hints & tricks in no particular order
18/08
As I bought a very handy TL866 II Plus USB flash programmer to replace my old and trusted Willem parallel programmer, I noticed this newer device could check and enforce chip IDs. As I already knew, many (if not all) of my EEProm chips are fake or at least remarked. Well, as long as they do work fine... What I […]
14/05
I need to test one of my projects on Safari on macOS. This time I cannot use BrowserStack, and I won't buy an iMac just for this. So... emulation it is! I mostly followed the tutorial at https://techsviewer.com/install-macos-10-15-catalina-on-virtualbox-on-windows-pc/ but there are a few caveats I want to address here. […]
25/04
The Tandy 1000SL is a neat XT compatible with a few tricks: advanced mode with 16 colors and a sound chip! Unfortunately, it only has 576 KB of available base RAM. So the trick is to find a MS-DOS with the best features for the lowest RAM. So I decided to make some tests: Total Reserved Used Free MS-DOS 3.20 570 454 44 […]
04/06
The Toshiba Libretto 50CT originally came with Windows 95. It was not meant to be used with MS-DOS, and it does not have a hardware volume control. The Libretto uses an OPL3 sound chip that is Sound Blaster compatible—or perhaps the other way around, since Sound Blaster uses OPL3. However, compatibility does not extend […]
19/03
I got a Compaq Portable III for very little money, mainly because it was considered dead. Disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling it somehow brought it back to life, with the exception of the CMOS battery and the floppy drive. I would not usually mention the CMOS battery, because it is obvious that batteries this old […]
13/03
There are many Floppy Drive USB Emulators and not all are equal. Here is a list of GOTEK models: Formatted capacity 1.44MB : SFR1M44-*** 1.2MB : SFR1M2-*** 720Kb : SFRM72-*** Cables IDC34pin+4P power plug IDC26pin withour additional power FPC26 flat cabel 1.0MM pin distance use mdoel SFR***-**26 FPC26 flat cabel 1.25MM […]
13/03
25/02
I've been intrigued by Ret0bright for some time. This magic cooking recipe makes your old yellowed plastic computers like new again. It is not very clear what the consequences of the treatment are, since it involve chemical reactions and interactions with light and oxygen. The recipe is a bit complex though, but I […]
28/01
I recently got a Commodore SX-64 to play with. Problem; the floppy drive, a Commodore 1541 was working a bit too randomly to my taste. Luckily, it is quite to find good advice (but also bad one) on the vast internet. It came out to be a problem with the drive spindle clamp mechanism. I found a very useful forum post […]
04/06
Just a reminder of some of the vintage HDDs I still use... Conner CP3044 (40 MB) BRAND MODEL SIZE CYL HDS SECT WPCOMP LZONE TYPE WHERE? LINK CONNER CP3044 40 MB 980 5 17 0 980 ATA Specs CONNER CP2121 120 MB ATA Compaq Contura 4/25 PDF · Specs TOSHIBA MK4025GAS 40 GB 16383 16 63 0 16383 ATA-100 Specs
03/04
03/04
Title says it all :) I wanted to build a serial loopback plug compatible with the ancient CheckIt diagnostic tool. It wires serial inputs to serial outputs so that the port may be tested. There is more than one way to wire up a loopback plug - but this is the most common. Pinout front view: From Pin Pin To CD 1 6 DSR […]
10/11
I needed to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on a PC with no optical drive and I didn't have any USB device to put the image on. I resorted on using a network install through PXE. I found a great win app to do so, Serva. Serva is a tiny (~1 Mb), yet powerful Microsoft Windows application. It was conceived mainly as an […]
02/02
Source : http://forum.hardware.fr/hfr/Hardware/carte-mere/topic-unique-zotac-sujet_841219_77.htm ZOTAC 9300-ITX DDR3 Tested CPU list CPU type Speed CMOS CPU power Celeron 420 1.60GHz 65nm 35W Celeron 440 2.00GHz 65nm 35W Celeron Dual-Core E1200 1.60GHz 65nm 65W Celeron Dual-Core E1500 2.20GHz 65nm 65W Celeron Dual-Core […]
02/02
sudo hdparm -I /dev/sdc sudo hdparm user-master u security-set-pass Einstein /dev/sdc sudo time hdparm user-master u security-erase Einstein /dev/sdc Result /dev/sdc: Issuing SECURITY_ERASE command, password="Einstein", user=user 0.00user 0.00system 2:38:09elapsed 0%CPU (0avgtext+0avgdata 624maxresident)k […]
02/12
23/11
23/11
05/11
20/07