best cheap/free scores 1.1

[stj]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

that would probably pull good moey on ebay.com from collectors.

[ratdude747]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^look at topcat's smoke removal thread. Your DIMM contacts are probably fouled. clean the board as per that thread and try again.

[Dan81]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

^look at topcat's smoke removal thread. Your DIMM contacts are probably fouled. clean the board as per that thread and try again.

Actually I've encountered that with a clean Deluxe variant (clean as in no nicotine residue or anything like that) of the P4P800, where it would exhibit the same issues as this board - some RAM sticks simply won't work with it.

Oh, and there's no Simple Green here where I live, and I don't know what can I use instead.

[Per Hansson]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Use anything you like as long as you properly rinse it afterwards.
I've used YES in the past, it's a simple washing detergent...
Board is working fine almost 10 years after so I'd call that a success

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Anyone in the UK want some free kit that needs repair?

Asus a8v deluxe motherboard (leaky caps)
AMD Athlon 64 chip
Matrox GPU g55+mdha32db
Adapted 29160lp controller (physical damage to resisters)
2GB Kingston DDR 400
IDE dvd drive

I only bought system for the case, I don't need hardware and I doubt it would fetch much on the bay. I know some you guys like playing with older hardware so you are welcome to have. I assume everything apart from board and adapted card work, board should be a easy fix for someone.

Just request p&p be paid for.

[hikaruichijo]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

I'm not planning on sell it, at least now, I'm curious if it really works, the monitor has a male DB9 and the keyboard is a 6 pin DIM but I can't find any technical information about it to try to create an adapter for the screen and the keyboard, also I can't find any info about the software it used.
It is like they made only two or three of this machines...

[stj]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

well trace the monitor pins back and draw a shematic
i suspect it is gnd, video and H/V sync
it could be colour - but i doubt it.

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

the athlon64 may be handy - what's the part number? so many damned sockets on those!

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Ada3000daa4bp

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

off the asus board?

[mikay786]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

Yep, everything from same pc

[stj]

Re: best cheap/free scores 1.1

dont need it then, i think i have a 3200 or 3400

[Curious.George]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

I'm not planning on sell it, at least now, I'm curious if it really works, the monitor has a male DB9 and the keyboard is a 6 pin DIM but I can't find any technical information about it to try to create an adapter for the screen and the keyboard, also I can't find any info about the software it used.
It is like they made only two or three of this machines...

Probably CGA video -- one bit per color (R, G, B) and one bit of "intensity". I.e., 15 colors and black. My Compaq Portable 386 has a similar video interface (but, then again, with a plasma display you're limited to orange, orange, orange and black! )

Remember, it's a word processor, right?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_Graphics_Adapter

[stj]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

it's z80 based, i doubt it's colour and it's probably 25KHz horizonal (medium-res)
a frequency counter or multimeter that can read frequency would be handy.

[stj]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

http://home.iae.nl/users/pb0aia/cm/phcomp.html

[Curious.George]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

it's z80 based, i doubt it's colour and it's probably 25KHz horizonal (medium-res)
a frequency counter or multimeter that can read frequency would be handy.

If it's Z80-based, then it either has a 6845 as a CRTC or (worse!) a homegrown mishmash of tonka-toy logic implementing same discretely. MPU's of that era were relatively easy to share memory with a display device (e.g., frame buffer -- though a word-processor would typically not need that level of sophistication and could just get by with a character buffer) owing to the simplicity of their memory interfaces.

The consolation is that you should be able to reverse-engineer EVERYTHING as the most proprietary devices from that era would be PLA's and even those were "readable" (lacking much buried state). Likewise for the software...

[stj]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

registered pal's are not that readable.

[Curious.George]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

registered pal's are not that readable.

Depends on whether or not the register outputs are "buried". Many of the small PAL's/PLA's brought every register output to pins (keep in mind the vintage of the devices in question).

Even in that case, knowledge of the internal structure of the AND/OR array can allow you to probe the device and deduce it's hidden state. I wrote a tool that allowed me to probe a DUT (at bus speeds) to tabulate its responses to various stimuli and then back-fit a set of logic equations to the observed outputs.

[hikaruichijo]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

It's z80 based for sure, it has two z80a cpus on the main board and another z80a on the bigger dautherboard but I don't see any 6535.
I also thought of CGA and will try if my boos finds his CGA monitor and that's as far as I can go withought info like pin1 red,pin2 green,pin4 hsync... well I lack the knowledge to reverse enginer it.
Looking at the traces that go to the screen conector, or I becoming blind or the board has more than two layers, because I only see four pins conected and two go to ground and another go to a memory chip.
Maybe this thing deserves a better owner because it's seens to be a bit exotic piece of hardware. The last wordprocesor philips produced after the apearance of wordpro.
A shame I can't fully fix it.

[Curious.George]

Re: Your Best Dumpster Finds

Maybe this thing deserves a better owner because it's seens to be a bit exotic piece of hardware. The last wordprocesor philips produced after the apearance of wordpro.
A shame I can't fully fix it.

A lot of older kit is just that -- older kit! Most folks would gladly opt for "new(er) kit" and toss the old in the tip.

I tend to save older devices for:

• sentimental reasons
• support <something> that I bought that is no longer supported by newer devices (e.g., one of my logic analyzers supports an external XT keyboard)
• support <something> that I designed many years ago (and don't feel inclined to try to move that to newer platforms)

E.g., I have a working "HiFi" VCR that I keep until I can finish transferring all of my video tape onto DVD. Ditto (audio) cassette and laser videodisc. I keep a pair of working Sun workstations to support software that I wrote to run under Solaris -- that I don't consider worthwhile to port to a more modern OS. I recently discarded my last pen plotter after having recovered the last of the drawings that relied upon it.

You have to make your own criteria for what's worth your (storage) space and time... (as you get older, these criteria tend to change remarkably!)