Adventures with old PC hardware & software

[xdaniel]

Long story, WALL OF TEXT actually, but maybe interesting if you're interested in old PCs.

 

So, there's this PC I was given for free on Saturday. Like so many old electronics these days, it was supposed to be trashed, because it wasn't of use to its owner anymore. That said, for this particular PC, I can understand that mindset - it's just under 20 years old:

• Intel Pentium 100 MHz, Socket 5
• ABit PK5 Socket 5 mainboard or similar (presumably; no markings on board, just BIOS strings to go by)
• 32 MB EDO-RAM (2x 16 MB)
• SPEA/V7 Mirage P-64 video card, S3 Trio64 chipset, 2 MB RAM
• 16-bit ISA I/O controller (floppy, IDE, serial, parallel, gameport)
• Tekram DC-290N PCI E-IDE controller
• 1.2 GB IDE hard disk
• Quad-speed IDE CD-ROM
• 3.5" floppy
• AT Big Tower case w/ 200W PSU

...while I ended up adding:

• Realtek RTL8029-based PCI LAN card
• ESS AudioDrive 1868F 16-bit ISA sound card

First things first, I had to wipe the hard drive. That was more or less a requirement, because the machine belonged to an acquaintance (or somesuch) of a good friend, and there was still old but personal data on it. I also looked up drivers, manuals, etc. online for as many of the components I could find.

 

So, HDD wiped, machine cleaned, additional cards installed... and then I had to fight with the BIOS to work properly with the PCI IDE controller, the ISA one, and respectively the HDD and CD-ROM drive. Turns out I had to change one IRQ-related setting, so that the PCI card correctly receives certain IRQs. And to prevent even more potential IDE-related headaches, I ended up hooking up HDD and CD-ROM to the same controller, the PCI one, leaving the one on the I/O controller unused.

 

Next up, I went and installed Windows 95... or, well, at least I tried to. It couldn't get very far in the setup process, dying with floating-point unit errors or just giving up altogether without any messages at all... so I decided on MS-DOS 6.22 and Windows 3.11. Fabricated the three DOS setup disks, using some of the only working floppy disks I still have around - and those are over 10 years old, too! - and got a barebones copy of DOS installed.

 

Afterwards, I borrowed the good old Oak Technology CD-ROM driver from a Windows 98 boot disk, put that onto the HDD, started getting re-accustomed to CONFIG.SYS, AUTOEXEC.BAT and co., and a reboot later, I had a working CD-ROM drive. And that drive is how I installed Windows 3.11 - and now I hear you scream, or those who're familar with Windows 3.x and such - "But was that ever on CD-ROM?" ...actually, I don't know for sure, but I don't think it came on CD from Microsoft. However, I do have an original setup CD from some manufacturer's PC, which has DOS, Windows 3.11 and Works 2.0 on it. The DOS is useless tho, as that requires setup from floppy disks... or that's what the setup told me, anyway.

 

As Windows was installing, I tried copying the LAN card's drivers onto another floppy disk, for Windows Setup to, uh, install during, well, setup. But that didn't seem to work - all I ever got were read errors, even though ex. WinImage could write (and verify!) a disk image onto the disk... I left networking aside for the moment, to get Windows going. In the meantime, I put together a collection of drivers, DOS and Windows tools, as well as Windows 3.1 and 3.11 itself, to burn onto a CD and use to set this machine up.

 

Once Windows was done installing, I first tried to get the proper video drivers set up. First set of drivers detected the card fine, installed properly, then I went to increase the resolution... and was met with a "frequency out of range" from the monitor I'm using (Samsung SyncMaster 15" TFT). Had to shutdown, then edit SYSTEM.INI manually to replace the driver with the default VGA one, then restart Windows once more - back to 640x480 VGA we went. More fiddling around with the driver didn't give much better results... or well, I did get 800x600 going, but nothing higher. And there's been an even more severe problem, too: any DOS application would cause the monitor to go "VGA cable not connected"! Including the freaking DOS Command Prompt!

 

...out that driver went. In went the second one I had found... which turned out to be a few versions newer - like 1.x versus 2.4 or something, in fact. And this one even worked perfectly first try - resolution up to 1024x768 at 16-bit color and 60 Hz, no problems with DOS applications, etc., etc. The sound card was next, and as equally painless as the second video driver was. There might've been one mishap or two, again with regards to IRQs, but overall I got sound working quite quickly.

 

Now, networking... this was a real pain in the ass to get to work. Installing the drivers, installing the TCP/IP stack (that was separate back then!), configuring everything, trying to connect to my router... then finding that apparently one of the LAN ports on said router is broken... then trying to set file sharing up to transfer data, etc... In the end, it's basically working. Using a static IP - because DHCP doesn't seem to work - I can ping across the network, have my normal desktop move files into a shared folder on the Pentium, can access my Thin-Client-turned-server's FTP, pretty much all I want to do, really.

 

I think all that was left to do at this point, was installing all the tools and such that I wanted... or well, I actually haven't installed very many of them yet, just a few essentials like the Norton Commander for DOS. I've also copied over and/or installed a few games, namely Doom, SimCity 2000 and Warcraft 2, even though... I don't have a mouse yet. Yeah, I've installed and used Windows 3.11 with just the keyboard. I have a PS/2-to-serial adapter but not actually a PS/2 mouse I could use here - at least I don't think so, but I guess I'll need to go through my spare parts in the basement.

 

Well, uh, it's getting late (1:08 am late, which means getting up in... less than 5 hours), this is getting long, so to round this out, here's a few pictures of the beast!

 

 

 

[Antidote]

Nice, this makes me pine for my AMD-K6, it's still lying around, I just don't have a board for it.

[!Tommy]

It's interesting that Windows 95 wouldn't install on this machine. Heck, it's even got enough to handle Windows 98. Barely, but it would from the specs. It baffles me why you'd be getting so many errors during Windows 95 setup. Could it be the IRQ swapping you did in the BIOS? You listed an IDE controller, is it an addon or built into the motherboard? I've never used a socket 5 processor either, the oldest I've really dealt with was socket 7. I guess that could be a slight lie since I worked on a very old server machine that had a really old 80486 processor in it. It's nice to see someone actually care about this stuff. I've run into many who would rather just take a hammer to it or throw it out the window instead of taking the time to appreciate how far we've come technology wise. I usually dabble a bit into older versions of Windows myself. I still have Windows 2000 running on all but one computer and that one computer is a laptop I use only for Skype since the webcam refuses to work on anything older than XP. But I'm definitely interested in seeing any follow ups with this machine as you work on it.

[john_smith_account]

XDaniel, XDaniel... you had me at EDO.  

[xdaniel]

About Windows 95's errors during setup, it could imagine that it's unable to cope with the PCI IDE controller somehow...

 

The system has two IDE controllers: one on the typical ISA multi I/O card you'd have in many pre-Socket 7 systems (very similar to this one, almost the same chipset in fact), the other is a dedicated PCI E-IDE controller, the Tekram from the first post, which also has a small daughterboard that plugs into the end of a 16-bit ISA slot. There's no on-board I/O, outside of the AT keyboard connector and obviously the PCI and ISA slots.

 

The main IRQ-related thing I had to change in the BIOS, was for where the PCI IDE interrupt should be mapped to. If I left this on "PCI-AUTO" or any other "PCI-" setting, the BIOS would never proceed beyond the memory test, so I had to change it to "ISA" - presumably so that the interrupt could reach that daughterboard, and in turn the PCI IDE controller. Also, even though that was the original hardware configuration when I got the machine, I couldn't get the CD-ROM drive to be recognized if it was left on the ISA IDE controller, which is why I switched that over to the other IDE, too.

 

Also, further adventures to report:

 

I actually did have a PS/2 mouse all along - in fact, I used it with my Pentium MMX ThinkPad before! The problem is, tho... it doesn't get recognized at all. Neither Microsoft's DOS driver, nor the CuteMouse DOS driver, nor any of Windows 3.11's drivers work. In fact, CuteMouse's COMTEST.COM (which lists all COM ports and things attached to them) doesn't see anything attached to either port when the mouse is plugged in. The ports appear to be configured correctly and get recognized in the BIOS, by COMTEST.COM and by good old MSD/Microsoft Diagnostics. I also happened to have another 9-pin COM port to attach to the I/O card, which didn't change a thing. So... I'm guessing the PS/2-to-serial adapter might be busted? Oh well... no Warcraft 2 tonight!

 

(And I realize I could just play Warcraft 2 in DOSBox or somesuch, but... where's the fun in that?)

 

Next up, networking, again. Functionality is still pretty limited, but at least I seem to be able to bring up the network reliably now. Previously, I'd have intermittent problems ex. connecting to the network in the first place. Now... I've switched the LAN cable - and even the "broken" port on my router is working again. So, yeah, I think it's pretty likely that the other cable is bad.

 

Oh also, while looking for the mouse, I also happened to come across some ancient EDO RAM sticks, wrapped in tape, with handwritten labels stating their sizes! I don't even remember when I packed them up, it must've been around 2000 or thereabouts... However, problem: only the two 4 MB sticks would work on the Pentium's board. The two 8 MB and two 16 MB sticks either don't work at all, only come up with less total memory than they should, and/or don't work together with the existing 32 MB RAM. Maybe some of them are bad, maybe they aren't compatible with the board, I'm not sure. Regardless, I've at least got the two 4 MB sticks in, bringing the memory up to 4 sticks in 4 slots, totalling 40 MB.

[!Tommy]

About Windows 95's errors during setup, it could imagine that it's unable to cope with the PCI IDE controller somehow...

 

The system has two IDE controllers: one on the typical ISA multi I/O card you'd have in many pre-Socket 7 systems (very similar to this one, almost the same chipset in fact), the other is a dedicated PCI E-IDE controller, the Tekram from the first post, which also has a small daughterboard that plugs into the end of a 16-bit ISA slot. There's no on-board I/O, outside of the AT keyboard connector and obviously the PCI and ISA slots.

 

The main IRQ-related thing I had to change in the BIOS, was for where the PCI IDE interrupt should be mapped to. If I left this on "PCI-AUTO" or any other "PCI-" setting, the BIOS would never proceed beyond the memory test, so I had to change it to "ISA" - presumably so that the interrupt could reach that daughterboard, and in turn the PCI IDE controller. Also, even though that was the original hardware configuration when I got the machine, I couldn't get the CD-ROM drive to be recognized if it was left on the ISA IDE controller, which is why I switched that over to the other IDE, too.

 

Also, further adventures to report:

 

I actually did have a PS/2 mouse all along - in fact, I used it with my Pentium MMX ThinkPad before! The problem is, tho... it doesn't get recognized at all. Neither Microsoft's DOS driver, nor the CuteMouse DOS driver, nor any of Windows 3.11's drivers work. In fact, CuteMouse's COMTEST.COM (which lists all COM ports and things attached to them) doesn't see anything attached to either port when the mouse is plugged in. The ports appear to be configured correctly and get recognized in the BIOS, by COMTEST.COM and by good old MSD/Microsoft Diagnostics. I also happened to have another 9-pin COM port to attach to the I/O card, which didn't change a thing. So... I'm guessing the PS/2-to-serial adapter might be busted? Oh well... no Warcraft 2 tonight!

 

(And I realize I could just play Warcraft 2 in DOSBox or somesuch, but... where's the fun in that?)

 

Next up, networking, again. Functionality is still pretty limited, but at least I seem to be able to bring up the network reliably now. Previously, I'd have intermittent problems ex. connecting to the network in the first place. Now... I've switched the LAN cable - and even the "broken" port on my router is working again. So, yeah, I think it's pretty likely that the other cable is bad.

 

Oh also, while looking for the mouse, I also happened to come across some ancient EDO RAM sticks, wrapped in tape, with handwritten labels stating their sizes! I don't even remember when I packed them up, it must've been around 2000 or thereabouts... However, problem: only the two 4 MB sticks would work on the Pentium's board. The two 8 MB and two 16 MB sticks either don't work at all, only come up with less total memory than they should, and/or don't work together with the existing 32 MB RAM. Maybe some of them are bad, maybe they aren't compatible with the board, I'm not sure. Regardless, I've at least got the two 4 MB sticks in, bringing the memory up to 4 sticks in 4 slots, totalling 40 MB.

Windows 95 could be having an issue with the add on IDE controller. Truthfully I've never really worked with them so I can't be of much use there.

 

My very first computer I got in 2001 was from 1994 or 95 I believe it was, and it had a PS/1 keyboard port (The big one) and just a serial port for a mouse. It had a socket 7 processor, a 90MHz original Pentium and it came with Windows 95 and a blistering huge hard drive at 600MBs. It was a Seagate. But the computer itself was a custom machine and bare bones at that. It had a separate video card, an Alliance Promotion 2MB graphics card.

 

As for your mouse issue, maybe the computer is too old for the adapter to work? I wouldn't think this would be an issue but maybe it doesn't receive the right signal from the adapter. It's another issue hard for me to diagnose.  As for the RAM, SIMM RAM is a bit picky I've noticed. I have a bunch of it along with an HP Vectra XA which still utilizes it and I have two 32MB sticks that I put in there, but it seems to recognize them as 16MBs a piece instead. What's even funnier is that if I put a 32MB and 16MB in together, then the full amount registers which I think is around 140MBs or so. But usually with SIMM RAM, you need to install them in pairs otherwise you run into issues. Maybe your board is limited to a certain amount of RAM. Have you tried flashing the BIOS at all? What kind of BIOS does it use? It almost sounds like it could be a Phoenix since Award has been the same for years and shows plenty of information on startup. But if at all possible, I would make sure the BIOS is up to date as far as it can go which sometimes allows you to use more RAM or other fixes, which I'm sure you probably know already. Also, there is FPM RAM which a few of your sticks might be and maybe it can't handle those either. That's the fun of working on old computers! I've noticed newer PCs from the early 2000s and up are generally easy to work on and usually almost anything goes. But with older machines, they can get so picky as far as RAM and hard drive sizes go. My HP Vectra XA is so picky that it doesn't like when I replace the add on graphics card. It's a 1MB or 2MB Matrox Millennium I believe and even if I put a newer one in that's 8MBs, the machine acts up. I've never seen anything like it. In fact if you install Windows 2000 or Windows XP on it with the newer graphics card, as soon as a sound tries to play, the entire machine locks up until you manually restart it. Putting the old graphics card in doesn't do that. Very strange indeed!

 

As for DosBox, sure you could use it. But what is really the fun in that? Emulation is overrated though convenient. I love working with old machines and old versions of Windows. :3

[xdaniel]

Hehe, this is my first time dealing with a whole secondary IDE controller, too. I only ever had one of those ISA multi I/O cards per machine before, or everything on-board later on... That said, I'm not very sad about Windows 95 not working right - I haven't really used Windows 3.x since... my last PC that came with Windows 3.x? Which IIRC was a Pentium 75 of some kind, I don't think I had that one very long. So I'm fine with getting back into 3.11 here.

 

Windows 3.11 here, and this machine in general, remind me of my first PC too: forgetting some details here, but it was a 486DX2 with 50 MHz, 24 MB RAM, some sort of SVGA video card (that I never bothered to get Windows drivers for), and an Adaptec AHA-1542B SCSI controller with two huge 800 MB IBM hard disks! "Huge" in two respects even, the capacity and the size - one was as high as two regular 5 1/2" drives, so stack four CD-ROM drives on top of each other and you get the idea XD As far as I can remember, we were told it was some sort of server system before, which explains the SCSI card and HDDs. Think I got it in... 1997 or thereabouts? Didn't even come with a CD-ROM drive, btw, but I later got a TEAC CD-532S (IIRC) for my birthday or somesuch - one of the best drives I've ever had, too, as it had some great error correction. Read pretty much every CD I fed it, no matter how scratched up it was.

 

The mouse problem is a curious one. I know the mouse works because I used it on said ThinkPad before, I don't know if the adapter works... Hm, let me see if my "disk fabricator" (aka my old Dell Latitude C640 laptop I've been using for writing the floppy disks) recognizes the mouse via the adapter on its serial port... ... ...nope, no dice. Rebooted and specifically set the laptop's BIOS to serial mouse - disables PS/2 and integrated touchpad -, but Windows (XP SP2) didn't recognize nor respond to it. Changed that setting back, put mouse into PS/2 port, and bam, it works fine. Doesn't work via serial in PS/2 and touchpad mode, either...

 

The BIOS I'm not sure if I can update, because I'm not even 100% sure about the board's model nor manufacturer. Again, the version string shown on startup points to it being an ABit PK5 - chipset given and "2A5IAA11" match this description, but there's no marking or anything on the board that would confirm this. It's actually an Award BIOS, too, not Phoenix or AMI... And btw, I noticed earlier that it has the infamous Y2K bug! Or a sort of variation thereof anyway, because if I enter 2014 as the year in the BIOS, it ends up as 2094 after saving and restarting.

 

And the RAM would've been a little extra something for the machine - just think, a Pentium 100 with 64 MB RAM! Whoa!! I had that in my Cyrix MII 333 MHz back in 1999/2000 or so, if I remember correctly! - but it's no problem that it isn't working. Now that you mention it, I do remember there being differences between EDO- and I guess FPM-type RAM, so that might be the issue... I did remember to put them in in pairs, at least.

 

But yeah, it's pretty fun to work with those old systems, and especially old PCs (i.e. less than, I dunno, 500 MHz) I haven't done much with recently. I mean, I have my Amiga 500 that I want to upgrade some more, but that's a whole different beast... plus a pretty expensive one, if you want ex. an accelerator board, or even an IDE or SCSI controller. Also have that ThinkPad I mentioned - Pentium MMX 166 MHz, 80 or so MB RAM, Windows 98 SE, etc. - but I'd consider that comparatively modern, compared to a Socket 5 Pentium running DOS and Windows 3.x

[!Tommy]

I wonder if Windows NT 4.0 would work on that machine. Despite it lacking some of the more modern technology for gaming, it's actually a nice little operating system. It lacks a proper device manager but it's not bad as long as you know what you're looking for when it comes to manually installing drivers. The oldest machine in regards to actual age is the first one I had mentioned. It had 32MB of RAM in it which I never did upgrade. When I received it, it didn't have a sound card in it so I went out and bought a SoundBlaster PCI 16 which was my first internal computer upgrade I had ever performed. It came with Windows 95 but the graphics drivers were not installed. I had it for a year until I finally bought a new machine which was an HP Pavilion back in 2002. I hated it for one reason, it had Windows XP on it and XP sucked in my opinion at the time. Luckily I figured out how to downgrade it to Windows 98 and I used it like that for quite some time until I installed Windows 2000 on it. It was a decent little machine but I sadly don't own it anymore.

 

Anyway, back to your machine. Wait, before I talk about it, the CD drive I must bring up. TEAC is actually a good brand, especially back then. In my opinion, a lot of CD drives I've worked with in the late 2000s are crap. The tray jams up for no reason and you have to literally grab any bit you can get and help it out as you open it, or you have to push the button about 10 times before it finally works its way out of the drive. Old drives definitely were the bomb. Seems like they went downhill when they changed from cream colored to black.

 

For your BIOS, you should be able to update it. Have you ever tried installing Everest Home Edition? I'm not sure if it would work on Windows 3.11, but it can tell you anything about your machine and is a very valuable tool for techs like me. Award is usually good about updating the BIOS so you might be able to find one as long as you can figure out what you're actually looking for. But I'd at least give it a try. Everest is actually under a different name now but a little bit of googling should reveal even an old version.

 

64MBs of RAM for a Pentium 100 is very awesome for the machine itself. Heck, my HP Pavilion came standard with a whopping 128MBs of RAM for Windows XP Home Edition! What gets me now is how many machines comes with only two slots for memory. Sometimes you're lucky and you get more but the old machines had as many as four or sometimes even six like the case for my HP Vectra, which I do still have. I think I have Windows NT 4.0 Server installed on that computer, runs like a champ! Haha, I was moving the computer and I accidentally dropped it on the floor. It basically said, "LOL, like I give a shit." The only thing that happened was the floppy bezel came off which just popped right back on. It still works with no problem! I bet a new computer wouldn't survive falling off a desk in that fashion. If I didn't do some of the editing I do or watching videos, I probably wouldn't even have a problem using a machine that old for everyday use. Need for Speed III HP on my first computer was interesting though. It basically just refreshed itself every three seconds, even the honking the horn on the car was delayed for a second. It required 133MHz and I only had 90. But I still made it work!

[xdaniel]

Been looking around trying to identify my mainboard for good. While I couldn't find Everest, formerly AIDA32, for Windows 3.11 - it appears to be some 10 years too young for that - I remembered Dr. Hardware, another hardware information tool that was around during the late 90s. A lot of searching and crawling the Internet Archive later, I found a 32-bit version of it that does run (mostly) under Win 3.11 via the Win32s extension. That confirmed that the board is indeed an ABit/Silicon Star International, but couldn't tell me much else.

 

Then I ended up searching for more information about the Abit PK5 I assumed it is, or is closely related to, based on that BIOS string. That way, I found this site here, with diagrams and jumper settings for a lot of boards. Comparing those diagrams with the jumpers I can see on my physical board, it appears to be very close to the "PK5 (REV. 1.1)" listed there... but the chipset doesn't match; mine has an SiS 501-503, that one has an OPTI of some kind.

 

That said, there's a set of DRAM configuration jumpers listed on the site, where you have to select the correct configuration depending on where there's single-sided and/or double-sided RAM sticks in your system. That's something else that I vaguely recalled while looking this up, that single-sided and double-sided SIMMs can make a difference. So, I ended up switching the jumpers around, and put those other two 16 MB sticks in... didn't work. Well. Tried the next smaller sticks, the two 8 MB sticks... and success! 48 MB of RAM, or 49152 KB!

 

I also noticed the section about the CPU speed configuration jumpers and tried to mess around with those a bit, and while I couldn't overclock this particular CPU to 120 or 133 MHz - it just stayed at 100, apparently -, I could underclock it to 90 MHz. I guess if I'd come across a 120 or 133 MHz Socket 5 Pentium somewhere, I could use it in this machine as long as I set the jumpers correctly. Heh, I had almost about having to set CPU speeds manually on the board... we're really lucky nowadays with the CPU speed being configurable from the BIOS and such.

 

Finally, after even more searching and Internet Archive browsing, I even did find what appears to be a BIOS update for the PK5... although which PK5, I do not know. The "2A5IAA11" part of the version string matches, it's about half a year younger than the BIOS I've got installed (06/20/95 vs 12/30/94 on mine), but beyond that... I'm really not sure. Neither am I sure if I should even try to update the BIOS at this point, seeing how I did get at least those two 8 MB RAM sticks working.

[!Tommy]

Oooh, maybe you'll get lucky and find something! Just have to keep looking.

 

I forgot to mention I owned a Compaq Presario 9500 from 1995 for a little while. I didn't know much about it sadly but it operated at 100MHz and it had the BIOS on the hard drive rather than integrated on a chip on the motherboard. I was able to overclock the system to 120MHz just by moving a jumper but it got unstable after a while which I think was caused by heat since there was no fan on the heatsink and so it didn't have proper cooling. I put a regular deskfan on it and blew cool air at it which seemed to help but it usually helps a lot more to have something pull out the hot air. I was able to get it up to 64MBs of RAM which was the very minimum for Windows XP. Being the adventurer that I am, I took a chance. Yes, Windows XP would install and run on it! It was slow and the installation took about 3-4 hours, but it installed perfectly! I found Windows XP seems to only check for the RAM requirement but not the CPU requirement whereas Windows Me does indeed check to make sure that your processor is at 150MHz or higher. That is a bit puzzling but the installations were different too. I'm not sure if Windows 98 is picky in the same was since it only requires a 66MHz processor and I've never once tried installing it on a computer with less than that. But seeing as how 98 and Me's installations appear to be built on the same installation platform, it's a safe bet it probably works in the same way. Maybe an emulation VM program exists where you can tell the machine how fast you want it to run as you can tell it how much RAM to use from the host machine.

 

I've had this happen with RAM too, and I think it was what I was referring to earlier. My Vectra is able to go up to 192MBs of RAM as stated by HP themselves, but I've never gotten it up that high. Maybe if I had all 32MBs of SIMM RAM it would. But if I had 4 sticks of 32MB of RAM and 2 of 16MBs, but instead of it listing it as 160MBs, it was only 128MBs (or 130MBs according to POST), but if I took out the one  But if I put in 2 sticks of 32MBs of RAM and 4 sticks of 16MBs of RAM, it would also be at 128MBs. I know the other RAM is 32MBs as it states right on there and since it's a big stick, it's usually a safe bet. But that doesn't even begin to make sense! SIMM RAM is definitely the pickiest and most interesting RAM I've ever worked with, aside from Rambus RAM that is.

 

Maybe if you did get your RAM working, maybe it would be safer to just leave the BIOS alone. If you can take pictures of it or inside the case, I'd be most delighted to see them.

[xdaniel]

Oh man, Windows XP at anything less than 512 MB RAM is a pain to use. At one point years ago, my mom's PC's memory died (or was faulty from the start, I don't remember), so I had to lend her one of my two 256 MB sticks. We were both running XP back then, and both of our machines struggled visibly with that little memory.

 

As for the P100 here now, I haven't done anything with it today - was all over the city in the afternoon, had to pick a package up at customs, etc... -, besides digging up another longer LAN cable and putting a small 5-port switch between my main desktop and the LAN cable. That way, I can get onto the network from there instead of having to kinda lay a cable right across the room to reach the router.

 

I'll take more pictures of the machine and the insides once I get the chance. I actually wanted to document this "restoration" project on video and upload it to YT, but once I started working on it, I kinda got carried away... *cough*

[!Tommy]

Oh man, Windows XP at anything less than 512 MB RAM is a pain to use. At one point years ago, my mom's PC's memory died (or was faulty from the start, I don't remember), so I had to lend her one of my two 256 MB sticks. We were both running XP back then, and both of our machines struggled visibly with that little memory.

 

As for the P100 here now, I haven't done anything with it today - was all over the city in the afternoon, had to pick a package up at customs, etc... -, besides digging up another longer LAN cable and putting a small 5-port switch between my main desktop and the LAN cable. That way, I can get onto the network from there instead of having to kinda lay a cable right across the room to reach the router.

 

I'll take more pictures of the machine and the insides once I get the chance. I actually wanted to document this "restoration" project on video and upload it to YT, but once I started working on it, I kinda got carried away... *cough*

A restoration video would definitely be an awesome thing to see. It's reminds me of something uxwbill or vwestlife would do and I'm very interested in both their channels when it comes to old PCs and restorations they do so I'll be looking forward to that if you ever come around to making a video.

 

Yes, Windows XP is a big pain to use on anything less than 512 or even a gig of RAM by today's standards. In fact if you're using at least Service Pack 2 with Windows XP, it's better to have more RAM. 128MBs just on the Gold version was bad enough. The fact on this machine that I do plenty of video editing and the fact I have dual monitors because of the comparison and multitasking I do with my machine, more is definitely better. I only have 2GBs in this machine since it's all I have of this type of RAM but I have two more slots on the motherboard that I can add more once I get more.

 

I remember bad memory at times. Once the computer completely refused to even POST and just beeped. I was cleaning the tower with air and I have no idea what happened but it made the one stick go bad, once it was pulled it worked just fine. But then I had another PC I worked on that just had RAM errors, IE would crash for no reason was one thing. It was a Windows 98 PC, a Dell Optiplex GX1 if I remember correctly. I pulled one stick of RAM out of it and tested it and no more errors. So the PC would boot but there must've been something in the memory module itself that was bad and when something was stored in the bad place, it just crashed. This was before I became CompTia A+ certified and it was more of just a hobby at the time, and I was still learning as well.

 

In fact the computer I'm using now was an HP Pavilion Media Center PC. It was from a friend that had it and all of a sudden, it just died. It would power on and that was it, it wouldn't do a thing after that. Even replacing parts didn't help. However, someone must've gotten to it because I noticed someone pulled a SATA port completely OFF the motherboard! The terminals themselves were sticking up in the air with no plastic port on them. I was shocked! Someone who didn't know what they were doing must've unplugged something and the port came with it. But I do believe that they could've shorted the board out. Even taking the computer right down to bare bones didn't do anything. Actually, it started booting once, but only once. Being an OEM computer, it's almost impossible to replace the board with anything other than the OEM board itself. Well, the friend gave me the computer so I found a new motherboard online, it was a Gigabyte that was completely compatible with the parts I had in the machine already. So I swapped the board out and put the new board in, reapplied the thermal paste and added a new heatsink because this motherboard has a four pin fan connector while the old one was three pin and so the fan would run completely at full speed all the time with no way to change that. So I invested in a new heatsink and four pin fan. But surprisingly, everything plugged in just like it was meant to be, even the media card reader works! So that's how I saved that computer and am using it at this very moment. Even though it's new, it's still an accomplishment I'm proud of.

 

I do have a question for you Dan. Have you ever had to replace bad caps on a motherboard? I never went that far but I know of some people that have. My Dell Optiplex GX270 fell victim to bad caps. I was using it just fine one minute, got up to go to the bathroom, came back and it was completely frozen up. I restarted it manually and that was all it wrote. It would power on and that was it. Looking at the board carefully, one of the CPU capacitors was just beginning to bulge a bit. I salvaged parts in it and that was it, I didn't save the board.

[xdaniel]

Heh, I've actually heard of uxwbill, I think I friend of mine introduced me to his channel. I haven't seen very many of his videos yet, tho. I really like RetroJunkie's videos (channel RetroJunkie2020, I think), although they're more console- and more specifically Sega-centric - his repair/restoration videos on the Aiwa Mega CD (a boom box with integrated Mega Drive/Genesis and Mega/Sega CD) and the Sega Saturn Sophia (early Saturn development kit) in particular are really interesting.

 

I haven't replaced bad caps before, but I do have some things that need new caps... My old GeForce 8500 GT, for example; that thing has seven caps on it, five of which are blown. I might also still have the old Super Socket 7 mainboard from my AMD K6-2+ (450? 500? I forgot) days, which also had bad caps the last time I saw it, some five or so years ago. That was a... Shuttle HOT-591P, I believe. Would be nice if I still had that board and could replace the caps on it, I'd love to get a K6-type machine up and running again.

 

Back to the P100: Haven't made a video about it yet, but here's some photos of it and its innards:

 

The whole mess as it is right now, haven't put the system back together yet; also in the picture, the backside of my Adaptec AHA-1542CF, and the other RAM. Also the kinda inappropriate for the timeframe Samsung SyncMaster 570B and Logitech Corded iTouch keyboard (Y-BC9), September 2000 and ca. 2001/2002(?) respectively:

 

 

Side view of the opened tower:

 

 

Close-up on the cards inside, from top to bottom: V7-Mirage video card, PCI IDE controller, RTL8029 LAN, ISA multi I/O and ESS 1868F sound card:

 

 

Another close-up on the cards; as above, just from right to left:

 

 

Area around RAM slots, above the top PCI slot. The two rightmost sticks are the 2x 16 MB, the other two are 8 MB each:

 

 

Close-up on CPU, cache and chipset:

 

 

The Tekram DC-290N PCI IDE controller in all its glory:

 

 

Front panel of the tower; MHz display, HDD and turbo LEDs, turbo and reset switches, power switch and LED:

 

 

The MHz display without flash, so that it's actually readable. Would be kinda cool if my desktop said "2x3450"

 

 

The tower front's upper half:

 

 

And the tower's rear, as well as the plastic cover that goes above the screws and exposed metal when closed up:

 

 

Ports close-up, from top to bottom: VGA (video card), stereo audio out (on PCI IDE controller, intended for CD audio, apparently), LAN, serial ports (25-pin and 9-pin, on multi I/O), parallel port and gameport (multi I/O), gameport and audio jacks (sound card). The labels for LPT1, COM2 and COM1 were already incorrectly placed when I first got the system, btw, so I assume it had been upgraded at least once before:

 

 

Went overboard with the descriptions maybe

[Antidote]

Wow that PS/2 port is really close to those DIMMs.

Also, that tower must weigh a ton.

[!Tommy]

WOW!! That thing is HUGE!! I love how big the case is yet the motherboard barely takes any room at all in there. XD!!

The motherboard itself is really clean and in great condition! It's so nice to see old hardware in such great condition! I see it does have a PS/1 port that you have an adapter for. My first computer had the PS/1 port as well but I no longer own it or the keyboard. I also took note you guys must use 230V for your power supplies. Over here in America we use the 110-5V, sometimes they vary. I worked on a machine that refused to turn on at all until I looked and saw the switch was moved to 230, as soon as I switched it, it turned on! So it must've had some sort of protection in it so it wouldn't damage the power supply or the board itself.

 

I love the little 'baby' heatsink and fan on the CPU. Back then it was sufficient, now you have these great big monsters with at least 3 inch fans that's about half an inch or more deep. It actually looks a lot like my original one did. The Compaq Presario 9500 had a bigger heatsink but no fan on it at all. I prefer fans on the heatsinks so it'll at least take care of the heat instead of just absorbing it.

 

As the board you mentioned that support Super Socket 7, I've definitely heard of that before and somewhere in some point in time, I picked up a Super Socket 7 AMD K5 or K6 processor that I've never ever used. It's actually sitting on the bookshelf next to me. I have no idea what speed it is or anything, just that it's Super Socket 7. For shits and giggles, I put it in a regular Socket 7 computer to see what it would do, but it didn't do anything. It powered on but that was it. XD

 

@Antidote: They're actually SIMMs, not DIMMs.

[Antidote]

@Tommy, no those are DIMMs, there are modules on both sides.

[!Tommy]

Are you sure about that, Antidote? I'm looking into it. Not that I actually care if I'm right or not, but you have me curious. DIMMs are usually 168 or 182 pins, not 72 pins which would be SIMM Ram.

[xdaniel]

It's quite big in comparison - especially compared to, say, a modern barebone or even just a "normal" desktop -, but I feel like I'm used to them. My first PC was a big tower like this, the 486DX2-50, my trusty Athlon Thunderbird 1.4 @ 1.0 GHz (RIP) was one, so... yeah. Also, it's true that this machine's in really nice shape. I hadn't even cleaned it up much; it just had some spots of dirt on the outside, and there's still some dust on the inside, as you can see in the photos. And yeah, we do use 230V over here. In your case, I'm guessing that machine set to 230V simply didn't get enough power, so that it didn't even get the chance to damage anything. Don't quote me on that, tho, I'm not an electrician

 

EDIT: In fact... have two ancient photos (pre-2006) I found when backing up my old LiveJournal blog a week or so ago. This was my old Athlon TB:

 

 

 

...and yes, that's the same Logitech keyboard I'm now using on the P100

 

Now, after a few days of working with this machine here, there are a few faults I've noticed despite its overall good condition:

 

First, the CMOS battery doesn't seem to be holding up very well anymore. Problem with that being, it uses one of those old Dallas RTCs. I haven't looked at it closely yet, so I don't know the exact type of chip, nor if it's socketed or soldered on, nor if there's compatible replacements still being made. I know you can hack the original chip and add a new battery, but I'd prefer not to have to try that.

 

Second, the CPU fan is very noisy and seems to get stuck sometimes. This is probably easier to replace than the RTC, I just need to get a new fan of the same diameter and especially height - because it's really close to the 3 1/2" drive cage - and solder it up to the original cable to the PSU.

 

Finally, I've found another system information tool, this time for DOS and from... *drumroll*... the year 2010! The thing's called Navratil Software System Information, is freeware and... identified my mainboard perfectly fine as - wanna guess? - an Abit PK5! All my detective work was for naught! <.< ...okay, it wasn't really, because I found that diagram and jumper settings, and I could get 48 MB of RAM working on it because of that.

 

Also, if you're curious, here's the output that program's report function produced for the P100.

 

EDIT 2: Desktop!

 

Edited January 17, 2014 by xdaniel

[xdaniel]

Alright, let's see. I had a quick look at the stuff stored in the basement earlier today. I was looking for 1) one more PS/2 mouse I knew I had, and 2) any other parts that might benefit the P100, such as a faster CD-ROM drive.

 

The other mouse I did find, some Fujitsu mouse with a very short cable (presumably meant for a laptop?), but I couldn't get it to work with the PS/2-serial adapter, either. To be exact:

 

 

...none of those work with the adapter. The Microsoft I would've expected to work, because it seems pretty old, the Fujitsu maybe, the Dell maybe (with a heavily elongated "a"), the A4Tech probably not. Also in the picture, the adapter in question.

 

Also, about the Dell mouse, I only just picked that up yesterday at a flea market for cheap, bundled with a Dell keyboard. Both work fine - the keyboard is hooked up to the P100 right now, even - just the mouse not on the system it would matter. The keyboard's got the English QWERTY layout, by the way, so it's pretty odd to type with for me, because QWERTZ...

 

 

The mouse aside, I didn't see anything else useful in the basement, or nothing I could get at easily - there's lots of boxes stacked on top of each other. I did find a few more video cards - ex. a Matrox (MGA Millenium, I think), an ATI Mach64, and a few AGP cards (ELSA Erazor X! GeForce 256 with 32 MB RAM!) - but I haven't decided yet if I want to switch the V7-Mirage/S3 Trio64 out. Also did see a few optical drives, but they were mostly DVD-ROMs and CD-RWs, and I don't think they necessarily "fit" in a Pentium 100 from 1995 or thereabouts.

 

I did install Internet Explorer 5 (shudder!) just for fun, but it's quite useless, because of the rather elderly system it's running on, and because of modern websites and their images, stylesheets, scripts and such.

[!Tommy]

Alright, let's see. I had a quick look at the stuff stored in the basement earlier today. I was looking for 1) one more PS/2 mouse I knew I had, and 2) any other parts that might benefit the P100, such as a faster CD-ROM drive.

 

The other mouse I did find, some Fujitsu mouse with a very short cable (presumably meant for a laptop?), but I couldn't get it to work with the PS/2-serial adapter, either. To be exact:

 

 

...none of those work with the adapter. The Microsoft I would've expected to work, because it seems pretty old, the Fujitsu maybe, the Dell maybe (with a heavily elongated "a"), the A4Tech probably not. Also in the picture, the adapter in question.

 

Also, about the Dell mouse, I only just picked that up yesterday at a flea market for cheap, bundled with a Dell keyboard. Both work fine - the keyboard is hooked up to the P100 right now, even - just the mouse not on the system it would matter. The keyboard's got the English QWERTY layout, by the way, so it's pretty odd to type with for me, because QWERTZ...

 

 

The mouse aside, I didn't see anything else useful in the basement, or nothing I could get at easily - there's lots of boxes stacked on top of each other. I did find a few more video cards - ex. a Matrox (MGA Millenium, I think), an ATI Mach64, and a few AGP cards (ELSA Erazor X! GeForce 256 with 32 MB RAM!) - but I haven't decided yet if I want to switch the V7-Mirage/S3 Trio64 out. Also did see a few optical drives, but they were mostly DVD-ROMs and CD-RWs, and I don't think they necessarily "fit" in a Pentium 100 from 1995 or thereabouts.

 

I did install Internet Explorer 5 (shudder!) just for fun, but it's quite useless, because of the rather elderly system it's running on, and because of modern websites and their images, stylesheets, scripts and such.

I miss those old Microsoft mice, they were so cool and I don't know why, but they just were!

 

Speaking of IE5, have you tried using the internet with IE2? Talk about useless! Surprisingly Google works somewhat but almost all websites refuse to even start loading with it. It's cool to see what works and what doesn't work with it though.

[xdaniel]

So, I kinda neglected this thread because I kinda neglected the Pentium 100 it's been about. However, I am (hopefully) having a serial mouse for it coming in the mail soon-ish, so that I can actually use the system properly, at which point I'll also try and get some sort of presentation video about it up on YouTube.

 

In the meantime, there's something else I've been thinking about and partially working on... my Commodore Amiga 500, as mentioned in one of the posts above. I haven't yet gotten an accelerator for it yet or anything, but there's a very recent expansion card called ACA-500 that looks quite interesting. It attaches externally to the A500's side expansion port, has a 68000 CPU at 14 MHz (up from the original 7 MHz 68000), 2 MB Fast RAM, two CompactFlash slots (one as an HDD replacement, one for data exchange with PCs), you can attach certain A1200 accelerators to it to upgrade the system even more, etc. There's more details about it on this site.

 

So that ACA-500 is something I'm interested in getting someday... and honestly even something I'd be willing to sell part of my "collection" of games for. And thinking even further ahead, if things align somehow, converting that A500 into a desktop or tower machine would be wonderful. We did have a heavily upgraded A500 when I was a kid, some 15+ years ago - 68030 accelerator with 40(?) MHz, a lot of RAM, big HDD, a CD-ROM drive, all in a modified AT form factor desktop case - but I cannot for the life of me remember what happened to it. I went looking for it the last two times I visited my family, but with all the junk accumulated in the basement and attic there, I had a hard time going through everything and couldn't find it. Either it's still "buried" somewhere there, waiting to be resurrected, or we actually sold it, or even gave it away after we all got PCs.

 

Anyway, the whole ACA-500 thing is something for the future, right now it's about getting this A500 back into better shape. The keyboard, but not the rest of the case, is badly yellowed, the internal shielding is bent and discolored, at least one component on the board - a NAND buffer chip, I think? - has corroded or oxidized legs, and leaving the system aside, I have hardly any floppy disks that work well left... and the situation for those here is even worse than with the PCs, because the Amiga uses 3.5" DD (Double Density) disks at 880 KB, instead of the more recent HD (High Density) disks that PCs have used since, I dunno, the late 80s?

 

...yeah, so, old hardware-wise, the A500 is probably gonna have my attention from now on. I already have modified a PC floppy drive (yes, the drives themselves differ slightly, too) for Amiga use, just in case something was to happen to the old drive, so that I don't have to go and buy a replacement eventually. And speaking of which, while the sounds of the original drive are really, really nostalgic to me, the modified drive (a 1999 vintage Sony) is sooo much quieter and thus far more pleasant to the ears than the original (a Panasonic from I dunno). Here's a quick comparison I made after performing the modification.

[xdaniel]

Sooo, progress on the Pentium and the Amiga fronts:

 

While I haven't had the serial mouse I mentioned in the mail yet (it's the weekend after all), by chance I did come across a Logitech PS/2 mouse with its serial adapter still attached, at a flea market on Saturday. The good news here: the mouse works, in both PS/2 and serial mode. The bad news: not on the Pentium 100. CuteMouse and Microsoft's driver detect the mouse and install themselves, but no applications react to mouse movements or clicks, while Logitech's own driver doesn't even detect the mouse. The Logitech driver also contains a simple program that detects activity on the COM ports, from which I can see that the mouse does do something on the P100 when moved/clicked, but that's about it.

 

Also, which is even worse than the non-working mouse, the P100's power supply seems to be failing. During the two or so hours I tried to get the mouse going yesterday evening, the system shut off without warning three times - complete power loss with the power switch still down (remember, it's AT, not ATX), needed to switch the power off for a bit before it fired up again. One time it even damaged the BIOS settings in CMOS RAM, so that I had to redo the configuration, i.e. HDD parameters, IRQ stuff for the PCI IDE controller, etc. And seeing how I don't have another AT PSU to try and switch this one with, I can't even be sure it is the PSU that's dying... A really frustrating situation.

 

Next up, the Amiga 500. I had asked a friend of mine earlier this week, if I could have one of the junk A500s he's found at recycling centers over time, basically to have spares for mine. He ended up bringing one over yesterday - A500 Rev 5, 512 KB RAM, Kickstart 1.3, broken FDD (does not recognize disks) - that I could have, in exchange for someday setting up an old PC of his, where he's planning to replace the HDD with a CF card in an adapter, with Windows 95. Some of that A500's parts already found their way into my main system, including the keyboard's keycaps, the RF shielding and some screws, which all were in better condition on that one.

 

And speaking of the Amiga, at the same flea market, and the same stall even, where I found the serial mouse for the Pentium, we had also found a bag - literally - of seven(!) Competition Pro joysticks for ex. the Amiga, C64, and anything else with a compatible joystick port - five normal-sized (three of them black, two transparent blue) and two half-sized (one transparent white, the other transparent blue), for 0.50 € each. The downside of that: only two of them are working properly right now, while the others have non-working directions and/or fire buttons. All of them do something, so we'll be trying to diagnose and repair them next weekend.

 

Edit: We have three working Competition Pro joysticks; the second transparent blue one is now working fine as well. The right directional button apparently was stuck or something, because after some (not so) gentle wiggling around, that direction is back in action.

 

Edit #2: The PC mouse problem has been solved. Turns out the IRQ settings for the COM ports were swapped on the multi I/O card! COM1 is supposed to use IRQ4, while COM2 is supposed to use IRQ3. Switched those around, bam! The Logitech drivers for DOS and Windows installed fine and work perfectly. Now to diagnose those random power losses, although I haven't had one today so far. Also, Doom's attract mode has been looping for the last 20 or 25 minutes, without any hickups, so... I guess the PSU might still be fine? But I probably should get myself a multimeter soon anyway, to check the voltages it's outputting.

[xdaniel]

I made a very unexpected purchase today at a flea market... "Unexpected" as to what it is, and the price I got it for:

 

 

A Commodore 128D for a mere five Euro! ...well, sadly it's just the base unit itself, a C128DCR "cost-reduced" to be exact, with no keyboard, no cables, no manuals and so on. And don't mind the keyboard underneath it in the photo, that's just my Amiga 500 peeking out and serving as a stand for the 128D. It was very dirty when I got it, but some TLC (i.e. abrasive cleaner) later it's looking much better already. The scratches and damage to the case's paint I can't do much about, tho, but I guess that's fine... the thing's just a few months younger than I am, after all - mainboard and ICs are all from 1987, weeks 15-30 -, so some signs of wear are to be expected.

 

The best thing is, of course, that it actually works! Like, as far as I can test it anyway, which is 1) powering it on, 2) waiting for the disk drive to try and detect a CP/M boot disk and 3) have Commodore BASIC v7 appear on the screen, all of which it does perfectly. As mentioned, I don't have a keyboard for it, so I can't try to use Basic, and neither do I have a CP/M boot disk for it to try and start CP/M from...

 

Sooo, aside from the (pretty much finished) P100 restoration and upgrading my A500, I suppose I have another hardware project to take care of now?

[!Tommy]

Very sweet find, Dan! Could you remove the cover and take a picture of the internal components? Very curious to see what it looks like!

[xdaniel]

Hah, man, I'm stupid sometimes: I had the cover off already to clean the system, so I could've easily taken a few pictures then... I'll remove it once more, take some pictures of the internals and post them here tomorrow