Alright who else feels an X68000 needs to be in their collection after reading this thread? Nice machine and repair. Been there with corroded solder that on very old PCBs that has basically turned to ?rust, and once you get there the repair is never elegant. No matter much much heat and flux you use some just doesn't budge. Some I've had to use a Dremel to buzz off and a fine drill bit to open up the holes again.
Updated https://forums.overclockers.com.au/threads/import-fabmaster-asc-to-kicad.1349352/ PCB, symbols, footprints. The only madness left is a automated schematic creation, but I doubt I'm that good.
A colleague asked me if I wanted an Apple IIe with disk drives & monitor. Quite an offer, if only I had the time or space to accept. It's being picked up from parents over Christmas, and after that will need to find a new home ASAP. I've told him What He Has, and he did point out it hasn't been powered up for a decade. I don't know what the ask will be. I've offered to help connect him with someone in the Wollongong area to pick it up in early Jan, whether it's a member I can put in touch or a local group. Advice? The one thing I know about these is that you need to be ready to recap the PSU.
Apple IIe (beige and platinum) are pretty bulletproof short of if-not-blown-they-will-probably-have-a-go 2 x RIFA/filtering capacitors in the PSU, I've come across a couple with bad keyboard controllers (~ $10 replacement) and the keyboards can degrade sometimes need a trace repair or two. Disk II drives (black, blocky model) often need attention usually, the newer beige Disk drives are usually good. The Apple monitors should also work but will eventually need a recap and not a terrible job to do. Check also the cards, slots some have real-time clocks and there might be a battery leak here. I'd accept your mate's offer they are pretty solid noting the above and you can pick up a cheap USB Smartport controller card to put every bit of software on at once.
Retro Fuzion replacement c64 case arrived today - swapped my c64 over and the keycaps (it came with a mechboard64) works 100% fine. Looks Pretty nice in person (red and blue light/plate) I have an extra mechboard though as I didnt remember it came with one lol that I have no interest in soldering together
The funny thing is that with my Apple IIe, the bulk filtering caps in the PSU were fine, and there were no RIFAs to blow apart. It was actually the a couple of small 1uF (I think) capacitors that had failed and leaked, causing the feedback circuit to not work and output to collapse when turned on.
Finally got around to building and mounting a Sega style view and start button box. Happy with the result, adds a great arcade feel.
Helped my grandma empty out her garage went to the local tip thought ide go to the “shop” while there and picked up a 486 box for $20 just at a glance it has a umc vlb board intel dx2 66 ess688f just a plain box will test out later today
Crazy that that nascar guy actually did (successfully) the daytona track 1 wall ride literally everyone did
I picked up an X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty recently (the PCIe SB0880 one) which I was intending to put it in my P4 XP machine, but one thing led to another and it's now installed in my Windows 10 PC. I'd read that Daniel_K's driver pack allows these things to work in Win10 and 11, and it occured to me that most of the games I play (even on my relatively modern gaming machine) would benefit from some EAX action, so I decided to give it a crack. I've been using onboard sound for 10 years and deemed it good enough but I've been really impressed with the improvement over the onboard Realtek ALC1220 codec. Sound is of course pretty subjective but I've done lot of A / B testing, and my ears are telling me that the X-Fi has a noticeably nicer sound. And for the relevant games, using ALchemy really enhances the sound experience. Much better stereo separation and even with 2.1 speakers (Logitech Z623's) the improvement to the sound stage is amazing. There are visual cues involved too of course but sometimes I swear I can hear things behind me. Anyway this is probably not news to anyone but me - are you guys still using a sound card in your modern machines? I've considered them over the years but couldn't ever justify the expense, but maybe I'm back on the bandwagon. These are the games that have responded well to ALchemy:
yes, up until i moved to a laptop. i had grand intentions of digging the old girl out (i7 2600k) over the break but motivation is low when between GOG and the AMD APU lets me play everything of interest (for now) might still set it up and throw that rtx2080 i bought a year ago into it and finally try Quake II out with raytracing
I... Think I only ever owned one sound card. The sb16 that came in my 486. Gotta hand it to ac97, azalea and realtek. They killed the market
Went back to the tip shop to get a skateboard for my daughter, and grabbed this gem the anti glare material on it had a small tare so I removed it all gave it a full strip down and clean not that it was dirty inside and it’s up and running with bright crisp image
Nah Ive always owned sound cards.. kicks all over onboard sound. Currently on a Xonar from Asus. Awesome bit of kit.
Myne_h is not wrong though, the sound card market has been relegated to enthusiasts with the majority of users (myself included) happy with onboard sound. Mind you I've generally stuck to higher end motherboards which tend to have better onboard sound than the entry level boards. I've been in IT distribution for almost 15 years now and I still remember the days when you had shelves full as they would sell. Nowadays (and it's been like this for quite a few years now) they are largely considered a special order item which many disties stock very little of if at all.
