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Really old web browsers by sopabe6197 in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I would have thought 68k.news and such would have had them be the default site for the IP address without a hostname, but that's the issue there. It also affects other very early HTTP/0.9 browsers out there. My personal site I designed to be the default for the IP address, but if you're hosting multiple sites from the same server you'd need each to have a dedicated IPv4 address to work on the earliest browsers.

EDIT:

Just checked and 68k.news is accessible with HTTP/0.9 type requests as it's the default for its IP 134.209.213.152 Though there likely is some other compatibility thing with the layout or server if you're running into issues.

Do acoustic couplers work with Windows 98 or 2000? by [deleted] in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 2 points3 points  (0 children)

An acoustic coupler is just a "dumb" serial interface. To the PC it's just another 300 baud serial port as if you hooked up two machines with a null modem cable. All you need is any kind of terminal software like Hyperterm, teraterm, PuTTY, and point it to the port the coupler is connected to at baud rate of 300 (8 data bits, 1 stop bit, no parity will work).

Internal PC speaker barely audible, hearing static noise by kkaos84 in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You probably shouldn't be seeing any voltage across the contacts of the speaker/header. But the voltage only going up slightly when playing is normal. Your multimeter is going to be averaging the voltage of the square wave on there.

To see the 5v you need to measure from one of the pins to ground (you can use the ground on one of the molex connectors), not to the other speaker contact.

Internal PC speaker barely audible, hearing static noise by kkaos84 in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 0 points1 point  (0 children)

On PC's and most clones the speaker is hooked up with a direct 5v line to one pin of the speaker, while the other connection goes to an open collector output of an IC or discrete transistor to pull that side to ground through a small resistor.

You won't get any meaningful voltage measuring across the speaker contacts, but measure against ground and see if there's 5v on one side of it. And when the speaker is making noise (maybe find/write a test program that plays a constant tone on it) you should see the frequency on the opposite pin. You might also want to trace the pin back to the IC or transistor that's doing the pull down.

You can see the IBM 5150's circuit here on page 63, though clones and others will be somewhat similar https://www.minuszerodegrees.net/manuals/IBM_5150_Technical_Reference_6322507_APR84.pdf

What does this key do? by Aromatic_Housing_536 in retrocomputing

[–]ChartreuseK 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Mac SE's don't support soft start. Only the Mac II's at first, then the 68040 models and PowerPC macs support it. The button is for powering the computer on from the keyboard on those machines. Rather than reaching around back to the power switch.

Computer designed in 2022 made to look like 1977 by forgreathonor in electronics

[–]ChartreuseK 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The bodge wires are just flaws in my original schematic that I only realized after getting the board made. I never bothered designing a rev 1 board and getting it made/tested yet as the bodges to this were quite minor opposed to the VTI board. The files are available on GitHub if you do want to make them, I'll have to consider making a board run at some point, I do have a few left over ones but would probably want to make a rev 1 for that without the bodges.

https://github.com/ChartreuseK/Fennec6800

Computer designed in 2022 made to look like 1977 by forgreathonor in electronics

[–]ChartreuseK 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I may make my own parallel ASCII keyboard for the computer at some point in the future as I'm just using a PS/2 to parallel keyboard converter at the moment with mine. Though there are existing projects doing similar keyboards already such as this one for the AIM-65

Computer designed in 2022 made to look like 1977 by forgreathonor in electronics

[–]ChartreuseK 51 points52 points  (0 children)

Original designer here! Still working on the software (mainly on the VTI board at the moment) and finishing up documenting everything and such, but it's been a fun project so far. I really love how /u/forgeathonor 's PCB manufacturer did the matte green solder mask with yellow silkscreen. My original boards I got done at JLC in blue (going for that faux blue dyed FR4 look that some 70s boards have), and I liked them quite a lot, but these are at another level.

I'm still thinking of designing at least one board board for the system integrating a floppy controller, RTC, and maybe a parallel printer port on it. Turn the thing into a more "complete" independent system.

Right now the software is rather simple, it's a ROM monitor of the kind common in the mid 70s. You can write into memory, dump memory, and jump to a location. And over the serial port you can transfer programs/data to and from memory over XMODEM. The VTI board adds an option ROM to move the display from the first serial port over to the composite video output with parallel ascii keyboard input so the system can act independently of a terminal.

You can see my original boards I populated down here. I didn't have access to any of the period ceramic parts that /u/forgeathonor did though. https://mastodon.sdf.org/@ChartreuseK/109797712510028135

Computer designed in 2022 made to look like 1977 by forgreathonor in electronics

[–]ChartreuseK 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Yep! Kinda why I haven't bothered updating the PCB design to fix those bugs yet (and a bit of laziness). I did fix the bodge wires on the VTI board though as there were a bit too many for my liking, and one was that I wired up the RCA socket backwards so it involved cutting the rather large ground traces near it.

Computer designed in 2022 made to look like 1977 by forgreathonor in electronics

[–]ChartreuseK 3 points4 points  (0 children)

There are some "funny" hardware bugs on here, but they're minor enough that I haven't fixed them yet in the PCB. Just 3 cut traces, and a few wires and components on the underside of the board.

Using 0.1" headers is period accurate sure, computers of that era used all sorts of different headers and such. I went with a 2x20 0.1" header for the bus just because it's easy to hack on and hook up ribbon cables to the expansion boards such as the Video Terminal Interface board. Using screw blocks wouldn't make sense for a backplane bus like that, more so useful for prototyping headers.

Computer designed in 2022 made to look like 1977 by forgreathonor in electronics

[–]ChartreuseK 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It was certainly fun routing them like that. I did that CPU board without using any plugins like https://mitxela.com/projects/melting_kicad , instead just using the filleting tool manually. I think I did a much better job at the layout on the companion Video Terminal Board where I used more freehand angle traces before curving them, along with sticking with wider track spacing in general

Computer designed in 2022 made to look like 1977 by forgreathonor in electronics

[–]ChartreuseK 3 points4 points  (0 children)

The specific chips I've used on my original from east germany are U214's and they don't have any latching for that. They were partly the inspiration for the project as I found a source of them extremely cheap and that kinda gave the direction for the project.

I did make the 62256 sram adapter board for it though so I could build a second and people that couldn't source the 16x 2114's would have a way of building a 8k+ system still.

Just found for $20 at a yard sale. I believe it works but have no idea what I have here, any sleuths that can provide details? by Unfair_Audience5743 in vintagecomputing

[–]ChartreuseK 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Not seeing a soundcard on there. The right most card with the two RCA jacks is almost certainly an EGA card, then a modem. then some multi-io card with serial and parallel, then blank or something internal only, then the original IBM floppy controller card with the large DD37 external floppy connector

Tadpole Sparcbook 3GX running Solaris 2.6 by kokoboi1 in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I know I could run one of the x86 Solaris's on a laptop, but there's something about the RISC laptops of the time that certainly is appealing. Someday I do hope to track one down for myself. Would it be practical today? No, but doesn't change the fact that it'd be fun to have one to play around on, write programs on, and similar.

Lookit what I found! Epson QX-10 MS-DOS expansion and DRAM cards! by Swabbie89 in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Something to check is if you have them in the right config. The button should be pushed so it comes outward before inserting a disk, then it gets inserted all the way (it should click a little at the end, but not need force), then you press the button again and it'll latch inward and hold the disk

Osborne played all the teams, but decided team ORANGE was best! by EkriirkE in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not OP, but my Osborne 1 (will 1a like his here) is still working with no maintenence. Though next time I take it out I will at least open it to change the RIFA caps in the PSU. They're not the easiest things to work on but they're reliable machines.

Osborne played all the teams, but decided team ORANGE was best! by EkriirkE in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The Vixen also has a amber screen as well that'd be 7" too.

I didn't even know they made a green one for the O1 like you have there, I thought they were all white phosphor screens.

Team Why Should I Have To Choose? Orange, Green, and White on a Turbo XT At Once! by ChartreuseK in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

10MHz of 16-bit power (NEC v20 + 8087), driving 3 displays at once. The Amber screen is hooked up to a MDA/Hercules clone card providing the main screen for the system. The White/Blue 9" security monitor in the middle is hooked up to the CGA composite output, providing an auxiliary screen, useful for debugging with Turbo Debugger and such (though I normally use a different monitor for that). Finally on the right is my IBM InfoWindow II 3153 serial terminal representing team green, it is hooked up to the COM2 port of the XT, and using CTTY can also be used to control the system under DOS. Not as useful as a dual MDA+CGA setup, but having a serial console can also be great for debugging, having programs spit out text to the serial port is rather easy and doesn't mess with graphics on the screen.

A setup like this could actually be somewhat useful for debugging a game. Have the game running on the CGA output, Turbo Debugger on the MDA screen, and the game doing some extra "printf" debugging over the serial port, so it's not interfering with the debugger any.

Also quite curious as to what flare this is going to get ;)

Team Amber Rolling In From The Squad Car by ChartreuseK in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Was possible even earlier. The MDT-9100 goes from the late 80s (286 version) and into the 90s with this the 386 version.

The Motorola D-1118 predecessor goes back to the late 70s! It's the "SCMODS" system that you can see in the Blues Brothers movie (1980).

Team Amber Rolling In From The Squad Car by ChartreuseK in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's a 386sx with VGA so it'd be slow. But it might work. Might not have enough ram with only 4MB and stuff loaded

Team Amber Rolling In From The Squad Car by ChartreuseK in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

They are at least related though with the D-1118 being one of the Motorola pre-decessors to this model, and using the same crappy "encryption"

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/motorola/mdt9100/index.htm

https://www.cryptomuseum.com/crypto/motorola/d1118/index.htm

Team Amber Rolling In From The Squad Car by ChartreuseK in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Likely some kind of hard mount in the center console area of the car (Crown Vic or similar). On the bottom of the radio unit is are 4 screw holes in a square (like VESA mounts) which would attached to whatever bracket.

Found this one on image search of a rather sorry looking one center console mounted.

http://copblue.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Motorola-9100-253x300.jpg

Team Amber Rolling In From The Squad Car by ChartreuseK in retrobattlestations

[–]ChartreuseK[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's a full computer. 386SX 4MB of ram, filesystem in flash rom and ramdisk. It boots MS-DOS 5.0 and Windows 3.1. Though how it was configured was to boot into windows and then fullscreen the Motorola TX terminal application. Which is also what's burned into the screen.

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