So, first of all, the Pacman PC passed its tests with flying colors! Woot! I'll leave it at 1GB for future fun.
As such, I've moved on to the CompUSA PC. It has an Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard. Oh, here we go again, that i440BX chipset. Also, looks like the manual and The Retro Web disagree here on max memory, but I bet with the right kind of 256MB chips, we could hit 768MB.
Alright, let's be obnoxious and pop in these PC133 256MB DIMMs. That didn't work. So I popped in some PC133 128 MB DIMMs (not pictured, sorry! I forgot to snap a pic, and am being lazy ๐)
So far, MemTest86+ is off to a good start! As I write this thread and look at the screen, it's at 37% , so I think we will be ok!
While I was here, I wanted to see if I could put that really goofy chip in, but alas, as @Sparcie2 noted earlier, it's different. I've put a standard PC133 DIMM on top, and we can see that one of the holes is "one pin different." Okay, I guess we don't get to test it!
@Sparcie2 Well, anyway, that will do it for today. I'll take one final pic as I very lazily sit in my recliner in the back of the room ๐. This PC is about 40% tested, and I might just let it run over night and go to bed ๐ด. Thx for following along!
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I went to visit my friend Bill yesterday, and he gave me "just a few" DIMM and RDRAM modules ๐. Shall we explore a bit and upgrade some PCs? Methinks yes. Time for a ๐งต
The first order of business was to sort a bit. I looked up a fair number of chips to get this far, and also got a little lazy and "guessed" on a few. But we can see we have PC100/133, DDR, DDR2, and Rambus modules here, in varying capacities!
The first thing I am going to do is set the Rambus aside, since I can't test that! This will also probably be true for the DDR2 (and actually DDR3 as well) memory, but that's ok. And yes, those blanks are for populating unused Rambus slots in a motherboard.
Last week, I took my ISA to USB card out of my Tandy 1000 TX. Today it finds a new home in my 486 DX4/66. Let's get it installed and talk about it briefly in a ๐งต here!
And before I get into that, recall that if you purchase one of these ISA to USB cards, they are pretty much good for mass storage devices only. Also, I did design a bracket for these a few years back if you need one!
When I cracked the case on this system, I realized that pretty much every slot is in use. I am going to remove this second serial port header for now, which freed up the bottom slot. All put back together, and this is what we see now. This is one power-packed 486 PC ๐
A few weeks back, I picked up this X10 home automation system for $5 at a thrift store. Who wants to explore some home automation using Windows '95? Let's have a look in a ๐งต here!
First of all, what is probably most fascinating is that you can still buy this stuff from X10's website... in 2025. Go figure!
Let's explore what is in the box. If we look at the back of the box, we can see the accessories included. When I opened this up, the CD was missing, as was the serial cable. I bought the serial cable from eBay for about $10 and downloaded software from "The x10 Shop" online.
I recently picked up another AST Premium Exec 386 laptop... but not so much for the laptop, but really in search of some spare parts for my other Premium Exec 386 laptop. Let's talk about it and explore it in a ๐งต here!
First of all, unlike my Premium Exec 386SX/25 Color, this Premium Exec 386SX/20 is greyscale. It's still really nice though! I imagine that the color variants of these laptops was pretty rare, given the cost at the time.
One of my motivations for buying it was to get a nice power adapter. My aftermarket Delta Electronics adapter was looking worse for the wear, and none of my AST OEM adapters work. I think they need a recap (anyone want to help?)
I got my $50 HP LaserJet 6L in the mail today, and here it is. Let's have a closer look... oh.. wait a minute... oh no. Yea, not good. Let's talk about it, and some fun I had with it, and my NEW PLAN, in a ๐งต here
So, yes, the plastics on this printer were brittle, and it unfortunately wasn't shipped well. As soon as I saw the box, and the size of the box, I thought we might be in trouble. And, yes, we were. Just look at all of those glorious plastic pieces.
Here's even more breakage. The front "bar" that connects the two sides together. And this internal mechanism too. Yea, this thing is cooked.
I think it's time to consolidate a few more retro PCs ๐ . Going to start with my Tandy 1000 TX which already has a new owner! I did a little bit of consolidation into my 1000 SX in preps for sending it packing. Let's talk about it briefly in a ๐งต here!
My 1000 SX had an XTIDE card in it, but the 1000 TX had a Silicon Valley ADP50 "hard card" with a 540 MB HDD. I decided to move that over to the 1000 SX. It takes up a fair amount of space, fortunately my 8 bit ISA network card is tiny ๐
This leaves us with a multi I/O card (the 1000 SX doesn't have an onboard serial port), 286xpress processor upgrade, ADP50 "hard card", 8 bit Ethernet card, and 8 bit SCSI card for the Bernoulli box. Sadly, no space for the ISA2USB adapter, so it comes out.