What retro computer activity did you get up to today?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metrication_in_Australia
Because it is a 50g tin it is post 1966, so probably not as old as you might think.

 

I had the phone in the mid 80's as a handme down as the higher up moved to walkie talkie style mobile phones, I just put it in the boot of my car and kept wearing a pager every where.

 

The (non) wisdom of starting to muck with something just before bedtime. "It'll only take 5 minutes". Cue next scene, psychotic snorting bull with bloodshot eyes at dawn.

 

Some of my best and worst work is done after midnight.

Just got done with this slim PS3 - Dust cleaned, fan oiled, thermal paste re-applied.
First time I've pulled one apart, pretty good design, I imagine with the metal shrouds attached to the mainboard you could throw it at the wall and it would probably survive.

 

I've always been too chicken to pull mine apart. Is it fairly straight forwards? Or death by a million screws?

 

I read this guide first and referred back to it a couple of times during the process but it's not 100% thorough but at least gives you a proper order of part removal and indicates fragile ribbon cables clips.
https://www.ifixit.com/Teardown/PlayStation+3+Slim+Teardown/1121

It's not too bad just group the screws related to each part as you disassemble it. I was taking 1-2 pieces outside at a time to blow dust out with the compressor. As a result my layout of pieces got a bit mixed up. i ended up trying to use the 2 fans screws for the ODD which only has 1 screw (their screws are identical) and I had to take the ODD back out cause the power/eject strip is supposed to go in first. Most of the screws are unique per component but I'd advise try to avoid distractions throughout the process as well

I have two more of them to do
It's high time I gave my fat PS2's the same treatment though.

 

Forgot to mention, there's about 4 little rubber pads adhered to part of the mainboard shroud - if you're brushing/blowing this clean be mindful of them as they will fall off and disappear easily.

 

Not today.. More like the last week.. Finished my custom versus link!

The two cabs acts as a master and slave

The master has the pcb/jpac connected to it.

The harness piggy backs the signals for video, service, test, coin 1 and the 2p on the master is wired to the 1p of the slave so it's literally just plug and play.



The schematic changed a little from this as I didn't take into account the two grounds required for the kick harness, I thought i could use the single ground, but I forgot the kick harness is a pass through and the grounds are picked up from the cps2



Here is the quick test and she looks good!



Video of the harness and cab in action!

 

It does look amazing, but that slight colour difference is triggering my OCD.

I've got a colour probe on the way from the US. I'll be doing a guide pretty soon on how to colour match two displays *exactly*.

 

Trust me! It's not just you.... I was on it for about an hour! I just couldn't get it perfect.

That was the best I could get with my n00b calibration skills

 

You're not a noob. I know exactly two people out in the real world that can colour match by eye, and that's after many years working with top tier video and VFX professionals.

The rest of us are just slaves to human biology. Even colour experts with decades of experience need to use professional equipment to help.

 

Well that makes me feel somewhat better

I thought I had decent eyes for colour, but in the image it looks a lot worse than in real life

Hopefully once you get the colour probe, you can show us the way!

 

Would anyone have any idea what I could do about the missing reset button?
It feels incomplete without it! Is it possible to get 3d printed referencing from the other button?
That's the only thing I could think of.

 

3D printing is probably easier. You could take a cast of the power one, make a mold for a resin copy and paint to match.

You going to leave it Pentium 75? Funny CPU that one. 50Mhz bus, low clock. The last released of its generation (they released the faster ones first).
In terms of performance really sits apart and next to the Pentium 60 and 66 from the earlier socket. Almost all P75 boards will happy take up to a Pentium 200. But even a 120 or 133 will basically be twice as fast because of the bus speed.

 

I'd be inclined to use the existing button as a reference to get two new ones 3D printed. Then it's a perfectly matched pair. I'd probably do them in red, too.

 

I intend to keep the hardware as I received it as much as I can. The floppy drive I will replace as I have a spare one. I don't have any other Pentium chips as I'm just getting into this restoring game

Any idea where I could go to get it done? I'm sure it wouldn't cost much for such a small piece but then again, I really don't know anything about this.

 

No personal experience, but there are a lot of services out there these days.

Surprised to learn just now that some of the bigger chains are doing it, including Officeworks (at the Mentone store):

https://www.officeworks.com.au/print/print-and-copy/3d/3d-scanning

 

I definitely understand. Keeping something authentic (or least able to be restored as authentic) is an important part of retroing for many. I've always thought it would be great to put it next to say a AMD 133Mhz 486 and see if it is actually noticeably different in normal every day tasks and many non-quake games.

 

A lot of those services will be printing only, what you need is someone to re-create the button in CAD.
Autodesk 360 is free for personal use if you wanted to have a crack. Not sure what the back looks like but the front shapes would be fairly simple to re-create, a rectangle with circle at each end, extruded and chamfered.

You could also get some play-doh\blu-tak and push the button in to make the shape, then pour in some epoxy and wait for it to dry then sand\paint.

 

Scored an AGP nVidia Quadro 980GXL graphics card - basically a Geforce Ti 4800SE. However, it was in a house fire and covered in soot and corrosion, I took to cleaning it up in the slim chance it worked, as I was looking for a card from this era to suit a Tualatin-Pentium III based setup.

It's odd - the card POSTS fine, but refused to install the Forceware driver under Windows 98. Tore it out, checked it over, fired it up and the bloody thing doesn't miss a beat. Driver installed fine, can run repeated runs of 3DMark. I suspect it might go awry again ... but in the mean time it's a good pickup and evidence of quality considering where it came from!

Some of the larger caps aren't bulging, but could have been exposed to very high heat - if it fails again I'll replace these.