I picked up juuust a few items at last week's Retro Bits and Bytes Swap Meet here in Northern Virginia USA. Perhaps we can test a few of them, let's see how it goes! Are these new old stock floppy drives going to work? Let's find out! Time for a 🧵
So, first of all, we are need to need a test victim... erm... I mean a test harness... or a test machine. I think the Kehtron 486 DX/50 is the perfect candidate. It's been a little flaky recently though. I had to reseat the HDD/FDD controller to get it to boot!
Let's begin our testing session with this beeeautiful Gateway 2000 keyboard. It works great! I took it downstairs and cleaned it up, and now not only does it work great, it also looks great!
Alright, let's move on to the new old stock Alps floppy drives. What a curious yellowing on these... oh... look, it's exactly where the sticker "wasn't". That's kindof funny! I'll attach a clip so that you can listen to it boot... if only the bearings on my HDD weren't so loud!
Fortunately, both drives checked out. And I decided to throw their face plates into the Retr0brite bin. The results weren't perfect, but I think they look better. Take what you see with a grain of salt.. first pic was taken during the daytime and the final one at night.
Next I decided to test this VESA local bus mobo. The smoke test was uneventful despite all of those tantalums. This board is a TAEIL Media Co board... Retro Web says it is the same as a Biostar MB-14**. I have yet to get it to work. I need to CPU jumper settings, might help.
Well, anyway, this was all done earlier in the day. I still need to test the Pentium mobo.. maybe it will be happier. So, shall we say "to be continued"? Thanks for reading!
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