Core 4 on a P133! It crawls on anything less of 700MHz and 64M...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jan 28, 2006 18:55:55 GMT -5
OK, it's time to make "My crap Hardware Asset List(tm)". Here are a list of all my systems and miscelaneous stuff that i got in the last two years: Main base: -Celeron 700/PCCHIPS M755/SiS 630 system (almost-dry caps, 128M, 24gig on SamsungHDs, Aopen 48X CD burner and Acer/BenQ 56X CD reader, faulty IBM monitor, scanner, printer). Status: DEAD (5 inflated caps out of 9, CD drives reserved for future projects, pieces for sale). -hp compaq nx9010 laptop (stock, Mobile P4 2800, 256M, 37G HD, DVD/CD-RW, onboard ATi IGP340 crap) -Stock Genesis Model I with 12 games (1 missing from my home ) U-base: -AcerMate 333s, "Extreme Tunning Edition" (read the first page of this topic) -IBM P350-75 mobo on a AcerPAC case (PI-133, 32M, S3 Trio onboard, no EISA riser card, board OK). Now running OpenLinux 2.4!-AcerPAC unknown ( mobo shot, PI-75, 24M, faulty RAM management (constant parity errors, system crashes. Damaged board/corrupted BIOS?), Cirrus Logic GD543x video) -HP/Acer/ 486 unknown (AMD 486DX2-50, no RAM, GD542x video, dead board?) -Fuxored Epson 386SX-33 mobo (i ripped all SMT chips, the board has a leaked batery that destroyed some tracks, "bricking" the system) -Unknown small 286 mobo (Harris 286-15MHz, missing chipset, no integrated devices, got some RAM chips from there for the Acer 386 VRAM, Mitsubishi 8042 processor) ( photo of all boards plus some PCCHIPS crap) -Samsung SC-152E bricked CD reader (a CD went boom inside, unable to repair) -Assorted CD pickups, floppy heads, CD motors, port interface connectors, LS chips, EPROMs.... -Some dead Trident 9440 PCI video cards -HMC 83471B port controller, ISA -Chinon 5.25" floppy drive with damaged lock lever -A couple of almost-dead cellphones and lots of chargers with weird outputs -Early FDIV-bugged Pentium 60 -Mitsumi CRMC-FX001DE 2X drive. It reads most burned CDs, unlike my CyberDrive 240D -CyberDrive 240D 24X CD drive (with Play button), it sucks when reading data, it loves to behave crazy. Used for "DiskMan" project, stored for future usage. -Ultima Electronics Corp. ACD-340 (34X), erratic behavior, almost dead. Status: bricked. - CyberDrive 482D, got from a cybercafe server. It was "ready for teh trashcan", but in fact, it has a worn belt. Hacked to add the missing "play" button, in storage for future usage. Reads everything, except crap HP RWs. -AOpen CRW4850 OEM CD burner. Also hates some CD-RWs (mostly HP crap). In the IBM box for experiments... -Quantum Bigfoot CY2612 2GB HD, large, heavy, and sane. Now running Linux, and only Linux (on the IBM box). - Conner CP30084E (85M, sane), and Maxtor 7420AV (400M, faulty) HDs. -enough resistors and cables to make something useful. -and more assorted crap... Planned: -CoreDuo-based Dell Inspirion laptop (details soon)
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jan 30, 2006 11:05:45 GMT -5
As promised, i now have some photos of my "IBM-powered" Acer box. There are (with some bonus pics, like my dead motherboards collection...) I tried to boot XP there (using BartPE, a bootable/"homebrew" XP CD), but due to a complex numbrer of factors (crap CD reader, nasty IBM POST, faulty RAM, and some bad luck too), i had to try several times until it actually reached a desktop. I did at least 8 attempts, but i will list those who go past the XP logo: 1) "Hardware malfunction" BSOD 2) Dead with a blank screen 3) "Wrong CRC on SHDOCVW.DLL" BSOD 4) Success! (mostly, some programs crashed, and the shell ran out of memory quickly) 5) "STOP 7B" BSOD photos sponsored by crap Nokia "cameras", againIBM POST: XP trying to boot: System dies here:
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Post by GiGaBiTe on Feb 8, 2006 22:09:10 GMT -5
my moms roomate used to have a ACER 486 computer, and i upgraded the crap out of it until the power supply crushed the video chip, resulting in the screen having lots of colorful ascii characters. back then i didnt have nearly the resources i do now, so it was basically dead. a couple of years later i found it rotting in the garage (rusty case) i attempted to boot it up (with a fire extinguisher standing by ) all it did was beep over and over again. it was a shame, it was a really good looking computer for its day, in fact it looks similar to the one you have sitting on top of that sideways computer. she bought a evergreen 486 upgrade (it was an adapter with a PLCC AMD 586 on it) after some tweaking, i managed to get it up to its max speed of 133 MHz. i still have the upgrade chip and have since used it in various 486 laptops i have had lying around.
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Apr 8, 2006 13:52:34 GMT -5
Done more progress: found two "defective" drives at my university: a Samsung 52X CD drive with defective tray and ICs (tray does not open sometimes, drive is sometimes not recognized), and a Panasonic 3½" floppy (did not read anything).
- Fix for floppy drive: it has LOTS of dust: blowed it away, and drive springed back to life. (i told to the owner that it's dead, and traded it with a old NEC drive. i love to cheat ;D )
- Fix for CD drive: The tray has a loose belt due to excess of dust. Changed it with one from my dead SC-152E (i love this drive! easy to take apart, modular design, only 12 or 15 screws holding everything...). However, the "no drive detected" issue is still there... i must reboot sometimes to get it working. Drive defect or nasty BIOS? I had no problems with other SC-152E drives with my 386... UPDATE: tray problems fixed: i "repaired" the damn belt!
Also, the dreaded "sector 0 damaged" errors with my 5.25" floppy seems to be gone! It now works fine under Windows, and i do some backups there...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jun 3, 2006 20:28:41 GMT -5
Remember my IBM-on-Acer box? After testing some floppy-based Linux, i took a Caldera OpenLinux 2.4 CD that i got with my 1350-page Linux book, and tested there. It works awesome! And i thinked that 32 MB are not enough for run KDE... Unfortunately, it's KDE 1 on a 2.2 kernel, but at least i got no kernel panics... Even Java programs runs fine, although you may want to run these without window managers, just plain X. UPDATE: Now with a custom 2.2.27 kernel (patched to use the PC speaker as a basic soundcard), it's fun to recompile kernels, and although most people says that this is a slow process, it only take 15 minutes on this box for cook a 2.2 kernel. Maybe add a 2.4? It's weird: a 1995-box running a 2000 Linux got from a book purchased in 2005... and it's not 2010 yet ;D
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jul 1, 2006 14:18:10 GMT -5
Back to the 386, finally i got a new harddisk for replace that old Maxtor crap (an 7420AV, from the worst era of Maxtor drives: cheapo, with a "disposable" look). From the university "dumpster", i got a SANE 2.16GB Samsung Winner2 (WA32162A). It was preloaded with Win98 (and it still booted in the IBM box), but i ghosted it with my old Maxtor drive contents. After fiddling a bit with PartitionMagic and Ghost in both machines, i wasted 2 hours on this, since i first copied only the partition, ending with a unbootable disk, then i mirrored the entire drive, and had to fix the partition sizes, remember that i would be able to use only the first 504MB of the drive. Also i needed the help of the IBM box since Ghost doesn't run on 386s, but PM does.
Now the system boots damn faster, and it's quite more stable (no more need to whack the box for get it working, because sometimes that old Maxtor refused to start, and the machine started to beep and beep).
In other news, i got another fuxored CD drive for the collection: an Ultima Electronics ACD-340 (34X). It has erratic behavior: the tray does not work, laser seems to work, but CD is not recognized, industrial ammounts of dust requiring some detergent and alcohol... but the drive looks shiny new!. Also i tested Knoppix 5.0 in my IBM box: it boots, but you need a beefy swap file/partition, and don't even try to run KDE there! X is fine, but use Fluxbox or TWM as window manager. It takes a loooong time to run (10 minutes for text mode, 20 minutes for start X with Fluxbox...), but after that, it's somewhat usable. Remember, there are only 32MB of RAM and a nice 256MB swap partition.
Expect more experiments soon...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Jul 20, 2006 14:20:03 GMT -5
More photos added! (this time, i used a LG camera phone, better than Nokias): This is my actual system setup: On the top is the P133, now with Linux. The grey box over the CD drive is an Quantum Bigfoot CY2160A HD (2GB), and since the old drive cage of the Acer box did not fit when using my IBM mobo, i had to mount the drives without screws or any kind of fixation. This causes problems with the HD when moved slighty, because the IDE cable can get loose. The red/white/black cable at the left of the (recovered) CD drive is from the PC internal speaker, NOT from the CD drive! (you can see the speaker cable that goes to my fairly good Omega speakers), since i compiled my kernel to use the internal speaker as a soundcard (no riser card == no expansion choices!). It works for playing MP3s with almost no CPU load, but it's quite noisy. (note for myself: buy a battery for the CMOS settings) On the bottom is the 386 box, with a "tricky" Samsung SC-152F (damn, i need a new belt for this sucker!), and dozens of floppies (most of these recovered from my university labs). Since it got the new HD, it works with no problem. However, uses are still limited (for example, PowerCOBOL compiler crashes after compiling something long). The SoundBlaster is still pending... Here are more pics: tomman.monkeeh.com/media/pics.p133/extra/Bonus shot! KDE 1.0 with a nice coachbus and a homebrew kernel
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Aug 30, 2006 12:10:56 GMT -5
If anyone is still reading this old thread, I had the same idea as @tom Maneiro recently...
I own an old 386sx that I renovated lately.
It now has...
AM386SX-40 (yeah, I know rare...) ATI 2MB GFX 16MB RAM 250MB Maxtor HDD (no bad sectors) SCSI Pioneer CDROM (slot load) 3.5" Floppy Windows 95 OSR 2
I spotted a 33MHz Maths Co-pro on eBay and I'm wondering...
1. Will a 33MHz Mac-co pro work on a 40MHz 386 board?
2. Will the Maths co-pro be overclocked in this situation?
3. Will I need a heatsink if No. 2 is true?
If anyone knows, I'd appreciate some info...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Aug 30, 2006 16:52:19 GMT -5
If anyone is still reading this old thread, I had the same idea as @tom Maneiro recently... I own an old 386sx that I renovated lately. It now has... AM386SX-40 (yeah, I know rare...) ATI 2MB GFX 16MB RAM 250MB Maxtor HDD (no bad sectors) SCSI Pioneer CDROM (slot load) 3.5" Floppy Windows 95 OSR 2 Nice! Although the SCSI stuff is quite extreme, i must admit... I could find a SCSI card (and solve the "only one IDE connector"), but i have no way to find SCSI devices. Anyway, with a 2gig HD and a 52X CDROM i can survive... and with less than half of your RAM I spotted a 33MHz Maths Co-pro on eBay and I'm wondering... 1. Will a 33MHz Mac-co pro work on a 40MHz 386 board? 2. Will the Maths co-pro be overclocked in this situation? 3. Will I need a heatsink if No. 2 is true? If anyone knows, I'd appreciate some info... 1. Yes, but it will run overclocked (or may not work at all, it will depend on manufacturer) 2. Yes, if the thing support it (i have not find one for test...) 3. Optional, but having one will do no harm Once i learn to solder and desolder, i will overclock this sucker to 40 or 50 MHz ;D
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Post by paulpsomiadis on Aug 31, 2006 7:33:14 GMT -5
The maths co-pro I found is: IIT 3C87SX-33 I'm not sure if it'll work, but it's the only one I've seen for a 386SX for a LOOOOOOONG time! So I'll go for it and try... Hmm...you'll need quite a bit of practice before messing with motherboards. I've been soldering since I was 5 years old (no really, my parents encouraged me to learn electronics - under supervision at an early age of course!) so it would be no biggie for me. ;D Good luck with your 386 refurbishment! I'll post again once I receive and can test my Co-pro... ==EDIT== Well I bought the Co-pro. - but it'll be at least a fortnight before it arrives via airmail from America...
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Post by Tom Maneiro on Sept 1, 2006 16:55:26 GMT -5
How much you have to pay for it? I can't find one over here (neither that nor 4MB 30-pin SIMMs)
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