Compaq 486 PC restoration and upgrade - Part 2!
Vložit
- čas přidán 15. 06. 2024
- This is part 2 of my restoration and upgrade of my Compaq Deskpro XL 466 computer. In this video, I'm going to finish getting this thing looking and working how I want it... in fact, above par for a machine of its vintage, but while keeping it mostly period correct. The one exception is adding a CompactFlash card to take over for its aging SCSI hard drive, but I have numerous problems while attempting to do so! I also work on replacing the dead (soldered-on) battery, repainting the case, and figuring out if the Matrox MGA Impression Plus video card is going to work as a retro gaming card.
There's a lot going on in this video - so much so that there's a bonus part 3 coming! There are just a few extra things I want to try out that really deserve a little more time than shoehorning them in at the end of another 40 minute video.
Some links/credits:
Vogons topic on classic PC colors: www.vogons.org/viewtopic.php?...
Phil's Ultimate VGA comparison chart: bit.ly/30Z9CRq
Early PCI and AGP DOS graphics compatibility chart: gona.mactar.hu/DOS_TESTS/
Ben Zotto on "Apple Beige" (be sure to read part 2!): / what-color-was-apple-b...
The Instruction Limit Guide on installing a CF card in a 486: theinstructionlimit.com/instal...
Music:
Ketsa - Good Vibe - freemusicarchive.org/music/Ketsa
Crowander - Forever with You - freemusicarchive.org/music/cr...
Bobby Richards - Two Moons (CZcams Audio Library)
Nico Staff - Walking in the Sky (CZcams Audio Library)
00:00 Intro
01:27 Replacing the CMOS battery
04:26 Dealing with that ugly paint!
12:00 CD ROM drive repair
14:20 CF card and CD ROM drive install
18:14 CF card woes!
20:26 Graphics card woes!
24:57 Exploring the MGA's 3D features, then saying goodbye...
29:38 Installing and testing a new graphics card - an S3 Virge
33:30 Fixing the CF card issues
36:55 Showing off some games and wrapping up - Věda a technologie
Nice results on the repaint! I've used the same smokey beige on some drive covers with good to mixed results, but as you mentioned the different off-whites and grays of various old machines really make it tough to match exactly. Especially decades later.
Whoa, somebody rang the bell and got a notification. Lol. Always happy seeing you in the comments! 🙂
Hey, thanks! Yeah I honestly didn't expect to get it as close as I even did. Looking for the right color, though, made me realize that even though there are about 1,000 different cans of paint in that section of a hardware store, there's never *quite* the exact color you want. I was really looking for just a very neutral, very light grey but just couldn't find that in a rattle can. But I think the Smokey Beige still turned out nice.
@@ModernClassic The case looks nice. That machine is going tombe a bit of a beast, when you take out that 486 motherboard card, and put in the Pentium card...
These two videos is really tempting me to tear apart my existing Raspberry Pi computer solution, which is in an Argon One M.2 case. Considering I also have a DAC for it, trailing out, and never got the M.2 part to work... yeah, there are issues to be resolved, and slapping it all into its own special case, and making it more or less a PC, which I use it for, anyway.
Thanks for 5his video, and sharing your experience. This has been fun to watch.
@@horseradishpower9947 Congrats on figuring out the next video :) It's going to be more casual and unscripted, but yeah I've got the Pentium card to install and test. As well as one or two other things that people have requested and that I think will be fun...
@@ModernClassic You know what would be really fun (but also really pointless), adding an RF Antenna video out, so you could use a tube tv as a monitor natively.
“...a new graphics card in 2021!” I had to rewind to enjoy that joke a few times 😆
"Retro PC builds are never done" - ain't that the truth. Recently started my own smol, humble collection of retro computers. There's always more to do.
I loved our 486/66. It served us well all through the 90's
When I needed to color-match my old 486 case, I went to a local car painter. He has some kind of electronic probe device that can measure colors. A piece of paint that was inside the case and therefore not changed by the sunlight or other things was needed for best result. He gave me the numbers to go and order a spray can to be mixed and even offered to mix the paint himself and to paint the case. He even managed to mimic the texture of the original paint which I wouldn't be able to do with a spray paint. Granted, not exactly the cheapest solution, but not too expensive either. I really wanted that case to look spotless. The whole thing was done i a day and the result is just amazing.
Modern Classic it's a nostalgia time warp adventure! I really enjoyed and can't wait for part 3! If I remembered back then that I used Dos 6.22 - Windows 3.1 for word groups- then Windows 95 A for the trifecta of Early dos gaming. (pesky 600 kb's that some Dos games needed) Privateer was one of my favorites back then. I sure miss the tinkering with these classic machines. Thanks again for video share.
Wow, it's a long time since I've thought about VESA Modes. Thanks for the trip down memory lane :)
Cool video as always, man! I never thought I'd be so entertained by someone talking about different shades of beige on computer cases. There's something wonderful about getting things like this just right, isn't there? It's what life is all about!
I forgot what its like to get a "new" graphics card. What at thrill! great video.
Love the shirt! I also enjoy doing the repair work more than playing the games on my channel.
Great stuff sir, I'm really enjoying this little series. And I'm looking forward to part three.
Hello! Just a couple of updates:
1) The dual boot issue on my CF card is now fixed! Turns out that was a bug in Windows (some say an intentional one) and a commenter below turned me on to a homebrew patch for it that worked like a charm. Surprised I never found that in any of my Google searches, but I guess I was probably looking for more of a CF card fix than a Windows fix. Anyway, thanks to David Wonn!
2) The block mode error is a smaller issue (and basically insignificant now that I know it's got nothing to do with the boot hang) but I will just say the new CF adapter did not fix it. I do have a new IDE controller card coming, which has its own BIOS, and I have a feeling that will do the trick. I needed this anyway since no cable I've seen will let me run from the CD-ROM to the back of the case, where I want to mount the CF card (in a rear slot). There is only one IDE port on this motherboard, since it is mainly a SCSI-based system. Older IDE controllers are cheap these days, so no big whoop... though eventually, I would like to put an EISA one in there just for the heck of it! I'd love to be able to use that feature of this machine, since it's an unusual one, and also free up the PCI slot that's now going to be occupied by the new controller. If anyone has an EISA IDE controller to sell, let me know!
Glad to see my suggestion worked out!
I can't find the comment for the patch.. sorry too many comments to wade through. Would be nice to know what the patch was.
@@molivil I’m uncertain why my comment wasn’t pinned, but CZcams often likes to bury my comments for unknown reasons. In a nutshell, a patch to the IO.SYS file is needed on OSR2 in order to restore dual boot functionality, among other things that Microsoft disabled which otherwise work fine on 95 retail or 95a.
CZcams introduced me to you with a part 2, well done CZcams haha
@@RWL2012 That happens to me too when I first encounter some channels. It always makes me hunt down part 1 either by (1) looking for a URL in the description, or (2) via playlists, or (3) by sorting a channel's vids by date, generally in that order.
The editing of your videos is always top notch. I really appreciate it: so many times have I stop watching a really interesting video because of the more than mediocre sound or boring (and even sometimes the complete lack of) editing. Thanks a lot for the entertainment!
Thanks! I am kind of a perfectionist about editing and that's what takes me the most time (I'm never 100% happy with it in the end, either - I always just get to a point of diminishing returns where I say "ok, that's enough, I have to release this"). And I know what you mean about the sound; some of my videos have had sound issues too but I've really tried to refine my process on that. Thanks for noticing!
These kinds of boot problems are why I was an avid user of System Commander in the 90s. It manages any number of OSes installed in the same FAT16 partition, and multiple config.sys/autoexec.bat configs too. It saves the boot sector and boot files of each OS in a subdirectory, and ensures the correct files are present when you want to boot a certain OS (so it protects against mishaps). I highly recommend it.
Love this-great stuff! Such wisdom (and irony!) in the statement that no retro build is never done-the past is ever incomplete, I suppose. Thank you for your work!
You have the best production values on CZcams and a smooth calming voiceover. This is one of my favorite channels and this video did not disappoint.
i was a trueSpace user from the early days up until the 2000s. It was supported quite well and certainly took advantage of hardware acceleration via Direct 3D.
Those flash cards were quite a saga
Looking forward to the "bonus" part 3!
Love the journey and the story to go with it. Well delivered enjoyed every minute. Keep it up! 👌
Paint looks great! I remember building one of these for a customer at work. Compaqs were built like tanks. Those CD players were the same ones they used in their server line. Deskpros were great computers.
I have the pentium 60mhz version of this machine from back then, i loved that thing!
The repaint part is pretty useful, as I have to do the same on an AT case
Just make sure you do multiple light coats. Be patient with it. Remember that a computer runs just fine without a case around it!
35:41 sweet nostalgic moment!
Fascinating stuff. As usual. Thank you.
I used to think these old 486 COMPAQ machines were garbage back in the early 2000's when I worked for a computer company. There were rooms stacked with these from floor to ceiling all heading for recycling. I took quite a few home with me but I don't have any of them anymore. I like the look of them and I was looking for another a while ago but prices are stupidly high. I've always found CF cards to be a temporary solution they are not made to be used as hard drives and wear out pretty quickly. An SSD with a SATA to IDE adapter works as a better solution.
Computer is looking good! Motivates me to look further into mine and see if I can get it going again.
Thank you for documenting the horrifying reality of trying to ACTUALLY use a CF or SD card to IDE adapter with an earlier-era PC.
It's never been 100% smooth sailing in any computer I've tried it in. (Three now.) I've now ordered a new IDE controller card. (The new CF adapter didn't help.)
@@ModernClassic I've had luck with using industrial IDE DOMs. I haven't had compatibility issues and they seem to always be recognized as a standard IDE drive. CF and SD need additional adapters and controllers that seem to cause more problems than they solve.
@@ModernClassic Heard drive bearing whine is rarely a sign of failure. Often times older drives fail from bad heads, bad sectors, head crashes and bad sectors. Though bad heads and head crashes being a lot more uncommon. A lot of hard drives were whiny from the factory too. I have a Quantum Fireball CR 4.3AT with a decent amount of bearing whine that has been on for 80,656 hours (9.20730594 years). It is fully functional. Unless you have something like a late 90s Maxtor DiamondMax bearing whine isn't usually an issue.
I love you videos, they are amazing! Please make more!
Nice paint job on the case, looks like new.
Hey by the way, I really enjoyed the whole Renderware segment in this one, especially with the music you put along with it. That stuff is so cool! There's a special quality to that very early era of 3D that wasn't merely surpassed by later technology, kind of like how pixel art has its own worthwhile aesthetic that has lasted through the years. Something about simple 3D objects being so fundamentally rendered says to our brains, "look: three dimensions!" and we process it way differently than we do high-res texure-mapped 3D or real-life 3D images.
It's like that thing you said in the PS/2 video about Block Out looking better on the orange screen because it better captures that 80s retrofuturism vibe. I agree! The fact that it's simpler makes it more evocative. There's really something to be said for simplicity in graphics and design--I think it's a neurological fact that it tends to be more exciting to our creative imaginations, and therefore is more evocative than higher-res or more lifelike stuff. I hope you do more videos with stuff like this in the future! I really like this early-to-mid 90s era in particular, when 2D games were reaching their peak of sophistication and 3D was just taking off, usually in very imaginative ways. This was an exciting and creative time! I'd dig more videos on Windows 3.1 and Macintosh computers too. :)
Super awesome! Man that is a really great job on that paint. Would love to try your method on an ol' Deskpro 386s. I love this specific era of Deskpros. Great to see the restoration journey. Now time to enjoy the fruits of your labor.
Thanks! Yeah I'm really happy with the paint. Definitely worth doing if you have a scratched up case. Just be patient with it. I went about a week total with the case off, with a full day each for the multiple coats of paint and clear and then 2-3 days for each stage to fully cure.
FWIW, the drive rail issue is something that 3d printers were really made for. Esoteric parts that might be hard or impossible to find, but since they are really just thin plastic or metal, all you ever really need are the schematics for one set. Then print.
That paint looks good man.
read the title as Compy 486 and had a soft chuckle
Nice to see .I still have my Pentium 90 gateway 2000 computer.
Good video. Thanks for the journey.
My Sun Ultra 5 had a similar issue with a CF reader. But i got a SATA to IDE. Worked perfectly.
I used to work with one of those, back in the day, so good machines, I loved Windows 2000 ☺️.
I was sitting here watching the first part saying, "There's a lot of PCI cards that are better than that Matrox card, and you're going to want one of them if you wanna game on that thing…" I'd recommend an ATI Mach64 card, but the S3 Virge is a good choice too.
I spend a day restoring my K6-266 mhz and my friend asked me why are you fixing pc from 20 years and i cant explain why, its just stuff we do, and i enjoy it.
Even now I'm browsing local market page and i saw PC that is i think 486 judging by the case owner as they doo took one blurry picture but i really really want it
YES!!! I was looking for to this!!!
Nice results!
My Pentium 133MHz uses a 4MB S3 Virge card. Pretty good for DOS and Windows 3.1! :)
Tip on painting, hold the can far enough away and move at the pace that lets you keep a wet edge when making a pass so each subsequent pass will blend together, looked a little tiger striped when painting. looked good all together at the end so I guess that didn't matter too much.
That's the reason for the multiple coats.
Great work. Still struggling with one of my 486 machines and the lack of cmos battery.
It great fun playing with old systems like this, Ive just done a few retro builds myself. Its worth bearing in mind however without the benefit of a modern system connected to the internet and google it would probably be a nightmare. If something like this were your only pc back in the day it would have been so frustrating dealing with the issues and very expensive!
Great job!
I had this machine back in the day! Had it until 2000 when the motherboard was wasted by lightning hitting a tree 30' away from it. :(
The Compaq S3 Virge/GX 385, the a datasheet says there was a 2MB memory expansion module for it. 4MB was the datasheets reported max for the card. I have never seen one these 2MB memory module.
I love watching videos like these in part to see how different people approach retro hardware. What modern technologies will they integrate? For my part, I like to replace anything that moves with something that doesn't, whenever possible, and to replace anything else I can with modern, quieter, more efficient options. I still keep the CPU, RAM, motherboard, video card, sound card, case, and optical drive within about plus or minus three years of each other, because I want the games to actually run like they did back then, but I happily use modern CPUs, CF cards, Gotek floppy emulators, and the like, so that I can get to the game as quickly as I can. This means that my P166 through 1GHz PIIIs are nearly silent, as is my C2D. The P4 is a different story. Those things were so ridiculously hot!
Wow, very nice video, and even nicer t-shirt ;)
I see a spot you missed on the top of the case...oh wait...that was my dandruff casting a shadow on my phone. But it’s sweet looking with the new paint. Nice
Thanks for mentioning the eBay seller and his drive rails. I've been looking for drive rails for my Deskpro XE 466 for years.
Shame they're only in the US so I have to pay $15 shipping for $5 rails, lol.
your right about the s3 card i have one with the expansion card plugin it more memory
Quick tip on removing the double sided sticky tape with which the acrylic light pipes are attached to the metal case: use dental floss. Similar to how you'd remove emblems and badges from a car. Here's an image that'll explain it better: www.theartofcleanliness.com/wp-content/uploads/using-floss-to-remove-emblem.jpg
You can also heat the area with a heat gun from the outside. Don't hit the light pipes with the hot air, they can easily deform! Use it on the outside, right where the adhesive is on the other side. I'll soften it up, and you can easily cut through it with the dental floss. To re-attach the pipes after painting, I'd suggest hot glue or silastic. Both aren't strong adhesives, but they don't have to be. I'd say it's more important they can be easily removed at a later time for perhaps cleaning, or repair, or another paint job.
Hi
The respray looks good - top marks !!
I did have my Gateway P2 resprayed and colour matched , i did take it to a smash repair shop and they used a scanner to get the RGB colours and the computerwill find a exact match or recommends similar shades that the shop can colour match
** i first heard about this with my 1970 chrysler the part near the instrument section of the dash was scuffed and scratched, the ashtray was immaculate the glove box scuffed and severely scratched on the bottom ?? why , did they stack boxes up front ?? , the shop just cleaned the ashtray and scanned it and mixed up a spray cans of the correct shade **
Re the CF cards, i have 3 40 pin adapters and 2 x 44 pin adapters, and about 5 CF media cards - they have been running on 2 machines 100% for 3 years, but it was mix and match to get the correct card matched up to a suitable and stable adapter
Some CF adapter donot allow any other device on that chain even if they have a master / slave jumper - all 3 of my machines there is no other device on the same cable
While you can run a speed test like Chrystal disk mark, is there a small software tool that works similar to SD card info or the SMART drive info to get information like hours used read/write cyles
Oh BTW - all of my older machines with CF cards, i max the physical ram as much as i can and turn of disc cache / indexing / virtual memory - all of those items are for marginal spec machines and memory upgrades at the time were expensive and close to the starting price of the machines - i recall buying a 386dx new and then paid $400 for another slave 40 meg IDE drive and ram was $100 a meg for a single sim module, the SB16 and 2 speed cdrom i waited until it fell to $700
Regards
George
Nice T-shirt!
I am using the IDE to SATA adapters with good results, they cost less
than $5 and I see you can buy 8 GB SSD's from China now for about $20.
Cheers, Dave.
thanks for info! I am trying to remove soldered CMOS battery on my Compaq Presario 433(486sx 33Mhz) machine. It looks very similar to yours.
Mine was BR2330A. I guess I can replace with CR2032 socket ? I will order battery socket if this is right size.
Great video, very enjoyable. There is a fairly easy way to run an older Dos version. You just need to create a Dos 6.22 boot floppy, then put the Dos 6.22 files in a separate folder and change the command lines in autoexec.bat and config.sys accordingly. If it accesses the floppy all the time there is a fix for that. I've successfully done this by booting dos 7.1 on Win95 which is dos 7.0, mainly because I was too lazy to recreate a proper dos 7.0 boot floppy, so yeah running win98 dos on win95. Of course this is for real mode dos only, not rebooting from Windows into dos.
You can never go wrong with S3 cards. They are fantastic. My 486 has a Diamond Stealth64 VLB DRAM which has the S3 Vision864 chip. It stays in my system forever...or until I die and somebody very foolishly removes it!
You are probably having problems btw because of that crappy CF to IDE adapter. Get the more expensive (not much more really) StarTech CF device. They have never let me down on multiple 486 builds.
I have long noted that I very rarely buy a new PC - I think I've done it twice in the past almost 40 years now. Instead, my systems just "evolve" over time as I upgrade this and that. In a sense (pretty much just from a data standpoint now), I still have the "same" computer as the 8088 clone I started with oh, so long ago. It never ends, and I have a closet full of old parts to show for it...
Just remembered a weird issue with my Amiga and IDE2CF adapter.
Currently my system drive is an mSD2CF adapter, which seems to work fine. But I did at one point try a cheap 1GB CF card I had, which works perfectly fine as a data drive on my DS and with a PCMCIA adapter, but failed miserably as an IDE drive.
Oh man, that case looks nice. I'm trying to find something about the same size (3 5.25" drive bays tall) in an ATX form factor for my modern system.
32:17 I decided to spin up my 486 and do that quake demo. I got 9.1 FPS on a Cirrus Logic GD5428 (VLB) with a fully populated CPU cache and an AMD DX4-100, so I'm convinced you're right about the CPU bottleneck since I know my CL card is nowhere as beefy as that S3. There's probably a lot of free bandwidth to the S3, just not enough CPU time to make it happen.
I will have another test and hopefully a solution for that in part 3... stay tuned! I may film that this weekend; if I do, it could be ready as early as later next week.
Yeah I will give that graphics card props for being so early to the 3D party, but it kinda seems worse than a Jaguar. 😂
Nice work! It would be good to see what a Voodoo 1 could do on this system. Just curious :)
@26:35 hahaha man I was laughing too!
You should give Win 95 Lite a go. It would be interesting to see how well it performs. Some say you can gain better FPS with it ?? I'm not 100% about that though :) Keep up with the good work. I'm looking forward to the next video, I got the bell notification on ready :D
I've noticed that many swear by the CF card adapters because of the IDE compatibility etc.
I myself stick to the cheap SD to IDE adapters. They work well enough, and SD cards are cheap and easy to get etc. Probably lasts shorter, but hasnt been a problem for me :-)
10:10 Use dental floss. Also, I use smokey beige for Macintosh projects.
Hey just wanted to call this out-- that board has a place to plug in an external battery!
I had exact same problem with my Deskpro 486/33m, set block mode error. Adapter was ide-sd and 2GB MicroSD in it. I gave up and put 6,4GB HDD in. Apart from set block mode there's one thing good to remember, on a new CF/SD -card: run fdisk /mbr before any use.
Oh I've done that several times, but it turned out there's nothing really wrong with the card (the main problem I was having was a Windows 95 bug, now fixed). What I've decided to do to fix the block mode error is just get a new IDE controller, which I need anyway to mount the card in a rear slot (no cable will reach from my CD-ROM to the rear of the case).
I've had great luck with IDE->SD.
I'm not 100% sure why your DX2 50hz ran sluggish like this, but to fix some problems with 486's back in the day *COUGH* was to run a memory management tool QMEM or DOS 6.22's own memory manager, can't quite think of the name of it, I miss my DX4 100hz with 500mb HD and 1mb Trident Video card oh and dual cdrom xD, great video keep the nostalgia going :).
I am running EMM386...
@@ModernClassic Bit of an obvious question, and knowing you was running EMM386, does your 386 have a Math Co processor in, as some motherboards came with out then, just a bare socket, just trying to think, as a DX50 shouldn't have been slowing as much as yours did, or it's something else I can't see / figure out xD.
yup...had one...
Why is Jeff Goldblum in this video? The only logical reason is that he raised the level of it from AWESOME to RAD!!!
Have you tried an ide to sd agapter instead? I've been through ide cf card hell on a big box Amiga. For some reason the SD adapter just seemed to work.
My key question for a 1996-era machine: How does the Transgression 2 demo from MFX run? You can still get it on pouet.
EISA slot. God, almost forgot how things of the past were.
I never thought of trusting Windows to not back to DOS 6. I probably would've used just a simple boot disk, of course with all the called files on the C drive. I'm even sure there's a way to make it read the DOS bits on the C drive instead of the current boot drive. Terminology fails me with age, so I'm not even sure I could remember enough terms to google it, lol. I just remember way back in the day I had a boot disk for gaming that was optimized to load only necessary drivers and TSRs and keep as much conventional memory open as possible. (This was before I discovered I could make branching config.sys/autoexec.bat that would prompt on boot.)
Your problems with CF reminded me, I built a cocktail mame cabinet back in 2004. I used a fanless VIA EPIA and the idea was to have no moving parts at all. But I had such problems with CF either flaking out or running slow that I reluctantly put in a harddrive. I should modernize it some day (that'll be some work as all the controls are wired to PS2 and all the software is custom code running on freedos)
In many cases now it's better to just use a real SSD if you want no moving parts. I thought about that with this machine but was really just trying to save a little money. At one point I thought I remembered still having my old 120GB first SSD and looked for it, but I must have gotten rid of it and even the cheapest new SSD from a reliable manufacturer is like $70, plus the possible need for a new controller. But, I have read a lot from people who have done that successfully, even in old machines running DOS and Windows 9X, and I'm sure it would be more reliable. And it might not even be more expensive if you would end up otherwise having to go on a wild goose chase to fix a problem like I'm still doing. (Though this machine does now work except for those couple bugs that I can work around.)
@@ModernClassic True. And the point of my mame cabinet isn't to be true to the period so I can modernize the whole thing really (except there's something to be said about using a real 15khz arcade monitor)
Can I ask what grit of sand paper you used to rough up the case before painting? I know that's likely a dumb question from a lot of people's POV, but my experience in preparing surfaces for painting is nonexistent, and I've got a case I was hoping to refinish soon. Thanks! :)
I had issues with that same IDE to CF card in an 486 build, It would only work with a 80 wire IDE cable.
I am using an 80 wire IDE cable... still no joy on the block mode error. It's probably an incompatibility between the adapter and on-board controller.
I have [re]discovered the solution to the "1740-fixed disk 0 failed set Block Mode command" issue.
Turns out this error isn't just encountered when modern humans try connecting compact flash adapters to these computers. Our fore-bearers faced this scourge when connecting non-Compaq hard disks as well.
I know this because I discovered the lost sacred text of Softpaq SP0970, followed its teachings and found resolution. I am happy to report that my Deskpro XL 560 now happily boots from an 8GB CF Card (with system utilities installed), although it sees only 4GB. When you consider the vintage of these machines (1994)-- 4GB is an absurd amount of disk space.
So to recap:
Compact flash adapters and cards work just fine, just use BLOCKMD.COM to disable block mode for the disk. The 1740 block mode error will go away.
System Configuration can be installed onto the CF card.
Disk size limit for the BIOS appears to be ~4GB.
The issue you're having with the CF drive is might be related to the 2 GB barrier. Even if you formatted the CF drive as FAT16, a lot of BIOSes and IDE disk controllers from that era did not support drives larger than 2 GB. The only thing that gives me a little pause is that you tried the 2 GB industrial card, but it's still possible that the BIOS is not fully compatible with the controller you're using, but is compatible enough to make it work. Just a SWAG.
Very nice video 🙂 The pc turned out great and I am looking forward to the next one. I hope you don't feel you had to do all that research on correct color of paint to justify spray painting it to please the small, I hope, minority who demands everything must be perfectly original, no modifications and so on.
99% of the stuff I do is for me :) So don't feel bad, it was really because I have to look at it every day and it'd drive me nuts if the color wasn't right. I still see that it's not 100% right, but it was never going to be from a rattle can. I definitely got the best result I could have. I'm really happy with how even and professional it looks too, given that it's literally the second time in my life that I've spray painted anything.
@@ModernClassic That's good to hear 🙂 It really looks great 😁
What color of paint on the RAL grid did you use? Is there a number on the paint bottle?
❤️
You should consider trying a Matrox Mystique 220 with 8Mb and the Matrox M3D Accellerator
No doubt those would be fast enough; the reason I got away from Matrox is that their later cards all have scrolling issues in some games. I experienced that myself with the Millennium II, and you can see it in the chart I referenced in the video as well. So I just wanted to try something different.
I'm sitting here giving myself serious upper cuts as during lockdown I did a bad bad thing. I "cleaned" out my stash of old computer parts. Old 486 stuff and P1 stuff, keyboards, mice and lots of different peripherals. The sad part is many were still new and in packets. I never thought to look online and see if they had any value... Oh well regrets won't change a thing.
Oh I've done the same and probably worse... life isn't perfect, don't beat yourself up about it. It's crazy how much people are willing to pay for nostalgia these days. I try to find good deals for mine, at least :)
they make appliance paint i used it once looked really close
Hi Sir. Did you tried to clean the CF in windows 10. Boot with dos 6.22 and partition it and then do FDISK /MBR ? I do that in all my CF's and no problems at all
My newer Pentium Deskpro has a header for a battery pack in addition to the soldered coin battery. Did these older machines not have one?
Is the Pentium upgrade Socket 4 or 5?
It has one. I just wanted to replace the internal one.
Is there a specific part# for the battery holder? I am going to do the same thing on a Deskpro XL 560.
Now that you figured yourself what cursed the errors of not being able to boot anymore, will you just prepare a second CF card with only DOS 6.22 on it?
The 486 would do great with it, I think.
No, another commenter actually turned me on to the fact that the dual boot issue is a known bug (some think an intentional one) in Windows 95b. There is a homebrew patch for it that I've applied and it now seems to work - I can boot either DOS 6.22 or Windows with impunity. I'll be posting a pinned comment about this since it's a pretty important update to the story.
Half the joy is inkering and building. What about making an at case yourself and selecting all components.
My project: ibm pentium clone 200mhz with mmx, cd rom, 3,5” floppy drive, 2x 512mb cf, 2gig hdd, standard pci video card, soundblaster awe 64, pci network card and power supply. All this build in an onkyo housing. I have made a lot of modifications to the back for the cards and power supply. The front has a aluminium bezel and transparent plasic front that still has to be finnished. Holes for the reset and power button and spray painting the back of the front.
When ready it will be a black pc with a bit of aluminium around the front.
Socks with slippers the ultimate fashion faux pas.
They're not slippers, they're sandals :) And I was only wearing them for painting. They're what I wear when I'm walking outside in my backyard.
That rule has been rescinded due to the pandemic.
Judging by the 1996 date on your Windows 95, you are actually running 95B which has a known bug which only allows it to boot to a previous version of DOS *once*! You can either patch the IO.SYS via googling OSR2fix, or preferably use 95 retail or 95A to eliminate this boot bug.
Interesting. Thanks - I will check that out. Sounds like it may be the culprit!
@@ModernClassic Yep, this bug is one of the main reasons I stick with 95(a) on older hardware that neither needs USB nor FAT32 support. Plus its built-in DOS 7.0 natively runs Win 3.x, though that still generally runs significantly better on the previous version of DOS due to DOS 5 / 6 likely having its config files already fine tuned for Win 3.x.
The underlying DOS 7.1 of 95OSR2 _can_ run Win 3.x, even on FAT32 with caution, but it also requires the aforementioned OSR2fix and custom batch files to ensure it is always launched from the proper directory. I only do this on PCs with USB or over 64MB (the upper limitation of DOS 6.22's himem.sys, though even that can be Frankenstein'd allegedly to support more.)
@@DavidWonn The problem I have with 95a is that it requires a restart for every resolution change, which I do frequently. 95b can do it without a restart. So I will definitely be trying those fixes (I already googled them, but the links in the articles I found to the files themselves were broken... I will just look a little more tonight, I'm sure they're out there).
@@ModernClassic If all links are broken, I may look around to dig it up from a backup of a Pentium III that I applied the OSR2fix to a couple decades ago and upload to my old website.
As for the resolution change, yeah 95a does require a restart when the color depth is changed, but usually doesn’t if only the resolution changes. Fortunately, it isn’t a full reboot though (equal to the time it takes to Start - Shutdown - Restart while holding the Shift key.) It’s a tolerable amount of time on my 486SX25, but I don’t change the resolution nearly as often as I used to.
I found the w95bootfix.exe, which fixed my dual boot issue. So thanks! It is weird that that never showed up in any of my Google searches about this problem; guess I just didn't use quite the right search terms. I'll be posting a pinned comment about this being fixed. The osr2fix file seems to be for running Windows 3.1 under DOS 7.1... I'm not sure if I need that, but now I know it's out there if I do. Anyway, thanks again for the suggestion!
I ended up only using DOS 6.22 (and Windows 3.11) on my 486 DX2. Windows 95/98 isn't great for CF cards due to the way the pagefile works. It can wear them down quickly because they have a limited number writes. I have a Pentium 233 MMX that I use for Windows 95 and a Pentium 4 2.4GHz for both Windows 98 and XP. It's pretty easy to get modern hard drives to work with the two Pentium machines with SATA to IDE adapters. Once you start going more towards windows you start losing DOS compatibility with your video and sound hardware. There's truly no perfect system for everything. I'm still on the hunt for some earlier computers, like maybe a Tandy 1000, due to older dos games not running well on the 486 even with cache turned off and turbo on (or is it off lol).